Before music, these women had worked as nurses, foster carers and ice-cream van drivers. Now, they’re booked solid at clubs and festivals. How did they become the real-life Riot Women?
When Sally Wainwright’s series Riot Women burst on to screens last autumn, the overwhelming critical acclaim was punctured by a few questions about authenticity. “There is a fascinating TV series to be made about a menopausal rock band – Riot Women isn’t it,” opined Tiff Bakker in the Guardian, denigrating the fictional group as a “bunch of middle-aged punk rockers who, until now, seem to have heard of only Abba”.
If Wainwright needs inspiration for the second series, she could do worse than head to south Wales to meet the real life version of the Riot Women. The NaNaz are a six-piece punk band formed last year by a group of women in their 50s and 60s. Their repertoire of songs tackles everything from unaffordable care home fees, to male attitudes towards older women, to the frustrations of recycling. And they are possibly the only band to have ever been featured on both the homepage of guitar.com and a poster campaign for Age Cymru.
I meet the NaNaz in the bat-cave gloom of the Cab, a hardcore punk club in Newport. Recent headliners include Murderburgers, Pizzatramp and Siberian Meat Grinder. To my uninformed eyes, this reads like a menu from the takeaway from hell, but it was within these walls that the NaNaz story began.
“After the first episode of Riot Women was on TV, loads of people got in touch with us, all saying: this is old news – you lot are already doing it,” says Anne-Marie Bollen, 60, bassist, vocalist and a former community nurse. Bollen had seen an advert on social media for “Nana Punk” workshops at the Cab, which invited women over 50 to come and experiment with instruments and performing. “It said no experience necessary, no instruments required, and it was on Sunday afternoons. So I thought, I’m going to give this a go,” she says with a grin.
A miner’s daughter, Bollen grew up in south Wales and as a misfit teenager was inspired by the first generation of female punk musicians. “I used to love X-Ray Spex, Pauline Murray of Penetration, Siouxsie Sioux. I’d been in choirs and I always loved singing. Later, I was a backing singer for a local band. But I was never confident enough to perform on my own. I was too worried about being any good.”
