‘I’d wear a mac on stage because of all the spitting’: Lora Logic on punk, prayer and Poly Styrene

‘I’d play saxophone five hours a day’ … Lora Logic in 1979. Photograph: George Bodnar

It was the summer of 1977 when Lora Logic discovered she was no longer the saxophonist with X-Ray Spex. “I called our manager, Falcon, to find out when our next rehearsal was,” she says. “He said, ‘Oh, didn’t you know? We found a new sax player.’”

Only months earlier, Logic had blown an anarchic storm on the group’s debut single, Oh Bondage Up Yours! But the 16-year-old had sensed tension brewing with frontwoman Poly Styrene, ever since a notorious Sounds review suggested that Logic was “stealing the show” and that “her tenor sax sound is X-Ray Spex”.