The Bromley Contingent: The cult of punk where Siouxsie Sioux was crafted into a star
Sticky floors, safety pins, and a cavalier attitude towards sanitation, the age of punk rock wasn’t for the faint of heart, but seemingly everybody who dyed their hair and ripped their clothes during those early days in the squats of London went on to become musical revolutionaries in their own right, with Siouxsie Sioux being a particular stand-out.
A closely-knit bunch of misfits, outcasts, drug addicts, and fashion students, the early days of the UK’s punk scene in the mid-1970s were fairly niche, centred around the cramped, sweat-stained walls of The Roxy in Covent Garden. Sioux was among the key patrons of that now sadly defunct gig venue, even if the goth queen didn’t truly make a name for herself until the post-punk and new wave scene that rose from the ashes of punk.
At that time, in the pre-Banshees days, Sioux was more of a fashion icon than a musical one, setting the standard for punk’s striking DIY look and eyeliner-based experiments. However, she was still embroiled in the endearingly abrasive sounds of The Roxy, thanks to an unending appreciation for the harbingers of UK punk, Sex Pistols. Manufactured by Malcolm McLaren from the comfort of his infamous sex boutique on King’s Road, the Pistols were years ahead of everybody else during the mid-1970s, and Sioux was a natural disciple.
The Pistols sounded like nobody else back in those early days, particularly not the complacent mainstream rock dominating the pop charts of the time. Their musical talent was severely lacking, but therein lies the DIY revolution of punk: nobody could play, which meant that everybody could play. When Siouxsie Sioux first found herself exposed to that earth-shattering revelation at the age of 17, there was no possibility of her returning to an ordinary life.
Instead, Sioux banded together with similarly-minded young punks, forming ‘the Bromley Contingent’. Despite sounding like a rather lacklustre football hooligan firm from an Alan Clarke film, the Bromley Contingent was essentially a cohort of young punks and societal outcasts living in opposition to the mainstream of British society, and their excursions largely consisted of following the Sex Pistols around.
“It wasn’t a fan club,” Sioux was quick to clarify during a 2007 interview with Magnet, “It was called the Bromley Contingent, a misnomer because we didn’t all come from Bromley”.
“It was like-minded people meeting at a lot of gay clubs, actually, who had gotten into the Pistols. And I got introduced to them,” the songwriter continued, “They didn’t really have an audience. Their first gigs, you’d see them playing at a college, and there’d be people scrambling to get out the door or clinging to the walls.”
In contrast, the Bromley Contingent seemed to soak up every ounce of punk inspiration being dished out by the confrontational outbursts of Johnny Rotten.
Sioux’s ties to the Sex Pistols became all the more unavoidable during her first-ever television appearance in late 1976. Standing behind the slouched and disheveled architects of Britain’s punk revolution on the now-infamous episode of Bill Grundy’s Today show, it was the host’s creepy comment of “We’ll meet afterwards, shall we?” directed at Sioux, that sparked the Pistols’ ‘Filth and the Fury’ outburst, making them a household name and bringing widespread attention and sensationalist outrage to the emerging world of punk.
So, while the Bromley Contingent might be resigned to a mere footnote in the story of the Sex Pistols, they did end up playing a major role in preaching the gospel of punk far and wide across the nation, in addition to introducing the world to the groundbreaking sounds of one Siouxsie Sioux.
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