Girlschool's Kim McAuliffe still going strong after 45+ years of rocking

Girlschool, touted as the longest-running all-female rock band, toured plenty of times with their British compatriots Motörhead over the course of almost 40 years.

Guitarist Kim McAuliffe can clearly remember one of their early encounters. After early trepidation about meeting them — “we’d only seen a photograph of them, and we thought ‘What the hell?’” she said with a laugh — the band turned out to be “just cuddly bears basically” and one of Girlschool’s biggest champions. And, of course, they liked to have fun and play pranks, especially singer/bassist Lemmy Kilmister.

“They always used to bring us in a crate of beer — this was on the very first tour because we had no money. So he always used to just bring us in quite a bit, wish us good luck to the gig, blah blah blah, and this particular time, Lemmy was hanging around a bit longer than normal,” McAuliffe recalled in a recent Zoom call from Manningtree, England. “They’d just come in, and we were just about to go on stage, thinking this is a bit strange; eventually he leaves the dressing room.

“Then we were just about to go on and I opened my guitar case and I screamed my head off. I thought there was a human head in there, but it was half a pig’s head with its ears sticking up. I can still see it now, even all these years later, and that’s obviously what he was waiting for, but he didn’t have the satisfaction of actually seeing it, but he could hear us screaming,” she said with a laugh.

That’s just one of the stories McAuliffe could share about her 46 years in Girlschool, if she ever decides to write an autobiography. And there could be more to add, as the band is currently on Part 1 of its final North American tour. They’ll visit Mr. Smalls Theatre in Millvale on April 4 along with Lillian Axe and Alcatrazz.

This will be their first full North American tour since 2015 — “It’s been bloody difficult getting there, I’ve got to say that,” McAuliffe said. “I mean talk about jumping through hoops with all the interviews, the embassy things, whatever, but they finally allowed us in.”

Did the band raise a little bit too much hell the last time they were here?

“Yeah probably. They said, yeah, we’re not having them back,” she said with a laugh.

It’s also quite possibly their first Pittsburgh stop since Feb. 26, 1984, when they opened for Blue Öyster Cult at the Stanley Theatre (now the Benedum Center). That tour didn’t ring a bell for McAuliffe.

“Bloody hell. I don’t remember being in that,” she said. “I know we’ve toured with Blue Oyster Cult many times; I don’t remember being in America (with them).”

Related

• Thrash metal veterans Artillery blasting through area on 40th anniversary tour
• Andrea Bocelli, Chappell Roan, Tim McGraw highlight April's top Pittsburgh concerts
• 2024 Pittsburgh area concert calendar

Whether it was Blue Öyster Cult or Black Sabbath, Rainbow, Deep Purple or Motörhead, Girlschool hit the road with many of their favorites.

“Throughout the years, there’s been so many,” McAuliffe said. “We’re so lucky to have met and become friends with quite a few of our childhood heroes, which is, if you’d have told me then when I was like 15, 16, I would never have believed it.”

Girlschool formed in 1978 originally as a covers band with no intentions on being just a girl group.

“The only reason we became a female band was because no boys wanted to play with us,” McAuliffe said. “It was as simple as that, you know. Well, I don’t blame them really, because we couldn’t actually play.”

But they got better — much better — as they toured and released several albums, like “Demolition” in 1980, “Hit and Run” in 1981 and “Screaming Blue Murder” in 1982. Although they made several appearances on Britain’s “Top of the Pops,” they’d sometimes find themselves hard to categorize, even though they considered themselves “a rock and roll band at the end of the day.”

“It was a bit of a problem because we played a punk club and they’d say we were heavy metal,” McAuliffe said. “We’d play a heavy metal club and they’d say we were punks. So we were a bit sort of stuck in the middle.”

Although being a pioneer isn’t something McAuliffe really thinks much about, she believed similar bands would follow in Girlschool’s wake.

“We were really expecting a load of girl bands to suddenly appear or a load of other female musicians and it just didn’t happen,” she said. “We were so surprised. It’s only been I suppose in the last 20 years — I say only in the last 20 years — but fairly recently that there’s been a load of female musicians coming up now, I mean brilliant ones as well, so it took a while. We were quite surprised.”

Over the course of the rest of their career, there were lineup changes, but always with McAuliffe and drummer Denise Dufort holding down the foundation. They lost founding guitarist Kelly Johnson to spinal cancer in 2007, and founding bassist Enid Williams has been in and out, departing again in 2019.

With the current lineup of McAuliffe, Dufort, bassist Tracey Lamb and lead guitarist Jackie Chambers, the band released their latest album “WTFortyfive?” last year to a strong reception.

Their last release had been 2015’s “Guilty as Sin,” and their record label kept prodding them for another record. Then covid happened, and it got pushed back even further. That is, until UDR Music, according to McAuliffe, put their foot down: “One day the record company went nope, right, that’s it, now. We want it like now, and we thought oh bloody hell.”

With ripping songs like lead single “Are You Ready?” and “It Is What It Is,” Girlschool showed they are just as catchy and heavy as ever.

“We’re really, really happy with it, really happy with it. We wanted to, because this possibly could be our last one, even though the record company is saying we want another one now. We go, What? It took us like eight to 10 years to do this one, but now you want another one this year? It’s like ‘Ah!’” she said with a laugh.

“But we’re really pleased with it and we wanted it, if it was going to be our last one, we wanted to go out with a bang.”