The Bromley Contingent

The story of how a group of friends drawn to the Sex Pistols become known as the Bromley Contingent.

As the Sex Pistols developed into the antagonistic, challenging band they became known for, the music now matched the clothes made by McLaren & Westwood in SEX /Seditionaries. Shirts were likely to feature Marx, anarchist slogans and Nazi regalia in equal amounts. They would also feature rapists and porn, pedophilia, rubber wear and fetish wear. In short, anything to elicit a response, to shock and grab attention and to make a statement.

Vivienne Westwood (Designer) The clothes are great and people feel great when they’re in them. The clothes have got content and they’re an expression of some kind of comment about the way you feel your situation in society is. Isabelle Anscombe, Not Another Punk Book, 1978

Vivienne Westwood (Designer) My clothes are a commitment. You can’t walk down the road in them and avoid a confrontation. Virginia Boston, Punk Rock, 1978

So it was a curious Simon Barker (music fan and hot dog seller) that attended a Sex Pistols gig at Ravensbourne Art College Dec 9th 1975 and stayed on impressed after the band managed to clear the venue of audience in minutes. Later he tells his mate Steve Bailey (Steve Severin) about it. Also hearing about the band on the grapevine is Bill Broad (Billy Idol) and Sue Ballion (Siouxsie Sue) and this small group soon is extended to include Debbie Juvenile (Wilson), Tracey O’Keefe, Bertie Marshall (Berlin Bromley) and Simone Thomas. In early January 1976 this group of people witness for the first time, the Sex Pistols.

Also associated, but not part of the Bromley Contingent, was Phillipe Salon, Marco Pirroni, Linda Ashby and Soo Catwoman (Lucas). They were lovingly described in the Punk hatchet job book ‘The Boy Looked At Johnny’ by Burchill & Parsons as

A posse of unrepentant poseurs, committed to attaining fame despite the paucity of talent other than being noticed; achieving their aim by displaying themselves in a manner meticulously calculated to kill.

Praise indeed! Read what she says about Siouxsie & The Banshees!

They are drawn to the band and become a constant fixture at their gigs, becoming known as the Bromley Contingent on account, unsurprisingly, of them coming from Bromley.

Simone Thomas (Bromley Contingent) I was 16 at the time. My life revolved around David Bowie and Roxy Music and dressing up and going to gigs. I’d met Siouxsie at a Roxy concert. She was from the same part of London as me and she started going out with Steve Severin…we became known as the Bromley Contingent after the Sex Pistols played Orpington College. Adrian Boot & Chris Salewicz, Punk: The Illustrated History Of A Musical Revolution, 1996

Johnny Rotten (the Sex Pistols) The first girls to join in was the Bromley Contingent, Siouxsie & The Banshees and people like that. They joined in for a more fashionable reason. They were into the Roxy Music look of sophisticated elegance. Eventually they got bored with that, so they started to rip their fishnets and wear plastic bin liners …After a Pistols concert, they’d invited all of us over to their house for a party… [Siouxsie was topless, knickerless, and wearing tights, stilettos and an apron while carrying a whip!] We discussed how this whole thing should be approached, and what we should be thinking about…we were definitely pointing the direction. John Lydon, No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, 1993

As early adopters of the band they contributed to the emerging Punk look with their use of fetishist clothes, swastikas, Nazi chic sex and the blurring of genders with both sexes using makeup. Heavily influenced by films such as ‘Clockwork Orange’ and ‘Night Porter’, ‘Cabaret’, ‘Salon Kitty’ and ‘The Damned’, the Contingent were glammed up decadence attempting to recreate the sleazy blurred sexual times of Berlin Germany in the 30’s on the streets of London in 1976.

Bertie Marshall (Bromley Contingent) I liked the movie Cabaret, especially Fosse’s aesthetic mixed in with Isherwood’s eye for detail and brilliant recording of that era in Germany, so evocative. There seemed to be some correlation to London in the 1970s. I particularly liked the Nazi look, so well tailored, and all black. 3:am.com interview

They aimed to shock and to provoke, be it Siouxsie leading Bertie on a leash into a pub and asking for a bowl of water for him to drink from, or the wearing of swastikas. For them it was a sense of superiority and being a diva.

Boy George. At the time I was obsessed with Siouxsie Sioux who I dared to address in the ladies toilet at Louises as she stood preening herself in the mirror wearing a swastika armband and very little else. She glared at me with contempt, and almost knocked me flying as she stomped out with all the grandeur of a dishevelled Bette Davis. Bertie Marshall, Berlin Bromley, 2006

But above all it was narcissism. There was nothing worse than not being noticed.

Bertie Marshall (Bromley Contingent) Of course by the way we looked, we wanted attention, the right kind. We wanted to cause effrontery.” Bertie Marshall, Berlin Bromley, 2006

And noticed they certainly were as the kind of clothing and attitude they wore forced attention on them whenever they made an entrance be it in clubs, pubs or gigs.

Ron Watts (Punk Promoter) The fashion and art side, you know, was where Siouxsie etc was coming from. They took it very seriously; it was a new movement and they only had the one band to start with. It was very arty, but it was an art movement that worked. If you’d been there the first night I put the Pistols on, I think it was March 30th 1976, and you saw the Bromley Contingent coming in! They didn’t all come at once, they came in dribs and drabs. Each time, it was breathtaking and jaw dropping just to see them walk through that door. Punk77 Interview

Norah I was shocked…[Siouxsie] was walking around wearing some suspenders and a bra with her whole tits out. I was stunned… That night I couldn’t listen to the Pistols at all because Siouxsie was sitting one row behind me. I was so uncool because I couldn’t stop looking at her tits

Comparing breast size – Steve Severin, Siouxsie and Debbie in the Pistols audience at The Screen On The Green.  (behind Severin’s head is a moody looking Shanne from the Nipple Erectors! Photo Credit Ray Stevenson

Part of the Sex Pistols allure is also effrontery together with a music articulating similar ideas. Members of the Bromley contingent saw themselves rather as friends than fans.

Steve Severin (Siouxsie & the Banshees) When our path crossed the group’s, it was more a meeting of the minds. It was never so much that we were fans as they just happened to be guys who played in a group…Although it may seem unusual for a band to be close to their fans, we became more like friends since things hadn’t really gotten to the stage where the notoriety had set in. John Lydon, No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, 1993

Billy Idol They were what we wanted to happen. If we could visualise the rock band of the mid-seventies, there it was in front of us. The Sex Pistols.

Attending the Sex Pistols gigs also gives the Bromley Contingent another place to go out and be seen along with their usual haunts of the gay clubs of central London. Made up of heterosexual, bisexual and gay people and being camp, young and shocking the safest place for them and others like them were gay clubs. These tended to be more tolerant of different-looking people and accepted ostentatious dress and behaviour as normal.

Berlin (Bromley Contingent) Sioux knew all the clubs – Louise’s, Bangs, Chaugerama’s. I don’t know what attracted her to gay clubs. I’m sure that not feeling threatened and being able to have a good time was part of it. Bertie Marshall, Berlin Bromley, 2006

Siouxsie Sioux (Siouxsie & the Banshees) At the time of seeing the Pistols and being into Bowie it was also a time of being into Brass Construction, Disco Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes, Sister Sledge and Candi Statton…. [gay clubs] the Sombrero, Chagarama’s … the first place I went to was the Masquerade. That was 1971-72. That was in Earls Court…my sister was a ‘gogo’ dancer and I would tag along to these places. The Birdcage and The Trafalgar on the Kings Road. All these places dotted around and they were traditional. It wasn’t topless or anything like that. She made her own cossies and sewed her own sequins on! I was probably fourteen and it was at one of those places that some boy said ‘Who’s that girl you’re with?’ and she said ‘Oh, that’s my younger sister’ and he said ‘Oh, I’d like to take her out somewhere’ and he took me to all these places like Masquerade and he took me to see The Rocky Horror Show when it was on in the Kings Road.

Severin (Siouxsie & the Banshees) Then gay subculture was a haven for us because of the way we looked. We went to Louise’s all the time. Mark Paytress, Siouxsie & the Banshees: The Authorised Biography, 2003

Billy Idol (Generation X) We gravitated toward the gay discos because they were much more tolerant of young people like us being different; they left us alone. Everything sprang from that gay scene. John Lydon, No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, 1993

Indeed, for the girls and boys it was a haven away from ‘beered up’ disco boys in the straight pubs and clubs of the time.

Boy George. Gay clubs were the only safe havens, Rod’s, Louise’s, Chagerama’s in Neal Street…the Sombrero in High Street, Kensington. Boy George, Take It Like A Man, Pan, 1995

Looking different was always going to make you stand out and so likely to be shunned. But in the the gay clubs you had one; a place to relax. And two; confirmation that you weren’t a freak and there were other people like you.

Simon Barker (Bromley Contingent) Suddenly, coming from the suburbs, you realised that you weren’t a freak. Or maybe you were but there were other freaks who thought and felt the same as you did. These clubs were where you saw (gay) people wearing straight leg jeans (something outrageous at the time) and capped sleeved t-shirts.

It had a very strong kind of 50’s vibe, inspired a lot by (gay icon) James Dean, and I vaguely remember some guys in US army looks. Not the macho camo trousers and boots look – more an Elvis GI blues thing. While girls had stilettos and circle skirts, tight 50’s pants, cardigans etc. Like us, many here would be wearing clothes from Malcolm and Vivienne’s shop ‘Let It Rock / Sex.’ Punk77 Interview

The result of the Sex Pistols spark was Siouxsie, Severin and Billy Idol starting to experiment musically. Billy with Tony James in Chelsea and then Generation X and Siouxsie auditioning unsuccessfully for various pub bands (I wish I could have seen that) before deciding with Severin and Billy Idol to put a band together for the 100 Club Festival. At the last moment Billy Idol dropped out leaving Marco Pirroni on guitar and Sid Vicious on drums. The rest as they say is history!

And now that they had their own bands how did the Bromley Contingent end up?

Billy Idol We used to go to Louise’s (a gay club) and hang out together. We wanted to do things together so we could feel it growing. But later on it got bitchy. Everyone started getting their own bands, and it was wild how we started to slag each other off. At that time the scene had no name. Then Caroline Coon came up with the name punk.

Punk was up and running now. Billy Idol formed Generation X and then went Stateside and became massive on MTV, Siouxsie and Severin continued with the Banshees producing fantastic music. Soo Catwoman’s underage flat chested double appeared in The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle and Soo herself occasionally re-appeared. The rest carried on, dropped out or reappeared later like Steve Strange in the New Romantic movement fronting Visage. Simon Barker became a photographer based in Prague. Bertie ‘Berlin’ Marshall, one of the youngest members of the group, became a novelist and playwright.

Sadly both Debbie and Tracie would die early.

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