Poly Styrene

Poly Styrene was the stage name of Marianne Joan Elliott-Said (3 July 1957 – 25 April 2011), a British musician, songwriter and singer, most notably in the pioneering punk rock band X-Ray Spex. Marianne Elliott-Said was born in 1957 in Bromley, Kent, and raised in Brixton, London. Her mother, who raised her alone, was a Scots-Irish legal secretary. Her father was a dispossessed Somali aristocrat. As a teenager, Marianne was a "barefoot hippie". At age 15, she ran away from home with £3 in her pocket, and hitchhiked from one music festival to another, staying at hippie crash pads. She thought of this as a challenge to survive. The adventure ended when she stepped on a rusty nail while bathing in a stream and had to be treated for...