Art Sex Music

by Cosey Fanni Tutti

  We’d set up a regular TG get-together for every weekend (all other commitments allowing) … with Sleazy not turning up as often as we all would’ve liked. Chris’s rekindled enthusiasm for music didn’t sit well with Simone, and things gradually started to get awkward. As usual, Gen began moves to have group sex. Simone wasn’t interested. Chris was happy to come with us for TG sessions and to sleep over, assuming (rightly) there’d be sex. Both Gen’s sex-game play and Simone’s indifference to Chris backfired. Me and Chris both fancied each other: he was beautiful in body, mind and spirit, and wasn’t at all shy. Our making love for the first time ignited such passion and lust between us that neither of us could go back – or wanted to accept anything less than what we felt for each other. It far exceeded anything either of us had experienced before.

  We were faced with a dilemma as we were both in relationships and committed to TG. Was it love or lust? It was both, and we decided to keep TG on track and our emotions in check. Well, we tried, but Gen’s partiality for watching us have sex just fed our desire for each other and our resistance waned, especially when opportunities arose, usually when Gen went to sleep with other women.

  *

  Investing £175 in an answerphone so my agency and photographers could contact me had worked out great … but I also got other messages. I’d been getting dirty phone calls from a man who called himself Jeff. I figured out that he’d probably got my number from a photographer or someone at Tuppy’s launch. His calls didn’t freak me out so much as fascinate me. Maybe it was his methods of persuasion to get what he wanted from his illicit wank calls. There were times his calls were inconvenient, but rather than miss out altogether on a good masturbation session he’d politely ask if he could call back when I was less busy.

  ‘Hello, it’s Jeff. Is now a good time for you?’

  ‘Err, yeah, OK, but I haven’t got long. Make it quick.’

  I found it amusing for a while and at times he’d forego the sex chat and we’d have some great conversations on other subjects. I viewed it as another aspect of my sex project and taped some of his calls, until I finally brought a halt to the whole thing and told him never to call me again. I used some of the recordings for TG, along with threats from Simone.

  She and Chris were going through a really rough patch and she wasn’t happy about Chris being with TG, and particularly being around me. She started leaving non-messages on the answerphone to use up the tape, as well as threatening messages and warnings for me to leave Chris alone. We weren’t an item at that point. I caught her call once and she screeched hysterically down the phone, ‘I’m going to get you – you’re a pervert, a slut, filthy, you’ve probably given Chris clap and fleas …’, accusing me of luring Chris into bed and suchlike.

  I said, ‘Yes, mmmm, oh, hmmm …’, took the phone away from my ear for a while – I couldn’t get a word in – then when I put it back the screeching stopped. ‘Hello? Have you finished yelling at me?’

  Then she put her mother on, screaming down the phone. I hung up. Then Chris’s mum rang me – at least she asked me for my version of the story. I just said it was between Chris and Simone. Chris was really embarrassed about the whole thing and upset because I was so angry at being the target of such venom. He consoled himself by getting immersed in recording and editing David Mayor and Alan Fisher’s cassette magazine, Revealer, a kind of audio Fortean Times: art, poetry and interviews.

  After a month of continual harassment from Simone and trying to make their relationship work, they decided to separate. We and John helped Chris move his belongings into a room at John’s mother’s new house in Queens Avenue, Muswell Hill.

  I thought the Simone troubles were over, but much later TG had gone out one evening to the Pindar of Wakefield pub near King’s Cross and were enjoying the entertainment when I got pushed in the back. I turned around to see Simone stood behind me, flanked by two of her friends. Their stance was challenging and intimidating. After her phone threats to attack me, and given that she had previously slashed Chris across the stomach with a shard of broken mirror, I suspected I might have to defend myself.

  ‘You still haven’t got over it, then?’ I asked.

  She went to attack me. I moved swiftly to defend myself. It was her or me. I pulled her down by her long hair, brought my knee up and threw her to the ground. I wasn’t going to let her get back up to retaliate. Her friends were motionless with shock. Chris and Gen came and pulled me off her and told her friends to get her out of there.

  31 May 1976

  Had a go on lead guitar and Chris on synthesiser. Gen played lead … I decided to stick with lead and a bit of bass and percussion. Chris wants to be on his synth not mixing. Sleazy may like that anyway.

  Sleazy, Chris, me and Gen had all tried out different instruments and ways of generating sounds. Sleazy played Chris’s synth but decided he didn’t like it and wasn’t that interested in TG at the very beginning. He was more into COUM, and his full-time job with Hipgnosis took up most of his time. Being made a partner meant his responsibilities lay with Hipgnosis first – and the money was so good he’d started saving up to buy a flat. His absences caused friction at times because all of us were working too, yet managing to set time aside dedicated to developing TG.

  The three of us carried on working together and investing in equipment. I’d bought myself a cheap Raver lead guitar from Woolworths. The way I used it there was no need for anything expensive. I didn’t know how, nor did I want to learn how, to play guitar. I never tuned it.

  6 July 1976

  And today we had our first ever public performance of ‘THROBBING GRISTLE’. It went very well … first number was great, VERY GOOD, then we got lost in the middle but everyone thought we were tuning up having just changed instruments.

  Chris’s last performance of his audiovisual ‘Waveforms’ solo show was only three days prior to our very first Throbbing Gristle gig at A.I.R. Gallery in London. We adopted ‘TG’ pseudonyms for ourselves: Teresa Green (me), Terry Goldstein (Sleazy), Ted Glass (Gen) and Tom Gozz (Chris). Sleazy didn’t take part in the first TG gig – he was away working with Hipgnosis. Loading up the gear was difficult as me and Gen had to lug everything ourselves – Chris had had an accident at the Italian furniture shop where he worked. A large glass table had fallen and shattered into pieces, one piece going straight through his shoe, severing a vein and sticking in his foot like a spear. He was rushed to hospital. Having had six stitches and lost a lot of blood, he wasn’t feeling too good, especially after he’d worked late into the night at the studio – then he got an electric shock from a wrongly wired extension cable while setting up the gear, which almost threw him across the room (it wouldn’t be the first time).

  All considering, we had a good time and the gig was well received. Changing instruments, no vocals, not much rhythm to speak of, but loops we’d prepared in the studio, an industrial ambient vibe – and very loud.

  We crashed out at Beck Road, talking about what to do next with TG, maybe songs but with an interesting, strong subject matter. The next evening was my solo art action, ‘Woman’s Roll’, back at A.I.R. Gallery. It was very slow, quiet and graceful, focusing on the body and form. Sleazy had taught me some of his casualty make-up techniques. He’d passed the necessary exams and was a fully paid-up member of the Casualties Union in London, so was qualified to take part in the training exercises for industry, hospitals and emergency services. Watching him apply imitation open gashes and stitched wounds had fascinated me and I got him to teach me some of the basics and put together a kit of very convincing fake blood and materials for making skin.

  Chris had never seen any COUM actions up to that point and was quite taken aback, telling me the next day that it had affected the way he saw and felt about me … which made me wonder what he’d thought before.

  The next day me, Chris and Gen went to Walker Prints to collect the first TG poster. There’d been some debate as to whether Walker Prints would take on a job with an image of
a Nazi death camp and the slogan ‘Music from the Death Factory’, but they agreed and it looked fantastic. The slogan referred to our basement Martello Street studio, which was rumoured to be on a level with plague burial pits in London Fields, just opposite to where we produced the dark, uncompromising sound of TG. It was an old factory aligned with death. The image of the death camp was a comment on the inhumanity of building an actual killing factory. The TG sound was to be evocative of the subject matter we chose and we wanted to address the full spectrum of human behaviour. We felt it important not to shy away from grim realities and were mindful of Santayana’s saying, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’

  Our approach was counter to, and a reaction to, disco and pop music (although Chris loved ABBA), the culture of exclusivity, the tendency to bury past or present atrocities and ‘distasteful’ crimes, and the political upheaval of the time, which impacted on us daily, with strikes causing chaos, and the ever-present ambient sounds all around our studio – factories at work, saws, machinery, Tube trains, children playing in the park. We were creating the soundtrack to our reality, warts and all. There were no half measures.

  7 August 1976

  Chris was experimenting with sounds and had the whole of the studio shaking. Sounded frightening but he’s going to do it tomorrow for us and maybe we’ll do it at Winchester. Probably make the building collapse.

  Sleazy had been MIA for months on Hipgnosis business, and then he got back in touch. He still wasn’t fully on board with TG but started coming to Hackney again. He was surprised by how much gear we’d amassed, how the studio was changing.

  While me and Gen were away visiting his family, Chris had painted the stage area matt black and had brought almost every piece of equipment he owned to the studio. We taped all our sessions on his Tandberg or AKAI reel-to-reel, or Wolfdale cassette machine. He’d built a mixer, repaired the Norman and Sinclair amps, rebuilt an old COUM bass guitar for Gen, and we now each had an echo unit to put our sound through, me using a Sound Dimension tape echo, Gen a Simms Echo Dek. Chris put Gen’s vocals through his Roland Space Echo and his synth through a WEM Copicat tape echo machine. Chris had experimented with sine waves and subsonics and we loved the physicality and power – we’d never felt that before with any music. It was awesome and inspiring and set in motion the direction we’d take the sound of TG.

  We’d also started on the androgynous military look of TG. I’d bought a very well-worn biker jacket, army trousers and knee-high lace-up boots. Gen followed suit, as did Chris. Sleazy had reconnected at a good time – everything was more or less in place for him to jump in – but he was uncertain what he could do as he had no gear of his own. We suggested he do the mixing and he could apply his Casualties Union skills.

  By the time the Winchester gig came around, we’d each found our places – well, a point from which to start that was adaptable as and when we felt like it. We had our first ‘songs’, ‘We Hate You’ and ‘Very Friendly’ (about Moors murderers Myra Hindley and Ian Brady). Gen with a fake bloodied forehead, me with a large fake bloody gash on my boob applied by Sleazy, and Chris razoring his arm for real. Not entirely suitable for the front row of very young children, but they seemed to take it as (horror) theatre, with Gen screeching, ‘We hate you!’ then adding, ‘Little girls’, directly addressing them. David Mayor came along to help and offered to be TG roadie for future gigs. We made him a ‘Death Factory Worker’ T-shirt.

  *

  You tell yourself you’re used to doing porn, it’s not that difficult – until you get bowled a curve ball. For me that was Chris. I’d coped with sex work by removing emotion as best I could, detaching myself from my body. That became impossible after Chris and I got together. My whole body was crying out only for him. I didn’t want to give myself to someone else, even if it was transient, meaningless and shallow – it was a part of me that didn’t belong there any more.

  Once with Chris, I was back in my body, I felt whole. I stopped doing hard-core films. Then Chris asked me not to do a job with Michel and offered me the same fee NOT to go. I still went. It wasn’t about the money: my response was the usual kneejerk reaction of refusing to have someone else tell me what to do, and telling myself that if he loved me he’d accept me as I am and for what I choose to do. It wasn’t that simple. He wasn’t trying to control me, and my being with someone else was hurting him. I’d been thinking of breaking off my affair with Michel for a while, as he’d been getting demanding and a bit possessive, talking of my being ‘unfaithful’ to him by going with Chris. I guess Chris was right to be worried.

  I broke off the affair with Michel, which pleased Gen because, even though he had his own lovers, he had been getting increasingly antagonistic towards Michel. Me and Chris had tried to keep our feelings for one another in check, but Gen prompting group sex between the three of us so often gradually ate away at our resolve, bringing me and Chris closer and closer. Neither of us wanted to hurt Gen, yet pleasing his sexual desires fuelled our own for each other. The three of us spent so much time together: long talks on group policy, compiling ‘Best of’ cassette tapes of recordings of our TG work in progress … Chris had a tattoo done on his neck as a symbol of unity with us – a number 7 inside a crescent moon, based on alchemy and cosmology.

  We were caught up in the excitement of working on the TG project but also in a ménage à trois that was leading somewhere none of us had expected it would. Chris was in the middle, which often got him down. I’d go for walks with him in Victoria Park, talking things through, cheering him up. Those walks turned into stolen opportunities to be together, to lie in the sun and pretend we didn’t have a care in the world.

  *

  When I switched model agencies from Ragdoll to Suzannah-Jon, I was a relatively new face and body to the magazines Suzannah-Jon worked with, and my bookings escalated as the photographers smelled fresh blood. Magazines used girls up pretty quickly. Being featured over and over again was a no-no, unless you were someone who had a dedicated fanbase, like Mary Millington.

  When you’d been ‘used up’ you could disguise yourself by wearing a wig, turn your hand at blue movies, body doubling – even private ‘parties’. I was invited to go to a few such parties: one for Paul Gadd (Gary Glitter), which I declined, and one for some visiting Arabs who knew George (Harrison Marks). He rang me one day and asked, ‘Do you do anal? That’s all they want. They’ll pay you a couple of grand. It’s in their flat in Mayfair.’

  That sounded decidedly dodgy to me. ‘No, thanks, George,’ I said.

  He seemed relieved that I’d refused. I turned down all such offers and eventually wasn’t asked again.

  My new ‘Z card’ had helped a lot in getting me so much work. The photo was stereotypical of the time, in mood and pose, with me holding a silk scarf across the front of my naked body, revealing just one breast and staring directly down the lens with come-to-bed eyes and lips parted invitingly. That got me a lot of work – and the ‘Z card’ got a place on Chris’s mum and dad’s mantelpiece.

  It had been taken by an American photographer called Szabo, who my agency had sent me to. He lived in a flat in Earl’s Court and had a small studio set up there, with a makeshift but adequate darkroom in his bathroom. I didn’t know what to make of him at first. He seemed eccentric, about forty years old, wore Andy Warhol-style glasses, had a limp and was a little weird – but not in the usual weird-photographer way. He intrigued me, not least because he had Crowley and Buddhist pictures over his mantelpiece, as well as a large black-and-white photo of him naked from the waist down, one leg on a chair, with his substantial-sized penis hanging between his legs. I’d gone to Szabo for test shots and we got on great. He’d come from New York, where he knew Allen Ginsberg and had been in with the Beat Generation, been a junkie and drunk bottles of Dr Collis Browne cough medicine, which (then) had a high enough opiate content to keep his cravings at bay.

  That aside, we shared so many interests that our one-hou
r booking slots turned into entire afternoons sitting around exchanging views on art, literature, magick and sex. He often said he fancied me and would give a dirty, low laugh, but he never tried it on, even when he chained me up for one of his photo shoots. As he lay over me, securing the wrist chains, his nose touching mine, he smiled and said, ‘I could do anything to you right now.’

  ‘I know you could, but you won’t,’ I replied. And we both laughed.

  I’d arrive at his flat and he’d usually be sitting naked, doing hatha yoga, calming himself in readiness for work. He taught me the yoga basics that the photographer Sheila Rock’s classes hadn’t managed to. I confided in Szabo. I took Chris to meet him, and he became my much-needed sensitive, supportive friend. Szabo was special to me. I was his muse and Chris recognised and accepted that – but Gen didn’t.

  3 September 1976

  Gen says to gain more power I am to screw each cock that I don’t want but take as a sign of my power increasing.

  19 September 1976

  Gen told me what’s been keeping us apart the past 3 days. He said he wasn’t going to make love to me again, it was better to be just friends and forget about sex. It was like being thumped in the stomach. It was all because I never fucked Szabo and I’d said I would … it’s Gen’s source of energy …