In Her Own Voice

It’s quite amazin’,” chirps Pauline Murray, her north of England lilt still obvious. “I had an acoustic guitar when I was 14 but I never really did much with it. I joined the band and I was always just the singer and I wrote all the words and everything, so I never really picked the instrument up till a couple of years ago, and it was Martin Stephenson – he’s a one-man show from the north east – he put me on a bill and once the name went up there I had to do it so I had to pick up the guitar. But I’d already been writin’ on the guitar, so I did that and it was terrifyin’ but I thought you’ve got to step out of your comfort zone sometimes and the more I do it, the more I enjoy doin’ it.”

Murray was 18 when she saw a review of a band called Sex Pistols and took herself down to London from Ferryhill, County Durham, to check them out. Seeing Johnny Rotten in action, she knew she’d found the genre that would allow her own voice to be heard and, hooking up with guitarist Gary Chaplin, she formed Penetration. Proud to be releasing a single, Don’t Dictate, with Sex Pistols’ label, Virgin, the band built a respectable reputation on the circuit, releasing a second single, Firing Squad, before Virgin opted out. 

Penetration split in 1979 after touring a debut album, Moving Targets, over five weeks in the US, and a tentative solo career turned into Pauline Murray & The Invisible Girls, who released an album with RSO. (Murray is bringing copies of the album as reissued 33 year later with her). Setting up her own label, Polestar, she released a couple of singles, an EP and a solo album, Storm Clouds, but by 1990, she’d given the writing and performing side of things away and has spent the past 30-odd years running a rehearsal studio. Come 2001 and Penetration reunited and has once again become a going concern, chalking up 20 shows this year (check out the Penetration Re-Animated DVD), but it’s the newly-discovered acoustic singer-songwriter Pauline Murray who is making her first visit to Australia.

“It’s so different to band,” she continues. “Like, the band’s really noisy and this is really intimate, so it is like a new start almost. I’m only doin’ a few of the older songs because the Penetration songs, for all we were a punk band, are quite complicated. 

“The new songs are more focused and a lot simpler because I work within my own limitations. I’m writin’ enough now towards makin’ a recordin’ and I’ve started to do some of them with musicians as well. Working solo, you can actually sit there and enjoy singin’ because you don’t have to compete with drums bashin’ and loud guitars. And to be doin’ music again now, you really appreciate it more, doin’ it because you want to do it. I’m just doin’ my own thing.”