Nancy Barile:
early days in punk

Nancy Petriello Barile was a Catholic school girl in the Philadelphia suburbs when she fell hard for punk rock in the 1970s.

After moving into the city in her 20s, she started booking shows, managing bands and attending punk and hardcore shows up and down the East Coast. 

Barile’s new book, I’m Not Holding Your Coat: My Bruises-and-All Memoir of Punk Rock Rebellion, came out in January via Bazillion Points and is already into its second printing. It’s full of great stories, photos, show flyers, and, fittingly, culminates in a playlist. I’m Not Holding Your Coat adds another necessary female voice to the record of the early days of American punk and hardcore, a conversation that has long been dominated by male voices, even though women were and still are crucial to the birth and persistence of those scenes all around the country. Barile is now an award-winning high school language arts teacher in the Boston area. 

January 29, 2021
interview by Erin O’Hare
portrait by Maggie Negrete
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What inspired you to write I‘m Not Holding Your Coat more than 35 years after all of this happened?
I kept drawing on things from punk rock in my life, especially as a teacher. There’s a guy up here named Rev. Hank—he roadied for [Boston straight-edge hardcore band] Slapshot for a while and he is a minister, actually. He asked me to write an article about punk rock and teaching. When I sat down and wrote it, I was like, “Wow. Punk rock really informs my practice on a daily basis.” The article for him came out so well that I sent it to Education Week and they published it and it kind of went viral. I did an “ed talk” for the Massachusetts Teachers Association on how punk rock made me a better teacher. Then I said, “You know what? I’m going to write a book,” and wrote a book about how punk rock made me a better teacher. I got a high-powered agent almost right away, and he was like, “We’re gonna send this out to bid.” I was all blown up, like, “Ooh, I’m gonna quit my job!” but what happened was, people either liked the punk rock story or they liked the teacher story. They kind of didn’t like the two combined. I was telling these stories on the hardcore and punk Facebook groups, like, “30 years ago today…,” and people loved the stories. Everybody kept saying, “Write a book! Write a book!” so I decided to go with the punk rock part of it first. 

The other thing was—and this used to drive me crazy—I would post something in these hardcore Facebook groups, and some guy born in 1985 would be like, “Um, no, you’re wrong about that.” And I’d be like, “Shut up! I was there!” I posted a photo of SS Decontrol at Irving Plaza and this guy is like, “That’s not Irving Plaza.” And I’m like, “Irving Plaza’s probably been remodeled about four times since this photo was taken. Shut up! Stop contradicting me!” It’s men trying to silence women’s voices or correct us and contradict us and refute what we’re saying. 

And that’s such bullshit! Women were and still are so involved in punk and hardcore.
Always.

You say in the book that in Philly, women ruled the punk and hardcore shows.
Yes! In Philly, we absolutely ruled the shows. Not only were we putting them on, we were up front. There were tons of women that were in bands in Philly. D.C. always, always had a good scene for women. We might have been outnumbered, but we certainly were there. 

I gobble up books that women have written about their time in punk. Like Alice Bag’s memoir, Violence Girl, Vivien Goldman’s Revenge of the She-Punks, and the Poly Styrene biography, Dayglo!, because there just aren’t enough of them.
And that’s the thing: I wasn’t a performer and I wasn’t on stage and I’m just kind of a nobody. But I happened to be in the right place at the right time for a lot of cool events and I thought, “Maybe people are interested in this.” 

I love your writing style. The book is so conversational, friendly and unpretentious.
I’m glad to hear that because in my family, storytelling was a very valued tradition. If you walked in my house and said, “I have a story,” everybody stopped what they were doing and pulled kitchen chairs to the kitchen table and wanted to listen. Even my father—he passed away two years ago—but if he called me up and said, “Nance, I got a story,” that was it, we’re all in.

I read it in one day.
So many people are saying that! As an English teacher, that really makes me happy.

That stylistic approach really reflects your attitude about punk in general. You were booking all-ages shows. You say in the book that you wanted this to be available to people who needed it.
Right, which was us at the time. You had to have ID and we weren’t of age so we were just like, “[to] hell with it, we’ll do our own shows.” It was a necessity. Everyone that I hung out with was underage and we were psyched that we were able to do it. I count the first show that we did, Punk Fest I, as one of the happiest days of my life because it was an enormous amount of work to pull off and we didn’t know if anyone would show up. And then, when the line was around the corner, we realized, “Oh my god, we did it.” It was a great sense of empowerment and a great sense of accomplishment. It had a profound impact on the person I am today.

What did those shows offer that you all needed?
Well, it was always about the music for us. We just loved punk music. We loved the energy, the beat, the anger, the melodies. We had an appreciation for the local scene. The first Punk Fest was all local bands and it was really fun to see the people that we knew on stage, playing their hearts out. It was really rewarding. I loved it.

Yes, I know the feeling! But the long-running punk house here in Charlottesville is now done for. But someone else will pick it up, someone always does.
Yes, they will.

You mentioned the empowerment that punk and hardcore gave you, and in the book, you say, “that empowerment caused me to act.” How can we continue to empower women in music?
You’re gonna put that on me, huh?! If you can play an instrument, pick it up, start playing. But if you can’t—and I couldn’t but I always wanted to be a contributor—figure out what your role is. Maybe it’s promoting shows. Maybe it’s managing bands. Maybe it’s working the sound board. Maybe it’s writing about the scene. Figure out what your role is and do it. If you don’t fit one of those, support the bands that you love by going to see them. 

When my husband [Al Barile, who played guitar in Boston hardcore band SS Decontrol] started a band in the ‘90s called Gauge, the scene had changed so much in the ten years that we had been out of music. When we went to see a band in the early ’80s, if the show started at five o’clock and there were five bands, you were there at five o’clock and you were there ’til every single band played. You got to know new music that way. But then in the ’90s, I noticed that people would only come for the band that they knew and wanted to see and then leave. People need to support the music that they love. 

When I think about music today, I think, “Somebody needs to empower kids.” I read that sales of guitars have gone down some ridiculous percentage and that makes me really sad. I look at my own school that doesn’t really have what it needs to have every kid learn an instrument, which is so powerful for kids. We have a rock ensemble. I write the grant so that we get it and the kids are great and the guy who runs it is just spectacular. I love seeing it. When you have music education in schools and you have school bands and choirs and voice lessons and stuff like that, you’re going to get good music. [That] creativity needs to be nurtured.

Music can provide such a sense of community for young people, too.
Exactly!

I hope that there are young people reading this and realizing, “Okay, nobody’s telling me, ‘Yes, you can join us,’ so I’ll just start my own thing.”
Right. Judging by how many women, and young women, are buying my book, this was something that women wanted to hear. My role was so tiny, but maybe somebody reads it and they say, “I’m going to do a show now,” or “I’m going to do this or that.”

I hope so, too. Why does the book leave off in the early ’80s? Was it because hardcore changed so much that decade?
It ends in December 1982. By ’85, I was out [of the scene]. I moved from Philly to Boston in ’82 and helped manage SS Decontrol. There were some really fun years, ’83 and ’84, and then I don’t know if we aged out of it or a lot of the bands that I really liked broke up. It got sort of aggro and we sold all Al’s equipment and we bought a Kawasaki 550 jet ski and instead of spending all our time in smokey, dark clubs, we were out on lakes and on the ocean and it was really restorative. We just had had enough. It was time. But that being said, it was those years that I spent in punk, from ’76 to ’85, that were just really definitive for who I became as a human being.

What did it help define for you?
I’m a high school teacher and I think that one of the reasons that I can connect and build strong relationships with my students is because I remember what it feels like to be an alienated and marginalized teen. The do-it-yourself work ethic that I learned through punk helps me because I teach in a low-income school where there aren’t a lot of resources. I have to knock down walls and smash through doors to get books, field trips, guest speakers and things like that for my students. Punk rock taught me the power of the written word and also strong communication skills because back then, everything was done by either letter or very expensive phone call, so you had to be able to express yourself well to get what you wanted. 

I believe that music, all kinds of music, breaks down racial, ethnic, religious barriers and brings people together. Those are all things that I draw from on a daily basis.

And, speaking of punk rock and awareness, it’s hard not to read the book and notice the anti-Nazi and anti-fascism patches on most of the punks’ jackets in the photos.
Exactly. I can’t believe I’m still fighting that crap.

What are you listening to these days?
I always get asked that and I have to say that I listen to old stuff. I don’t listen to a lot of new music. I listen to what’s on the playlist that’s in the back of my book!

That’s why recorded music is so great—we can have it for as long as we want. What was the most recent album you listened to, even if it’s an older one?
Let me flip on and see…I was listening to Blondie, The Best of Blondie. One of my all-time favorite songs, maybe my favorite song, is “Dreaming.” When Blondie opened up for Iggy Pop, I was in the front row and I wanted to be Debbie Harry. I dyed my hair, I bought clothes to dress like her. When I was in high school I thought she was the most beautiful and most talented woman ever. And cool, so cool.

Is there anything that you had to leave out of the book? Any darlings you had to kill, as they say?
No, actually! I’m sure that there are things that I don’t remember. We do have punk rock reunions and I’m sure if we sat around, my friends would jog my memory and remind me of different things I wish were in there. Writing this book was like a five-year process so I think I have just about everything that I could have possibly had in there. It’s pretty comprehensive. 

I bet it was fun to call up people and ask, “Hey, do you remember this?”
It was really fun! I wanted to be accurate—memories are fallible, right? When I first started thinking about shows that I did and whatever, I had mistakes. Talking to my friends in Philly [helped]—like Chuck Meehan, he’s been there forever, been going to shows forever. Another friend, Sheva Golkow, kept meticulous concert notes and she was really good about the dates things happened.

For women who want to be up front, but maybe don’t feel welcome, what advice do you have for them?
Who are you waiting to welcome you? Just go do it. Own it. That’s what I would say. I don’t think I waited for an invitation. We just did it. You’re just reaffirming the patriarchal status of men if you’re waiting for them to welcome you. Screw that! Just go right up front if you want to be up front.

Erin O’Hare is an arts and culture journalist based in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she hosts Ye Olde Tuesday Afternoon Rocke Show every other week, and Black Circle Revolution the first Thursday of the month, on WTJU 91.1 FM and wtju.net.