Poly Styrene parents: Meet Joan Elliot

May 2024 · 2 minute read

Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, better known by her stage name Poly Styrene born on 3 July 1957, was an English singer-songwriter, musician, and lead vocalist for the punk rock group X-Ray Spex.

Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, better known as Poly Styrene, was born in Brixton, London, in 1957, and raised in Bromley, Kent. Her mother was a Scottish-Irish legal secretary who reared her alone.

Despite Poly Styrene’s claims to the press that he was a dispossessed Somali aristocrat, her father was a Somali-born dock laborer. Styrene was a hippy when she was an adolescent.

With just £3 in her pocket, she fled her home when she was 15 and hitchhiked to music festivals while sleeping in hippie crash pads.

She viewed this as a survival challenge, but her journey came to an end when, while taking a bath in a creek, she walked on a rusty nail and needed to be treated for sepsis.

Poly Styrene parents: Meet Joan Elliot

Styrene, who was raised by an English mother and a Somali father, had a challenging and turbulent youth.

His father’s name is Joan Elliot but his mother’s name hasn’t been mentioned.

Her mother was reported to have experienced racism, physical and sexual abuse, mental illness, and poverty. But Poly said that despite everything, it offered her a special viewpoint.

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