Band profile with interview: “Chris Westwood dresses Doll By Doll up”

One-page Record Mirror profile in which Chris Westwood – later the band's most important champion at Record Mirror – introduces Doll by Doll ahead of the release of their debut. He begins with the lower-case spelling after E. E. Cummings that Leven adopted, and places the band on an axis running from Cochran and Holly through the Velvet Underground into something of the future. Automatic Records, Nick Mobbs' new project, signed Doll by Doll as its first band; as the piece is written, Leven (guitar, vocals), David McIntosh (drums), Robin Spreafico (bass) and Jo Shaw (guitar) are working on the album. The interview took place in the band's squat in Maida Vale near Warwick Avenue tube station, though only with Shaw and McIntosh. Shaw explains the connection with the Philadelphia Association (shared houses for people in psychological crisis, inspired by R. D. Laing's ideas): the band played benefit concerts and donated part of the Automatic advance, but the connection has been exaggerated in other articles – as has the influence of Artaud, who mainly inspired Leven. McIntosh says that about two and a half years earlier he played with Leven in Dorset in another band that never performed; after it ended he went abroad, and then Shaw, Leven, Spreafico and he found each other – about a year ago. Since then almost a hundred concerts, support slots for John Otway and Ultravox, and next the Devo tour with two nights at the Hammersmith Odeon. Both talk about the risk on stage (“like a tightrope”). Leven's earlier album, available only in Spain, is also mentioned. Tone: enthusiastic, presenting the band as a genuine, uncompromising alternative to commercialised punk.