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

by Viv Albertine

  40 SHIFT

  1977

  Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.

  George Eliot, Middlemarch

  I hear a phone ringing through the thick fuzzy air. It’s Thunders, asking me to join the Heartbreakers. He says to come over to the rehearsal studios right now. I’m scared, but I go anyway. That should be written on my gravestone. She was scared. But she went anyway.

  When I arrive he says, ‘OK, let’s figure out some songs you can sing.’ He asks if I know the words to ‘These Boots Are Made for Walking’, by Frank and Nancy Sinatra. I say, ‘Yes, most of them.’ The rest of the Heartbreakers stand around looking polite but not very keen: Another one of Johnny’s mad ideas. Johnny plays the intro to the song and the band join in. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I’ve never played in a proper band, I can’t sing, I haven’t used a microphone before. Johnny nods to let me know when to come in. I talk my way through the words in a deadpan voice, my fear slightly cushioned by the heroin that’s still trickling through my veins from earlier. At the end of the song, Johnny says it was great and he loves my delivery. We run through it a couple more times, then they move on to another song and I slump into a chair on the edge of the room, steeped in an idiotic stupor.

  Johnny must have missed my vein when he injected me, because my arm turns black from my wrist to my armpit. It stays black for three months. I have to hide it from everyone including my mum, which isn’t easy, as I am evicted from my studio (for not paying rent and complaints from the neighbours about Sid threatening them with broken milk bottles) and have to move back home. I’m so ashamed of myself. I’ve been so weak. I almost owe it to Mum more than myself to have some self-respect. I’ll never take heroin again.

  A couple of weeks later I go to the Music Machine (a club in Kentish Town, now Koko), and bump into Ben Barson (the guy from Woodcraft Folk I was going to marry). Now I’m his equal, I’ve caught up. Don’t you love it when that happens? You meet someone who wasn’t interested in you, then a couple of years later you meet again and you’ve reinvented yourself. Ben fancies me now, dressed in my pink and black fetish gear, Dr Martens and feisty attitude. As we talk, he slides his arm around me, like we’re teenagers, but I’m meeting some people backstage so I have to go.

  Backstage I’m chatting to Johnny Thunders. He asks me what I’m doing later, do I want to hang out? I glance over at Mick, he glares back at me, furious. Johnny sees Mick’s expression, laughs and sings, ‘Who’s it gonna be? Him or me?’

  Something snaps in me. What are you doing, Viv? Stop messing around. What do you want out of life? I realise I don’t want to be with either of them, so I walk out, hail a cab and go home. It’s time to show people, and myself, what I’m made of. Time to try, and maybe to fail again, but better that than never try at all.

  41 SIDNEY’S DREAM

  1977

  Me and Sid are still mates, I’m not going to be petty about him dropping me from the band. We still hang out together all the time, endlessly listening to the Ramones album, it encapsulates what we’re trying to do, pushing everything to extremes. Sid takes some speed and says he’s going to stay up all night listening to the record. I go to bed. When I get up in the morning he’s still in Alan’s room, but now he’s playing Paul’s bass along with the record. He can play every bass line of every song. He’s never played bass before but he’s worked it all out by ear and made his fingers do it. Those bass lines are really fast and he can play every one perfectly. I’m in awe of him, he’s done that in one night, turned himself into a bass player.

  Because of what he did that night, Sid’s ready when John asks him to replace Glen Matlock as bass player in the Sex Pistols. Talk about a dream come true. We were standing at the back of the Screen on the Green watching the Pistols only last week, saying, ‘What’s the point of being in a band? If you can’t be better than the Pistols then don’t bother.’ Unbelievably, Sid actually thinks twice about joining them, even though to him they’re the best band in the world. He asks me what I think he should do, should he join them or create his own thing? He’s not sure about being part of something he hasn’t formed. This dilemma only lasts about five seconds; he says yes, of course.

  42 THE COLISEUM

  1977

  The Clash, Buzzcocks and Subway Sect are playing at the Coliseum tonight but I haven’t come to see them, I see them all the time. I’m here to see the Slits.

  The Slits asked me to join them a couple of months ago, I can’t remember how they contacted me, probably through Nora, the young singer’s mother, who I hang out with quite a lot. Nora is German, tall, athletic, blonde, sophisticated. She wears vintage suits and heels, she’s very feminine compared to the rest of us. I respect her for sticking to her own style. The Slits were looking for a bass player back then. I play guitar, I don’t want to play bass, I don’t feel bass. Your instrument is not interchangeable. I’m a guitarist: even though I haven’t been playing long, I know I’m a guitarist. And anyway, I don’t want to be in an all-girl band.

  I talked to Chrissie Hynde about it. (I got to know Chrissie when I met Mick at art school. He was trying to get a band together with her, she’s still not in a band but she really wants to be in one.) I said, ‘It’s gimmicky and tokenistic being in an all-girl band, isn’t it?’ She told me to shut up and get on with it. I read a lot about feminism and I’m a feminist, apply it to everything I think and do, but I don’t want to be labelled in any way.

  I’m interested in what Palmolive’s up to now she’s not in the Flowers of Romance any more. I’m not expecting much, I’ve seen the Slits around town with paint daubed on their faces, wearing black bin liners, and Ari, Nora’s fourteen-year-old daughter, is usually charging up and down the room screaming.

  The lights dim and four girls tumble onto the stage, all fired up and cocky and excited. Ari’s wearing a long dirty beige mac over a leopard-print top, vinyl mini skirt and fishnet tights, her hair is long and tangled, with a comb stuck in it. Palmolive looks great in leopardskin trousers and a black plastic waistcoat. They start playing. A blast of energy, a cacophony of sound, and pumping through it all is Palmolive’s insistent drumming, ferocious, wild, a call to arms. Her eyes burn with passion, she’s focused and charismatic. I’ve never heard anyone drum like her; it’s primal. Her whole body and spirit are thrown into the performance.

  Ari is in her element: suddenly, she makes sense. Too big a personality off stage, on stage she rules. Ari’s husky voice and German accent are sensual, she stamps her foot, screams and warbles, she’s abandoned and unfettered – prancing around like a demented pony. She flashes her mac open and closed like a parody of a dirty old man; she’s so funny. She’s completely unselfconscious and like no girl or boy I’ve ever seen live before. Whenever I watch a lead singer, I think to myself, ‘Are they as good as John Rotten?’ Me and Sid still compare every band we see to the Pistols and every singer to John. It’s unnecessary to add another band to the world if it isn’t doing something different or better than bands that already exist. Ari stirs up all sorts of feelings in me, visions, aspirations, possibilities – she inspires me, like Rotten did last year. I get all these feelings and thoughts without understanding a word of the songs, just from her presence.

  The next morning I lie awake and think about the Slits, then I get dressed and go to the phone box on Acton High Street and call Nora’s house. Ari answers. I don’t know why I’ve called really. I just have to say something, to make contact. I tell her I think the Slits were great last night. We arrange to meet at a squat in Edgware Road where they rehearse. I’m excited. I’ve made something happen.

  43 DAVENTRY STREET

  1977

  I’m going to play with the Slits. I’m anxious because playing with Sid in the Flowers of Romance was nerve-racking.

  The rehearsal room is in a squat on Daventry Street, West London. There are egg boxes stapled to the walls and a smelly damp mattress leaning in a corner – a feeble attempt to dampen th
e noise – old torn carpet on the floor, two amps and a drum kit. Palmolive’s kick drum is weighed down with a couple of bricks on an old towel.

  Kate Korus, the Slits’ guitarist, isn’t here. I didn’t ask for her not to be here, but I’m glad, because maybe they’re thinking I might be good in their band, and I’m beginning to think I would like to be in their band.

  I’ve no idea how this rehearsal or jam is going to turn out. I’ve seen the Slits play and I know they aren’t musical virtuosos, but it’s still daunting as I’m very new to guitar playing. I tell them I’m not very good, I haven’t been playing long and I’ve no idea how to jam, and they chorus back that they can’t either and it’s fine. I feel a bit better and get my Les Paul Junior out of its cardboard case.

  Ari is the only one of us with any musical training; she’s reached grade six on piano. She shows me the chords to a song they’ve written called ‘Let’s Do the Split’. I can just about hold down the bar chords and we thrash through it a few times. They don’t seem horrified with my playing, in fact they get it wrong as often as I do, and I begin to relax.

  They ask me if I have a song to show them. All I have is a guitar riff I’ve made up and some lyrics that came out of a phone conversation I had with Johnny Rotten about Sid a couple of weeks ago. It’s called ‘So Tough’. I play the riff. They love it. I show them the words written in my little lyric book. They love them. We start working on the song, and that’s when things really get good. Me and Ari click creatively. We respect each other’s ideas, we take suggestions from each other easily, without any ego, and we have the same sensibility. We like the same sounds, we understand and spark off each other. After the experience with Sid, I know that being able to write comfortably with someone is a rare and precious thing. The song comes together: it sounds good. Just how I’d imagined it, but better.

  After the rehearsal I have a warm feeling inside. That feeling you get when you’ve created something. A cross between doing a job well and stretching yourself. We lounge against the speakers, Palmolive leans forward with her elbows on her snare and we chat and laugh. They tell me that when I called them the other day at Nora’s, after Ari put the phone down they all started laughing and saying to each other, ‘Oh, so now she’s interested!’

  We move into the cold kitchen and huddle around the stove. I look at the girls as we drink tea out of cracked, stained mugs: Palmolive with her sparkly Spanish eyes, toned brown body and beautiful heart-shaped face, framed by cropped auburn hair; Tessa, skin white as snow, hair black as raven’s wings and eyes azure blue, she’s like a young Elizabeth Taylor, but dressed as a boy; and Ari, long tousled brown hair, full mouth, large unblinking blue eyes, a smattering of freckles, completely unaware of her beauty – Lolita crossed with Minnie the Minx. Every one of them beautiful and interesting. Why didn’t I see it before? They’re fantastic.

  I want boys to come and see us play and think I want to be part of that. Not They’re pretty or I want to fuck them but I want to be in that gang, in that band. I want boys to want to be us, not have the usual response like that one at the party in Islington the other night, he told me he played guitar.

  ‘I play guitar too,’ I said.

  ‘Great! We could do with some crumpet in our band.’

  His name was Paul Weller. Mick wanted to have a go at him when I mentioned it but I thought that would make me look weak so I stopped him.

  I reckon the Slits’ clothes are cool enough, our attitude is rebellious enough and our music so unusual and powerful that we might be able to change that kind of attitude for good.

  We’re all excited and start to do each other’s hair. I backcomb all of them to look more like mine, I don’t mean to, it just happens. We gather around a cracked old mirror and stare at our reflection. And that’s it. We look like a band.

  The Slits – me, Ari, Tessa, Palmolive

  44 THE SLITS

  1977

  It takes a few weeks for me to decide if I definitely want to be in the band. I don’t want to hang out with a young girl just out of German boarding school every day if it’s not going to be for a very good reason. Ari’s a virgin, she’s never had a boyfriend, so she doesn’t know about passion, sex or love. How can she write songs? She has pictures of ponies on her bedroom wall for god’s sake. But there are other differences, like her private education and family money. Ari has no idea about social injustice, poverty or racism. She’s totally un enlightened politically, not just because she’s so young, but because she’s had a sheltered, privileged upbringing in Germany.

  I bump into Chrissie Hynde at the Speakeasy and tell her I’ve changed my mind, I’ve decided to join the Slits if they ask me again. She says, ‘If you didn’t go for it, I would have!’ If they ask me I’d better say yes before Chrissie moves in on them. But they wouldn’t ask Chrissie. No one wants to be in a band with her, she’s too good.

  I play with the Slits a couple more times and we start to hang out. But no one mentions anything about me being in the band. There’s now no doubt in my mind that I want to join. I’m so excited about the songs, we’ve reworked their old ones and added a couple of my new ones, so why haven’t they said anything?

  We’re waiting for a train at Queensway tube station and Ari is talking non-stop, making babyish comments about the posters on the wall. I feel frustrated so I say to her, ‘Ari, just tell me if I’m in the band or not. I need to know.’

  She looks shocked and says, ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘What about Kate?’

  ‘We’ve told her.’

  I’m so happy! I’m in a band. I’m in a great band!

  From now on we go everywhere together. We march down the street four abreast and people scuttle out of our way, or spit on us or swear at us and it just makes us laugh. We’re invincible together. We have no doubt that the Slits are great and are going to change the world. We’re on a mission and pity anyone who doesn’t get it. We spend hours talking about our look, our stance on all sorts of subjects, from feminism to what is good and bad in music. We play each other our records and point out backing vocals, string sections or guitar riffs we like. We especially love Dionne Warwick sings Burt Bacharach and Low by David Bowie. We also listen to The Sound of Music, the Beatles, the Ramones, MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges.

  I’m so excited about the girls that I want to take them round to meet all my friends. First they have to meet Keith Levene: they’ll all respond to his sensitivity and Ari will love his musicality – they’ll adore each other.

  We set off to find Keith and track him down at Barry Black’s flat in Elgin Avenue. I introduce everyone and we wander between the kitchen and the living room chatting, when Palmolive says, ‘My purse has gone.’

  I help her look through her bag but I have a sinking feeling I know where the purse has gone. Keith takes heroin, so do a couple of other guys at the flat. I’m worried because I know that often people who take heroin steal. Anger starts to mount up in my chest. I ask Keith if he knows where the purse is. He says no. I’m furious. I’ve brought the girls here to meet my friends. They are my band. I’m determined to get the purse back, I scrutinise the room looking for a guilty face. A hammer leaning against the wall catches my eye. I pick it up and in my mind I have a flash, a vision: I’m going to smash Keith’s knees to pieces with the hammer. I lift the hammer and walk towards Keith, he starts to gibber, ‘Viv! Viv! We’ll find the purse!’ The Slits rush forward and talk me down, they take the hammer off me. The purse reappears.

  As we walk back down Elgin Avenue towards the 31 bus stop, the girls look at me differently. No, I’m not the nice, balanced, well-behaved grown-up they thought I was. I’m a nutter.

  With Ari

  45 ARI UP

  As she was German und quite new to the English language, Ari thought adding ‘Up’ to her name made it ‘Hurry Up’, because we all dropped our aitches. And when the Sham 69 song ‘Hurry Up Harry’ came out, she thought they were singing about her: ‘’Urry up Ari, come on!’


  Ari is wonderful and terrible in equal measure. She’s great when we’re writing, rehearsing or playing, but the rest of the time I find her difficult to be around. She’s loud, boisterous, rude, unstable and desperate for attention every second of the day. She’s not an ordinary fifteen-year-old, they discovered that about her at her last two schools; in the end they asked her to leave, they couldn’t control her. She makes enemies wherever we go, pissing off soundmen, promoters, potential managers and other bands with her attitude. I know she’s young and just beginning to discover the adult world but she’s so extreme: at one point she was convinced she was god’s mistress reincarnated. It’s worrying.

  Because Ari’s the singer of the band she’s our mouthpiece. The trouble is, she doesn’t know enough about life yet to be a mouthpiece, and she doesn’t know that she doesn’t know – that’s the worst thing. I’m not very patient with her, I hardly ever let her naïve comments pass without a withering look or a sharp retort. I wouldn’t care what she says or does if I wasn’t in a band with her, but I am and it’s important to me.

  Being involved in music is a great outlet for Ari – I can’t imagine her finding a place in society otherwise. She’s lucky her family has money; plenty of people with her extreme character traits but no money must end up in some sort of institution because their parents can’t cope. The combination of money and a bohemian mother who moves in artistic and musical circles means that people are more accepting of Ari’s behaviour. I think a lot of Ari’s attitude is a rebellion against her mother’s cool, blonde beauty. She knows she can’t compete with that, so she goes to the opposite extreme.