As you may know, I paid my dues throughout the late eighties and nineties writing for hardcore punk zines like Flipside and MAXIMUMROCKNROLL. None of these pieces are online, so I’m gradually endeavoring to posting them on here for posterity. So far, I’ve uploaded my interviews with The Cramps, Divinyls and Lydia Lunch (actually, there are two articles with Lunch – here and here). Here are some articles I did about outrageous pioneering transgender punk icon Jayne (formerly Wayne) County in 1995.
Quick bit of context: at the time, County was London-based and playing semi regular gigs at a now-defunct pub called The Intrepid Fox in Soho that attracted a punk and heavy metal clientele. I was always thrilled to see this punk legend perform in such an intimate space. The Intrepid Fox was a pub rather than a music venue. There was no stage and County wasn’t backed by a band. The shows were therefore more like raunchy one-woman performance art than a conventional rock gig and all the better for it. Jayne would arrive with a flurry of drama and excitement (the first thing you’d see entering the building was her gigantic bouffant haystack wig, and then the crowd would part) and then sing over taped musical accompaniment in the corner by the window. Inevitably, passersby outside would be transfixed by the spectacle of County - wearing her signature shortie babydoll mini dresses and laddered tights - thrashing and flailing around in a glamour fit and stop and stare, which would only spur County to freak out the squares even more. Glorious! The MAXIMUMROCKNROLL interview was conducted at The Intrepid Fox before one of County's gigs. I remember buying her a drink and I seem to recall County's cocktail of choice was Southern Comfort, black currant and lemonade.
/ My own shot of County performing at The Underworld in Camden Town, London in 2005 /
When I encountered County in ’95 she was busy promoting two projects: her memoirs Man Enough to Be a Woman and her first new album in many years, Deviation. Note that the book – co-written with County’s friend, journalist, novelist and literary homme du monde Rupert Smith – has recently been reissued by Serpent’s Tail and is essential reading. Also note that in these articles County and I sometimes use expressions that have now fallen out of favour but were commonly used in the nineties. When I post these articles, I'm tempted to tweak things (I'd write them entirely different now!) but always resist. At the time, I was also contributing to the music publication Vox and the men's magazine Ikon - both long defunct!
From the May 1995 issue of MAXIMUMROCKNROLL
Punk rock’s number one transsexual is back! Straight out of the gutter and into your arms, trash icon Jayne (formerly Wayne) County is resuming her one-woman assault on good taste, complete with a forthcoming autobiography Man Enough to Be a Woman and her first new LP in years Deviation. Despite a low-key period in the eighties, County’s sleaze-rock sensibility, whorish dress sense and paint-stripping vocals are as fierce as ever and ready to terrorize a new generation of audiences. We chew the fat over her past, present and future.
Early years: little Wayne County was raised Pentecostal in Atlanta, Georgia. County still retains a Southern accent and a taste for Southern Comfort. As an androgynous teen, she met antagonism from the locals.
MRR: I heard that when you used to leave the house in your Beatles suit and Cuban heels, the local rednecks wouldn’t just shout insults or even beat you up they would literally shoot at you!
Jayne County: I got shot at one time. That’s what the song “Are You a Boy or a Girl?” is about. We used to get chased through the streets all the time. I used to carry two pairs of shoes: one to walk in and one to run in in case I had to make a quick change! We used to run from the police as well, they were just as bad. Horrible redneck police. You’d have to hide behind trees when they’d come around the corner. In those days men could be arrested for female impersonation if their hair touched the top of their ears! They could legally arrest you for female impersonation! (Laughs). They’d just use any excuse to arrest you. It was weird. A weird time. Really strange. One night me and another transgender person, Davina Daisy who looked like Liz Taylor, were walking down the street. We were always on acid! We were sailing down the street, stoned out of our minds, and we heard these (does “whoosh!” noise). It’s very strange to hear bullets whizzing past your ears! I said, “You know, they’re fucking shootin’ at us!” It was a truck full of rednecks and they had the gun right out the window and were shooting right at us!
MRR: It sounds like something out of Easy Rider!
JC: Yes, exactly like Easy Rider. I kind of decided right there I wanted to split, leave Atlanta.
County left Atlanta for good in ’68 – originally meant to go to San Francisco but got sidetracked to New York – arrived in time to participate in the legendary Stonewall Riots in ’69 – became active in the extreme fringes of Off-Off Broadway underground theatre scene. She landed the role of Vulva in the play Pork, a parody of the Andy Warhol Superstar Factory crowd.
JC: It was 1971. (The play) was based on all these tapes, Warhol’s personal tapes. He taped people on the phone. He had all these taped conversations of people sayin’ awful stuff. He gave them to a friend of mine, Tony Ingrassia, and he put them into script form, into a play and called it Andy Warhol’s Pork. Basically, we were just saying real lines that people had rang up and said to Andy Warhol. Tony was a real good friend of (the Warhol Superstars) Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling and had appeared in lots of Theatre of the Ridiculous underground stuff. He had been directing a play of mine called World: The Birth of a Nation, Castration of Man. It was called that ‘cause we had all these traditional male figures doin’ weird things. Like John Wayne gave to a baby out his asshole. Stuff like that. Warhol came to see the play and he was totally impressed. He wanted me to be in the play and for Tony, who’d directed my play, to direct Pork. So, we got lots of attention with that.
A production of Pork went to London later
that year, where County found an admirer in David Bowie – unfortunately, this
was pre-Ziggy Stardust Bowie and instead of finding a kindred spirit, County
lamented that he was “just another folkie” – musical debut at a 1972 gig at New
York University, which turned ugly – County’s onstage antics included squirting
the audience with a dildo-shaped water
pistol and eating dog food out of a toilet bowl.
JC: This guy from the Gay Liberation Front saw me onstage and went to the dean, and the dean came down and said he wasn’t going to allow NYU to be turned into a 42nd Street smut shop! I was pretty over-the-top then. We didn’t get to do shit. The power went off during “It Takes a Man Like Me to Find a Woman Like Me”, where I was layin’ on the floor with a fake vagina strapped around me and fucking myself with a double-headed black dildo, and the power just went! And this person started screaming at us, “Being gay has nothing to do with hating women!” We were looking at each other like, huh? This has nothing to do with hating women. This is just over-the-top shock tactics. See, my problem is I always expected people to get it and they hardly ever do!
County became a regular in the VIP backroom of the legendary pre-punk hangout Max’s Kansas City – as a tribute, she would later write and record the club’s theme song “Max’s Kansas City” on the first Electric Chairs LP in ’78.
JC: It went through a lot of different phases. The backroom could be vicious. You dared not walk out of the backroom with your back turned because everyone was gonna be saying horrible things about you. That was where the elite hung out. You could find just anyone back there at any given moment, from people like Grace Slick to Janis Joplin to Jimi Hendrix to up-and-coming underground people like the Warhol people, the Theatre of Ridiculous, to the lowest drug dealer in town to someone strung out on the floor on Quaaludes. It was just such a mixture. Intellectuals, famous writers, movie directors.
MRR: Pre-Blondie Deborah Harry used to be a waitress there.
JC: Yeah, that’s in my book. She was famous for dumping cheeseburgers into peoples’ laps, walking into the walls. She was so stoned half the time she got fired!
Around this time County entered into a competitive friendship with Warhol’s drag queen Superstars Holly Woodlawn, Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling, the trio name-dropped in the lyrics of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side.”
JC: I used to live in a flat with Holly. It was Leee’s flat, really. (Photographer and scene-maker) Leee Black Childers. I was there with Holly, Jackie Curtis. Jackie moved in first. She was running away from this guy who was producing her in this play she’d written. She’d run away because he was a maniac – he was torturing her. Driving her crazy, basically. So, she quit the play. She was in hiding. He was threatening to kill her and everything. Jackie was a total speed freak. She put speed in her coffee, speed in her orange juice. She sprayed the apartment silver. It would have been nice if it’d been done right, but she just sprayed over the dishes, skipped the corners, sprayed the refrigerator. We came home one day, and it was horrible, blotches of silver everywhere, and she thought it was wonderful. She was speeding, y’know. We didn’t have a phone and she had a telephone put in and she put a lock on it so that we couldn’t use it. She was in Long Island, and I broke the lock off. She was visiting somebody – was it Candy? No, she’d had a big falling out with Candy before then. She was in Long Island, and I had the number and I’d broken the lock off the phone and called her. I said, “Oh hi Jackie. I’m calling from the apartment.” And she was like, Oh. I said, “Jackie, you don’t live in this apartment and put a lock on the phone.” It was easy to have a falling out with Jackie because everybody did. She’d fall out with people quicker than she could be friends with them. Always. She fell out with everyone I know.
MRR: So, you and Holly were closer?
JC: Well, I fell out with Holly because of Jackie. Holly had the bad habit of getting her welfare cheque, her dole cheque, and all bills were due, and she’d promised to pay up with the bills. So, she got her dole cheque and what does she do? She went off and bought a fucking feather boa with it. Came home and said, “Oh darling, isn’t it glamorous?” Yes, but our electricity’s going to be cut off in two days! So, I got really nuts about that. Jackie wouldn’t go to Holly herself, so she asked me to do it, to ask Holly to leave. We were the only ones bringing in money. We’d be sleeping, it would be four o’clock in the morning and Holly would come in and she’d be rolling around in the middle of the floor with someone. Anyway, it got too crazy and there were too many people living in the flat and I was the one chosen. I was the villain, and I regret it. I shouldn’t have let Jackie manipulate me like that.
MRR: Did you and Holly ever patch things up? That was over twenty years ago.
JC: Oh yeah. Of course, we have. Everything’s fine now. We never mention that. But she’s fine now.
MRR: Candy was more stuck up.
JC: She was snobby, yeah. She hated Holly’s guts. She didn’t like me at all. She had a big falling out with Jackie too. The minute Jackie decided to start wearing dresses all the time Candy hated her. Candy wanted to be the only underground drag queen, she didn’t want anyone giving her any competition. She was very jealous of her position. She didn’t want any challenge. We didn’t have any fights or nothing, but I would purposely do things to upset her. Purposely wear the same top or some hat I’d seen her in three days ago and watch her face as I walked into the backroom. Or copy her eye make-up on purpose and watch her go crazy! I did that once.
MRR: How come you didn’t end up acting in any of the Warhol / Paul Morrissey films?
JC: Because I wouldn’t go to the Factory every day and kiss their asses, basically. I was more into the rock’n’roll thing. Apparently, Morrissey was quite taken with me, but I think Candy would have basically tried everything in her power to stop me from being in their films. But I never really tried anyway. I didn’t want to be typecast into being just a Warhol Superstar type thing ‘cause everyone who was typecast like that hardly did anything else, ‘cept for some of the later ones. I mean, Sylvia Miles had already done Midnight Cowboy. Joe Dallesandro, he did a few more movies but nothing really after that.
MRR: Well, virtually all the Warhol Superstars came to a bad end.
JC: Yeah, they died. Suicides. ODs. I didn’t want people to think of me as a Warhol Superstar, because immediately people would think, “A junkie who just rants in front of a bad movie.” A lot of people didn’t like Warhol and you wouldn’t have got an even break. There was a lot of antagonism, particularly in California. When the Velvet Underground played there everyone hated them. “How dare these fucking junkies come out here?” They wanted to keep everyone on acid so they could love, and then all these junkies come out from New York. Oh, it was horrible. They hated the Velvet Underground! I didn’t want to get stereotyped. And I knew I wanted to get into rock’n’roll.
Friendship with the New York Dolls – County continues to include Dolls covers in her act – sings “Lookin’ for a Kiss” while lolling her tongue lewdly, scanning the audience for a likely candidate – wrote “Johnny’s Gone to Heaven” as a valentine to Johnny Thunders following his death in 1991.
JC: I knew Johnny for years. I did some shows with the Dolls. Leee Childers, who’s been my flatmate on and off for years, was managing The Heartbreakers when they were in London. We were part of the same scene, hung out in the same places. You couldn’t really help bumping into everyone. There was always something goin’ on. You could run into anyone on the street anywhere: Patti Smith. Dee Dee Ramone.
County contributed backing vocals to a few songs on Thunders’ last studio LP, Copy Cats in 1988 -- County is also featured on the recent Thunders tribute LP I Only Wrote This Song for You (1994).
JC: I sing on “Help the Homeless.” When they told me about it, I just went – get outta here! Is this a wind-up? I’m not singin’ on no fuckin’ song about that. Not because I don’t agree with helping the homeless ‘cause I do, but I thought this must be some kinda pisstake. I’ll do it and I’ll look like a fool. But then they explained it to me, and I said Oh, cool. But when I first heard about Johnny Thunders doing a song called “Help the Homeless” I just thought – I ain’t doin’ that! But then when I heard the lyrics, the lyrics were really cynical. I said, Yeah, I get kit. But my first reaction was I don’t want to do that! It might come off like a do-gooder song, not well, corny and tacky. But it’s a good track and I’m really glad I did it now. My first reaction to a lot of stuff is immediately the first three minutes is negative and the next few minutes I’ve totally changed my mind. I do that all the time.
From glam in New York to punk in the UK – moved to London in time for the emerging punk scene – found a receptive audience and a record contract with the Safari label – teamed up with the band The Electric Chairs and released self-titled debut in 1978.
JC: I’d been playing at Max’s forever. Leee Childers had gone over with The Heartbreakers, and he called my manager and said, “There’s a scene developing in London that Wayne would really go down a storm in.” The scene in London was more theatrical. And so my manager got me over there. We went over to play The Roxy. That was my first gig there. It was packed to the rafters, queues around the block. It was incredible. The London scene was incredible. They loved it. The punk scene in London was very showy. First time I ever went into The Roxy someone was sitting there with a razor blade, cutting themselves and bleeding. It was very much “Look at me, I’m suffering. I’m a masochist.” It became a bit uncool later, but there were lots of people wearing swastikas. Johnny (Thunders) used to come onstage with a swastika armband on, I think they got that from him. And then Siouxsie did it and it grew trendy. But people wised-up later. It was very showy; it was a fun scene. It was less serious than the New York scene. The people in New York were more serious, more arty: Talking Heads, Television, Patti Smith. The punk thing in London was more fun and more energy, more just jumping around and sticking your tongue out. “Look at me, I’m brainless!” More that trip. It worked well with the music because the music was so fast and energetic. The punks in London got a lot of the style from the Ramones, whereas in New York the Ramones were the only band that played like that. The rest was like Patti Smith, Talking Heads. More variety. But the early days in London was more like that. The Damned, even the Pistols. A lot of Steve Jones’ guitar sounds were lifted from Johnny Thunders.
MRR: Who from that period impressed you the most?
JC: (Long pause, then laughs). I wasn’t really impressed! It’s hard to impress me.
MRR: Did you feel like you were coming from a totally different place? I mean, you were American, older, a transvestite …
JC: I knew I was the odd person out. But then I was in New York as well.
MRR: What was it like for you in punk circles, being a transvestite and then a transsexual later? How much acceptance or prejudice did you encounter?
JC: A lot of prejudice at times, from people you wouldn’t expect.
MRR: Well, a lot of the most so-called liberal hip people are the most hypocritical.
JC: Yeah. I remember running into Patti Smith on the street and I was wearing a t-shirt and my tits were just beginning to grow. There was this look of horror on her face as she focused in on my breasts. She got totally speechless and couldn’t even talk to me. Dee Dee Ramone’s reaction was fabulous. “Oh, your tits are growing great!” He’d pinch them and say, “You’re gonna have great tits! Don’t get big silicone tits, Jayne. Just get a nice handful. That’s all you need.” Dee Dee was always really nice to me. Johnny Thunders was always a little strange with me. He’d still call me Wayne just to irritate me. “Hey Wayne!” I went to Max’s one night and he said to me, “Oh Wayne. I love you anyway. I don’t care if your tits are pointed!”
/ Bad boy Ramones bassist Dee Dee Ramone (1951 - 2002). I covet his killer Mae West t-shirt hard /
MRR: You emerged from the glam scene when it was trendy to pretend to be androgynous. You must have seen right through that, being the real thing.
JC: Yeah. I was just doing an extension of what I’d been doing in the underground theatre in New York, but I was doing it to rock’n’roll. Early Alice Cooper really impressed me. I was trying to merge theatrics into rock’n’roll. And I was doing it long before David Bowie!
MRR: Well, you got revenge on Patti Smith because you used to do a vicious parody of her in your act.
JC: Oh, I did. But I didn’t mean it to be mean, I meant it to be funny. She was always taken so serious and I had to take the mickey. I’d come out in a black wig and a man’s shirt and tie and I’d spit. She started that whole thing, spitting onstage. I did “Horses” and then I went into “giraffes … giraffes” and then “chimpanzees … chimpanzees …”
MRR: Did she ever see it?
JC: I don’t think she ever came to see it. I think her manager saw it and warned her not to come. She took her work very seriously. Patti was a little bit funny with me, although I’d worked with her twice in the theatre already, so I don’t know why. A lot of people, when I first started doing rock’n’roll, were taken aback. They couldn’t believe I was gonna do rock’n’roll because drag queens didn’t do rock’n’roll. They didn’t know how to react to it.
MRR: I guess they expected you to mime to show tunes, do Carol Channing or something.
JC: That’s right. But I’ve always been a
rock’n’roll person ever since I was a kid. Most transgender people are not
rock’n’roll-oriented, they’re more into dance music and show tunes. Not that I
don’t appreciate different types of music sometimes but I’m a rock’n’roll
person. It’s in my bones.
Infamous punk feud: County’s onstage fight with Handsome Dick Manitoba of The Dictators at CBGB’s in 1976 – after exchanging words, County attacked him with her microphone stand, breaking his collarbone.
MRR: What exactly did Manitoba say to you that led to you hitting him?
JC: Oh, he was saying all kinds of things
from the back of the room. The typical things: “Oh, you fuckin’ faggot … you
fuckin’ drag queen … you fuckin’ slag.” He’d been there the night before
calling Debbie (Harry) a slag. I said, “What? I can’t hear you. Come up.” So,
he came up to the stage and started yelling, “Oh, you fuckin’ …” So, I got
vicious back. “Oh, go home, go on a diet, you bum, you fat fuckin' pig …” And
then he stopped for a while, and I went on singing and all of a sudden, he was
up on the stage! My first reaction was, he’s going to fuckin’ clobber me. So,
before I even knew, I picked up the mic stand and clobbered him with it. Later
he said he was just on the way to the bathroom, the loo was behind the stage,
but he was walking too close to me, and he had a glass in his hand. I didn’t
want to stop and find out if he was really just goin’ to the bathroom, so I
just whacked him one. And then he fell off the stage and hit his head on a
table and gave himself a concussion. They had to take him out on a stretcher.
He was bleeding. And the next song was “Rock’n’Roll Resurrection”: “rock me
Jesus / roll me Lord / wash me in the blood of rock’n’roll …” and I performed
the whole song dripping in Dick Manitoba’s blood! He pressed charges
(eventually dropped). They arrested me, took me to the tombs overnight. The
tombs is like a nightmare – hardened criminals. They put me in a cell with
another drag queen. They must’ve taken one look at me and went, “We know where
to put you!” So, there was this queen with no eyebrows and dyed hair, and all
the others were like (mimes slurring and lunging). We were like, “Thank God.”
At least they were that understanding. New York police, they can surprise you.
They actually asked me, “Do you want to be put in a special place?” and I said,
“I’m not going in there with them!” So they said, “OK you don’t have to.” They
were very nice. Years later (Manitoba) came up to me at a bar and he was
showing me the scars in his head. I said, “You fell off the stage! I didn’t hit
you there! You fell off the stage and hit a table!” He said, “I do realize that
you felt threatened …” (County’s voice rises at the memory). Somebody comes up
onstage, twice as big as you and holding a beer mug in their hand, what would
your first reaction be?! After that person had been screaming at you from the
audience. Wouldn’t you have thought that person was going to kill you? I
thought you were going to hurt me! And he agreed. He won’t talk about it
anymore. They interviewed me about that for the CBGBs documentary about a year
ago and they tried to get him to talk about it and he refused.
After scoring punk hits with triple-X gutter rock tunes like “Cream in My Jeans” and “Fuck Off”, The Electric Chairs and Wayne County parted acrimoniously by the end of the seventies. At the time, The Chairs issued a press release stating they’d kicked County out of the band and would continue without her.
JC: No, they didn’t kick me out. They were covering their own egos. What happened was I went to New York to do a few solo gigs and they got mad. So, to get me back, they decided to do a few solo gigs without me, but there was no kicking out of the band. My manager wanted me to get on the next plane from New York to come back and I wouldn’t do it. They wanted me to come back desperately and I wouldn’t. No one wanted to know The Chairs without me. They knew that.
County now a solo act again – Wayne became Jayne – re-emerged in 1981 with Rock’n’Roll Resurrection, a live recording of a New Year’s Eve gig in Toronto – enjoyed nightclubbing in Berlin at the expense of her career – would be five years of obscurity until next studio LP Private Oyster (aka Amerikan Cleopatra) in 1986 – she surfaced in a “Whatever Happened To?” article in Rolling Stone magazine – the EP Betty Grable’s Legs in 1989 brought the grand total of County’s recorded output for the decade to up to one album and a half.
JC: Berlin was a great stomping ground for me. I was becoming more serious about my sexuality and everything. I went there just to sort of hang out. It was probably a mistake. I should have come back to London, but I was going through a lot of changes, and I was very stubborn. I’m a lot more loose about things now. But basically I just fell in love with Berlin and didn’t want to leave. It was very exciting. The Wall. The clubs were open all night. It was like a 24-hour coffee shop. I made all these incredible friends who were also TS’s and TV’s. There were fabulous people. I just thought, this is great. I can’t leave. It practically ruined my career. I should have come back to London, gotten back with The Chairs and got on with it. I was a fucking fool. I’m still paying for my mistakes. But never mind. That’ll teach me for being a stubborn know-it-all. The eighties were pretty much of a slow gap. I hated the eighties! Everything in the eighties was horrible! I just didn’t feel like I was part of anything. I just sort of kept my head above water. I was active, performing in clubs, but not very high profile.
MRR: At one of your last shows at The Intrepid Fox here, you introduced an old song by saying it was by someone called Wayne County and asking, “I wonder whatever happened to him?” Do you really feel that way?
JC: (Laughs). That just came off the top of my head. There’s still a bit of Wayne County in me. You always retain the original character, the original person, despite the changes over the years. I may be Jayne County now, but there’s still a lot of Wayne in there. I don’t want to murder him!
/ The evolution of Wayne to Jayne /
MRR: You’re heading back to spend some time and play a show in New York. What city would you ideally stay in?
JC: No city permanently. I’m too itchy. I’m a bit of a gypsy. I stay in one place too long, I feel trapped. I gotta get out. It’ll always be Atlanta – New York – London. I wouldn’t live in Berlin again. I’d go back for a while. But my real base is always going to be London and New York.
County is poised to inflict herself again on an unsuspecting public this year with double whammy of new LP (Deviation) and autobiography (Man Enough to Be a Woman) – the album promises to be a return to form including Jayne-ified anthems like “Everyone’s an Asshole But Me” and a cover of The Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb”.
MRR: Is the new material going to be the classic Jayne sound or have you changed much?
JC: It’s the classic Jayne sound, but a little punchier. It’s all rock’n’roll-ish but some of the songs are varied with different guitar sounds. It’s all really driving. It’s seventies punk but with a modern feel to it. I can’t describe it. It’s just the best thing I’ve ever done. I don’t see how anyone who likes rock’n’roll can listen to this and not like it.
MRR: So, the nineties are going to be your big return to the scene.
JC: (Fatalistic). Well, I don’t know. They always seem to have accepted me more in Europe. I’m going to be working there a lot soon. We did a European tour in April as a test to see what the reaction would be like after being away so long, and the reception was incredible. We couldn’t get off the stage. We had to do songs over again. They went fucking mad. I was over the moon.
MRR: I promised Sexton Ming I’d ask you what are your favourite colour of tights.
JC: Tights? I don’t really have any favourite tights. I like the kind that don’t fall down. I hate it when you have to keep pulling them up. Oh, I like fishnets. What I like to do now is wear three or four different pairs of rights of different colours on top of each other. That looks fabulous.
MRR: Final question. So many of the people you started out with are now dead …
JC: They’re either dead or mega-stars!
MRR: But you’re still here. Do you ever wonder what kind of survival skills or whatever you must have? You must be tough …
JC: Either that or very lucky. I’ve always managed to keep my head above water. I’ve always had a place to live. I’m very streetwise. I do know how to survive, because I’ve had to since a very early age. In my teens when I was living on the streets of Atlanta, running from the police. I’ve learned to survive over the years. I can suss people like that (snaps fingers). I can suss out a situation on the street. But this is all I know how to do, really. I’m a rock’n’roller and that’s why I’m still doing it. I’ll do it until I drop because that’s what I do. That’s what I am.
MRR: Well, you could be like the Marlene Dietrich of punk. She was still performing onstage into her mid-seventies.
JC: (Laughs). And she’d break her hip and they’d tape her back together! Her face was all taped back under her wig. It pulled everything back, and once she was right in the middle of a song and one of the grips broke and one side of her face just fell, and they had to bring the curtain down! She was amazing. (County sucks-in her cheekbones and sings a bit of “Falling in Love Again” with a fake German accent). I am a rock’n’roll person. It’s not an act. That’s what I love. It’s what’s kept me alive. Everything’s rock’n’roll with me. I am rock’n’roll.
/ Portrait of County as a young starlet by Leee Black Childers /
Missing In Action piece from Vox magazine. July 1995 issue
Jayne County’s career is like a one-transsexual assault on good taste. In the seventies with The Electric Chairs, County (then billed as Wayne) vomited up sewer-mouthed diatribes like “Fuck Off” and “Cream in My Jeans” to receptive British punk audiences. After the band split, County relocated to relative obscurity in Berlin. But 1995 sees her resurfacing with two new projects, an autobiography entitled Man Enough to Be a Woman and an album called Deviation.
Born in Dallas, Georgia, County’s music career began in the sixties as a nightclub female impersonator, miming to Dusty Springfield and Janis Joplin records.
“Straight drag queens used to do people like Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand,” she recalls, “and I’d come out and do rock’n’roll people, which would really flip people out. Dusty was my favourite. She had such a strong, stark image and I really aspired to that image.”
With the Backstreet Boys, County carved a niche in New York’s rock scene, hanging around CBGBs with the New York Dolls, the Ramones and Patti Smith. She had to leave the US though to find a recording contract. Moving to London in 1977, County was lapped up by the punk subculture.
“The punk scene in England was more theatrical, more showy,” she says. “They’d incorporated the David Bowie make-up left over from the glam era. The safety pins, the no-eyebrows look, the heavy make-up. In New York it was more arty and less theatrical. It was more visual in London. I fit into that a lot better.”
Re-naming her band The Electric Chairs, she specialized in scatological gutter-rock outbursts, the most notorious remaining “Fuck Off”, with “Eddy and Sheena” the most fondly remembered. They became a popular live act due to County’s outrageous stage antics, the most printable of which was wearing tattered babydoll nighties long before Courtney Love.
“Is she wearing babydolls?” County rasps in mock horror. “They don’t look like mine, do they? I’m gonna kill her!”
In 1979 The Chairs imploded and County left London to find kindred spirits among Berlin’s transgender nightclubbers. It was a turning point.
“My looks had changed quite dramatically, and I couldn’t go on calling myself Wayne. In a club one night this drag queen said to me: “You’re not Wayne. You’re Jayne now.””
After a low-key solo career in the eighties, County seems due for a rock’n’roll resurrection in the nineties. Gender’s gone crazy and drag is suddenly hip again, with transvestites on the catwalks and films such as The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert pulling in large audiences.
“The glam thing in the seventies, they took that from drag queens,” nods Jayne. “Drag queens would not have been accepted, so people took from the underground and made it more commercial. It’s come around again, and I think people can now accept trannies.” [Note: this term was still considered acceptable in 1995].
Deviation sees County repaying old debts by vowing “I’m in Love with Dusty Springfield.” She also re-interprets the old Runaways jailbait anthem “Cherry Bomb.” If anyone can claim the line “Hello world, I’m a wild girl” it’s Jayne County.
From September 1995 issue of Ikon Magazine
Let Your Backbone Slip: the Best of Wayne /
Jayne County Volume 2
Deviation
Hot on the (white stiletto) heels of her autobiography Man Enough to Be a Woman come Jayne County’s latest musical offerings, and these two releases more than adequately flesh out the lurid past and present of the toilet-mouthed American transsexual punk chanteuse. Let Your Backbone Slip, a sequel to RPM’s earlier greatest hit compilation Rock’n’Roll Cleopatra, traces County’s progression from the punk era, when she was billed as Wayne and backed by The Electric Chairs, to her later (post-nose job and female hormones) solo career as a self-made woman. On raunchy glitter-punk rants like “Bad in Bed” and “Are You a Girl or a Boy?” the former Wayne Rogers trashes his / her own Deep South Bible belt upbringing and rasps your face off in the process.
Reassuringly, she hasn’t cleaned up her act at all during her long absence. The raucous Deviation, the artist’s first new album in years (the last – Goddess of Wet Dreams – was never released in the UK) confirms that County’s voice, saturated in Southern Comfort and gravel, is still one of the lewdest instruments in rock. “I’m in Love with Dusty Springfield” is a beating valentine to an early hairstyle role model, and County explores misanthropy on the anthemic “Everyone’s An Asshole But Me.” Best of all, on “Transgender Rock’n’Roll” she surveys her own history as the Glen or Glenda of punk and snarls, “I’m looking fierce / So don’t you piss me off.”
In the seventies, Wayne County was the
undisputed drag queen of choice for hardened punks. Today, Jayne looks like a
genuine cult figure for the nineties.
/ My own shot of County performing at The Underworld in Camden Town, London in 2005 /
Further investigation:
Explore County's back catalogue on Spotify.
County's official website.
County on Instagram.
Filthy Dreams blog's appreciation of County as a queer role model.
