"The contrast between this angry girl Palmolive and who I am today is the contrast between dark and light. Christ radically changed my heart in 1985. Today I have real hope and purpose for my life." From Paloma's website.

I've done a fair few interviews and I have to say this one stands out as one of my favourites. The journey from Paloma to Palmolive to Paloma has been a pretty amazing one. In the context of this site that journey involved the major figures of punk rock. In fact really Paloma is one of the major figures herself. With her band The Slits, she was one of the radical new young guns wanting more and wanting to express themselves creating their own rules as they went. Nowadays people want to apply tags to them as a feminist band or post punk band or this or that to suit their own agendas. Paloma herself is down to earth, good humoured and at peace with herself.  The freedom she sought didn't lie in England or in punk or in music. For her it was in Christ and religion. Whether you agree with her or not you have to respect her beliefs and the journey she took to get there.

Growing up and a teenager rebels

I grew up in the South of Spain in Malaga. My parents were republicans – In Spain the conservatives were fascist led by Franco and then there was the communists that after the civil war had been thrown out. My father didn’t believe in fascism or the war or politics. We had a big family and that influences you I think, with my mum, dad and grandparents being there and other adults in the house too. My family was catholic but I didn’t really like it all. By the time I was 13/14 I had a lot of disrespect for a lot of the things they were doing. Rebellious? Yeah I was. I just wanted to joke around. At school I didn’t want to do my work too much. I was a regular teenager.  

How did you come to end up in London and what did you do there?

Because of my catholic upbringing and morals and all that. On the other hand I had been abused as a little girl by a family member. I knew that afterwards that my father wasn’t faithful to my mum and stuff like that. I just didn’t want to get married so I had a lot of questions about the status quo and I wanted to get out of Spanish society where you get a house and you get married. I did not want that because to me that was crazy to commit yourself to someone who was going to be unfaithful to you. After the guilt of having been molested you don’t see marriage the same way and so because of that and also the questioning of the hippy movement had started way before in England and USA and those influences touched me too so I had a great desire to be free. I wanted to see a different way of life and with Franco in the government here wasn't any freedom. You couldn't act in certain ways, you couldn't think in certain ways what you wanted and even certain books were not allowed to be read.  I just wanted to break through that. because I didn't think it was right. To me freedom was breaking the rules of the status quo and to me England represented somewhere I wanted to be free and make my own decisions. Again basically like a lot of teenagers. But I was very very radical about it. A lot of my friends might have thought that but I actually left the comfort of my own home. I think I had a £100 and I was 17.

London, squatting and Woody & the 101'ers I just left and in London I looked for a job. I didn’t really know anybody. I had one contact there. It didn’t work out so I just went and looked for a job myself. Later on I had gone back to Spain then come back. Meanwhile my sister Esperanza (who was 17) had come after I had gone the first time and she had met with Richard Dudanski the drummer of the 101ers and whom my sister ended up marrying.  So the second time I went back to England I met up with them and that’s how I met Joe (Strummer) and got involved with the whole squat thing. First I lived in 101 Walterton Road which is where the 101ers got their name from.

Paloma, Woody, Richard Dudanski & Esperanza

Influences?

In London it was more like the rhythm and blues and the 101ers. The 101ers were not just a group but like support group around them like the whole squat thing and people helping them out with flyers, making the gigs. You know we were like at all the gigs...all of us.  I remember saying to my mum we living in paradise. We didn’t have to work because the taxpayers pay for the dole and we had free housing so basically in my mindset that was a good thing. I’d look at it very differently now, but it allowed us to live without any responsibilities so I thought I was really free without any commitments.

We had a lot of relationships. I started living with Joe Strummer who was at the time Woody. We were living together for 2 or more years. We were not married. I thought marriage was legal prostitution. We used to joke about it. I don’t know where I got it from but anyway. You see I didn’t want any commitment and so we just lived together but we were pretty much with each other the whole time.

So we had moved to another squat a few times. There was a time when the Sex Pistols came on the scene. Joe was dissatisfied with how slow the 101ers were making progress and he got really excited about the whole possibility. He really wanted to make it in the music world and so he really embraced punk. We were together but I had gone for a little bit up to Scotland and I wasn’t sure about anything at the time I was there. It was like a transition time for me and I had left him and told him I don’t know if wanted to continue having a relationship with him. Anyway when I came back I had made my mind up that I loved him and wanted to be with him and when I got there he had started the Clash. We had been on the phone in contact and he had explained a little bit to me and so I went I got interested too in punk. I was so tired and disgusted with the hippy thing, sitting around smoking dope and I thought this is great this is what I need...it sounds good. And it went along with my temperament, my aggressiveness, like the whole in your face attitude and writing songs, not having to be perfectly correct musically. I thought I’ll start a group.

Why drums?

"We used to go and dance, that's what we used to do. We danced to the 101ers' music, basically. My sister and me would go and have a good time. I got tired of it and decided I wanted to do something with my life. So I thought I'd like to do mime and be like a street clown or something like that. I met these people, I had these friends, and they said, "Yeah, you can join us, but we only need someone to play drums when someone does something difficult." I didn't get on with the guy, I didn't like him, so I had a fight with him and left. But I had already kind of played the drums and I thought, "Ahhh! That's not hard! I can do this!" So I started going "mm-cha, mm-mm-cha." It went from there. And I really wanted to change, really wanted to do something different. I was tired. I jumped from one thing to another very easily -- my character, you know. I would do something while it was fun. So that was like a new thing, it was all happening. Joe was into it. I was living with him at the time. http://www.nstop.com/paloma/intervw.html

I loved dancing and with the 101ers I used to love to dance and I figured that drums was kinda like dancing. I like rhythm. I'm not very musical but I can feel rhythm very strongly.

Stills from Don Letts' 'Punk Rock Movie'

The Flowers Of Romance

Before that there was Flowers Of Romance. Because we were hanging out with the Clash and the Sex Pistols we were rivals but we still went together to gigs or whatever or hung out. I had met Sid Vicious and so he had asked me to be in the group and we had actually practiced in the squat that we had. But it didn’t last very long because one day he just said you’re kicked out you’re not in the group anymore. I asked why and he replied 'you’re not right'. 'You’re not right'. It was his band to start with as a singer, with Viv, a girl called Sarah on bass and me on drums.

'He wanted to sleep with me and I did not want to. That is why he sacked me, I believe.'  Paloma recounts about Sid on the 3a.m site 'What happened with Sid was the best thing that ever happened to me. Girls are usually treated all nice. But after I was chucked out of that group I really got my shit together.' Palmolive - The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion by Caroline Coon.

We didn’t really play. Nothing really happened. I don’t think they even played. Sid Vicious wasn’t very like into practicing. He was really high on drugs. He couldn’t stick to something in the same way that someone like Joe Strummer could or even Johnny Rotten.  He was a messed up kid. He  became a puppet of the media and turned into what was expected of him. If you have no respect for anything how will you respect yourself. How far do you go with something like that? How far will you take the negativity of punk?