There are some things that never change. For Girlschool – the all-female hard rock band, named after the B-side of Wings’ Mull Of Kintyre – the same back-handed compliments are still applied, even by fans such as Dave Thompson. In the liner notes for this album, Thompson states: “They could play.” He means well, but nobody has ever felt the need to say that about a bunch of guys in a band.
Girlschool had more to prove than any other band that rose out of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. They did so with an electrifying debut album, 1980’s Demolition; with the killer single they recorded with Motörhead, Please Don’t Touch; and with a bludgeoning approach to live performance. The latter is captured in all its ragged glory on Glasgow 1982.
Recorded at the city’s famous Apollo theatre, with bassist Gil Weston new to the band, it majors on tracks from that year’s Screaming Blue Murder album, including a punky version of the Stones’ Live With Me. Cheered on as only Glaswegians know how, the girls go at it full tilt from start to finish.
No wonder Lemmy took them under his wing. The way they played, hard and fast, was just how he liked it.
