Some passages from My Rock ’n’ Roll Friend by Tracey Thorn

Some passages from My Rock ’n’ Roll Friend by Tracey Thorn:


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“My band the Marine Girls have been described as looking like we’d break your arm before we’d let you break our hearts, and these things sound like compliments, praising women who are no one’s fool. But there’s an implication that demanding equal space and respect makes you the aggressor. These journalists, they are either scared of you, or they are pretending to be. And they shift the blame for this on to you.”


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“One interviewer says to her that all the Brits know of her culture is ‘lager, Paul Hogan and Australian rules football’, to which Lindy replies, with an accuracy that can only have silenced him where he stood: ‘It’s the same for Australians. We see your soccer violence, Benny Hill and Margaret Thatcher. We think you’re pretty barbaric too.”


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“As much as I’m drawn to her outrageousness and loudness, I’m drawn to her positivity. She is constantly upbeat, which is also in my nature. We are both full of a curious, almost gauche enthusiasm about the world. We are cheerer-uppers, bounce-backers, irrepressible, determined – me in a quiet way, her in a noisy way.

Within the world of The Go-Betweens she finds Robert and Grant endlessly depressing, describing them in an interview as ‘the most boring and sad people… That’s why they write the most boring and sad songs. They’re moody and sad. That’s our day-to-day existence and it comes out in our songs.’

She understands and appreciates the beauty that also comes out in the songs, but living and working with their introspection and angst is draining, exasperating, she thinks it is very self-indulgent boy behaviour. A woman wouldn’t get away with it. A woman has to try harder socially. Has to placate, keep things running smoothly, not make unnecessary demands. There is no room for her bad moods, which will be called hormonal. Men experience existential despair while women have periods. Lindy and I both take the view that you can be existential some of the time, while also concentrating on having the time of your life.”


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“I think how central this is to Lindy’s character, to her essence. The hatred of dishonesty. The inability to play along with it. The bewilderment at how others can embrace it so wholeheartedly. Her devotion to the concept of the truth: an almost religious belief in it as the only way of being, and a revulsion at its opposite. This conviction will bring trouble in its wake, and make hefty demands on her life.”


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“When I see the film, it makes me angry, then frustrated. How shortsighted, I think. Not to have recognized that Lindy was always one of their strongest assets. Which band would you rather go and see? Two Friends? Or Two Wimps and a Witch?

More than anything, I’m puzzled. Puzzled by the focus on the duo, which leaves out all the drama and tension in the tangle of the original trio, leaves out so much of what had been alluring. It’s such a weakness, not to realise one of their great strengths.

The presence of Lindy had elevated them above the ranks of the stereotypical indie-boy-student band, connecting them with new currents in music which were overturning the gender imbalance. She provided a link with the late ’70s feminist UK bands like the Au Pairs, Delta 5 and The Raincoats, a connection with the early ’80s mixed-gender groups, and a look forward to the Riot Grrrl movement of the ’90s.

Underplaying Lindy’s contribution does not just do her a disservice: it is self-defeating. It makes them a less interesting band, saddling them with a dull identity when they had a bright and interesting one. It is their final act of self-sabotage. As Zadie Smith writes, in an essay on the artist Celia Paul, misogyny ‘is a form of distortion, a way of not seeing.’ Leaving a woman out of the story skews the perspective, gives you an alternate version – a more boring one.

Lindy had brought passion to the band, a tension between decorum and licence. Robert and Grant were cool, and she brought heat; they were calm and she brought energy; they were cerebral and she brought physicality. Without her, they were all decorum, all chasteness. She opened them up, picked them apart at the seams.”



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