The Gun Club – Fire of Love

I went to see The Gun Club in 1983, when I was 16. I really didn't know anything about them. I was quite struck by the American-ness of them, because a lot of the bands I was listening to were British chart bands. At the time I thought of alternative music as very British and to see this American band conjured up an image of the south and a world that I didn't know anything about.

There was a journalist called Nick Kent, I remember him talking about The Beach Boys album cover and seeing this sunny Californian world, and it just felt so far away from rainy Croydon. I felt a bit like that with The Gun Club. There was something quite exotic about them. It almost sounds like cultural tourism or something, but that is how it made me feel.

They did at some point have Patricia Morrison playing for them. A lot of early gigs I went to had predominantly blokes in the audience. There were women, but we were massively in a minority. Having women on stage in a band who are not in any way derided by the audience, that was quite powerful for me to see. Patricia Morrison looked like fucking Elvira at one point. You couldn't have got more goth, and goth was something that was quite sneered at, but there she is in this amazing band, being allowed to be who the fuck she wants to be and dress how she wants and not have to tone it down.