We decided to do a set of photos and form ‘The Gary Gilmore Memorial Society’ in recognition of his asserting control by refusing the stays of execution made on his behalf and instead demanding the death sentence be carried out by firing squad, to ensure it was quick. We found a large wooden chair in the building that could pass as an executioner’s chair. We each dressed in a black shirt, army trousers and boots, and one by one sat in the chair, got tied in by our wrists and ankles, blindfolded, and with one of us pointing Monte’s gun at a target sticker positioned over our hearts. It was a freaky feeling going through the ritual. The photos were made into a postcard when we got back to the UK, which was in turn made into a T-shirt and sold at John Krivine’s BOY shop on the King’s Road.
Al Ackerman (Blaster) was coming at 7 a.m. the next day to drive us to his home in Portland, Oregon. None of us wanted to say goodbye. Monte was sad and I was sad; he sat staring and smiling at me over breakfast. I wanted to hold him and take him with us but Monte was contrary and fierce in his determination to only do what he decided to do – which was fine by me. Monte couldn’t be coerced (unless it suited him) and that had showed the previous day, when Gen had tried to set me and him up together during the ‘Nazi Love’ photo session on Monte’s Nazi-flagged bed. There was a lot of eye contact and body language between us, signalling a refusal to be manipulated. Monte could and still can be a pain in the neck, but deep down he’s good-hearted, very sensitive, and I love him for everything he is.
Blaster turned up as arranged. He looked like Orson Welles and was very warm and friendly. Caes Francke, a Dutch artist and mutual correspondent, was with him, as well as his wife, Patty, and young daughter, Stephanie. That meant we had to fit five adults and a child into Blaster’s small two-door VW Beetle. Being claustrophobic, I almost panicked when it came to getting into the back with Gen and the very quiet Caes. It was such a squeeze I decided to try and sleep as much as possible to take my mind off it. It took fourteen hours to get to Blaster’s house. We had soup in a local hippy cafe, bought books, wrote postcards to all our family and friends and sat and talked till the early hours about Blaster’s work as a nurse and his time in Vietnam. Heart-rending stories of bravery, suffering and death. He later wrote us a long letter describing his feelings about one of his burn patients, who he and the nurses called ‘The Hamburger Lady’. It became a classic TG song and was included on the D.o.A. album. Arethuse turned up at long last, and wasn’t too sociable. I think he was itching to get driving back to Chicago.
*
Chris met us at Heathrow, bursting to show us everything he’d done in the house and the studio. He’d bought some high-frequency, high-powered piezo tweeters and fitted them into the speaker cabinets, serviced the mixer, and was making another mixer for Sleazy. The PA had needed a good overhaul and upgrade, as far as he was concerned. Me and Sleazy had previously gone to see about buying a second-hand PA but it was pretty battered and had belonged to the band Hot Chocolate – not quite the musical lineage befitting TG.
Chris’s expertise and dedication to TG was uncompromising and invaluable. He built two huge bass bins in the studio that were big enough for Gen to get inside. Along with the piezo tweeters they increased our frequency range and brought substantive power to the sound and joy and inspiration when we played together. TG changed up a few gears. But neither Chris nor we had thought about the struggle we’d have later on when we had to get the bass bins out of the studio and up the narrow steps to load into Doris for gigs. They had to be lifted over the railings and caused Sleazy to go almost purple in the face with the effort … which made us all laugh and him get arsey as we saw him lose his cool for the first time. He wasn’t used to physical labour, and from then on often seemed to be missing when it came to loading and unloading the van.
13 January 1977
I feel like I’m lined with shit and oozing out love that is spiked with death. I’m going to the studio to see Gen.
All was not well in the TG camp. There’d been a bust-up between Sleazy, Chris and Gen. There’d been something simmering for a while, an unsettled feeling, but I couldn’t figure out what. I’d noticed that Gen had sensed that me and Chris meant more to each other than he’d anticipated we would, but there was something else making him miserable and argumentative. It couldn’t have been him being made redundant from his job at St James Press, because that came with a fat £1,000 cheque.
That day, Sleazy took photos of Gen with his new short haircut and they had a disagreement. I was at the studio with Chris, who was all excited having spent the last three days building a new effects unit he called a ‘Gristleizer’. We were trying it out, putting my guitar through it, totally thrilled at the sounds we were making. We trudged through snow and slush back to Beck Road, excited about telling Gen and Sleazy about the new unit. When they came back, Gen looked straight past me to Chris and said bluntly, ‘What are you doing here?’
Chris was taken aback, then furious. A huge argument broke out. The three of them went their separate ways. Gen stormed off to Martello Street, Sleazy and Chris went to their homes, and I was left on my own in the house, thinking it was somehow my fault that TG, the very thing that connected us all and that we all loved, was possibly over.
Up to that point everything had been going well. Sleazy had registered Industrial Records as a present to Gen, with me and Sleazy as named directors (Gen was on the dole again). We’d never been so close, especially as Sleazy had started sleeping over more often and surprised me, Chris and himself by having fun exploring my lady bits. I remember the cheeky look on his face when I peeped under the duvet. ‘It’s my first time,’ he said, grinning.
The three of us laughed and joked around so much, wrestling with each other in the big TG bed. We had a lot in common when it came to our sexual interests and indulgences, and often talked about our fantasies.
I wanted to make it right again. I talked things through with Gen and I rang Sleazy, who agreed to come over. The next day I noticed Chris had been to the studio and Beck Road while I was out doing a photo shoot for Fiesta magazine – he’d left some food shopping for me and had gone back home. I rang him. He’d been ready to ‘Fuck everything, fuck everyone’ and to end TG, especially when he saw that Gen had taken a load of his stuff down in the studio and moved it to one side. I persuaded him to come and see us. A TG split was thwarted, or so we thought.
Sleazy’s job with Hipgnosis understandably took a lot of his time but he’d also started working and hanging around with Sheila Rock and a guy called John, who had a band, which further reduced Sleazy’s availability for TG work. That annoyed Gen, but not as much as when Sleazy seemed to be passing on TG ideas to John, and then sold Krivine a design for BOY – it was to look like a ‘Death Factory’, including black knobbly rubber suits like the one we’d used in COUM. Chris was kicking off about it all too, saying he was worried Sleazy might steal the idea of his mirrored panels and the digital jewellery he’d made for us all.
We had a meeting. Gen wanted to throw Sleazy out of TG and get a keyboard player, relegating Chris to just do ‘twiddly bits and mixing with a few tapes’. I was bewildered as to what Gen really thought TG was about, and what Chris’s contribution and role in it were. Chris had just spent his whole tax rebate on building gear for TG and was understandably insulted. Gen sulked at Chris being hurt. Sleazy was confronted about his TG betrayal and blamed John, promising to be more involved. In the end, Chris rang him up and arranged to see him for a serious talk. Sleazy took him for a meal and to a Todd Rundgren gig; they left early, as did the Sex Pistols. Chris brought Sleazy back into the fold and we all met at the studio, did a full one-hour Gristle set and recorded it for reference.
In a fit of whimsy, we met with the Maniacs’ manager, Des Pierce. He wanted to represent TG and he put an ad in Sounds with the headline ‘Genesis P-Orridge and the Throbbing Gristle’. That pissed off Sleazy and Chris. Des didn’t appear to understand how TG worked and our association ended after a gig he got
us at the Nags Head, High Wycombe. The gig was, as Chris put it, ‘just one big shambles. All that could have gone wrong did go wrong … We need to sort Sleazy out.’
Sleazy didn’t turn up to load the van and got to the gig at 8 p.m. Gen did a solo ‘Very Friendly’ as none of the gear was working, then it all kicked in but my guitar cut out after twenty minutes and I walked off to sit with a bunch of punk kids, who Gen then took on stage with him. Sleazy kept coming to Chris every five minutes to tell him something was wrong and David Mayor had tried to help but was useless on the mixer. After forty minutes, Chris left a screeching high note on his synth and walked off.
Chris was all for calling it a day. With no one but him knowing how to set the gear up, he felt all the responsibility was on him, plus the monitor speakers and amp had been blown by Sleazy having randomly pulled out plugs left, right and centre. Gen was telling people TG was his newest project, Sleazy was prioritising Hipgnosis and Gen was telling Chris that I wasn’t into TG but was going into film work instead. The only non-sex films I’d done were for the experimental film-maker and co-founder of the London Film-Makers’ Co-Op, Steve Dwoskin, who Paul Buck had introduced me to. It was certainly a departure for me, but I’d never said I was intending to ditch TG to concentrate on filming.
I needed to keep TG going – I couldn’t let it fall apart. If I lost TG, I’d lose Chris. It was our affair that kept TG going. If I’d left Gen at that time or Chris had left, TG would have ended before it had really begun. We all had our extracurricular activities going on, some shared, some private. TG was dysfunctional and always on the brink of collapse, simply because of its component parts: much like the equipment, it teetered on the edge of breaking down from being pushed to the limit. But apart from the strains of personal relationships, I loved TG. It was the first time that working with sound had excited and inspired me. It was exhilarating to explore new ways of creating a different kind of ‘music’. I felt on the brink of discovery: there was so much potential yet to be realised.
4 February 1977
Got some five new Gristleizers now. Chris has worked hard this week … Did a really good version of ‘Zyklon B Zombie’ and went through the whole set.
The arguments, Gen’s moodiness and the Gen-focused press articles depressed Chris but didn’t faze him for long. He was on a roll with his TG research and development. He built himself a mini-synth he called ‘Tescosynth’, which was small enough to strap to his wrist, and Sleazy a telephone dial with jack sockets that, when connected to an audio signal and plugged into an amp, produced strange effects when dialling. All he needed was for Sleazy to turn up. Chris completed five Gristleizer analogue special-effects units to mangle the sound, one for each of us and one to put Gen’s vocals through with the new Shure mic Sleazy had bought him. The iconic sound of TG was being born. The Gristleizer became, and remains, synonymous with the sound of TG. I was in my element putting my guitar through my Gristleizer and pedals – such raw power at my fingertips.
However, the chaos continued unabated. I was used to it, and to working on multiple projects simultaneously, and accepted the disruption caused by TG being ‘on’ then ‘off’ as part of my life. I sometimes felt my role was as much about sorting out the squabbles and sulks as it was about being a collaborator. Whether it was a male/female thing, I don’t know, but I felt like ‘Mother’. Sleazy even called me ‘Mum’ at times – the boys got to play while I was Ms Domestic Goddess, food shopping, cooking, laundering and making friends when they argued, bringing them and TG back together to prevent it from imploding. Keeping our TG family happy and united also meant I got to do my thing. Shit, I hate saying that, but that’s how it was. And of course, when I wasn’t ‘Mother’ I was there for sex, Gen’s Scarlet Woman – although that role was under review, not only because I was in love (and having sex) with Chris but also because my getting to know Chris really opened my eyes to my situation. He didn’t say anything directly; it was more his actions and attitude to life and people, his disbelief at some of the things that went on in my relationship with Gen, and Gen’s treatment of me (and others) being regarded as subordinate to Gen and facilitators for his needs. That, and my needs always coming second to Gen’s, shocked Chris. He couldn’t reconcile Gen’s declarations of being unconventional, ‘enlightened’ and into magick with his sexist, cruel behaviour and dogmatic insistence on maintaining domestic routines like specific meals on certain days and watching New Faces, Coronation Street and Doctor Who. How did all that sit with how TG were promoting themselves?
Chris was the first true egalitarian I’d met. Meeting him was like an epiphany. For the first time in many years I felt someone really cared about how I felt, accepted me for who I was, and encouraged me to follow my instincts for my own purposes, gratification and experience. There was no game-playing, no ‘strings’, no coercion, just a deep respect for me as a person in my own right. Being in a relationship pervaded by manipulation and deceit teaches you things like resilience and coping mechanisms, like holding back a part of yourself, earning your own money just to try to maintain a sense of self-worth and control. That’s what I did. But one of the many downsides was ensuring a measure of emotional distance to offset being hurt. Not allowing myself to give too much or get too close also made me forget there are good-hearted people who can bring joy and positivity to your life, instead of darkness from constantly battling against surrendering to their control.
The barrier I’d put in place to protect me from Gen fell away when I was with Chris. He made my heart sing, he set my mind at ease, and his touch sent my whole body into uncontrolled shivers of lust of such intensity that I discovered another level of consciousness. He awakened in me desires I didn’t know existed. This wasn’t ‘sex’, it was fusion: when we made love we were as one, merging through every cell in our bodies, sublime feelings and senses so heightened that we were oblivious to everything around us as we immersed ourselves in the sensuous joy of velvet-soft skin, the tenderest of touches and pinnacles of delight like shooting stars and an underlying surge of pure energy. Our love was total, a oneness that rendered words superfluous in expressing the feelings that welled inside us. I was only happy when he was around.
My world was Chris – all my focus was now on him. I knew my life could only be with him but I was locked into what had become a hideous, mismatched, failing relationship with Gen, and I felt the only way out was to let time bring things to their natural conclusion – Gen and I separating – leaving me and Chris free to be together. It was torturous over the coming years, and it felt like it would be impossible for me to leave Gen, but his actions eventually created a situation that made my exit inevitable.
21 February 1977
Went to The Roxy tonight … Mark P was with Gen all night and Tony Parsons. Never again. SHIT.
We had done an interview and photos with Sheila Rock and met up with her again for dinner at John Krivine’s new flat, along with Leee Childers and Mark Perry, who had a punk fanzine called Sniffing Glue. Mark and Gen went out a lot together. I joined them on a night at the Roxy. It was a pit. I hated it. Gen had been there before without me, and to my surprise – and contrary to the low opinion of punks he expressed to me – seemed to like their company and going to their gigs with Mark and his then girlfriend (and soon to be Gen’s), Soo Catwoman.
It wasn’t long before the friendship between Mark and Gen led to TG appearing in Sniffing Glue, and Mark started coming to the studio to rehearse with his Alternative TV (ATV) bandmate and guitarist, Alex Fergusson. Gen would play with them and really get into it. That punk style influenced his playing in TG but wasn’t the direction me, Chris or Sleazy had in mind. There was yet another serious group meeting. If TG was going in a punk direction, Chris, me and Sleazy didn’t want to know. We all agreed to refocus away from anything punk or rock and roll.
The rhythms Chris had done previously using tape loops were quite loose, allowing for more experimental, ambient tracks. We wanted to tighten things up. I l
oaned Chris £40 to part-exchange his Korg synth for a Roland sequencer. He put rhythms together mostly at his flat, recording straight to tape using drum machines, synths, his new sequencer and tape samples. The Roland sequencer created the unrelenting rhythm that drove and anchored the TG sound. ‘Zyklon B Zombie’ took on a new life and we opened with it at our next gig.
26 March 1977
Got Gen a bottle of Whiskey. He drank the lot in the first factory music section. He was pissed, John too … some shouted, a lot were smiling/felt sick/bewildered and blinded by the lights. We got unplugged. The DJ gave them hell over his PA and had Gen and John shouting too.
Roger Ely had arranged a TG gig at Brighton Polytechnic for £60, and David and even our old COUM cohort John Smith turned up. 50 Beck Road was a full house that weekend. The day was like a trip to the seaside, having cups of tea and chips in the cafe. An audience of three hundred awaited our attention. After the initial assault with ‘Zyklon B’, we played ten-minute jam sections, but at the fiftieth minute someone unplugged us, then one of the PA stacks was knocked over and the gig ended. But we’d had a great time and got a decent tape of the gig, good enough to use as part of our planned first TG album.
The timing of Gen leaving full-time work seemed perfect. It fell just at the point when we were all well into TG; our regular jam sessions and the TG ideas were flowing freely. At last he’d have more free time to indulge himself and be happier. But the distraction of his job was replaced by something destructive.
*
Mark Perry and Gen went out together with Soo in tow. Gen told me about her, that she hung around with a lot of the punk bands: the Sex Pistols, the Damned, even Thin Lizzy. I think I was supposed to be impressed. Gen started hanging around with her, going to gigs by the Doctors of Madness and the Clash, and she took him to see the Stranglers’ agent, to Stiff Records and the Sex Pistols’ manager, John Miller. It all seemed at odds with my life with Gen, and especially with TG.
Art Sex Music Page 22