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‘People who were affected by punk still are’: Pauline Murray on rage, life on the road and doing things her way

The frontwoman of the pioneering 70s punks Penetration remembers the years of struggle and hard-won victories described in her memoir Life’s a Gamble

T his summer, as we all watched swathes of the planet on fire, Britain’s vocal nature punk, Chris Packham, pinned a video tweet in support of NoNewOil.com. He urged his 617,000 followers to demand from our political leaders “current and aspiring” policy-led action on climate breakdown. “It’s time for all of us to stand up,” he declared, “shout above the noise, and be counted.”

Shout above the noise. Packham watchers know that phrase: it’s the title of a song he wants played at his funeral, released by punk pioneers Penetration in 1979. Forty-four years later, the woman who wrote and sang the lyrics, Pauline Murray, is contemplating her impact on the famously teen punk Packham.

“It blows me away to think you can affect someone so deeply,” she says in her profound Durham accent. She knows all about Packham’s fandom, was interviewed by the revolutionary naturalist for his punk odyssey documentary Forever Punk (2019) who told her, whenever he’s down, he plays that song, “and it charges his battery right back up”. She gave him handwritten lyrics, a photo of which he tweeted, adding: “They’ll be in the box with me!”

Murray thinks about how punk changed, if not the world, then several generations of similarly insubordinate individuals who won’t give up on changing the world. “It’s an attitude,” she says. “People who were affected by punk, still are. It stays with you. You know when things are shit. You see things for what they are. It takes guts to say the things Chris Packham says, in his position of power. He’s targeted. And he is fearless.”

We’re in a retro-futuristic Italian restaurant opposite King’s Cross station where Murray has just alighted from her Newcastle home town. Lava lamps line the walls and the 65-year-old is as stylish as our surroundings: a black beret sits atop glam-white hair; she sports a silky cream blouse, black velvet jacket and drainpipe tartan trousers which could be Vivienne Westwood but are actually Primark. On the table between us lies a large-format, beautifully illustrated book, Life’s a Gamble, Murray’s autobiography told in a straightforward, unaffected manner, the compelling story of a shy, sensitive, creative kid growing up in a purpose-built coal mining village near Durham. By the mid-60s it had long been earmarked for “managed decline” and bulldozing, a controversial Labour council policy allowing mining settlements, as she writes, to be “actively killed”. Aged eight, with her breadwinner miner dad now unemployed and her home under threat, she became “introverted”, an outsider, aware of the power of external influences.

“I just thought adults were a bit stupid,” she remembers of the personal and community trauma. “Later on, with punk, which made you look at everything, I could see how everything is determined by politics locally, nationally, globally.”

As Murray’s attitude was forming, her family relocated into the larger Ferryhill village and she grew into a musically obsessive adolescent transfixed by Bowie. Soon she was a London gig-going regular with her teenage boyfriend, Peter (her husband at age 20). In 1976, everything changed: she turned 18, formed a band with local friends, and saw the Sex Pistols in Northallerton, that Yorkshire crucible of insurrection. Johnny Rotten changed her life: “His energy, his lyrics, the delivery.” The newly named Penetration joined what she calls “the cause. Bands all over the country, we all not only thought things were shit, but we provided an alternative vision of how to live.” Her gender felt irrelevant. “I never thought ‘I’m a woman fronting a band’,” she says. “It meant nothing to me. I’m a person. It’s not about being a man or a woman, it’s about what you do.”

Penetration’s debut single, the pointedly titled Don’t Dictate, released on Virgin in 77, became a shout-along classic (“Don’t tell me what to do! / It’s my choice, I’ll take it, I’ll chance it”), showcasing their signature sound, a fuzzy, frenetic, guitar-driven blast of anti-authoritarian indignation. Criminally, it was never a hit. Unlike their peers X-Ray Spex and Buzzcocks, Penetration never achieved a chart breakthrough nor appeared on Top of the Pops, though an appearance on Granada TV’s So It Goes became notorious: a renegade punter who repeatedly flicked beer in Murray’s face was set upon by the crowd and ousted, an incident presenter Tony Wilson hailed as one of the show’s greatest moments. Despite two Top 40 albums, Moving Targets (1978) and Coming Up for Air (1979) they remained a “John Peel band” and a geographical novelty, outsiders who remained in their Ferryhill mining village with no interest in moving to London’s musical centre. An early Sounds headline made the most of it: “Anarchy in County Durham … It’s the Pits.”

Their gigs, meanwhile, were infamously incendiary, often erupting into riots that got Penetration banned from various venues. “They were fired up, angry, spitting,” says Murray. “You had to keep control and it got out of hand many times.” Like all punk bands, they were drenched by the dreaded gobbing. Sid Vicious once hitched a lift in their van, gobbed on the ceiling; weeks later, his crystallised spittle was memorialised, circled in black felt pen with the caption, “Sid’s Gob”. But otherwise, Murray barely hung out with punk’s other big names, and Life’s a Gamble is less about her famous peers than what it took for a 60s-raised, northern working-class girl to lead an autonomous creative life, and the toll of that very life, in a peripheral band, forever skint and on the road, coupled with rip-off business deals, naivety and the exploitation of a relentless touring schedule.

After three years of punishing effort, Penetration split up. “I felt,” writes Murray, “angry, sad, exhausted, confused, relieved, frightened, disappointed, betrayed, exploited, financially broke, jaded and old at 21 years of age.” Then, she fell in love with Penetration’s bassist, Robert Blamire, and was soon divorced from Peter. Her early 80s were chaotic but productive, creating music with Blamire and shape-shifting collective the Invisible Girls, featuring a host of Mancunian mavericks, from producer Martin Hannett (a new acquaintance, who’d put them up in his Didsbury flat), to guitarist Vini Reilly to Buzzcocks drummer John Maher. But at 23 she had a breakdown.

“I didn’t know what it meant,” she says, in an era where mental health struggles were still taboo. “But I cried and shook from head to foot, all the time. It was all aspects of life. Leaving me husband, nowhere to live, no money, new relationship. And the music business is very unreal, there’s expectation, you’re criticised, rejected. You’ve got to be really strong; I was up to a point and then just let go.”

She deemed herself “a burden”, developed suicidal thoughts. Mercifully, in the mirror one day, “I had a word with meself,” she says. “‘Are you gonna do this, or not? No, I’m not.’” After years of a debilitating, touring lifestyle, living on “Greggs cheese and onion pasties, Cadbury’s Smash, Findus cod in butter sauce in a bag, sweets and cigarettes”, she says she saved her sanity through healthy eating. Full recovery, she adds, “took years”.

If there’s a thread through Life’s a Gamble it’s of struggle and stress, of fighting through poverty, turmoil and bad luck. Murray is an unexpectedly delicate character with lifelong anxiety, her childhood shyness still detectable today through her sincerity and warmth. In a 1979 NME cover story with Paul Morley, she confessed she was a glass-half-empty personality. “Pessimistic,” she nods. “But without the struggle and stress I might not have done anything. Struggle and stress is what propels you to get out of the struggle and stress, do you know what I mean? I’m a high-functioning depressi–” She stops. “I’m high-functioning.”

In 1990, done with the precarious musician’s life, Murray hustled for funding to create her own business, the band rehearsal studios Polestar in Newcastle, alongside bringing up two kids with Blamire. Penetration reformed in 2001 and today they’re regulars on the heritage punk circuit. “This time the external struggle and stress wasn’t there,” she says, of this surely perilous endeavour. “There wasn’t a manager, record companies, there weren’t fans, even. We were obscure! It felt real. I was willing to have a go.”

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Polestar is now a recording studio hub in the Byker area, where local young bands call themselves “post-punk, there’s waves still out there”, she says. Perhaps it’s understandable: Polestar is situated near Shields Road, voted Britain’s worst high street twice: a street in non-managed decline, graffitied and shuttered, strewn with litter and lost souls, not so different to the 1970s. “It’s desperate,” sighs Murray, “people at 8am drinking cans, people off their heads, drugs, poverty, begging outside supermarkets.”

Murray remains politically sceptical, deeming most people in power “liars, Boris Johnson and all that crew, they’re criminals who need locking up”. Not that she has any answers. “There’s not enough of us,” she decides, of her fellow insubordinates. “It’s when the man in the street goes ‘I’ve had enough’ that things change. But they’re all out their heads, stressed, too busy worrying about bills. The people in charge know exactly what they’re doing, it works, they’ve being doing it for thousands of years!”

The attitude, then, has definitely stayed with her. “But if you can live your life by your principles,” she adds, “by what you will and won’t do, it’s all you can do. Like Chris Packham does.”

There’s an early scene in Life’s a Gamble, where the eight-year-old Murray is sitting in a lilac tree in Ferryhill, staring down into a valley. She sees a car crash, and when the scene disperses, scampers down to investigate. There, she picks up tiny pebbles of shattered windscreen glass, carefully stores them in a suede pouch and pretends they’re diamonds. There’s something very punk, I tell her, about that. She laughs out loud. “Something beautiful in the aftermath of a car crash,” she hoots. “For all I’m glass half-empty, my actions are all positives. I’ve taken all sorts of gambles. And I’ve done alright. I’m not mega-rich, I’m not mega well-known. But I’ve done well in doing things my way. When, and how, I want to do it.”

She surveys her handsome book cover, an image of the young Murray in a ripped woollen jumper and black beret, staring straight ahead with smoky panda eyes. “I look quite defiant,” she declares, winningly. “I do! And I’ve started wearing a beret again. But the hair’s white now, that’s real white. I dyed it black me whole life, and this is a lot less hassle.” Where some would see decay, perhaps, she sees freedom. Still finding, after all these years, the diamonds in the car crash of life.

Life’s a Gamble by Pauline Murray is published by Omnibus Press on 14 September. Pauline is on a UK book-signing tour now: details

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• September 11, 2023 Setlist

Pauline Murray Setlist at The Pink Room, YES, Manchester, England

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• Andy Warhol ( David Bowie  cover) Play Video
• Don't Dictate ( Penetration  song) Play Video
• Dream Sequence ( Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls  song) Play Video
• This Thing Called Love Play Video
• Beat Goes On ( Penetration  song) Play Video
• Shadow in My Mind Play Video

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3 activities (last edit by Shambeko , 13 Sep 2023, 11:09 Etc/UTC )

Songs on Albums

• Andy Warhol by David Bowie
• Beat Goes On by Penetration
• Don't Dictate by Penetration
• Dream Sequence by Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls
• Shadow in My Mind
• This Thing Called Love

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Pauline Murray Gig Timeline

• Aug 06 2022 Rebellion Festival 2022 Blackpool, England Add time Add time
• Sep 10 2023 The Holy Grale Durham, England Add time Add time
• Sep 11 2023 The Pink Room, YES This Setlist Manchester, England Add time Add time
• Sep 13 2023 The Garage Attic Glasgow, Scotland Add time Add time
• Sep 15 2023 Rough Trade Bristol Bristol, England Add time Add time

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Pauline Murray Book Tour

An evening with Pauline Murray at The Holy Grale Leeds - 11th September Book signing at Jumbo Records Manchester - 11th September An evening with Pauline Murray at YES Glasgow - 13th September An evening with Pauline Murray at the Garage Preston - 14th September Book signing at Action Records, 1pm Liverpool - 14th September Book signing at 81 Renshaw, 6pm Bristol - 15th September An evening with Pauline Murray at Bristol Rough Trade London - 17th September An evening with Pauline Murray at Stereo Portsmouth - 18th September An evening with Pauline Murray at Wedgewood Rooms Nottingham - 19th September Book signing at Nottingham Rough Trade, 1pm Birmingham - 19th September An evening with Pauline Murray at Kitchen Garden Café Newcastle - 21st September An evening with Pauline Murray at The Great North Manchester - 11th November Louder Than Words festival

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AEG presents

The 40th anniversary tour 'pauline murray and the invisible girls', album played in full and a collection of solo and other favourites plus special guests, cancelled (thursday 21 april 2022).

From Pauline Murray: We are really sorry to have to announce that the headline Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls shows at Bush Hall, London and Sage Gateshead have had to be cancelled. These shows have been moved three times in the past two years and we have had problems integrating new band members as circumstances and availability have changed in that time. We are still able to perform a support slot on the upcoming Psychedelic Furs tour as this is a shorter set, but the solo gigs have added another level of stress which at this time we are unable to cope with.

Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. Ticket refunds will be available from both venues. Many thanks for your support.

Please bear with us during this unprecedented period. We will be in touch in due course about your tickets. Thank you for your patience and co-operation. We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused.

“One of the most optimistic voices of the punk age.” Uncut

Pauline Murray, singer, songwriter and performer with iconic first-wave punks Penetration and 80s pop ensemble the Invisible Girls will be performing her 1980 Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls album in full at Sage Gateshead on 6 May 2021 in Sage Two. She will also be performing tracks from ‘Elemental’ and other favourites.

“Her vocal powers remain undimmed, and she has always crafted tight, seductive songs.” Classic Rock www.paulinemurrayx.com | Facebook

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Pauline Murray: Elemental – album review

(Polestar Records)

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After a long hiatus of some 31 years, Pauline Murray returns with her third solo album, Elemental. Ian Corbridge reviews for Louder Than War and is delighted to confirm that it was most definitely worth the wait and those classic and melancholy vocal tones are once again doing far more than merely shouting above the noise.

As a first-generation punk band emerging in those tumultuous and exciting times of the mid to late 1970’s, Penetration produced two exceptional albums in what proved sadly to be a typically short career. Aside from the well-crafted songs infused with great melodies, Penetration’s sound was undoubtedly defined by the infectious and anthemic voice of Pauline Murray. In fact I recall a gig in Sheffield when Pauline was struck down with a heavy cold and yet her strong and distinctive vocal delivery still stood out like a beacon amongst the frenzied guitar attack that was synonymous of those times.

Perhaps a band ahead of their time, I have always maintained that Penetration were criminally under-appreciated and underrated, and I still believe that many of those early songs have stood the test of time. But in late 1979 it was all over and Pauline Murray stepped forward into an unchartered solo career, alongside bass player and co-writer Robert Blamire. From this emerged Pauline’s first and critically acclaimed solo album in 1980 backed by legendary producer Martin Hannett’s band The Invisible Girls. This would set a benchmark for a new era of electronic synth pop, although the follow up album, Storm Clouds, would not emerge until the end of that decade.

Since that time Pauline’s recorded output has been confined largely to a 3 track EP, Halloween, in 2000 and a new album, Resolution, by a resurrected Penetration in 2015, still with long-time collaborator and now partner Robert Blamire by her side. Throughout all this I still held the view that the song craft and motivation had remained undiminished and Resolution stood up well against any of Penetration’s previous recordings. And then we fast forward to 2020 with the prospect of a third solo album.

Elemental started life back in 2016 with recording sessions based in France and was finally completed at their own Polestar Studios in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 2019. Alongside bassist and producer Robert Blamire, the album features latter day Penetration members Paul Harvey, Steve Wallace and Ken Goodinson together with the keyboards of Steve Hopkins from the Invisible Girls and drums from Roxy Music’s Paul Thompson.

From the upbeat and melodic opening bars of Shadows In My Mind it is evident that the album draws on the tried and tested formula of Pauline’s previous solo albums with a synth-driven pop sound full of positivity and hope, regardless of the lyrical content. The song is about the dialogue we constantly have with ourselves, both positive and negative, and how we can be our own best friend or our own worst enemy. This is certainly a message which assumes a certain poignancy more than ever before with so many people living in isolation.

Secrets, the first single to be released from the album back in June, explores the pressure to conform to social perceptions and expectations. With a brooding start it soon explodes into life with a strong synth based beat and classic vocal overtones. Whilst this is an old song which has been pulled off the shelf and reinvented, the message conveyed is clearly as relevant today as it has ever been.

When We Were Young sees Pauline in a much more reflective mood whilst Chains appears to explore the world of depression and the shackles and memories that fuel it in a bid to “set my spirit free”. Weeds attains a more classic 1980’s pop sound as it dissects the power of nature.

After All has a much more solemn feel as it explores the issues faced in close relationships, again very pertinent at a time when so many are living in more confined surroundings. Gambler appears to focus the mind on the challenges of addiction whilst Dark Clouds exudes more gothic imagery in a bid to find a way through moments of despair. The irony is that such dark moods are conveyed in such an uplifting way.

Elemental once again reaffirms Pauline Murray as a classic and enchanting voice of our time, with a strong vocal sound full of emotion and melancholy which remains undimmed through the passage of time. As we meander seemingly endlessly through these challenging times, it would be great to think that this album will once again herald the resurgence of this great talent.

And as we channel our inner sense of positivity, we look forward to seeing Pauline on tour with a full band in 2021 both as a headline act, playing the Invisible Girls album in full alongside other favourites both old and new, and as support for the Psychedelic Furs at the following dates:

With the Psychedelic Furs: April 28 Nottingham Rock City April 29 Bristol Academy May 1 Liverpool Academy May 2 Glasgow Barrowland May 3 Manchester Academy 2 May 5 Cambridge Junction

Headline shows: May 6 Gateshead Sage 2 May 8 London Tabernacle

You can find Pauline Murray here on  Facebook , Twitter and her  website .   

All words by Ian Corbridge. You can find more of his writing at his author  profile .                                 

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