Tracie O’Keefe
One of the sadder stories of the time and the first Punk casualty. Tracie O’Keefe was a Bromley Contingent member and another Seditionaries (Sex) shop model/assistant along with Debbie Wilson and often photographed together.
She was one of the first Sex Pistols fans and danced in between sets with Siouxsie and Debbie at their Screen On The Green gig. Tracie was utterly devoted to the Sex Pistols, Punk Rock and Malcolm McLaren’s and Vivienne Westwood’s ideas and clothes at 430 Kings Road.
“Well I used to live in Bromley and I used to go round with Siouxsie and Steve, Simon, Berlin people like that and Simon went to see the Sex Pistols…and said “… they’re really good and different” … so we started going to see them … I just kept looking at Steve Jones and he had these two nude women on his guitar and I just thought it was a bit funny… But it was exciting and that what was good about it. But I suppose it’s just because they were different, different from everyone else. They were the first proper punk band. There was noone like it before the Pistols.” Sex Pistols The Inside Story – Fred & Judy Vermorel
Apparently Poly Styrene from X Ray Spex wrote Identity after an incident at the Roxy Club.
When you look in the mirror, do you smash it quick?
Do you take the glass and slash your wrists?
Did you do it for fame, did you do it in a fit?
Did you do it before you read about it?Identity is the crisis, can’t you see?
Identity, identityStuart and Savage chat to Andy and Susan the proprietors of the ROXY, while I go to the loo. Tracy a sales assistant from Seditionaries crouches on the floor in a corner of the ladies powder room scratching, slashing her wrists with a razor. Poly’s Diary
Disaster struck when she got arrested on the Sex Pistols Jubilee riverboat cruise in June 1977 and was the only one to receive a sentence (one month imprisonment) before being acquitted on appeal in February 1978.
Tracie O’Keefe was obsessive about guitarist Steve Jones and though one of his many many conquests, she fell for him again and again and believed she could change him according to Bertie Marshall (Berlin) in his book Berlin Bromley.
She and Berlin were close and shared squats, rooms and flats and both worked the prostitution and clipping game along with Debbie Wilson before Tracie moved on getting into drugs as she mixed with various Heartbreakers.
Debbie Juvenile People think the early days of Punk were all banging along at Sex Pistols gigs. But for me it was camping it up down Park Lane with a gang of trannies. All my friends John, Blanche, Tracey [O’Keefe], Berlin were on the game … it got to the stage where prostitution wasn’t that bad a thing to do. It became part of the new London. England’s Dreaming, Jon Savage
Viv Albertine I’ve heard that some of the girls who hang around the Shop [Sex] do hand jobs on Park Lane for money, which fits in with the way everyone sees sex; as a commodity, no emotional attachment needed. Clothes Music Boys, Viv Albertine
Top left picture in Panel Simon Barker aka ‘6’
The pain was real and sadly four months later she died from bone marrow cancer aged just 18. Her funeral was attended by all the Bromley Contingent and Sex Pistols bar Rotten. Malcolm filmed her funeral for use in the ‘Swindle’ movie and even sent a wreath which read ‘Never Mind The Bollocks – Tracie’ much to her family’s horror but would have been appreciated by Tracie. One person who thought he’d gone too far was Sid Vicious who attempted to physically attack the cameraman Phil Stuttard though his outrage was selective as the same cameraman would film him not long after later walking around the Jewish quarter in Paris haranguing passersby wearing a swastika t-shirt for the film!
Above – NME 3.6.1978
Tracie O’Keefe is played by actress Caitlin Taylor in Danny Boyle’s ‘Pistol’ series.
TalkPunk
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