Lifestyle
Soo Catwoman, ‘the Female Face of Punk,’ Is Dead at 70
In 1976, Susan Lucas asked a local barber in Ealing, West London, to part the back of her short hair — which she greased on the sides to emulate the Bride of Frankenstein — and shave off the entire middle section.
“He was very shocked and I think he thought I was kidding at first,” she recalled in a 2009 interview. But eventually he relented. When he finished shearing off almost all her hair, she said, “I think he felt bad about what he’d done.”
Two tufts remained, one on either side of her shaved head, flared upward to resemble cat ears.
“I was really pleased with it,” she said.
She dyed her new ears black, slicked them up with dabs of Vicks VapoRub and christened herself with a new name: Soo Catwoman.
That summer, she met and befriended Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols at Club Louise, a hotbed for musicians on the growing punk scene. She emerged as the face of that scene when she graced the cover of Anarchy in the U.K., a Sex Pistols fanzine.
With long tendrils of eyeliner swiped across her lids, a black star on her cheek and a skull dangling from one ear, her look, as well as her expression — a devil-may-care gaze that refused to waver — became a defining image of the vibrant, corrosive glamour of British punk.
“For me, rock ’n’ roll is all about haircut and attitude,” Bob Gruen, a photographer who documented the early punk era, said in an interview. “And she had both.”
Soo Catwoman died on Sept. 30 at a hospital in London. She was 70. Her daughter, Dion October Lucas, said the cause was complications of meningitis.
The fanzine photograph was published without her knowledge, and her face was soon reproduced on countless T-shirts and posters, often without permission or payment.
“It seems that my face and image, my ‘art’ as some have called it, has been hijacked,” she said in 2009, adding, “I’ve lost count of the amount of things that my face has since been used to publicize over the years, from books to clothing and everything in between.”
As her likeness became synonymous with punk, Soo Catwoman was a frequent presence in British newspapers. She was later portrayed onscreen in Julien Temple’s mockumentary “The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle” (1980) and in the 2022 mini-series “Pistol.”
Her D.I.Y. ethos influenced designers including Thierry Mugler, Chanel and Junya Watanabe, whose models strutted down the runway wearing warped Union Jacks and spiked hair. Keith Flint of the band the Prodigy fashioned his own acid-green cat ears after hers.
Soo Catwoman “was the female face of punk, the sexual opposite of Johnny Rotten,” Mark Perry wrote in his book “And God Created Punk” (1996). “Next to Vivienne Westwood she was the most influential woman in punk fashion. If she wore something, others followed.”
Susan Helene Lucas was born on Oct. 24, 1954, in London to John William Lucas, who was in the merchant navy, and Mary (Cobb) Lucas. She was the 10th of 15 children, and her parents joined two houses in the Chiswick area to make room for their large family.
As a teenager, inspired by the flamboyance of glam rockers like David Bowie, Susan dyed a pink stripe into her pointed bangs.
At 21, after debuting her signature haircut, which she paired with jewelry made from found objects like needles and broken razor blades, she became a fixture, photographed with Billy Idol and members of the Damned. For a time in the 1970s, she shared a flat with Sid Vicious and earned the nickname Auntie Sue for her kindness toward him.
In 1979, she contributed backing vocals to the Invaders’ album “Test Card” and sang lead on their single “Backstreet Romeo.” In 1989, after a long absence from the scene, she resurfaced to record a cover of the O’Jays song “Back Stabbers” with Derwood Andrews of Generation X and Rat Scabies of the Damned.
As punk permeated the mainstream, Soo Catwoman largely withdrew from the public eye. She went from being “insulted on a daily basis,” with people avoiding her on public transportation “as if I were contagious,” to watching privileged strangers infiltrate the scene. “Those of us with holes in our jumpers didn’t actually put them there on purpose,” she said in a 2007 interview with the website Punk77.
“I had an exhibit in London a while ago, and Soo came to the opening,” Mr. Gruen said, “and she was this sweet English housewife.”
Speaking to The Times of London after her mother’s death, Dion Lucas said, “Although she was the epitome of punk, as far as her image, she was a hippie underneath it all.”
She home-schooled her children for a while and led an effort to save a tree outside their school. In her free time, she read the Romantic poets and listened to music ranging from Neil Young to Motown.
In 2008, her daughter launched a campaign to reclaim her image. She silk-screened T-shirts and printed tote bags, which she and her mother sold online.
“My mother’s image has at times been associated with negativity, words like ‘destroy’ and ‘anarchy,’ and the mental pictures they conjure up don’t really fit with the person she is,” Dion Lucas said in 2009. “Her beliefs are more about a mental revolution — about people learning to think for themselves.”
In addition to her daughter, Soo Catwoman is survived by a son, Shem Lucas; 10 brothers, Paul, John, Tony, Steve, Joe, Jim, Dave, Robert, Roland and Adam; a sister, Linda Lucas Kenny; and four grandchildren.
Reflecting on her legacy on her Myspace page years ago, Soo Catwoman seemed bemused by the evolution of the look she helped create.
“It still seems strange to me that what happened back then could bring about so many changes, in hair, music, fashion, etc.,” she wrote. “It seems quite funny that what started out as anti-fashion became fashion in itself.”
Phil Pritchard of the Hockey Hall of Fame works the 2019 NHL Awards at the Mandalay Bay Events Center on June 19, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
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Paul W. Downs can’t help it that even on the weekends, his life intersects with “Hacks,” the HBO comedy he co-created and co-showruns with his wife, Lucia Aniello, and their friend Jen Statsky. (He also appears on the show as Jimmy LuSaque Jr., the besieged manager of its two stars, played by Emmy winners Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder.) The fifth and final season of “Hacks” premiered last week, but on Downs’ days off, he often finds himself at its previous filming locations or hanging out with cast members who have become like family.
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
Downs moved to Los Angeles in 2011, but soon after, he and Aniello were hired to write (and for him to act) on the über-New York show “Broad City,” keeping them away from the West Coast for years. Now the couple live in Los Feliz, which they enjoy with their young son.
“I love Los Feliz because it’s a real neighborhood with restaurants and bars, but also feels close to nature with Griffith Park,” Downs says. “Also it’s very central to my Eastside friends and Westside agents.”
And if he had to live at a local mall, like the character Ava Daniels did in the third season of “Hacks,” which would he choose?
“It would be the Americana, obviously.”
Here’s how he’d spend a perfect day in L.A.
10 a.m.: A late rise and a li’l barista
I’m sleeping in if I can, which I can’t because I have a toddler, but let’s say I can sleep ’til 10. That would be insane.
Then I’m making coffee at home. I’m making it with my 4-year-old because he likes to make my coffee now. He always wanted to help, now he really wants to do it on his own. I’m still there to supervise, but he does do a lot of it.
I do batch brew. I’m doing Verve Coffee that I’m grinding there, and then I’m brewing four cups because I need my coffee. I had a Moccamaster for a long time, but I recently got a Simply Good Coffee. There’s no plastic — it’s all glass and metal.
11 a.m.: Chocolate croissants for everyone
We’re driving to Pasadena and we’re going to [Artisanal Goods by] CAR, which is the place to get the best chocolate croissant, I think, in the world. I don’t just think in L.A., I think they’re better than Paris. I’m going there with my wife and my kid and I’m having another coffee and some pastry. We’re ordering three [chocolate croissants]. We’re not doubling up.
11:45 a.m.: The family business
We’re driving to Fair Oaks in Pasadena. There’s a place called T.L. Gurley. We shot “Hacks” there, actually. Not only in Season 1, but also full circle in Season 5. We’re going to shmay around and look at antiques. My kid is going to want to play a vintage pinball machine. We’re going to find a little piece of art for the house or what have you. It’s not necessarily that I’m on the hunt. It’s to pass the time and to have some fun. If I could do anything and have a leisurely day and take my mind off work, that’s what I’m doing.
People love to interact with my kid when he’s there. We’re really training him to appraise things at a young age. My parents are part-time dealers of antiques. My grandmother bought and sold antiques. It’s kind of a family business.
1:30 pm.: Baguettes and books
We’re driving to Larchmont and we’re getting a sandwich at Larchmont Village Wine, Spirits & Cheese. I’m doing prosciutto-mozzarella-basil on a baguette.
Then we’re going to Chevalier’s Books. What’s sad is that I’m often not looking for leisure material. I’m looking for something that I’m interested in learning more about or writing about, or that they’re turning into a show I want to audition for. But we’re also doing Little Golden Books for my son. He’s obsessed. We’re not huge on screen time, so we really encourage the book-buying.
2:30 p.m.: Cast pool party
We’re having some family fun in the pool and we’re doing that until evening. We invite people over all the time. My sister-in-law is a New Yorker, but she actually wrote last season on “The Rooster” and she’s often writing on shows in L.A., so she’s often here and she’ll have a couple friends come over. I know this sounds like a piece of PR or something, but we’ll really literally have Hannah [Einbinder] and maybe Mark Indelicato from “Hacks” come over to swim. Jen, our co-creator of “Hacks,” will come over.
6:00 p.m.: Family dinner
Sometimes we’ll order Grá to the house, which is a pizza place in Echo Park — excellent sourdough crust pizza. But if we don’t do that, an ideal evening is an early dinner at All Time on Hillhurst in Los Feliz. We’re ordering the ceviche and my son is having all of it and not sharing with anybody at the table.
8:45 p.m.: A thrilling ending to the day
After putting my kid to bed, my wife and I, in an ideal world (full disclosure: we haven’t done this in two years), we’ll watch something together that we’ve been meaning to watch. We have a long list of movies and we either want to revisit or that we haven’t seen that we need to watch.
We don’t watch a lot of comedies. It’s a dream to watch a “Black Bag” or a little espionage thriller. We really like that because it’s so different than the stuff that we’re working on in the day.
Often the things we watch are things that we admire. We like deconstructing it as fans of film and television. We do like talking about the making of it, but it’s less of a critique and more of a listing of the things we appreciated about it.
10:30 p.m.: No work tomorrow
And then it’s lovemaking ’til morning on a perfect Sunday. If it’s a perfect Sunday, there’s also a Monday that’s off.
Jay (not pictured) found himself alone and hopeless in a jail cell when a fellow inmate’s unexpected words of comfort changed his life.
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When Jay was 22 years old, he was a self-described loner. In this story, he is being identified by his nickname to allow himself to speak candidly about the following experience and his mental health. He says the few people he did hang out with at the time had questionable morals.
”I chose my friends poorly, and your friends have a tendency to rub off on you. And so I started making poor decisions,” Jay said.
One evening, when he and his friends were out drinking, someone suggested they should try to break into the chemistry building on his college campus. Most of the group shrugged the suggestion off, deeming it impossible, but Jay was convinced he could pull it off.
“The next night I made a plan of how to do it, and I did it,” Jay remembered. “And I didn’t get caught doing it, [but] I got caught afterwards.”
At around 1 that morning, Jay was placed in the county detention center. Sitting alone in his cell, reality began to sink in.
“I pretty much thought that my life as I knew it was going to be over, and I had decided that the world would be better off without me in it.”
Jay made a plan to end his life. As he prepared himself, he began to cry.
“But just in that moment when I was ready to do it, I heard a voice coming from the top left corner of my cell, from a little vent. And someone called out to me and said, ‘Hey, is this your first time?’”
The man who called out was an inmate in the cell next door.
“I collected myself a little bit, and I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘Can I pray for you?’”
Jay had grown up religious, but had stopped going to church years before. In that moment, though, he knew he needed support. He said yes, and listened as the man began to pray.
“I wish I could tell you that I remember the [exact] words that he said to me, but what I remember is that his words landed with me, and instead of wanting my life to be over, suddenly I saw hope,” Jay said.
The interaction happened nearly ten years ago, but it was a pivotal moment in Jay’s life, and one he thinks about all the time.
“[Now], I have a good job. I have a girlfriend who loves me. I have a life. But I have a life because somebody who was in the same situation I was in had the courage to talk to a fellow inmate and be kind.”
Jay says that he wishes he could meet that man again and express his appreciation.
“[I would] shake that guy’s hand, give him a hug, and tell him what his small gesture meant for me, how he changed the course of my life.”
My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain team, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.
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