Been there, did that. Some of the muso biographies capture this very well, a good example is Art, Sex, Music by Cosey Fanni Tutti. She and many associates survived on a pittance (and in her case ‘artistic photography’ helped to supplement the income) and used just about all the resources they had to create art of one kind or another.
The band she formed, Throbbing Gristle, is one of the most influential UK groups of the last fifty years. New Order would be in that category too.
I’m only a few chapters in but Malcolm McLaren seems to have covered the same ground, his biography is really quite brilliant based on the first 70 pages or so.
One of our social circle rose above the others, by similar route: Louise Downey. She became a Page Three Girl (topless model in tabloid newspaper), danced with the Beastie Boys, appeared in various short films and her real moment of fame was to star in the film Visions Of Ecstasy which was banned for many years. It can now be found on the usual streaming service(s). In this case a WiCIApedia link is accurate.
Visions of Ecstasy
As far as I know, she is in America now, we lost touch a long time ago. Very pleasant but neurotic girl, easily manipulated though she claimed everything she did was fully consensual.
Of course, the kids from more comfortable backgrounds found it a great deal easier to make it via Bank Of Daddy and/or into conventional educational settings, universities, etc, and thus had some of their rough edges rubbed off. Art Schools were a thing the UK did really really well and should be revived.
Wind forward to the present day, and nepotism is the default setting, which is a great shame. Maybe a little less true of America where working-class kids have to really struggle (or sell drugs, etc) to gatecrash the elite party. Or submit to programming by music industry fiends as per Gerard’s thread Alanis Morissette Claims Music Industry Is Run by Elite Pedophiles: ‘They’re ALL Child Rapists’
The default push-back on such statements is to label them Politics Of Envy, of course.