Gen had a talent for, and enjoyed, schmoozing people – from the music press to Tony Robinson of the Daily Mirror, the Guardian, fanzines and anyone of possible use. I let him get on with it and thought Soo was just another one of his flings, and I took advantage of the time he spent with her to be with Chris. I didn’t think that anything deeper was developing between Gen and Soo (or so Gen thought). He became more distant, discontent and more aggressive than usual towards me. He’d always kept a firm grip on how much of himself he’d expose, but now he was closed off. I felt locked out. It was only when he brought Soo to the house and studio, and then out with the rest of TG, that I got the full picture. She made lots of phone calls to the house and studio to speak to Gen, demanding his time and attention, which impacted on our TG get-togethers. I only knew what Gen had told me about her, but what I surmised from the few occasions she was around, and what she told me on the phone, was that she loved Gen and wanted to live with him.
I was annoyed at the banality of the situation and her blatant clichéd seduction of Gen – even marking him with huge love bites. It was crass and Gen had fallen for it. With Gen seeing so much of Soo, being accepting of the disruption it brought to our lives and adopting such an awful attitude towards me, I got the impression he was trying to instigate my leaving him. Maybe I was the target of the next Gen purge. I thought he would be open to discussing us adjusting our relationship, and I told him I wanted my independence and the freedom to also have sex with whoever I wanted. He said I was being selfish. I said he was. It didn’t get me far. He was happier having me at his beck and call, keeping TG and everything we had together intact as well as Soo as his lover. It appeared that he was slowly manoeuvring to integrate her into our inner family.
Things between me and Gen got worse but he carried on publicly as if everything was hunky-dory. Gen went to Soo’s for what ended up being three days. When he returned he brought Soo with him, walking hand-in-hand into the studio, where me, Chris and Sleazy were in the middle of working on Gristle music. None of us were pleased about the intrusion. I wanted him to have the guts to admit we were finished so we could get on with TG and have our separate lives.
Gen invited Soo to join us on our trip to the Mind and Body Show at Olympia, walking in front of me holding her hand and kissing. They didn’t stay long. Me and Chris went round the show, picking up information on dowsing, ley lines and a leaflet on a lecture by Wilhelm Reich’s daughter the following week. I don’t know what Soo had been told about the reality of my relationship with Gen, but when I got home she was there, moaning about pains in her groin and wanting to sleep in our bed. I was being worked by them both and felt insulted that they thought I didn’t notice. I was with Gen under sufferance and loyalty to TG. Soo’s ‘let me stay’ act was dragged out for so long that she missed the last Tube, leaving me little choice in the matter. I told her she could stay if she kept her hands off him. She agreed. But I knew what would happen and so did they. Three in a bed. I crawled into the wall to get as far from them as I could.
The next morning I confronted Gen, saying I was upset, that we needed to talk. There was no response so I went out. When I got back he didn’t come to me to talk, so I went to the studio and collected all my official documents and my passport and returned to the house. He was still in bed with Soo, who was casually smoking a cigarette. (Beck Road was a strict no-smoking zone because of Gen’s asthma.) He had his arm around her and smiled at me as if this was normal behaviour. I asked him to get up so we could talk. An hour later he joined me. I told him if he wanted Soo, I was happy to leave (I could finally be with Chris). I showed Gen the documents I’d got: I was serious. He just laughed at me. That made me more determined than ever to leave him – but not until I was ready.
*
For months Sleazy had nagged me and Chris to do some S&M photos with him. We three shared a taste for bizarre and fetishistic sex. Sleazy fancied Chris but knew he was with me and that the only way he could get Chris to ‘play’ for his camera was to have me involved. The outline plot was lean and very ‘Sleazy’. Chris would be an abductee who was humiliated by me, ending with my cutting off his penis. We enjoyed practising together – bar the amputation. We were co-conspirators and Chris a willing participant, playing the unwilling victim. As luck would have it, Chris’s dad had offered him a 16mm Bolex film camera, so the photo session turned into a film, After Cease to Exist. As it also happened, our neighbour had moved out from next door and we’d squatted it for Phil Parker, who we’d met at the ICA. He let us use the downstairs front room as our kidnapper’s torture room. We’d decided on a castration scene rather than penis amputation. Sleazy cast Chris’s testicles and made a realistic faux pair, complete with the sperm-transporting (vas deferens) tubes.
Gen wasn’t there while we did the filming – he’d gone off, uninterested. The floor of the room was to be dusty, as if derelict, and bare except for a small wooden table on which Chris was laid on his back, with his knees bent, legs hanging over the edge, and his ankles tied to the table legs. He was secured across his body so he couldn’t move, then gagged. Sleazy was a little lost as to what to do – he wasn’t used to heterosexual sex – so I took over. Chris got terrible cramp in his back and we had to help him up really slowly – he was in tears from the pain. The objective was to depict a kind of home-made, dark snuff movie, with me as dominatrix fondling Chris, then castrating him as the final scene. It looked pretty realistic: good enough to have people squirm, look away and even faint when they watched it when it was first screened later.
The film had started out being me, Chris and Sleazy, then Gen wanted to do a section – to film Soo as his prisoner tied to a bed, but shot like a police evidence scene. Gen didn’t want me to be in the scene but I was assigned the task of tying her up, supplying a black wig and her outfit and dressing the room. Then Chris added another section: the TG gig at the Nuffield Theatre, Southampton, filmed by David Mayor using Chris’s Bolex camera.
22 May 1977
A fantastic GRISTLE GIG! No other word for it … Gen was on form. Pissed and hurling himself into the audience.
TG had got an invitation from Brian ‘Rat’ Davis to do a gig at the Rat Club at the Pindar of Wakefield pub in King’s Cross. We went down to meet Brian and see what the place was like. It was run as an alternative music hall in a small room at the back of the pub. We’d gone to a few of the club nights, which featured sword-swallowers, fire-eaters, comedians, poets, strange magicians and musicians. One of the evenings we went to featured a middle-aged stripper who claimed to have a fifty-six-inch bust. She would swing her huge breasts around and slap people in the face with them – one of those people was Sleazy. The look of fear on his face as she approached and then swatted him with her massive fleshy boob was one of the funniest sights we’d ever seen. Of all the people she could have chosen, Sleazy got her special treatment – and his worst nightmare.
Having seen the kind of acts that were on, we felt TG would fit in nicely.
The day before the Rat Club gig had been full-on. Me and Gen had been up since 6.30 a.m. to go to Heathrow to meet Monte off his flight from San Francisco. He was a no-show. After a nap, we ran through some TG material, packed the gear into the van, and then me, Chris and Sleazy shot the castration scene late into the evening. The whole gig day was relaxed. Sleazy did some filming of me and Chris walking around King’s Cross for the film and then we had coffee with another act on the bill, Andy ‘Thunderclap’ Newman. The TG show was great, with Gen on particularly good form.
25 May 1977
I told Gen it had upset me etc. and it ended up in him punching me like a punch bag. I thought I had a black eye but I never. Don’t think I deserved that.
After Monte had failed to turn up, Gen got his ticket amended and he was now arriving on the 25th. I’d spent days decorating my old workroom for him to stay in. Gen wouldn’t tell us the new flight details and said he was going on his own this time, or so we all thought. In fact, he’d taken Soo
with him. I was really upset and when he and Monte got back I took Gen to task about being so sneaky as to arrange it without telling or taking me. After all, it was me who was Monte’s friend. I was punched for questioning Gen’s actions and had to cancel my modelling appointments. As usual, he hit me when no one else was present and never said sorry, just, ‘Look what you made me do’, leaving me the one in the wrong who should apologise, and him the victim. Monte was sleeping in his room downstairs, unaware of what happened. The trouble with violence is that you have to want to hurt someone, to have lost at least some control – I didn’t want to hurt Gen and I hadn’t lost control.
Gen’s defence of Soo was soon to be brought into question. As had become routine, he was going off to Soo’s house, but she’d taken a real shine to Monte. We had all been out together and were going our separate ways at Tottenham Court Road Tube. While Gen waited alone for Soo on the platform to take the Tube to her place, she was kissing Monte passionately on the platform opposite. It was a bizarre scene. The train pulled in, she pulled away from Monte, and then she went off with Gen. Me and Monte went home to Hackney. Then Soo and Gen came to Beck Road the next afternoon and she took Monte home with her. Within three days of Monte arriving, Gen’s eight-week ‘love’ affair appeared to be history. The whole seduction routine went into replay, love bites included. I was disappointed that two intelligent people who I’d thought were beyond such shallow games had succumbed so readily to flattery and the power of pussy.
While the Soo, Monte and Gen saga continued, I was working with Szabo on a collaborative project and photos of my future striptease outfits, and Chris and Sleazy were editing After Cease to Exist at Four Corners film suite. It was an independent, hip place where they enjoyed the company of Viv Stanshall, who was hanging out, singing and drawing funny pictures. They didn’t get back until 3 a.m. We all returned to finish the final edit the next day and laid down the soundtrack at the studio. After Cease to Exist had come into existence and had its debut screening at the Rat Club on 10 July.
Monte lived with us for months, causing havoc at times, but he was a great, positive presence to have around, with his inimitable attitude to life and art. He was a rogue, a free spirit with a generous, warm vibe and a dynamism about him that drew you close and made collaborating with him so enjoyable and productive. Monte was having fun, Monte-style: maintaining his friendship with us in spite of the conflict caused by his relationship with Soo, which had hit Gen hard. Being dumped in that way is tough to deal with.
As far as I was concerned, what me and Gen once had was gone: he’d lost me too. I’d moved on from him but he wanted to backtrack to how we were. That was impossible. I’d become used to Gen going off to indulge himself in his various sexploits and networking, as he did. He’d go off without any consideration of how I felt about it. But when it came to me having my own interests, that wasn’t tolerated. He couldn’t see why I’d want to be away from him or why he couldn’t come with me wherever I went. Although he was happy to make use of my sex work and all that it contributed financially to COUM, TG and his own sexual appetite, he was resentful of the time I spent away from him, no matter what the reason. I didn’t realise just how much until I went to write in my diary, only to find that he’d left me a message written in brown ink. Numerous entries of: ‘Not with Gen – no reason given’, ‘Not with Gen with Michelle & Cathy’, ‘It all seems a bit pointless doesn’t it?’ I brought my diary entries to an end. Why would I keep a diary of my own feelings, only for someone to use them in judgement against me and leave his mark of disapproval?
24 July 1977
Bloody funny day today. Everyone in funny moods. Gen kicked me in the chin. Chris went out for a walk and didn’t come back till about half four.
I needed to get away for a while, to try to make sense of my life with Gen and my love for Chris. I went to visit my sister on the Isle of Wight. Chris had been working for the London office of the ABC News bureau, refitting their outside broadcast studio, and he took the weekend off to come with me. We spent a wonderful night in Southampton before getting the ferry. We were at it for hours, orgasm after orgasm after orgasm. I fell asleep exhausted, with Chris still ready for more. I got home after the most amazing weekend, and with a recording of my niece and nephew at play, which I used for my solo track, ‘Hometime’, on TG’s second album, D.o.A.
Monte stayed long enough to do some recording for his forthcoming releases on IR. It was hard work getting him to knuckle down and record. We had great fun but he’d get moody and unsure of what to do. I worked with him on ‘Mary Bell’, singing the chorus and playing a small child’s piano, taking the track in the direction of an innocent nursery rhyme. He went back to the USA having done a lot of work with us, including coming up with the photo of him shooting up into his gashed wrist. It was made into a TG promo postcard with ‘Can you fix us up with a gig?’ written across it. It got a reaction – not always positive, but it was a great image and we thought it funny. But it didn’t amuse the manager of the Hope and Anchor pub, who read it at his breakfast table when his kids were there. He was disgusted by it, thought it in poor taste and left a message on our answerphone to say NO, he would not fix us up with a gig at his downstairs punk venue.
Gen came back on board full-time with TG and we even did another two COUM actions together. There were still times when he’d go berserk and smash things up, but overall it seemed to work OK and I was happy with my work outside of TG, which was going so well. I’d exhibited abroad, started stripping (which I’ll come to later), had an underground film I’d worked on with Anna Ambrose shown at the NFT, and my filming with Steve Dwoskin was ongoing, as was my work with Szabo. I relished the new and unique challenges all that brought to my life and art.
With life and art bleeding into one another at an ever-accelerating rate, there seemed no time for me to sit and work out specific strategies or consider my options (other than the very personal) – I reacted intuitively, working on instinct and not overthinking situations. There would be time for reflecting on my actions later. I didn’t base my approach to life or art on Burroughs, Manson or Crowley. Interesting as they were, their methods seemed more about them and tailored to suit their (male) lifestyles. My interest in Manson was about how unchallenged manipulation and control within an isolated group could lead to extreme and dangerous actions and damaging behaviour. Crowley and the occult interested me a great deal but some of our peers regarded it as a prerequisite for being ‘industrial’, alongside owning a collection of macabre books and objects and using the kudos and mystery they provided to shock.
I wasn’t into following someone else’s ‘formula’. Knowing oneself was a meaningful, positive goal in life that made total sense to me, and living my life through intuitive experience was my way towards that end. I was hungry for the experience itself. It provided material for further works and challenged my personal boundaries, which in turn made me more open to taking things further – all in pursuit of finding and becoming ‘me’. Belief in the power of myself increased. I was conquering my fears, dismissive of others’ expectations, and growing in strength of will – and consequently I considered myself an independent entity, no longer willing to be tied to or submissive to others’ whims and folly.
*
The IR/TG branding exercise began with a slogan, ‘Industrial Music for Industrial People’ (devised in collaboration with Monte), and also a symbol to provide immediate recognition: the TG flash. Chris had seen the power flash on a nearby railway danger-warning sign. We chose the colours of anarchy – red and black – and put the ‘power’ flash in white in the centre. We had two-inch stickers made of the flash, which had a small ‘TG’ on it, and a black-and-white sticker of the slogan, and started putting them up everywhere we went – on Tube trains, walls, buses and shops. I’d embroidered a red-and-black eagle on my army trousers and we discussed having an embroidered TG flash patch. I made a prototype and stitched it on to my leather jacket, and also made one for Gen.
Chris embroidered one of his own and drew up a graphic artwork for button badges – a thousand of them for £55 – and then later we had TG embroidered patches made up. Chris stencilled a huge version of it across the chimney breast at Beck Road and Gen painted it in, then a four-foot-wide circular wooden version was made and hung at the back of the stage in the studio. TG and its logo flash were everywhere: on our clothing, stencilled on to the equipment and graffitied on to walls around Hackney.
Even though our extracurricular activities took up so much time, TG was the main focus for each of us. The diverse and perverse activities of our personal lives fed the sound of TG, as did the cultural and political climate of the time. It could be dark and nihilistic, brutally honest in subject matter and presentation, unapologetic, irreverent and uncool – especially the name. The thought of someone going into a record store and asking for the latest Throbbing Gristle album brought wry grins to our faces.
We drew from both our own experiences and sensitive subjects people were uneasy about addressing, such as in ‘Very Friendly’ and ‘Zyklon B Zombie’. Gen would also say, ‘What shall I sing about?’ One day I said, ‘Persuasion’ – based on the photographers’ methods of persuasion I’d been subjected to. Gen’s lyrics reflected that and other persuasive tactics, segueing into talking about a murderer’s stash of panties in a little biscuit tin. We’d match the mood of the sound to the lyrics, and vice versa.
We were creating a forum for discussion, breaking down preconceived ideas of what was ‘music’ by ripping away the foundations and leaving the listener to discover their own point of entry. We didn’t want followers; we wanted people to think for themselves, to follow their instincts, be creative, be industrious in their approach. That’s what ‘industrial’ meant; it was about adopting a work and life ethic – to be independent, active, productive, thorough and committed. We worked outside the mainstream, accessing and using existing systems to subvert or hopefully instigate change, responding to and commenting on social and cultural events through our music, art, film and writing, refusing to let the personal be silenced. Industrial Records and the ‘industrial’ music of TG stood for all of that, and of course related to the studio ‘factory’ where we carried out our work: production, systems of quality and control – but of a different kind. We were constantly researching and acquiring books and information on propaganda and control techniques, business practices, cult movements and government strategies, deviant sexual practices, genetics, the criminal mind, pathology, psychology, weapons (especially the use of sound), medical research and anything unorthodox that hit our radar and piqued our interest. We utilised selected techniques, subverting and repurposing them to suit our needs and our ironic sense of humour, including how the music business worked and how they sold their ‘product’. It had started with MAI in Hull, then my model-card format used for COUM art promotion, then TG music promotion. We decided it would be the ultimate ironic statement to release an album of TG ‘music’: our progress report. We called it The Second Annual Report of Throbbing Gristle. It could sit on our shelves as a souvenir and in years to come we could show our grandchildren that we’d actually made a record.
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