A TRIBUTE TO POLY STYRENE OF X RAY SPEX

Marianne Joan Elliott-Said (3 July 1957 – 25 April 2011),[1][2] known by the stage name Poly Styrene, was an English musician, singer-songwriter, and frontwoman for the punk rock band X-Ray Spex. She was recognized as rock's original Riot grrrl, the underground feminist punk movement
Poly Styrene was born Marianne Joan Elliott-Said[4] in 1957 in Bromley, Kent, and brought up in Brixton, London.[5] Her mother, who raised her alone, was a Scottish-Irish legal secretary.[6] Her father was a Somali-born dock worker,[7][8] although Poly Styrene used to tell the press that he was a dispossessed Somali aristocrat.[9][10]

As a teenager, Styrene was a hippie. When she was 15, Styrene ran away from home with £3 in her pocket; she hitchhiked from one music festival to another, staying at hippie crash pads. Thinking of this as a challenge to survive, her adventure ended when she stepped on a rusty nail while bathing in a stream and had to be treated for sepsis.[6]

Having been 'an itinerant traveller, alternative fashion designer and a failed pop-reggae singer',[11] she saw the Sex Pistols perform at the Pier Pavilion in Hastings on her nineteenth birthday, 3 July 1976,[12][13] and decided to form the punk band X-Ray Spex.