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

by Viv Albertine

  I talk to Vivienne about the situation: there’s no doubt in our minds that Sid didn’t do it. She says she’ll find out what’s happening and let me know.

  Two days later, there’s a knock at the front door. It’s Vivienne. She has a car and says, ‘I’m going to visit Sid at Ashford Remand Centre, come on.’ I’m horrified. I’m wearing ripped Levi’s and a baggy old T-shirt. ‘I’ll just go and change,’ I say, cursing myself for looking so shit. Vivienne’s impatient, ‘There’s no time for that, Sid won’t care what you’re wearing.’ It’s not Sid I’m worried about, I’m much more upset that she’s seen me dressed so badly.

  I run upstairs and change in about ten seconds flat, there’s no way I’m going to keep Vivienne waiting. I look around for something to take Sid. I can only think of a book, but I’ve never seen him read anything. I pick up Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment but the title is too preachy and will put him off, so instead I take Helter Skelter, by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry, on the Manson Family murders. It’s written in a very matter-of-fact, cold style, almost like a list, which I know will appeal to Sid. Vivienne doesn’t approve and tells me off in the car. (Sid thought Vivienne left him the book, she would have been furious if she knew.)

  When we walk into the visiting room, Sid’s already there, slumped at a table. He looks broken, not the Sid I know. When he talks he sounds emotional and grateful that we’ve come. I’ve never thought of him as having feelings and I’m glad Vivienne and I are visiting him. Left to my own devices, it would never have occurred to me to see him, that he would have wanted it. He tells us how awful it is in here, that the worst thing is sharing a room with someone else. He’s already been moved once because his first cellmate was too violent; his current cellmate sings and whistles all the time but Sid doesn’t dare ask him to stop. Another guy tried to kill himself. Sid assures us he’s innocent and pleads with us to do all we can to get him out.

  A couple of days later I get a letter. I don’t know what I’m more surprised about: that Sid wrote to me, that his writing is pretty and girly with little circles over the i’s, or that he’s so articulate. I can tell that some of what he’s written is for the benefit of the prison wardens – he sounds so nice and well balanced and sorry to be there – but some of it shows a softer, more affectionate side of Sid that I’ve never seen before.

  I hear that the young girl who was hit by the thrown glass has lost the sight in one eye. Due to lack of evidence she drops the charges against Sid, so he’s let go. This incident changes everything for me. I thought the group of people I’ve been involved with were so intelligent. Now everything feels tainted, the atmosphere has changed from positive and exciting to negative and violent. Not a scene I feel so good about being associated with.

  Sid told me a year later that he did throw the glass.

  Excerpt from the letter Sid wrote to me from Ashford Remand Centre, 1976

  37 CHRISTMAS ’76

  The news reaches us from across the Atlantic Ocean that the Heartbreakers are coming to London and renting a flat. The Heartbreakers are respected because their leader, Johnny Thunders, was in the New York Dolls, a band that influenced both the Pistols and the Clash. Hearing Thunders is on his way to England is like hearing Dracula is on his way to our shores in the hold of a ship – a dark powerful presence, ominous and seductive, creeping closer and closer. We’re doomed.

  Keith, Mick and Sid can’t wait to meet Johnny. Leee Black Childers – the Heartbreakers’ manager, who’s arrived ahead of the band – says to me, ‘You and Johnny are going to love each other, Viv. Johnny’s going to go crazy when he sees you.’ I’m even more wound up after this comment. Eventually the band arrive, they’ve arranged a warm-up gig in Plymouth. Some of the London lot travel all the way down there to see them; bit uncool.

  And then I meet him.

  I’m at Caroline Coon’s house on Christmas Day. Caroline – the artist, writer and activist – has invited a bunch of us over for Christmas lunch, which is a very generous thing to do and quite funny because we’re all so untraditional. The Heartbreakers are there, so are Sid, John Rotten, Soo Catwoman, Steve Jones and some others. Rotten gives Sid a Christmas present of a doll he’s customised to look like Soo and when you pull down her knickers – which Sid does – John’s written ‘Sid’ with an arrow pointing to her vagina.

  Johnny Thunders and I sit on opposite sides of Caroline’s living room, stealing glances at each other when we each think the other one isn’t looking. He looks like he’s walked straight out of a Shangri-Las’ song: bad but good. He asks me polite questions, like what instrument I play and what I’m doing for the rest of the holidays. He’s older and much more confident and charming than English boys. He’s handsome and has a worldly, sexual aura about him. He keeps telephoning New York. ‘I’d like to place a collect call to New York.’ I don’t know what a collect call is. Hearing him talk in his New York accent is fascinating. A couple of things aren’t quite right about him though: he’s wearing a black-and-white spotty shirt, black waistcoat and a shoelace tie, it’s all a bit too neat and dapper. He hasn’t bought anything from Sex yet and his hair isn’t uneven enough, it needs to be messier and chopped about. But he’s bewitching; a beautiful, exotic alien from another world.

  Things get a bit out of hand at Caroline’s. No one eats anything, someone pisses in the pot plants and the turkey is stuffed, arse up, down the toilet. I didn’t see who did it, but it was obviously the silly English boys, the Americans would never do anything like that, they’re much more respectful.

  After the lunch, I walk back to my studio and Mick comes over; he’s been at his grandmother’s. He’s pissed off that he wasn’t invited to Caroline’s, he thinks it’s because people think the Clash aren’t cool, he’s very sensitive about it.

  Johnny Thunders, wearing the skull T-shirt he later gave me. 1976

  38 ME AND JOHNNY T

  1977

  Not long after the Christmas lunch, the Heartbreakers are playing at the Roxy in Covent Garden and I go down to see them.

  I stand at the front to soak up the band. I want to see Johnny’s fingers on his guitar, watch his face as he sings, check out his moves. He looks over at me from the stage. He doesn’t smile. The Heartbreakers launch into their first song, ‘Born to Lose’: Johnny shakes his head and pouts, he holds his guitar like it’s glued to him. He acts like he can barely stand up but his fingers glide up and down the guitar neck as easily as if he’s running them through his hair. He fixes his dark brown eyes on me. How great! Johnny Thunders looked at me from the stage! He doesn’t look away. He sings the whole song looking into my eyes. This is the sort of daydream I’ve been having since I was a little girl and Johnny Thunders has made it come true. I smile at him at the end of the song. It’s the most romantic thing that’s ever happened to me. Johnny Thunders understands romance and big gestures. He likes the Shangri-Las and the Shirelles as well, groups that English boys think are lightweight: he likes girls.

  Thunders in action, 1977. (Give him a great big kiss)

  Jerry Nolan hammers away at the drums and they’re on to the next song. Johnny doesn’t take his eyes off my face, he sings this song to me too. I’m rooted to the spot, I can’t believe what’s happening. This is the way to win a girl. He sings the whole set to me. Every single song straight into my eyes. He changes the words to ‘Can’t Keep My Eyes On You’ to ‘Can’t Keep My Eyes Off You’. The rest of the band don’t seem to mind, I think they understand romance too. Anyway, Johnny can do what he wants. After the show, he walks over to me – his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat – and asks what I’m doing later. I invite him and Jerry Nolan back to my studio. Whilst I make tea, Johnny plays my guitar and sings ‘Baby It’s You’, ‘Walking in the Sand’ and lots of other sixties girl-group songs. When we kiss, he breaks off and shouts to Jerry, ‘I felt something!’ He’s amazed, says he hasn’t felt anything in a long time. ‘I’ve got to call someone and tell them.’ He makes a collect call
to New York (I know what it means now).

  Johnny: ‘I met a girl.’

  Pause.

  Johnny: ‘Viv Albertine.’

  Pause.

  He turns to me, ‘How old are you?’

  Why did that fucking New Yorker have to ask that of all questions? Why didn’t he ask what I do or what I look like? ‘Twenty-two,’ I say (furious inside, sounds so old). ‘Twenty-two,’ Johnny says into the phone. I’m sure I can hear a bored exhalation of air from New York.

  Jerry Nolan falls asleep downstairs. Johnny and I end up on the mattress on the mezzanine. He can’t get an erection, it doesn’t bother me, we have a lovely time talking and touching. He says he can’t show his feelings that way, it doesn’t work any more. After a couple of hours I make breakfast for him and Jerry, beans on toast.

  Very quickly, me and Johnny Thunders become flirty friends. He’s a sweet and sensitive guy but heroin comes first for him and although he often calls me and we chat for ages, eventually he’ll ask if Keith (Levene) is there and I realise he’s after drugs. Keith has become central to the Heartbreakers crowd now, he’s best friends with the Yanks. He’s all ‘Thunders this’ and ‘Thunders that’. Me and Johnny still spend a lot of time together at the Heartbreakers’ flat in Denbigh Street in Victoria – which I take as a compliment considering I’m not into drugs. The flat is blandly decorated with off-white walls and fitted beige carpets, it has no atmosphere, like a hotel room. When he first moved in Johnny was worried about his image and asked me if Victoria was a cool neighbourhood. I told him it wasn’t.

  It feels like we’re meant to be together. If he wasn’t a junkie, I think we would have something very special. I’m as close to falling in love as you can be with a drug addict. I’m going out with Mick off and on throughout all of this, but the chemistry between me and Thunders is overpowering.

  One afternoon a whole bunch of us are sitting around at Johnny’s place, smoking and talking. I’m wearing a very thin worn-out black T-shirt with a skull and crossbones printed on the front that Johnny’s given me as a gift, his favourite T-shirt he said. It’s beautiful, ripped and holey with the sleeves cut off. I love it. At some point in the evening I look down and notice my right nipple is poking out of a tiny hole in the T-shirt. I’m not wearing a bra, god knows why, I usually wear a bra. I’ve been sitting here for hours with my nipple sticking out and no one’s said anything. I adjust the T-shirt and take a long drag on my cigarette. Best to act cool and nonchalant about it. I give it about twenty minutes then say I’ve got to go. All the way home on the bus, I can’t stop thinking about my nipple. Why didn’t Johnny say anything? The thing is, we all dress so provocatively that he probably didn’t know if I’d done it deliberately or not. Or maybe he just thought it was funny. I can’t face him again for a couple of weeks.

  Wearing Johnny’s T-shirt (hole sewn up). Bullet necklace. Hair by Keith Levene. 1977

  39 HEROIN

  1977

  Rock and roll is simply an attitude.

  You don’t have to play the greatest guitar.

  Johnny Thunders

  It’s three o’clock in the afternoon. I’ve got to get up, can’t lie here any longer, the room’s too hot. I can smell the baked beans from last night rotting in the sink. I throw off the bed covers – scraps of leopard-print fabric given to me by Mick, which he bought when Biba closed down – and run downstairs to answer the phone.

  A thick New York accent drawls down the line. ‘Hey, Viv, what’s happenin’?’

  It’s Thunders. He asks me to come and see him at his friend’s flat in Chelsea.

  ‘OK, I’ll come over for a couple of hours. I’m meeting Sid at six.’

  He says, ‘Yeah I know, I saw him last night.’

  No time to eat, I’ll buy a packet of crisps on the way. I put on a tight black lace dress Sid got me from a jumble sale. It didn’t quite fit so he slashed a split in the side – which is now held together with safety pins – then he hacked the bottom off whilst I was wearing it, leaving the hem really short and frayed. I pull on holey black tights and Dr Marten boots; I still never wear heels if I’m seeing Sid.

  I post a letter to Rory on the way – he’s moved to New York – telling him all about my great band, the Flowers of Romance, and how Sid is a brilliant front man, as good as Johnny Rotten.

  As soon as I arrive at his friend’s flat, Thunders grabs my hand and leads me across the living room. He pushes aside a heavy curtain and takes me through the French windows, out onto a tiny wrought-iron balcony where we perch like two scruffy crows, jagged hair and torn black clothes, silhouetted against the backs of the grand white stuccoed houses.

  I can’t imagine what Johnny’s going to say or why he’s being so secretive. Maybe he wants drugs? But he wouldn’t come to me for that. Is he going to talk about love? No, that’s impossible, he’s got no room for love, his heart is full of heroin.

  I ruffle my hair so it falls over my face and press my back into the railings, trying to get a little distance between us. I bet my skin looks terrible in this bright sunlight. I pray that he has bad eyesight.

  Johnny tells me that he saw Sid last night and Sid confided in him that when I meet him at six tonight, he’s going to chuck me out of the Flowers of Romance.

  No. It can’t be true.

  Not thrown out of the band we formed together. I made my mum cry to be in this band … we’ve been rehearsing all through this unbearable heatwave … and the Flowers of Romance is such a great name. If I’m not the guitarist in the Flowers of Romance, I’ve got no identity. Johnny sees my face collapse, I’m too shocked to act like I don’t care.

  ‘Viv, I told Sid he was wrong. I said what the fuck does it matter how well she plays? She’s totally cool and looks great.’

  But no one – not even the revered Johnny Thunders – has any effect on Sid. I’m out. There’s nothing more to say. We step back into the haze of the living room. Has Johnny told them? No one takes any notice of me, so I flop onto a floor cushion.

  Thunders, always the leader, takes command of the room. He announces that it’s ‘Time to shoot up now,’ like a playschool teacher. There’s a ripple of excitement. He looks down at me.

  ‘Want some, Viv? It’ll make things better.’

  I’ve been offered heroin before. I’ve never taken it. I’ve never had any intention of taking it – but today is the perfect day. Today I’m devastated. I want to belong, if not to my band then somewhere else, anywhere, I don’t care, I just need to make the world go away.

  So I nod. ‘Yeah.’

  Johnny knows I’ve never taken smack before and he becomes reverential. He tells me that I can go first as we’re all going to share the same needle and he wants it to be cleanest and sharpest for me. I understand – this is an honour. He produces a black-and-red bandana from out of nowhere like a magician. I remember seeing him wear it around his head on stage. He ties the bandana round the top of my arm and taps my veins with two fingers to bring them up. I’ve seen this ritual so many times. It doesn’t impress me, it doesn’t excite me. I’m numb.

  As Johnny sucks the liquid out of the spoon into the syringe, I feel no sense of occasion – no Oh my god, this is Johnny Thunders from the Heartbreakers, about to turn me on to heroin for the first time in my life. And I have no fear. I’m detached, just watching it all happening to me. Johnny compliments me on my lovely virgin veins, then slides the needle into the biggest blue one in the crook of my arm and unleashes the smack.

  A rush starts in my toes and surges up through my body. Thousands of tiny bubbles of love and happiness are released into my veins. I feel like a shaken-up bottle of Lucozade. Then I vomit. Right there on the carpet. I know I should be embarrassed but I can’t quite muster up the feeling. I look at Johnny and he smiles. He strokes my hair and tells me everything is OK, this is completely normal, then he crouches down and injects himself.

  A door slams. Someone’s shouting. I step off the kerb and fall in slow motion, down into the
gutter. Car horns blare. Tyres screech. I’m in the middle of Fulham Road. I think I might die. Black shadows prance on the edge of my vision. Faces loom. A leaf falls. Buildings lean. Everything’s happening at once …

  … Cool air blows across my face, I’m in a long dark corridor. Black and white tiles dance away from me, I follow them, they lead me to Sid. He’s leaning against my front door. Long skinny legs, huge cartoon feet in thick rubber-soled brothel creepers, bike chain dangling from his waist, padlock around his neck, black curranty eyes, spiky hair.

  He looks at me nervously. ‘Alright?’

  What a strange moral code we all have:

  Sid, on time for the first time in his life, to chuck me out of the band. Insisting on doing it face to face, because his mum – who’s a junkie – has told him to be nice.

  Me, out of my head on smack, risking my life to meet Sid, knowing he’s going to tear my world apart.

  And Johnny Thunders, kind and thoughtful enough to warn me of the impending doom and then shooting me up with heroin.

  Sid and I go inside. He mumbles something or other about me not being in the band any more: ‘You can’t play well enough.’ I can barely hear him. I’m far away in another world. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t hurt. I don’t give a shit.

  Sid’s a bit put out that I already know what he’s going to say and that I’m not in the least bit bothered about it. He can see I’m stoned. He must have seen his mother like this enough times. I get a faint feeling that he disapproves. He asks if I want him to stick around.

  ‘No no, I’m fine,’ I mumble and wave at him to leave.

  He leaves me sitting on the floor of my flat, chin drooping onto my chest, eyes half closed. Out of my head. And out of the band.