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

by Viv Albertine

  It will be devastating for me to leave them, but I’m not going to saddle myself with this situation any longer. Look where I’ve ended up for god’s sake. What I care about most is the music, but it’s not developing. I can’t bear the uncertainty every time we go out on stage, I never know if we’re going to make it through a song without it collapsing.

  At the end of my second week in hospital I feel strong enough to call a meeting – Palmolive doesn’t come. Tessa and Ari gather round my bed, I lie propped up on a bank of pillows like a scene from The Godfather. I say I won’t go on as we are. I want to progress musically: to get tighter, not perfect, but enough to know we can get through a song and convey its meaning. I tell Ari and Tessa I need them to be behind the music and to have a more dedicated attitude to songwriting and rehearsing. If they can’t do that, I’m out. And lastly, I say, ‘I go, or Palmolive goes.’

  Ari and Tessa take me seriously – maybe the surroundings help – I’ve never said anything like this before. I ask Tessa what she wants. I have no idea what she’ll answer, if she’ll answer. She says she agrees it’s time to buck up and Palmolive should go. Ari says the same.

  I concentrate on getting well. My back is pummelled twice a day by physiotherapists, my lungs are drained of mucus every morning by nurses, I take inhalers, I sleep and I eat. The consultant tells me if I don’t give up smoking I will be dead within eighteen months. I give up smoking.

  In just a few weeks I’ve started to forget who I used to be. Now I’m in this normal setting, talking to middle-aged women, housewives, I realise I’m not so different from them after all.

  During my last week at the hospital, Mick strides in wearing his black leather jeans and leather jacket. He’s holding a bunch of flowers. I didn’t tell him I was here, he’s annoyed about that, but I don’t like people to see me when I’m ill. Ben Barson, who I fell in love with at Woodcraft, also visits me, bringing a pineapple. Two boys; that’s more like it. I feel more comfortable with Ben, he has no fear of illness. Mick’s squeamish about things like hospitals, germs and diseases.

  When I leave hospital I’m very thin. I walk down the road with Ari and Tessa, just the three of us now. It feels weird without Palmolive, they say they’ve already told her she’s out, which I’m grateful for, it shows that they are taking responsibility. Together we hatch a plan – we’re going to get a new drummer, we’re going to record our album, it’s going to be on our favourite label, Island Records (they haven’t approached us yet, but we’ll convince them they want us) – and it’s going to be brilliant, a classic.

  With Ari and Tessa at the Tropicana Hotel in LA, wearing a vintage dress and giant paper bow from a bouquet of flowers in my hair

  52 SONGWRITING

  1977–1979

  We love Dionne Warwick’s record Golden Hits Volume 1, where she sings loads of Bacharach and David songs. We own it collectively; I can’t remember how we came across it, probably at the Record and Tape Exchange in Notting Hill. We’ve pulled the record apart, listened to every instrument, the drum patterns, the backing vocals, the very understated chk chk chk guitar sound, which mostly plays on the off beat. I wonder if reggae was influenced by this sort of music? I heard American ‘crooning’ was big in Jamaica and influenced lovers’ rock, so maybe it was.

  Ari and I try and emulate Bacharach’s classic song structures when we write, but the result is warped because it’s filtered through our lack of technical ability. Our songs come out in funny time signatures and structures – and we like it. The lyrics are different to David’s because we are being honest and specific about our own experiences, which are very different to an American man’s experiences (and he is a master of course). We were trying to write great pop songs, but ended up creating something new by accident.

  My guitar style is developing into its own sound even more now I know what I’m listening for when I hear a record. I’m moving away from the buzzsaw, industrial whine I was developing with Keith. I still don’t have any female guitarists to listen to and be inspired by, and I hate the note-bending, flashy solos, posturing and lip pursing of a lot of male rock guitarists, but I’ve found some I like. I’m influenced by Steve Cropper (of Booker T and the MGs) at the moment, also the guitarist on the Dionne Warwick record and reggae guitar playing, and I love Carlos Alomar on David Bowie’s album Low.

  Until now, I was just as likely to notice the horns, or a Hammond organ solo, as a guitar part, it just depended on whether the melody of the solo or the rhythm of an instrument stood out. When I listen back to music I liked when I was much younger, I realise none of it has a distorted, rocky guitar sound. I didn’t like Led Zeppelin or Hendrix, any heavy rock, it felt masculine and unappealing.

  In the past I listened to tracks as a whole, paying most attention to the lyrics. Words were what I knew, what I was familiar with; they worked or didn’t work for me. That’s how girls listened to songs. Most of the songs I’ve been exposed to are about romantic love. They’re an extension of the fairy tales I read as a little girl – I’ll love you forever. You’re the only one. I’ll rescue you. You broke my heart. Blah blah – which is shocking when you think about the effect that obsessive listening and repetitive exposure to songs about idealised love must have had on my brain. I’ve been brainwashed. The Slits’ lyrics are very carefully thought about and scrutinised. No peddling clichés and lies for us. No lazy escapism. Words have to be true to your life. Write what you know. And make people think.

  Flyer for one of the sound systems we went to

  53 GRAPEVINE

  1979

  I heard it through the bass line.

  Ari Up

  Nora phones Island Records and sets up a meeting with Chris Blackwell, the head of the label. It’s easy, just like we expected. We think we’re good. Lots of record companies want us. Why wouldn’t Island? At the meeting we tell Chris we love the label and that we want to be on it. He’s amused and says yes.

  We have a couple more meetings with Chris; he’s smiley and friendly and a little bit flirty. Although he likes us, I can tell he doesn’t really get the music. He loves reggae, which should bond him to us a bit more, but there’s something a bit old-fashioned about him. He’s caught up with people his own age, rock-star types, he talks about Mick Jagger and other old farts reverentially. At the moment he’s very taken with Marianne Faithfull, who’s recording and releasing an album called Broken English for him. We don’t understand why he’s so excited about her. We’ve seen her around over the past couple of years, hanging around squats, drugged up. She’s the past, we’re the future.

  That was my initial impression of Marianne Faithfull – I now think she is an interesting artist, a survivor and an inspiring role model.

  Stage one of our plan is completed. We sign a deal for one album with complete artistic control and an advance of £45,000. It’s quite a good deal. Although out of that figure has to come our recording and touring expenses, and wages.

  The first thing Island do is assign a photographer/art director to us. His name is Dennis Morris, a young guy, full of himself and his own ideas. He says the record cover should be bright pink plastic with rips and zips in it. For fuck’s sake. I say we want something that reflects who we are and the music we make, and pink plastic doesn’t do that. He takes offence. His masculine pride is wounded. He turns against me as I’m the spokesperson for the band. From now on, he undermines everything I say and do. We do a photo session with him, he wants to use a wind machine, for the pictures to be sexy. I say no, and we want to vet the photos before they’re released: he’s beginning to hate me. Luckily, as we have artistic control, there’s nothing he can do about it. We want to stay friendly with Island, so I’m loath to go against the first person they’ve put us together with and appear all stroppy and difficult, but we’ve waited so long and been so careful about our output and our image, we can’t just let it be taken over by people who don’t understand what we’re trying to do and say.

  The first reco
rding we do is at Island’s Basing Street Studios to lay down a cover version of Marvin Gaye’s ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’. We don’t have a drummer so we use a guy called Max, ‘Maxie’, ‘Feelgood’ Edwards; Island recommended him to us. Maxie’s a proper reggae drummer from Jamaica and has played with Dennis Brown, Tapper Zukie and Big Youth and he’s recorded at King Tubby’s studio with Scientist and Prince Jammy; we can’t believe our luck. I’m worried we won’t be up to the job of playing with an experienced drummer. We’ve never played with anyone except Palmolive before. What if we can’t keep in time with him? Or he thinks we’re terrible and unprofessional?

  We go into the room – only our second time in a proper recording studio – and play the track live as a whole band. Ari is so pumped up about playing with Maxie, she gives the first take everything she’s got. Me and Tessa rise to the occasion and play in time. Maxie is open-minded and relaxed with us, no attitude or sneering. Such a relief. The song sizzles with life and attitude, it flies off the tape when we go into the control room to hear it played back. We do a couple more takes for luck. Chris Blackwell pops in to see how things are going. He says he thinks the first take is great but can we do a couple more, try and get a different vocal performance out of Ari? He sends me into the recording studio to try and explain to her what he wants. I try reverse psychology, telling her we don’t need any more takes, just chuck something out, and everything else I can think of, but nothing she does matches that first take. Ari tries so hard, but she looks a bit bewildered, we all know that take was the one. We waste a couple of hours, just to please Chris, before we give up.

  We sing the original horn parts because we can’t afford horns: ‘Dah dah dah dah!’ like you do when you sing along to a record. We add our own bridge, chanting ‘Grapevine, grapevine’ over and over again. We make sure we do it in our real voices, not little-girl voices the way so many girls sing. As we come towards the end of the bridge, Ari counts Maxie in, so he knows where to change. And out of respect to the original, we don’t change the gender of the song, we can’t stand it when people do that.

  Island have sent along Dennis Brown to mix. Dennis Brown! ‘Money in My Pocket’ is one of our favourite songs ever. Our track’s got to be finished in one day. We want to prove ourselves, that we’re reliable, not just a bunch of crazy girls. A big star like Dennis Brown turning up is stressful and exciting at the same time. We want to impress him, but as we watch him in the control room, it starts to dawn on us: he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s not getting anything done. At midnight we call in the Jamaican tape op from the studio next door who we’ve really bonded with; her name is Rima. Rima is sensitive and confident, she understands what we want and starts to mix the track. She really saves the day. (Dennis Brown doesn’t seem bothered and leaves with his gangster-type mate.) This is a bold step, to get rid of a big name and use a tape op. But we are bold. Island haven’t got a clue what we’ve done.

  Whilst all this stress is going on, Dennis Morris rings up the studio and tells me he’s developed the photos from our shoot and he has to choose which ones to use tonight because the prints have to be at Island first thing in the morning. Funny that. I decide to leave the mixing of the record with Ari and Rima and get a cab to Dennis’s flat to approve the photos. He’s well pissed off. We spend hours going through the contact sheets. Doesn’t he realise how important these first official images are to us? I leave his place about four in the morning. I call Ari at Nora’s and she says the track is mixed and it’s great.

  Island suggest Dennis Bovell produces our album. He has a very broad knowledge and love of music, has just mixed an experimental band called the Pop Group for instance, but also runs his own reggae sound system and is in a reggae band (Matumbi) as well as mixing lots of reggae artists. Sounds perfect. We meet Dennis and like him immediately. He tells us he wouldn’t have considered the project if he didn’t like the songs. A couple of weeks’ recording is booked at Ridge Farm Studios somewhere out in the sticks. Island are worried that we’re untogether and Dennis is so busy he can’t be pinned down – this way they’ll have us all captive.

  After our final scheduling meeting at Island, Dennis takes me aside and says, ‘I just want to warn you, Dennis Morris is trying to get you thrown out of the band. He’s gone to the bosses and told them you’re disruptive and they’d be better off without you, they’ve had a meeting about getting rid of you.’

  I feel sick. I’m terrified. My body feels like it’s going to implode, my mouth dries out, I can’t focus … we’re on the verge of recording the album. All the work I’ve done to get us to this place … to be chucked out now, disposed of, just because I care so much. Dennis’s mouth is still moving, I focus back in on his words: ‘… don’t worry, Viv, I argued your case, told them that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Viv Albertine is the Slits. Without Viv, there is no Slits.’ The panic starts to drain away, I feel the floor come up and press against my feet again. I’m grounded. I know that with Dennis Bovell on my side, I will be fine. Island respect him so much, he’s probably the person they listen to above everyone else at the moment. I’m safe. And I’ll never speak to that cunt Dennis Morris again.

  None of his photos got used in the end.

  Now we have to find a drummer. Who else can it be but Budgie? We’ve held auditions and a load of boring rock drummers have come through the door and banged away, smashing their cymbals all through the songs. None of them have a broad knowledge of music, none of them have heard any reggae. They don’t like soul. Hopeless. Budgie is friends with Paul Rutherford (later in Frankie Goes to Hollywood), our friend from Liverpool. Paul and his friends follow us around when we’re on tour. It takes a certain type of guy to feel that strongly about the Slits. A guy who is open-minded and intelligent and comfortable with his sexuality. Sometimes I feel like Paul is the only person in the world who thinks I’m lovely. He’s gay, there’s no agenda, he just likes me and I love him.

  Budgie drums in a group called Big in Japan with Paul’s friends Holly Johnson (also in Frankie Goes to Hollywood) and Jayne Casey. We know he’ll have the right attitude, just because of the company he keeps. He comes down to London and plays with us. He’s inventive, has a light touch, is rock-steady and, most important of all, has no problem whatsoever with Ari giving him extremely detailed instructions about the rhythms, the hi-hat patterns and no cymbal bashing. He’s respectful and confident. Ari’s getting stronger and stronger musically and needs a drummer who can play her vision as well as add his own ideas and technique. She’s right and she’s good, but still, to be able to take that from a sixteen-year-old girl who doesn’t play drums, that takes a very special person. Budgie’s in. Not completely in, just in for the album and a tour, he makes it very clear – he’s a straightforward guy – he wants to keep moving on, not be in the Slits for life.

  It’s great to suddenly have this male energy in the room. His presence transforms the dynamic between us. He doesn’t get involved in the squabbling so there are fewer arguments, the air between us feels different, the change is palpable. It’s like the lid’s been lifted off a pressure cooker.

  Dennis relents and has his picture taken with us. Ridge Farm, 1979

  54 CUT

  1979

  We work on the tracks that are going on our precious first album for a month in the rehearsal studio, then pack our bags and head off to the countryside to record.

  Ridge Farm is a big old country house. The whole set-up is run by a talkative, charismatic guy called Frank Andrews. I’m more interested in his wife though, she fascinates me; she’s pretty, petite, pale blonde and has a strong personality, the opposite of her looks – but the thing that really intrigues me is that she’s on some sort of fast where she doesn’t eat anything and only drinks her own piss. She looks perfectly OK on this diet. Maybe a little pale, and her skin is so translucent you can practically see her skull, but apart from that, nothing out of the ordinary. She says she’s going to do it ri
ght up until after Christmas. I try and imagine her serving Christmas lunch to Frank and their little girl and then sitting down to join them with her cup of piss.

  We all eat on site. The meals are cooked by a girl called Denise Roudette, huge heaps of food, vegetarian shepherd’s pie, lasagne, fresh vegetables: I’ve never eaten so much or so healthily before. Denise is one of the sweetest, calmest, smartest girls I’ve ever met, she does a lot towards making the atmosphere at Ridge Farm harmonious. She’s also a bass player and Ian Dury’s girlfriend. Lucky him.

  The recording studio is in a barn near the house. It’s not what I imagined a barn would look like, it looks more like a country church inside. There are very high ceilings with wooden beams and wooden posts. The control room is up in the roof, the engineers look down on the studio through a plate-glass window. We all crowd around the mixing desk in the control room, pushing and shoving each other behind Dennis and Mike Dunne, the engineer, giving our opinions enthusiastically about the atmosphere of the songs, the sound of the guitar, the bass and the backing vocals.

  The excruciating bit comes when we have to actually play. Up until now we’ve only recorded the Peel Session and ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’; both those times we played live as a whole band. Now we’re laying down the instruments separately and it’s a completely different experience. First Budgie and Tessa do the backing track. Dennis keeps stopping them and making Tessa play her bass part over and over again to get the timing right. Every single second has to be in time. Every beat spot on. He’s right of course, but she hasn’t been playing that long, it takes years to get that sort of precision – still Dennis will accept nothing less than perfection. I go quiet as I stand behind him, looking down at Tessa in the studio. I know it’s my turn next and I’m beginning to dread it. When the first backing track is finished, I descend the curved wooden staircase into the studio – feels like I’m entering a Roman arena, going to face the lions – with a knot of anxiety in my chest. Some of the songs I get right quite quickly but others, like ‘Newtown’, make me want to kill myself.