Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys.

by Viv Albertine

  Shit and blood (I’ll get on to them again later) have dominated and punctuated my life since I was a child. I’m still scared of blood, seeing it, not seeing it. ‘Is it old blood or fresh blood?’ the doctors always ask. Is there a right answer to that question?

  12 TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL

  1969–1971

  Music lessons at my comprehensive school are so boring that we liven them up by trying to make the teacher run out of the room crying. We bang the desk lids and chant, ‘Out out out.’ Works every time. There are individual music lessons as well; we have the choice of nursery rhymes on the recorder or classical music on violin. Only the uncool kids play an instrument. I’m not interested. I don’t connect music lessons with the music I’m listening to, they’re worlds apart.

  The only teacher who makes music interesting is the RE teacher, a Peter and Gordon lookalike with thick ginger hair, black horn-rimmed glasses and a polo-necked jumper. He tries to get us interested in moral issues through music. Sometimes we’re allowed to bring a record in and spend the lesson dissecting the lyrics. People bring in all sorts of stuff: King Crimson, Motown, ‘She’s Leaving Home’ by the Beatles, anti-Vietnam songs by Country Joe and the Fish, Hendrix and the Byrds.

  Musicians are our real teachers. They are opening us up politically with their lyrics and creatively with experimental, psychedelic music. They share their discoveries and journeys with us. We can’t travel far, no one I know has ever been on an aeroplane. We can’t meet the Maharishi, but we learn about him through music. We hear Indian musical influences by listening to George Harrison’s sitars, discover Timothy Leary, R. D. Laing, Arthur Janov and The Primal Scream, acid, California, Woodstock, riots … whatever they experience, we experience through their songs. It’s true folk music – not played on acoustic guitar by a bearded bloke – but about true-life experiences.

  The thing I like most about school is my group of girlfriends. They’re a mixture of girls from my year, the year above and the year below. We’re a gang. We roam the streets together or go to each other’s houses. There’s Paula, Sallie, Kester, Sue, Martha, Angela, Judie, Hilary, Myra, and sometimes there are a couple of boys, Toby and Matthew. Most of them come from shabby, bohemian, stripped-pine-furniture houses with Che Guevara posters on the walls; their parents are communists, artists and intellectuals. We’re always at someone’s house – not mine, my house doesn’t fit in, not the right atmosphere – lounging around in someone’s bedroom, stretched out on the bed or cross-legged on the floor, smoking a bit of hash pinched from an older brother or a parent. We listen to records, talk about school, music and boys. If the parents are out, we go downstairs and cook an omelette, sometimes we go to the cinema but usually we wander round Hampstead Heath: it’s free.

  The gang. Front: Judie, Su, Angela, Sallie. Back: Me, Paula, Kester. Note psychedelic summer uniforms. 1969

  We wear very short skirts, just six inches long, or jeans and a T-shirt. None of us has many clothes. We all have long hair parted in the middle and don’t wear makeup; there are no grooming sessions, nail-painting, hair-dyeing parties, none of that sort of thing. Our feet are black and hard from walking around Muswell Hill barefoot, our fingernails short and functional.

  In my fourth year of school I’m allowed out of school at lunchtime, so I go round my friend Judie’s house every day. She has an older brother called Reuben and he has a friend called Mark Irvin. Me and Mark fall in love. I’m fifteen, he’s seventeen, my first proper boyfriend. We kiss and cuddle on Judie’s bed and listen to music all the time: Syd Barrett, Motown, King Crimson, Pink Floyd. At the weekend we go to gigs in pubs and take acid and Mandrax (‘Randy Mandies’) on Hampstead Heath. We’re known at school as a cool couple, we go everywhere together. One day I’m on my way to school early because I’ve got an exam. I see Mark walking ahead hand in hand with my friend Cathy. It’s so early in the morning they must have spent the night together. I feel like I’ve been smacked in the chest with an iron bar. I choke, I can’t breathe. It can’t be true. I turn and run. I run and run. I run to the other entrance of the school, about half a mile away. I’m late for my exam. I try to concentrate. Mustn’t let them ruin my future.

  I manage to avoid Cathy and Mark for a couple of days. I’m devastated – the first boy I’ve ever loved, ever trusted has betrayed me. Cathy comes up to me in the gym, ‘I’m sorry, it was a terrible mistake. He loves you not me, he talks about you all the time. It’s over.’ Me and Mark get back together. We haven’t had sex yet so it’s easier to forgive him.

  We go out together for years, we go to youth hostels, visit Cathy in Wales (she’s moved there with her new boyfriend). We take acid on the Gower Peninsula; once when the drug was just kicking in, ‘Here Comes the Sun’ by the Beatles was on the record player and I sang along with it. Mark said, ‘You have a beautiful voice.’ That’s the first time anyone ever said something nice about my voice. I’ll never forget it, although I’m not sure it counts, seeing as he was tripping on acid at the time. Mark took my virginity, I bled a tiny bit. It felt right, though, that it was him. He also took my art O level, did all the preliminary drawings for me. I felt a bit guilty afterwards because I got an A, a higher mark than he got for his own art O level. Love.

  Mark (Magnus)

  When I get to the fifth year at school, I have the terrible realisation that I’ve left it too late to do well. I’ve mucked about, bunked off and not done my homework for so many years that the teachers won’t put me in for some of the exams. The boys I like are clever and in the top streams, and I’m a wastrel. At night I’m haunted by anxious recurring dreams, I’m wandering the school corridors not knowing where the rooms for my lessons are and arriving at the school gates in my pyjamas as everyone else is leaving: an outsider, a failure, always going against the flow.

  Eventually I’m expelled. I foolishly admit I smoked dope once to a prying teacher – of course I’ve done it a lot more than once, at least I’m not completely stupid. My mother goes up to the school and insists that the headmaster puts in writing that I’ve smoked hash once, and that’s why he’s expelling me. He doesn’t want to do that so I’m allowed to stay.

  One morning a sixth-former comes into our English classroom. I’m sixteen and taking my O levels soon. I love English, Mr Hazdell’s such a great teacher, he looks like Biggles with a huge handlebar moustache, and is full of enthusiasm for Shakespeare – he interprets the plays, brings them to life, makes me love the language. The sixth-former says something to Mr Hazdell and he looks up at me: ‘Viviane, the headmaster wants to see you in his office.’ Everyone swivels round to look at me. I’m scared. Has somebody died? I feel important as I walk to the door. Not Mum. God wouldn’t take Mum. That would be too much.

  I go to the office. My sister’s waiting there, we knock. ‘Come in.’ Mr Lowe looks at us kindly, he’s quite a nice man. ‘Your father’s here. He’s in the office next door and wants to see you very much.’

  I’m shocked. We haven’t seen Dad for years, barely ever think of him – he’s written a couple of silly long letters over the past few years, long-winded, emotional, boring – why has he come to school? We don’t want to see him; we’d be betraying Mum, especially here, without her permission or a discussion. Not that I need to discuss it, I know what Mum’s feelings are on the matter: we’re a unit of three now, struggling along together, negotiating life with no money and he’s no part of it. There’s no way we’re going to see him. I don’t even ask my sister, I speak for her: we don’t want to see our father. Mr Lowe tries to persuade us. ‘He’s very upset, he only wants to see you for a few minutes, he says your mother won’t let him see you.’ I tell him it isn’t our mother, we don’t want to see him. Mr Lowe’s got no idea what she’s been through, what she sacrifices to bring us up on her own. I won’t have anyone judging my mum, saying she’s bad, blaming her.

  Mr Lowe leaves the room. My sister and I sit in silence, there’s nothing to say. I’m resentful that Dad’s on my turf, that he’s
interrupted my lessons and I’ve been singled out. It’s too much for me, this awkwardness, this grown-up pain, this fucked-up relationship between Mum and Dad.

  The headmaster comes back. ‘Your father’s in tears – are you sure you won’t see him? Please have another think about it.’ Don’t make me say it again, I may look sure and hard but this is agony. We know those French crocodile tears, after a strapping, after a shouting, after he’s gone back on a promise. We know more than you know, Mr Lowe. There’s nothing more he can do. He sends our father away.

  13 WOODCRAFT FOLK

  1967–1970

  The Woodcraft Folk is a youth organisation, a bit like Brownies or Scouts but it mixes boys and girls together and has an arty, bohemian vibe. It’s nothing to do with making things from wood, more about living in the open air, close to nature. It’s a relief to go to Woodcraft, I feel more at home in this world, mixing with these interesting, open-minded people. The uniform is a thick, forest-green cotton shirt, which we wear oversized and untucked, with a mini skirt or jeans. We call the adults in charge ‘leaders’ and address them by their Christian names – this is the first time I’m allowed to call an adult by their first name. At Woodcraft children are treated like people, not half-formed irrelevant creatures, we are consulted on every decision that’s made. We are divided into ‘Elfins’ for the young members, ‘Pioneers’ for the middle age group and ‘Venturers’ for the older ones.

  Every summer there’s a big meeting of all the different Woodcraft groups from across London, like a conference. Robin Chaphekar – a handsome boy from the Highgate group – has an electric guitar with him, and spelled out on the case in red and yellow tape is Safe as Milk. I keep thinking about it, such an odd phrase, what does it mean? Does it mean his guitar is as safe as milk in a milk bottle, tucked up in the fridge? Or like the free milk you get at junior school? Surely not: that’s not very rock ’n’ roll. I ask a few people if they know what the slogan means but nobody does. I’m too shy to ask Robin. About a month later I’m in a record shop in Crouch End and see the record, Safe as Milk by Captain Beefheart, in the racks. I buy it and as soon as I get home I put it on. I love the way Beefheart plays with his voice, he lets go and messes around with it in such an unselfconscious way. The music is experimental but accessible – my favourite combination – it sounds like pop music, all the songs are short with strong choruses and melodies but they’re undermined by Beefheart’s deranged singing. He shouts and squawks about ‘Electricity’, ‘The Zig Zag Wanderer’ and ‘Abba Zaba’.

  Woodcraft teaches us survival skills, how to make a campfire, hiking, how to save a life, is educational about global poverty, conflict and the peace movement – but for me, what it’s really all about is snogging boys. Meeting boys like Robin Chaphekar is the real reason I go to a school hall and prance about country dancing every Friday night. Most of the boys are gorgeous, they have long hair and are a bit wild and lots of them play guitar. We go camping on weekends, in a field in the middle of a traffic roundabout in South Mimms. We all sit round the campfire at night, someone plays guitar – one guy who did this was Mike Rosen, later the famous children’s author – and we sing protest songs about the Vietnam war, immigration and other social problems closer to home. My favourite songs are Ewan MacColl’s ‘Dirty Old Town’, Buffy Sainte-Marie’s ‘Welcome, Welcome Emigrante’ and a folk song about the atom bomb, ‘I Come and Stand at Every Door’.

  After ‘lights out’, we sneak into each other’s tents for a snog and to feel each other up until a leader or Venturer comes round with a torch and sends the interloper back to their own tent. In the morning we’re punished with a job like emptying the ‘lats’ (latrines) – buckets of shit and piss – into the cesspit.

  Before I went to the Muswell Hill branch of Woodcraft, I went to the Hampstead branch for a couple of sessions because there weren’t any free spaces in Muswell Hill. I dyed an old white shirt apple-green for the occasion and wore a tiny green mini skirt. I felt very out of my depth when I walked into the hall. I’d never seen such cool-looking kids before. I realised Hampstead kids were way cooler than Muswell Hill kids, I felt overdressed, like I’d made too much effort. I stood on the edge of the room and watched them run about. Both the girls and the boys had long tangled dirty hair and wore Levi’s and scruffy Converse trainers. They raced around the room shouting and laughing. Only one girl spoke to me, Clio. She had waist-length blonde hair and was very beautiful. Then it was as if the seas parted, everyone seemed to scatter as this boy walked into the hall. He was taller than everyone else and carried himself with a poise and dignity I’d never seen on a young person before, shoulders back, chin up but relaxed, not arrogant. He radiated confidence. He had longish brown hair just below his ears, a strong nose, he was the most handsome boy I’d ever seen. He looked like a young Greek god amongst mere mortals. I stood transfixed and a voice came into my head, That’s the kind of boy I want to marry. His name was Ben Barson, the most popular boy in Woodcraft and a self-taught virtuoso piano player (brother of Mikey Barson, later in the group Madness).

  Ben

  The boy I most fancy after Ben Barson is Nic Boatman, the naughtiest and cutest boy at Woodcraft. Once when me and Nic were kissing and touching each other on a bed in someone’s house, he put his hand inside my knickers and I orgasmed immediately just from the newness of the experience. Well, I think it was an orgasm, it felt like a big twitch and then I wasn’t interested in being touched any more.

  Paul, Nic (age fourteen), me (age thirteen) and Maggie in a tent on a Woodcraft camping trip to Yugoslavia, 1968

  14 MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC

  1967–1972

  The music I was exposed to when I was growing up was revolutionary and because I grew up with music that was trying to change the world, that’s what I still expect from it.

  I heard most new music through friends and whenever I went out I’d have a record under my arm – not mine, usually I was returning it. The record you carried let everyone know what type of person you were. If it was a rare record, cool people would stop you in the street to talk to you about it. One good thing about not having a phone was that it was difficult for people to remind you to give them their records back, they had to trek round to your house and hope you were in if they wanted it that badly – and then you could always not answer the door. (Mum taught us never to answer the door, the minute the doorbell rang we all froze. If you were near a window, you had to duck under the sill and try not to disturb the curtains. We all knew the drill: wait motionless until the ringing stops and the person goes away. She was worried it would be a social worker. They kept coming round after the divorce.)

  Music brought the war in Vietnam right into our bedrooms. Songs we heard from America made us interested in politics; they were history lessons in a palatable, exciting form. We demonstrated against the Vietnam and Korean wars, discussed sexual liberation, censorship and pornography and read books by Timothy Leary, Hubert Selby Jr (Last Exit to Brooklyn) and Marshall McLuhan because we’d heard all these people referred to in songs or interviews with musicians. My pin-ups were the political activist and ‘Yippie’ Abbie Hoffman and Che Guevara. Music, politics, literature, art all crossed over and fed into each other. There were some great magazines around too, the sex magazine Forum, International Times, Spare Rib, Oz, Rave and Nova. Even though we couldn’t afford to travel, we felt connected to other countries because ideas and events from those places reached us through music and magazines.

  The first band I ever saw live was the Edgar Broughton Band at the Hampstead Country Club, behind Belsize Park tube station. I sat in the front row on a little wooden chair with a couple of older boys I’d met. I’d never heard live music before and I couldn’t get my ears around it. I didn’t know how to listen to it. Up until then everything I’d heard had been produced, was on a record. There was a speaker right next to my head and all the sounds meshed together, I couldn’t differentiate between them. The band thrashed at their instruments and
screamed, ‘Out demons out!’ It was deafening.

  When I was fourteen I heard there was going to be an anti-war demonstration with famous people giving speeches in Trafalgar Square. It was the thing to go to, as exciting as a rock concert. I hoped there’d be lots of handsome boys there. I spent all Saturday morning before the demo tie-dyeing a white T-shirt black, stirring it round and round with an old wooden spoon in a large aluminium pot on the stove. Mum said, ‘Hurry up, you’ll miss it! Just wear any old thing, it doesn’t matter.’ But I had to look right. The T-shirt came out great, dark grey rather than black, with a white tie-dyed circle in the middle, a bit like the CND peace sign. I sewed black fringes down the sides of my black cord jeans and washed my hair by kneeling over the bath, drying it in front of the open oven with my head upside down so it would look full and wild. Then off me and my friend Judie went to the demo, chanting, ‘Hey hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?’ at the top of our voices. We got off the bus and ran down Haymarket towards Trafalgar Square. When we got there it was completely deserted. The paving stones were covered in litter, empty bottles rolled around, leaflets were blowing in the wind. No people, just pigeons. We’d been so long messing around with our clothes that we’d missed the whole thing. We were only disappointed for a minute, then we jumped in one of the fountains and chased each other around. A policeman told us off, said if we didn’t stop he’d arrest us and tell our parents. We were scared of going to prison, so we ran off to the bus stop. Sitting on the top deck of the bus, the fringes on my jeans all straggly, my hair damp and flat and the dye from my wet T-shirt leaving grey streaks across my arms, I thought, What a great day!