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The Cambridge post-punk band Dolly Mixture were an all-girl trio who formed at school and mixed rambunctious self-penned songs such as Will He Kiss Me Tonight? and Been Teen with covers of 60s girl group hits. In the late 1970s, they won the approval of John Peel and NME, with the latter noting they had the same cartoonish energy as the Ramones.
They wore polka dot minidresses, stripy tights and Dr Martens or platforms, an aesthetic in keeping with the brightly coloured confectionery after which they were named. Along with opening for acts including the Jam, Madness and the Undertones, the band were once supported by U2 and appeared on Top of the Pops in 1982 singing backing vocals on Captain Sensible’s chart-topping Happy Talk. That would turn out to be their career peak. Just two years later, having failed to have any hits of their own, and with guitarist Rachel Bor expecting a baby, Dolly Mixture went their separate ways.
Now singer and bassist Debsey Wykes has written a book about this variously thrilling, chaotic and frustrating period in her life. It is a coming-of-age tale built around the diaries she kept detailing Dolly Mixture’s inception and their attempts to make progress in an industry that regarded all-girl bands, particularly those with a love of pop music, with suspicion or disdain. Teenage Daydream winningly captures the devil-may-care optimism of adolescence that, for Wykes along with Bor and drummer Hester Smith, led them to try their luck as musicians long before they owned, let alone mastered, their instruments. Though they consciously kicked against the nihilism of punk, it was the have-a-go ethos of the movement that led to their formation.
Along with their youthful self-belief, Wykes articulates a touching camaraderie that came into its own as they faced sometimes hostile audiences. Supporting the Jam, she recalls spending “most of our set sailing valiantly on in front of a sea of parka-clad lads showing us the finger”. The scuzzy living conditions they endured are vividly drawn. Wykes recalls them holing up at their manager’s flat in Soho where anyone using the toilet would have to use an umbrella to protect them against downpours from the overhead cistern.
Teenage Daydream is steeped in the combined hopefulness and dourness of the early 80s, evoking what it was to be young, on the dole and chasing your dreams in the early years of Thatcherism. Dolly Mixture didn’t have it easy, enduring financial hardship and outrageous sexism; many a time they get close to a record deal only to be stonewalled by male executives irritated by young women with opinions about how they should sound. It was with admirable bloody-mindedness that, having tried and failed to get label support for an album, they ended up self-releasing an LP. Yet it’s hard not to compare their experience to those of young bands today who, without access to benefits and with fewer small venues to play in, would almost certainly have thrown in the towel sooner.
That the band have been consistently overlooked in accounts of the period more than justifies this book’s existence. Nonetheless, at points you get a sense of material being stretched thin. It’s one thing for Wykes to include diary entries detailing gigs, backstage shenanigans, record company meetings and ructions with managers. It’s another to pepper the book with fan letters that serve no clear function other than to break up the narrative. Dolly Mixture may have called it a day more than 40 years ago, but their influence endures. They were an inspiration for riot grrrl in the early 90s, while Saint Etienne loved them so much they drafted in Wykes as backing singer for their live shows. When a Dolly Mixture rarities LP was released in 2019, it swiftly sold out.
The final chapter of Teenage Daydream sees Wykes visiting her old bandmates in Brighton in 2024 to tell them about this book and reflect on what they achieved. Dolly Mixture may have failed to dent the charts with their own songs, but at least they had a wild adventure. Better still, they managed to stay friends.
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