The Raincoats were a band of women who revolutionised the British rock scene in the 70s. And it was Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain who offered the band an opportunity of a lifetime after they inspired him
An unlikely quintet of menopausal women form a punk band in Sally Wainwright’s new Sunday night BBC One drama Riot Women.
The six part series – episode 2 is on tonight at 9pm or on iPlayer – makes nostalgic viewing for Gina Birch and Ana da Silva, who formed punk group The Raincoats nearly 50 years ago.
“Polar opposites” Gina, an energetic 21-year-old from Nottingham and Ana Da Silva, a chilled 28-year-old from the Portuguese island of Madeira, met as art students in London in the Seventies, made friends and formed the band.
“We were leading our own lives but we had a very good working relationship. We sometimes argued. We’re quite good at that. Ana especially,” laughs Gina, 70.
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It was the era of The Clash and The Sex Pistols, when rebellion counted for more than musical prowess. And for Ana, now 77, who had grown up in a dictatorship governed by Estado Nova, London offered freedom. She says: “People could look how they liked to look and no one hassled them. I love Portugal and people are very nice … but the rules. You couldn’t kiss in the street at that time. People did, but it was a law that you couldn’t!”
Punk particularly appealed to Ana, who adds: “It was like a door opened and I embraced a lot of it and then became a part of it. I expressed myself in a way I liked to.” London’s sense of adventure also gripped Gina, who made a squat in bohemian Notting Hill her home. When I came to London, it was very much the big city and I felt very provincial,” she says.
“I had two rooms at the top of a house in this cul-de-sac where lots of musicians and artists lived. But it was very dilapidated. Everything was in a state of decay.” It was at this time that she first spotted Ana at art school. “I noticed her because she was very, very suntanned, she had hair down to her waist and she was a little bit older,” says Gina. “I’d just done my A levels and hung out with the crazies in Nottingham.
“We’d go to the local cafe and Ana would order a black coffee and a glass of water. I didn’t know anyone who had a glass of water. In Nottingham we would have orange squash or Ribena!” Having instantly connected, Ana continues: “We started going to lots of gigs together with my cousin, who had got a car.”
Their regular haunt was a club called The Roxy, which had a lot of regulars, and they loved the music of bands like The Slits. Gina says: “It was only really when I saw The Slits and there were four women on the stage playing their first show. It was so new and fresh and unformed in a way. It was shambolic. It was about mischief, it was about comradery. It was about breaking the rules as a young woman.
“It just opened my eyes to the fact I could do it. Previously, it had been men. Suddenly there were four women in charge of their own destiny.” Then, one day Gina walked into a music shop and bought a guitar – without even trying it. She says: “I took this bass home. Someone taught me how to tune it andI spent a lot of time listening to music where I could hear the bass.”
And the next thing, she and Ana had formed a band. In 1977 The Raincoats were born! Laughing, Gina adds: “When people got thrown out of the Slits, we hoovered them up. We were thrilled when Palmolive (one of The Slits musicians) joined the band. Then Palmolive wanted a violin or keyboard player and that’s when we got Vicky (Aspinall) We created a voice that was our own. We weren’t trying to play in 4:4 time. We were looking at it like a heartbeat or a rhythm of life.”
Two years after their creation, they released their debut album The Raincoats on the Rough Trade label and their first single Fairytale in the Supermarket “There were three moments for me that were miraculous,” says Ana. “One was finishing the song in the rehearsal space. One was when the single came out, because it meant that we were a real band and the third one was when the album came out. I remember going from my house to Rough Trade to look at it and I was crying on the way there. Those three moments were magical.”
Another career highlight for Ana was their fourth gig – performed in Poland, which was then behind the Iron Curtain. She recalls: “The audience was so starving for something new that having a punk band was magical for them. We may as well have come from Mars. It was amazing.”
In 1981 they released a second album, Odyshape, but creative tensions were starting to emerge. Ana – who says they broke up after every record – explains: “We all had strong ideas about things and sometimes those ideas clashed.” Tensions were at an all time high when they recorded a live album – The Kitchen Tapes – in Dec 1982 in New York at a venue called The Kitchen, which was a hub for experimental music.
The record was released on cassette and became an underground hit in the Big Apple. But, a year later, they received the disappointing news from their label that no more copies of their records would be produced in the UK. And in 1983 the band split up. Ana got a job in an antiques shop in Notting Hill and Gina went to The Royal College of Art before making music videos. But in the summer of 1992 something very exciting happened. The Kitchen Tapes was the only album still available and The Raincoats’ music was very difficult to get hold of.
That’s when Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain and his wife Courtney Love came into their lives – tracking Ana down at the antiques shop. She recalls: “I was talking to a client and these two young people came in. `”I didn’t know who Kurt Cobain was or Courtney Love. I found out later. She was pregnant at the time. He introduced himself. Kurt said, ‘When I listen to your music I fall on the floor.’ His body just sort of goes out of sync or something. They had been to the Rough Trade shop and tried to get a copy of the first album.”
When no one could help, they directed the star to Ana’s workplace, where he asked if she could sell him a copy and she said she’d find him one. She says of Kurt and Courtney: “I liked the way they dressed. It made a difference.“
When Ana found a copy, the band signed it, she put some photos inside and sent it to him. By way of a thank you, he wrote about his encounter in the liner notes to his next album Incesticide. He wrote: “When I listen to the Raincoats I feel l as if I am a stowaway in an attic. Rather than listening to them I feel like I am listening in on them. We are together in the same old house and I have to be completely still or they will hear me spying from above. And if I get caught everything will be ruined, because it’s their thing.”
The Nirvana endorsement sparked a resurgence of interest in The Raincoats – prompting their label to reissue their albums, while Kurt also released them on his label in the US. Ana says: “It made a lot of young women think they could do this as well.” And The Raincoats started playing together again.
“We just decided to do like a party thing. It felt good. Then things escalated,” says Ana. When Kurt heard they were playing together at a party in London, without so much as a listing, the opportunity of a lifetime came along. Gina was working on a music video in the edit suite and says: “I got a phone call from Nirvana’s agent saying ‘would The Raincoats like to go on tour with Nirvana?” I was just starting a potential film career. But we knew by then Nirvana were amazing.”
A mixture of nerves and excitement followed, but the band decided to go for it. They were in New York doing a gig a little while before the tour when they got the terrible news that on April 5, 1994 Kurt Cobain had killed himself. Ana says: “We were doing a soundcheck and Ray Farrel from DGC said ‘I have bad news. Kurt Cobain has died.’
“It created this really sad atmosphere. I felt the lyrics of the song I had created were talking to him.” Gina adds: “We felt really strongly that we wanted to dedicate this set to him.” The tragedy meant the tour was cancelled, but two years after Kurt’s death, The Raincoats released a fourth album, Looking in the Shadows.
Ana says of the singer: “I kind of always had this idea that he had become a bit of a guardian angel to us. He gave us a new lease of life.” While The Raincoats are no longer performing, Gina adds: “I think that’s a lovely way to think of him as a guardian angel. His love has helped us to have a significant place in history. I think we would have had a place in history anyway, but because of his involvement it’s a much more visible place.”
This interview was recorded for Outlook on The World Service. Go to https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct6wy0. Shouting Out Loud by Audrey Golden, published by White Rabbit tells The Raincoats’ story.
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