The Contractions: San Francisco's Punk Trio Who Kicked Ass and Took Names
The Contractions emerged from San Francisco's punk underground in 1979, formed around the shared chemistry of three women who would come to think of themselves as inseparable parts of a single whole. Guitarist Mary Kelley, drummer Deb Hopkins, and bassist Kathy Peck built a sound that was punk in spirit but far more adventurous in execution, and together they became one of the era's most distinctive Bay Area acts.
Kelley came to guitar by way of an unlikely path, having grown up on her mother's collection of 1940s pop and jazz records, orchestral music, and the British Invasion sounds of Pink Floyd, The Who, The Kinks, and Led Zeppelin. She had studied piano and French horn before switching to guitar once punk took hold of the Bay Area, bringing a melodic, almost cinematic sensibility to songs like Breaking Up Is Not Hard to Do and Water Beast.
Hopkins picked up her first drum kit between sixth and seventh grade, and her dyslexia turned out to be an unexpected creative asset: unable to rely on written notation, she memorized every part by feel. After one band rejected her for lacking power, she bought the thickest drumsticks she could find and built up the strength to match. Peck, meanwhile, had taken piano lessons from age five and was composing almost immediately, later finding her way into the punk scene through her husband's connection to pioneer Mary Monday. She admitted to fudging her bass experience to land the gig, a bluff the band came to see as an asset for their raw, untrained energy.
The three were introduced by Lisa Wexler, daughter of producer Jerry Wexler, who recognized Hopkins's talent and brought her together with Kelley to jam on original songs. Peck completed the lineup after meeting Kelley at a sculpture show inside The Manor, Kelley's warehouse space in the Mission District. Hopkins later recalled that the chemistry was instant, and that Peck brought exactly the punk style the other two were missing.
The band was insistent that their all-female lineup never be treated as a gimmick, and Kelley described the group as functioning like a three-legged chair: always a team, never quite whole without all three. The Contractions rehearsed and recorded at Truth and Beauty Labs, a studio they built themselves, and made their live debut at Deaf Club opening for Offs and No Alternative.
Over the next several years, The Contractions shared bills with a formidable list of Bay Area and touring acts, including Dead Kennedys, The Offs, No Sisters, SVT, Jim Carroll, Flipper, and The Mutants, as well as Glenn Branca, The Go-Go's, Duran Duran, and Bush Tetras. At Mabuhay Gardens, emcee Dirk Dirksen would introduce them, in typically irreverent fashion, as "the Contraptions."
Active from 1979 to 1985, The Contractions toured nationally and released two singles and an album, earning a reputation as musically dangerous. Hopkins has said the band's greatest legacy is the women who told her they picked up an instrument or started a band after seeing The Contractions play, and Kelley summed up their run simply: they showed up, kicked ass, and took names.