Rock guitarist Jackie Chambers on Girlschool and Syteria

Born in Bradford, raised in Pudsey, she originally played in punk and rock bands in Leeds – the best-known of which was Deja Vu (“we used to play at the Duchess of York and Haddon Hall, all of those kinds of places”) – before becoming lead guitarist in the hard rock group Girlschool in 1998. Throughout their 45-year existence, the all-female outfit have very much been pioneers in a heavy metal genre dominated by men.

When not writing, recording or touring with Girlschool, the 59-year-old can be found working with other group, Syteria, who have just released their third album in eight years, Syteria World. “I like a lot of kinds of music, I wanted to do something different as well as Girlschool, so I put another band together in Yorkshire,” she says, describing Syteria’s music as “pop-punk, rock-pop, with four-part harmonies”.

Their lead singer Julia Calvo was suggested to Chambers by a Facebook friend. “She lives in Sheffield but she’s actually from Buenos Aires,” she says. “We met up in Wetherspoons in Leeds Station first time, I really liked her, she was lovely, I just hoped she could sing.” She found bassist Keira Kenworthy in Harrogate; when a female drummer “didn’t work out”, they drafted in Julia’s brother, Pablo. “He was just helping us out, drumming at rehearsals until we found a drummer and we auditioned a couple, but listening to him, he’s such a good drummer he’s hard to replace, so we thought ‘We’re having him’, and his harmonies are impressive as well. We thought it sounded great with a bottom-end male harmony underneath everything.”

The band introduced themselves with a Christmas single in 2015, just before Chambers rejoined Girlschool for a tour with Motorhead. Their first gig was at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds in 2016, with their debut album, Rant-o-Bot, coming out the following year. Kenworthy left after their second album, Reflection, and was replaced by Steph Dawson in 2019 “just before Covid”.

“I’d been touring with Girlschool in January and February (2020) and just came home (to Morley) for two days and went straight back out with Syteria then we went into lockdown about a week after so we couldn’t finish promoting the album, and it’s been kind of hard getting back from it since then. We’ve sorted of started again with the new album this year.”

With songs such as Debt Generation and It’s a Mess, Syteria World touches on contemporary themes. “They were two I wrote – I’m the old cynical one,” Chambers laughs. “I’m quite old now so I don’t write love songs, but there’s so much to write about. I try to do it in a fun way because there’s no point in writing depressing songs. With Debt Generation, we’re a credit crunch people, kids are getting loans out, it’s seems like people are always in debt these days. Adverts say ‘you need to buy this, you need to buy that’, people are growing up knowing what debt is and being in debt for the rest of their life. So I try to write about things like that, but in a fun way, there’s some silly lyrics in there – ‘Champagne taste with a lemonade income’, that sort of thing. That’s kind of what this generation is, they all want the fast Jaguar but they’re all working in McDonald’s for ten quid an hour.”

With Girlschool also having just released a new album, WTFortyFive?, life is busy for Chambers at the moment. ”That went to number one in the rock chart so now we’ve got loads of gigs coming up,” she says.

The album’s title, Chambers says, refers to the fact that the band “can’t believe we’ve been around for 45 years and we’re still doing it – I’m the youngest and I’m 60 next year​​​​​​​”.

Given Girlschool’s legendary​​​​​​​ status within heavy rock, ​​​​​​​Chambers says she was proud to be asked to join them in 1999. Explaining how it came about, she says: “I was living in London at the time (in 1995) and I put an advert in Melody Maker and Kim (McAuliffe) answered​​​​​​​. She wanted to do a side project as well as Girlschool, which is what I’m doing now with Syteria. She lived in Tooting, I lived in Clapham and we just got on really well​​​​​​​ so we hung out at my house and wrote songs.

“There was never any intention of me joining Girlschool, back then I was a punk playing barre chords, I’d never done a solo in my life, it was far beyond my ability, but then Kelly ​​​​​​​(Johnson) who was the guitarist at the time said, ‘Come on, you’d be perfect for Girlschool if you just learned how to play lead guitar you could join’ because she wanted to quit.

“It became a bit of a joke​​​​​​​, but her and Cris Bonacci, who was the other guitar player, said, ‘If we teach you, will you do it?’​​​​​​​ So they taught me lead guitar solos and I went away and practised ​​​​​​​in 1998-99 and by the time I’d learned them ​​​​​​​they said ‘OK, we’ll do some gigs’. In 1999 I officially joined. The first gig was in Wacken in Germany and I said no way am I doing that as my first gig, so Kelly agreed to do that as her last one then I took over.”

Syteria World is out now. The band play at The Church House, Sheffield on October 28.