If you know us, you know we adore Debsey Wykes! So we are super-chuffed to present a brand-new excerpt from her book (out today!) Teenage Daydream: We are the Girls Who Play in a Band (New Modern, hardback, ebook, audio):
Debsey Wykes formed her first band Dolly Mixture in Cambridge in 1978 with friends Rachel Bor and Hester Smith while still at school. Championed by John Peel the girls were soon playing regularly in London where they attracted lots of attention from the music press and toured extensively for the next few years both as headliners and as support for groups including Dexy’s Midnight Runners, The Undertones, The Beat, Bad Manners and The Jam.
Debsey went onto greater prominence with Saint Etienne with whom she has performed since 1992, whilst in 2025, desirable Dolly Mixture reissues sell out around the world as quickly as they are printed.
She currently sings with her group Birdie and lives in London.
Read our Birdie interview here
Read our 2006 Debsey interview here
Buy the book here
This excerpt is from Chapter 2: Fist-Fumbled Power Chords
Monday 22nd May 1978
Dolly Mixture progress report.
I am a bassist in Dolly Mixture.
Rachel Bor – guitar, has done vocals
Hester Smith – drums
Debsey Wykes – bass guitar
The vocalist is an unknown quantity …
We’ve played 3 gigs, all successful for us on the whole.
St. George’s Hall – vocalist was Chriz stepping in.
Churchill College – Rachel sang.
Union Society – Rachel sang again.
Our original repertoire
1) Dolly Mixture Theme Song *
2) Dizzy
3) Nobody to You *
4) Honky Honda
5) One Way Street *
6) While My Guitar Gently Weeps
7) We all Fall Down
*absolutely original songs
As the gigs had gone so well, we agreed that it would be easier to stay as a three-piece and tackle the vocals ourselves. The line-up was complete.
I began to feel that we were on our way when we were rung up on a Saturday morning and asked if we would play that very night at the Corn Exchange. This was going to be gig number four. Only our fourth gig. At the legendary Corn Exchange. It was to celebrate Raw Records’ first anniversary, with Kevin Rowland’s band the Killjoys headlining, plus the Unwanted, Lockjaw and Some Chicken, along with some surprise guests, including Johnny Thunders who didn’t surprise anyone by not actually turning up
In the wake of punk, every town in Britain seemed to have spawned its own independent record label: Zoo in Liverpool, Factory in Manchester, Good Vibrations in Belfast, and so on. Cambridge’s own Raw Records was set up by Lee Wood, a dead ringer for Van Morrison who ran a second-hand record shop called Remember
Those Oldies with his wife Liz. I first ventured into the small shop in King Street to buy my copy of the Users’ ‘Sick of You’ – the debut release on Raw – the day it came out in May 1977. ‘Good taste,’ quipped Lee as he rang up yet another 49p.
Never having met any bands from outside Cambridge, let alone played with them, it was a daunting experience turning up at the cavernous Corn Exchange for a soundcheck with just a bass and two drumsticks (the only items we actually owned) and having to ask if we could possibly borrow someone else’s gear. We received a fairly frosty reception from the Raw Records roster with the only other band not billed, the Nipple Erectors, more than happy to help – ‘Of course you can!’ They looked amazing with a punky rockabilly style and, having seemed so cool and moody as they trooped into the building earlier, we couldn’t believe that they were actually smiling and talking to us, as well as being graciously generous with their equipment. We would meet Shane and Shanne from the Nipple Erectors again in the months to come and I’m glad to say that they were easily the best band on that night.
We were first up. I can’t remember playing, but I do remember looking out at the enormous, dark auditorium, hardly daring to believe that we were on this very stage playing a gig. Rachel had to run off home with school books in hand immediately after our set as she had told her parents that she was just popping round to a friend’s house to do some revision for their O-Levels. She did eventually get found out and was duly grounded.
Back at school less than two weeks later, I was in a classroom at the beginning of the day waiting for English to start when I heard a voice from the staircase shouting ‘Debsey Debsey!’ Hester ran in. ‘Debsey Debsey, we’re in the NME!’ She spread the paper out across a couple of desks and we read out the live review together. Others gathered round, intrigued. The piece began by criticising the crazy organisation of the whole evening, decrying the fact that the Killjoys were only able to spit out one number before the plugs were pulled at midnight. However …
The first band to play were Dolly Mixture. A trio of schoolgirls (they claim an average age of 16½ but look far younger), they come from Cambridge and have been together ‘two terms’. At present they only have a bass and two drumsticks to their name, but tonight’s gig, their fourth ever, was one of the weirdest I’ve seen. During their delicate 15-minute set they played, all more or less at the same halting pace, five soft-pop originals, and covers of Tommy Roe’s “Dizzy” and The Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, so how’s that for extremes? At the moment they can barely play, and often it was only the sheer volume of Debsie’s bass that prevented the whole thing falling apart. Be that as it may, everyone was impressed by their bravado, and they were granted fairly rapt attention. Whenever they made a mistake, which in retrospect wasn’t all that often, they simply stopped and began the piece again. Rachel the guitarist also sang lead, and in places her voice bore a remarkable resemblance to Patti Smith’s, although the quavering uncertainty was probably due more to nerves than lack of talent.
Life could be so exciting. It was very hard to concentrate on English composition now. I just sat there glowing and dreaming as if my future was assured. Later on that summer term, headmaster Mr Hill advised me to leave school. It was generally agreed that I should just go away and do whatever it was I wanted to do.
Obviously, that wasn’t going to be A-Levels.
