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

by Viv Albertine

  I jump off the bed and go out into the corridor to take the heat off the boys. There’s a scuffle between me and Mick. The Slits appear out of their rooms and try to intervene. Robin weighs in. He thumps Palmolive and beats up Rob. Now it really kicks off – a ball of arms, legs and fisticuffs goes rolling down the corridor, like a scene from the Bash Street Kids.

  Mick and I break up.

  No more smart hotels for us, from now on we’re in B & Bs, cracked washbasins in the corners of the rooms, bathrooms down the hall and beds with smelly nylon sheets. I lay my clothes down over the bedclothes and cover the pillow with a T-shirt before I go to sleep, so I don’t have to lie on them.

  Next gig is the Rainbow in London. I’ve been going to the Rainbow to see bands like Alice Cooper, Arthur Brown, Rod Stewart and the Faces for years. I’d see anything and everything there, I knew people who worked behind the bar and they’d get me in. Never did I dream that one day I would be on this stage. Even the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix have played here. My mum comes to the show and I’m so happy that the Slits are good tonight.

  On the last night of the tour, we play the California Ballroom in Dunstable. All the support bands have made a plan that at the end of Subway Sect’s set we’re going to go on stage and play the Velvet Underground song ‘Sister Ray’. We all steam on, the Slits, Buzzcocks, the Prefects and Subway Sect – singing and playing for ages, we make a terrible racket. Mick’s annoyed that he didn’t get asked to play.

  The Clash come on after us and the crowd goes wild, but something’s not right.

  During the dub bit of ‘Police and Thieves’, Mick calls into the mike in a heartbroken voice. ‘Where are you? Where are you?’ It’s so sad, it’s terrible to hear. I start to cry. I go out front and listen to the Clash’s last set, then go back to my hotel room alone. I don’t feel like partying.

  In the morning the Slits have to leave before the Clash. We’re all going our separate ways. Mick’s given instructions that he’s not to be disturbed but my guitar is in his room. He has all the guitars in his room overnight for safe keeping, wherever we play.

  I find a roadie, and tell him, ‘I’ve got to get my guitar out of Mick’s room, we’re leaving.’ The roadie says there’s no way he can let me into the room, he has strict instructions. I smile sweetly. ‘I’ll just tiptoe in and out, he won’t even know I’ve been there. Anyway, Mick won’t mind, we’re still good friends.’ The roadie unlocks the door.

  The room is stuffy and airless and swamped in yellow light from the thick gold curtains. It smells like a stagnant pond. I look over at the bed. I can just make out Mick, and beside him, a girl, fast asleep. I’m jealous. Pain stabs at my heart. But the pain is quickly replaced by fury. I leap onto the end of the bed and jump up and down. They’re shaken awake – I keep jumping like a maniac, making the bed bounce violently, Mick and the girl are tossed about like boats on a stormy sea, their heads thumping against the pillows. The roadie runs out of the room. Mick leans over to the bedside table, picks up a water jug and hurls it at me. I duck and it smashes into a mirror. Water and glass shards spray all over the guitar cases.

  ‘Pathetic,’ I say as I jump off the bed, pick up my guitar and scoot out of the room.

  That’s the end of the White Riot tour.

  A week later I get a call from Mick at my mum’s.

  Me: ‘Hello?’

  Mick: ‘It’s me.’

  Me: ‘What?’

  He tells me that I had better go and get myself checked out as he’s got something. He doesn’t know how he caught it.

  Me, bored voice: ‘OK. Thanks.’

  Pause.

  Mick, hysterical voice: ‘You knew, didn’t you! You knew and you didn’t tell me!’

  Yes, I knew.

  When I got home from the tour my period started. A couple of days later I went to the bathroom to change my sanitary towel. It was clean and white as I had almost finished. In the middle of the towel was a tiny black dot. I recognised that tiny black dot. I knew immediately what it was. I went straight to the chemist, got some anti-lice lotion and on to the clap clinic to get myself checked for VD. Then I waited to see what Mick would do. The thing is, I knew I hadn’t given it to him, because I hadn’t slept with anyone else. Somewhere along the line, before we even went on the White Riot tour, he must have been unfaithful.

  Postcard to me from Mick Jones – when the Clash were touring the States – mentioning a line from ‘Ping Pong Affair’ (‘dreaming on a bus’), the song I wrote about him, and complaining about how we split up

  47 JUBILEE

  1977

  Rob and I are going out together now, we still haven’t had sex but our relationship is intensely romantic. I’m wary of making a move on him because he’s so shy. I know he’s a virgin, maybe he wants to wait? Or he’s too nervous. I feel a certain responsibility not to mess him up. If I’m the first girl he sleeps with, I want it to be a nice experience. One night we’re holding each other and we start touching and although he’s trembling we do it and it’s beautiful. I would rather have sex with this intense, strangely old-fashioned boy who has no preconceptions, no ‘moves’, just his imagination and his passion, than some Lothario, any day.

  Meanwhile Subway’s singer, Vic, has started going out with Nora and for a while Vic and Nora and me and Rob become an odd foursome. We go to places in Nora’s car, like a Jean-Luc Godard all-nighter at the Paris Pullman, holding hands and kissing in the back row. We see the Fall at Alexandra Palace, and in June we go to the River Thames for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Malcolm’s hired a boat for the Pistols to play on as they float down the river past the Houses of Parliament. We turn up, but have no hope of getting on, I see Palmolive try and leap across the gang-plank but she’s turned away. There are lots of record-company people on board.

  Rob says that’s it. It’s all died for him right now at this moment, tonight. This is the end of the dream. He’s really upset. I know what he means, but it was over for me at the 100 Club with the glass-throwing incident. Commercialism and press coverage is what’s important now, that’s the message coming from Malcolm today.

  Nora and Vic aren’t bothered, they want to go and watch the boat sail under Tower Bridge, so Nora drives us onto the bridge and parks haphazardly, on a double yellow line. We abandon the car and lean over the railing looking down into the choppy old Thames.

  I don’t know what gets into Vic, he’s usually so restrained, but he picks up a huge piece of hoarding that’s lying on the road and chucks it down into the river as the boat is coming towards us. The bridge police arrive and arrest him. Nora tries to get him off the hook in her slinky German accent: ‘I made him do it, he did it for me, to be showing off.’ But they don’t buy it, they take him to Bow Police Station and down into the cells. We spend hours there, sitting on a wooden bench, staring at the shiny green tiled walls. After Vic is charged, we all go back to Nora’s. Johnny Rotten turns up later.

  The Slits’ contribution to the Queen’s Jubilee comes when Derek Jarman asks us to be in his new film, Jubilee. We’re not sure. As usual, we talk about the offer for days, arguing whether it’s right for the image we’re putting across. We take too long to get back to Derek, the first filming day arrives and we don’t feel we can say no. Nora drives us to the location somewhere on the North Circular and Derek shows us a spiral staircase going up to a bridge crossing the motorway. He tells us to run up and down the stairs a few times. After that we go to another location, a street, where we have to smash up a car. We give it a good kicking and then go home. But we’re not happy about being portrayed as violent. Although we often get into fights, it’s only because we’re being attacked; we don’t do mindless destruction, so we decide we don’t want to be in the rest of the film.

  I call Derek and tell him. I feel very grown up, normally we just wouldn’t bother turning up again, but because I like Derek I make a huge effort to do this embarrassing thing and let him know. I’m sorry to let him down because I imagine it’s ver
y annoying when you’ve already started filming and then someone drops out. He’s very sweet and understanding about it, but he uses the footage he has already shot of us in the final film, even though we asked him not to. Can’t blame him really.

  With pick in mouth, pausing mid-show to sort out a common occurrence – a skinhead attacking Ari (note the bouncers: teddy boy haircuts, woolly waistcoat and stitches above right eye). Woolwich, 1979

  48 PEEL SESSION

  1977

  John Peel and his producer, John Walters, come to see the Slits play at the Vortex in Soho. I’m impressed that they seem more interested in us than the Heartbreakers, who we’re supporting. We have a laugh with the two Johns before we go on and Palmolive throws a drink over John Walters as a dare – he doesn’t seem fazed by it. The club is packed, even Keith Moon is here, dressed in a floor-length fur coat and sunglasses. He sits in the corner with a bunch of cronies. Tonight means a lot to me because it’s the first time Johnny Thunders has seen me play and I want to show him I’m in a great band and I’ve recovered from being chucked out of the Flowers of Romance. There’s nothing between me and Johnny any more, we’ve drifted apart, but I still want to impress him. Shame the club’s so hot and sweaty that my hair’s gone flat. I’m wearing my blue ballet tunic and Sid’s leather jacket. We play a great show, our energy is ferocious, I think we’re better than the Heartbreakers by miles. Let’s see if they can follow that.

  John Walters comes up to us after the show and asks if we’d like to do a John Peel radio session for the BBC. We tell him we’ll think about it, we’re not sure we want to put our songs out until we can play them better, we’re perfectionists. We’ve turned down offers from labels that just want to get a record out quick whilst there’s a bit of interest in ‘punk’. We have a different vision, we want to make a record that lasts, that stands the test of time. We have faith in our songs and our message. Eventually we decide, yes, we’ll do the radio show, we’ve never been in a studio before, it’ll be good practice and we really like the two Johns, they’re the only men we’ve come across in the music industry who talk to us like we’re normal human beings rather than savages.

  The recording day comes; Nora drives us to the studios. The main BBC recording studios are booked so we have to use the old Decca studios in Broadhurst Gardens. Decca was the Rolling Stones’ label. I remember the blue and white logo in the middle of my singles. We jump out of the car, unload the equipment and barge through the doors into the hallway, heaving the gear backwards and forwards past two grumpy old doormen who look like they’ve been there since the sixties. One says to the other, ‘You can’t tell if they’re boys or girls.’

  ‘I bet that’s exactly what they said when the Stones came through the door!’ I say to the other girls as we tumble into the studio.

  I can tell immediately by their expressions that the studio engineer and producer are not happy to be doing this session. They keep telling us we can’t do this and we can’t do that. The same obstructive attitude and closed-mindedness we encounter wherever we go. If we didn’t have each other, we would’ve been crushed by guys like this ages ago.

  Our guitars keep going out of tune and these two guys act like they’re so superior because they know how to tune them. They think the whole music industry turns on whether you can tune your guitar or not. Well, maybe it has, until now; we’ve only been playing a couple of months and yet here we are in a studio. Nobody’s recording their songs, no matter how well tuned their guitars are.

  John and John come down to our session, which is rare for them, but they really rate us and are intrigued, wondering how the engineers will cope. They think it’s funny that these two old musos have to get their heads around working with people like us. We fight with them to sound how we sound, not to be polished up and smoothed out. It’s as if they’ve never heard a garage band, or never themselves been at that stage musically where they’re struggling to voice the sound that’s in their heads and the excitement and creative tension that come from that. It’s more than hating our lack of technical ability though, there is a real fury, which they attempt to disguise as ridicule and contempt. Resentment hisses out of their pores like steam off a cowpat.

  Anyway, we know what we want, we aren’t daunted by being in the studio for the first time. We just want to get it right. At last we can hear each other’s instruments and all the components of our songs in time with each other. It’s fascinating to hear the tracks so clearly and it gives us ideas about backing vocals and different melodies to layer on top. There’s not much time though and we don’t want to fail on that count: no way we’re going to be the one band that didn’t get all their four tracks finished (‘Vindictive’, ‘Love und Romance’, ‘Newtown’ and ‘Shoplifting’).

  When we get back to Ari and Nora’s house in Bloemfontein Road, we listen to the session over and over again, thrilled to hear our songs captured on tape at last. I’m amazed at the ferocity of the music. We sound like we have enough energy to conquer the world.

  Slits flyer 7/7/77 (note the time – ‘after Top of the Pops’, the only programme anyone watched on TV)

  49 ABORTION

  1978

  It’s a waste of time to think that if you coloured a painting red what might have happened if you painted it black.

  Yoko Ono

  Anxiously looking for blood. Please come, blood. I forgive you, blood. I will never be so stupid and careless again. I will never be horrible or have a fit about you again, if you will only come.

  I’m pregnant. Mick’s the father. We got back together after we bumped into each other at the paper shop in Shepherd’s Bush. I was looking at the magazines when I heard his lovely soft voice behind me, asking for a paper. I turned round and there he was with Tony James (Generation X’s bassist), my heart leapt. I just can’t get him out of my system. I’m twenty-four – just the age I always thought I’d be ready to have a baby – and pregnant. But now it’s here, I’m not ready at all. I did what my friends said worked for them and always put a contraceptive pessary up myself after sex (although it is supposed to be combined with a Durex). I haven’t had a period for a couple of months, which isn’t unusual for me, but my breasts are all swollen and painful so Mum bought a pregnancy test. My friend Becca was with me when I did it. She was shocked at how calm I was when we saw the result was positive. The thing is, I knew.

  Well I’m not going to keep it. No question. Mum says she’ll help me raise it. No way. Yuck. Me and my mum and a baby crammed into the top-floor flat of a council block. Nappies hanging on the clothes airer suspended from the ceiling in the steamed-up kitchen, no money, no heating, the metal lift that smells of piss: the thought of it makes me feel sick. It just can’t be, not now, not in this situation. I’ve been warned so many times not to mess my life up by getting pregnant and now I’ve gone and done it. I can’t keep the baby. Mum suggests adoption, but I think that’s crueller than death. That’s my opinion. To burden a child with abandonment and rejection right from the start. A living death. All or nothing, that’s me. I choose nothing. Nothingness for baby. I think this is a responsible decision. I will not countenance any other option.

  I make an appointment at a clinic. You can’t just go and have an abortion, you have to prove you’re mentally incapable of having a baby or they make you keep it. I don’t know how I can think of getting rid of a baby so calmly and yet get so upset when some spotty boy doesn’t call.

  I go to the clinic and cry. That’s what other girls who’ve been through it told me to do. If you cry, they’ll let you have an abortion. I’m sure the doctor would have let me anyway. He sits behind his desk, looking at me sobbing in a short, tight, pink second-hand child’s dress, fishnet tights and black Dr Marten boots, blonde hair sticking out all over the place. Better not let this one have a baby. In two days’ time I’ll be over the legal limit and then they’ll make me have it. I’m sent to a clinic in Brighton. Mum waves me off at the station. I’ve got a little overnight bag, it�
�s a duffel bag with pictures of 1970s pop stars printed on it, I bought it at a jumble sale, thought it was funny. I feel strangely calm. I don’t feel like I have a baby growing inside me. I don’t even think of it. It’s just something that needs to be sorted out. Before I leave I tell Mick over the phone that I’m pregnant and I’m off to the hospital to deal with it on my own. He offers to come with me but I don’t want him to. I don’t want to feel anything. If he’s there I might feel something.

  I’m given a place at the end of a long row of beds with girls about my age in them. A nurse comes in to give us a talk. ‘You will be taken into the operating theatre. You will be given an anaesthetic. The foetus will be removed by suction. You will be wheeled back into this room. When you wake up you will experience cramping in your stomach, it will help relieve the pain if you draw your knees up to your chest and roll onto your side. Then you will be served dinner.’

  The other girls are nervous. I’m not. I’m last to go in. I’ve never been to hospital before. I’m not allowed to walk anywhere, I have to be wheeled in a wheelchair. I don’t like it, I’m perfectly healthy. Two orderlies trundle me down the corridor, doors crash open and swing shut behind us. People hover over me fiddling with tubes and charts as we glide along. In the anteroom a doctor says he’s going to give me the anaesthetic now, it will feel like I’ve drunk a large gin and tonic. Just as he puts the needle into a vein on the back of my hand, the plastic casing on the ceiling light above me crashes down and lands on my face. A nurse rushes forward apologising.

  I wake up in my bed. The girl next to me is sobbing. My stomach hurts, I draw my knees up to my chest and roll onto my side. The pain subsides. A trolley arrives with our dinner. I’m starving and it’s a Sunday roast, my favourite. The girl next to me can’t eat, she’s too upset. I ask if I can have her roast potatoes.