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

by Viv Albertine

  Steve Beresford

  When we get back to London, I go to see him play with a rotating group of musicians called Company at the ICA in the West End and again at the Musicians’ Collective in Camden. I also see other great improvisational players like Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Misha Mengelberg, Lol Coxhill, Fred Frith, Han Bennink and John Zorn.

  I’m so excited by their playing; they’re obviously all technically amazing players but they don’t rely on learned formats, patterns or scales and compositions. They push themselves to respond to the moment, to the other players in the room, to the room itself, they are completely in the moment. It is very demanding and rigorous music but can also be playful and light. I find their attitude liberating and wonder if I could do it. I try it with my new housemate, Trace Newton-Ingham, and my neighbour, Tom Bailey, from the Thompson Twins (who were a large experimental band before they had hits). We do some pretty wild stuff in Tom’s studio. It’s not really something I can bring to the Slits yet, but it’s a new musical path and it helps my confidence.

  Knowing Steve Beresford helps me construct a mental framework with which to view myself musically, a context that validates my lack of ability. He’s very open and non-judgemental and also extremely intelligent, so I trust and respect his opinion. I lap up Steve’s views on jazz and improvisation: ‘Singing in tune is overrated,’ he says. He also tells me a little story about the great free-jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman. ‘Ornette Coleman was always a semitone sharp when he played,’ says Steve. ‘When a producer told him to play a semitone lower, Coleman tried it but said, “It doesn’t sound like me any more.”’ Now I can see a way forward despite my limitations. Even though this point of view is supposedly one of the main doctrines of ‘punk’, in reality all the bands except us and the Raincoats, and a few other people dotted around, can play to a high standard and want to be rock gods. Because Gareth and Steve are so talented and proficient, Ari respects them and I gradually start introducing some of the principles of free improvisation and experimentation into the Slits. Funk, jazz and disco are very uncool in the ‘punk’ scene, so it’s quite radical of the Pop Group to be playing those rhythms; Bristol has an enlightened music scene. The Pop Group are all good dancers too, we go down to the Dug Out (Bristol night club) and they dance wildly all night. I’ve never seen white boys do that before – either they headbang to heavy rock or throw themselves at each other at Sex Pistols gigs, a few can dance to reggae – but these Bristol boys really let go.

  Flyer for some of the improvised Company shows I went to

  Because of the Pop Group and Steve Beresford’s influence on our taste in music, when we plan our first headlining tour, we decide to mix up the musical genres on the bill and introduce our fans to the music we’re listening to. One of the records we love most is Brown Rice by the trumpeter Don Cherry, with its African and Arabic rhythms. The title track is long and meandering but full of energy, drive and menace. ‘Brown Rice’ is hypnotic and trancelike and the lyrics mix nursery rhymes with whispered voodoo-like chants. It’s trippy without being hippy.

  We invite Don Cherry on our Simply What’s Happening tour and he says yes. We also fly the reggae singer and ‘toaster’ Prince Hammer and his band over from Jamaica (we’ve blown most of our advance on arranging this tour). We decide to rotate the line-up, with a different one of us headlining every night.

  Ad for our tour, 1979

  On the first day of the tour, to my delight I find myself sitting at a table on the tour bus with Don Cherry and a couple of his band: I feel so privileged and excited. We’re chatting away all friendly and relaxed, I’m holding my own, trying not to get nervous that I’m talking to this cool, talented American musician. I don’t remember how, but the subject gets on to junkies. ‘I hate junkies,’ I say. Everyone goes silent. I don’t understand. I look from one stony face to another, no one speaks, no one smiles. Something’s wrong. I start to feel very alone at the table, the other three guys seem to grow bigger and loom over me as I shrink smaller and smaller. Then in a slow, measured and very cold voice, Don Cherry, looking me straight in the eye, says, ‘I hate hate.’ It’s a complete and total putdown. I know it’s the title of a song by Razzy – the DJ used to play it at Dingwalls – and I love the song; but what a fool I look and feel for hating anything. How unworldly, narrow-minded and judgemental I appear.

  I have a knot of anxiety in my stomach all through the rest of the tour because things are so awkward between me and Don. I feel like an outsider on my own tour. I can’t wait for it to end. I can’t look Don in the eye, he doesn’t look at me either. Don’s trumpet playing is amazing but his band are disappointing – he must have thought that because he was playing with young people he should bring rock musicians – he’s brought Lou Reed’s backing band with him, the music isn’t pure and trancey like we expected, more like muso rock.

  Ari makes great friends with Neneh Cherry, who is Don’s stepdaughter. She has bright red dyed hair, and although she’s only about fifteen, she has this grown-up, wise, maternal air about her – at the same time she seems very cool. I’ve never seen maternal look cool before.

  The idea of pregnancy did not become a beautiful thing for me, or having a baby an acceptable life choice, until I saw Neneh Cherry performing pregnant on Top of the Pops in 1988. Never on TV, in public, in magazines or in a club had any girl worn pregnancy the way Neneh did that night. She was beautiful, but not in a glowing earth-mothery way, she was sassy, full of attitude, sexy, powerful and a great dancer.

  Luckily for me, my friend Paul Rutherford and his mates come on some of the dates so I hang out with them. In Plymouth we all stay at a boarding house. I smuggle Paul and his two friends into my room for the night. I go off to the bathroom, which is across the hall; the house is very suburban and claustrophobic, patterned carpet, embossed cream walls, plastic flowers in a vase on a three-legged table. As I pass the top of the stairs, I jump because there’s a boy standing very still in the shadows. He’s about ten years old, short dark hair, navy school uniform. He’s holding something, I look down, both his hands are wrapped around his huge, erect cock. The whole thing is bizarre, even more shocking because his giant cock looks so out of proportion to his pre-adolescent body. In a panic and trying to normalise the situation I say, ‘Very nice,’ then turn round and walk steadily back to my room. I tell Paul and the others what I just saw. They’re terrified, especially the boys. We discuss what sort of mental state the boy must be in to do that, we think that his mother probably takes in a lot of sailors and maybe they’ve fiddled with him, corrupted him. A piece of paper slides under the door. Paul screams. On the lined schoolbook notepaper is written: I think you are very nice too, please come outside, in childish writing. Now we’re too scared to leave the room, the boy might still be standing there, might stand there all night. We lock the door and piss in the little corner sink. The next morning he’s nowhere to be seen. We haven’t got the nerve to tell his mother, as she serves us scrambled eggs on toast, although we think she should know.

  After the tour I find out that Don Cherry is a heroin addict.

  56 SPACE IS THE PLACE

  1979

  We listen to ‘Space Is the Place’ by Sun Ra whenever we travel through Europe on tour. It works especially well in Switzerland; we put it on at the beginning of the Gotthard Tunnel. Bruce Smith, our drummer, has his ghetto blaster on his lap and the rest of us hover around him, going, ‘Not yet, don’t press it yet.’ As soon as we enter the cool shade of the tunnel, we shout in unison, ‘Now!’ He jabs ‘Play’ and we sink back into our seats, losing ourselves in the music, each one of us in a completely different mental space. The track lasts exactly the length of the journey through the tunnel, twenty minutes. It builds and sways, it’s shamanic and uplifting. If we time it right, the track ends as we burst out into the light on the other side. Orgasmic.

  We love Sun Ra, we’re very inspired by him, his music feels accessible to us, the way he mixes childlike rhymes into his
repetitious, overlapping rhythms. We go to see him play live every time we’re in New York. We think that if someone as extraordinary as him can use songs from childhood, then so can we. We need to feel validated; we aren’t taken very seriously in England, especially within the music industry. But here is someone we respect doing what we want to do, and no one calls him silly or unmusical. Lots of girls’ history of music is playground songs; chants, folk songs and nursery rhymes, passed down through mothers, aunts, older sisters and friends. I want to incorporate these rhymes into our songs, they are all I have in terms of a musical background and I intend to use them, however small and insignificant they are to other people. This is one of the ways we can build an identity for ourselves – we’re starting from zero, no rules, no role models. Of course we’re going to be derided by people who haven’t heard music used in this way before, played by a bunch of wild, scruffy girls: new things are often threatening or considered frivolous and take a while to sink in. We have to take little snatches of ideas and inspiration wherever we find them: a conversation overheard on a bus, Rotten coming from a council estate, Vivienne Westwood’s fearlessness, Sun Ra and Don Cherry validating the use of nursery rhymes … and stitch it all together like a patchwork quilt to create the Slits’ sound.

  At Ally Pally gig, 1980. A rare outing for my Rickenbacker. Body paint, harlequin dress from Angels (a theatrical store that sold off its old stock). Spalding hi-top trainers. Pink lurex knickers from a Berlin sex shop

  We incorporate a whole a cappella rhyme and chant section into our live set, using Sun Ra’s ‘Quit that jive, Jack, put it in your pocket ’til I get back, I’m going out to space as fast as I can, ain’t got time to shake your hand’ (which is adapted from a Slim Gaillard song). We’ve added the rhyme that Don used to sing to Neneh Cherry when she was young, ‘Ooh ah, ooh ah ah, who stole the cookies from the cookie jar?’ And two from my school playground: ‘Milk, milk, lemonade, round the corner chocolate’s made,’ and ‘Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, what are these?’ (point at chest).

  We play in America twice. First we do three nights supporting the Clash at Bond’s Casino, in New York. They’re playing a two-week residency. It’s nice of Mick to invite us, he’s going out with a pretty American singer called Ellen Foley, so it could be quite awkward, but he’s very loyal to his friends. We fly on Freddie Laker’s airline, it costs fifty quid each way. Even waiting in the taxi queue outside the airport is exciting: our yellow cab pulls up and we pile in and set off to the Iroquois Hotel in Manhattan. We drive under a bridge with graffiti saying Wheels over Indian Trails. As we’re looking up at the words and agreeing solemnly with the sentiments, the bonnet of our cab springs open, obscuring the driver’s view of the freeway. A few minutes in New York and we’re already dead. The driver steers blindly to where he thinks the verge is, accompanied by a soundtrack of blaring horns. We’re too terrified to scream, our senses are heightened, the world has gone into slow motion, I look ahead trying to summon superhuman powers and see through the bonnet. We make it to the edge of the road without a collision. The driver gets out, ties the bonnet down with a piece of string and sets off again without saying a word.

  Steve Beresford, who plays in the Slits now, can’t play the Bond’s Casino shows with us because he has a gig in Amsterdam. Dick’s found us a brilliant replacement though: Raymond Jones, who plays keyboards with Chic. Ari is overawed by Raymond, very unusual for her; she frets and worries that we’d better be great for him, she’s not worried about the audience or the Clash. All day before our first night at Bond’s, Ari refuses to speak and will only communicate via written notes, to preserve her voice. Every now and then she lets out a little trill to test her throat. As we get closer to show time, Ari starts saying she doesn’t think she will be able to sing tonight, her voice isn’t up to it. None of us take any notice of her, she does this before every show, she’s always holding us to ransom over her voice. I don’t know whether it’s nerves or a power trip. Tonight we indulge her and tell her not to sing at the soundcheck, to see how she feels nearer the show. I’m not worried, there’s no way she’s not going to sing tonight now that Raymond’s in the band.

  It gets to a couple of minutes before we go on and Ari’s still saying she’s not sure if she’s going to sing. This is one of the most important gigs we’ve ever done, our first in America and in front of thousands of people. Right up until the last minute she keeps us guessing. In the end she doesn’t do it. We are defiant and go on without her. Raymond is game, ‘Yeah let’s do this!’ So is Tessa. Ari can’t believe it. She thought we’d give up. But we go on and play the whole set as an instrumental and just sing backing vocals. God knows what the audience think, they seem to be into it, dancing and smiling. Halfway through Ari comes on and does her skank dancing. I don’t think she can bear us to be on stage without her. I feel we’ve let the Clash down as well as ourselves and the audience. The next two nights go without a hitch and Ari doesn’t mention her voice again. We’re supported at Bond’s by two really great bands, the Golden Palominos with Shelley Hirsch and John Zorn one night, and a three-piece girl band called ESG (Emerald, Sapphire and Gold) the other two nights. Howie Montaug is on the door, he’s a gay Jewish New Yorker who writes poetry. He is the guy you have to have on the door turning people away, that’s how it works in New York.

  On the second visit to America, Ari doesn’t use her voice as a weapon again, but she does cause chaos wherever we go. In every town she runs around the back of the cafes we eat in and tries to talk to the immigrants working in the kitchens. They’re very suspicious of her: possibly they don’t have visas and Ari looks like nothing on earth to them, with her tower of dreadlocks and layers of skirts over dresses – she shows them how she dances and shouts into the kitchens that they’re being exploited and shouldn’t be treated like slaves.

  Me and Ari bothering a fit boy from a restaurant kitchen in LA, 1981. Vintage straw hat. Sarong, Brixton Market

  When we arrive in Philadelphia, we decide to pay Sun Ra a visit in homage to his great music. We don’t know how to find him so we do what we’d do in England and look him up in the phone book. Phone directories are inside public phone booths in America, same as England. We look under Sun, but find nothing, we feel a bit foolish but we also check under Ra, and there it is: Ra, Sun – followed by his number and address. Someone suggests we call and check he’s in (not to ask if he wants to see us), someone else shouts, ‘No no! It’s destiny, of course he’ll be in!’ We all agree we should just take a chance and turn up, so we pile back into the van (Ari, Tessa, Bruce, Steve Beresford, Christine Robertson – who co-manages us with Dick O’Dell – and Dave Lewis, who later plays guitar with us) and navigate through Philadelphia, past rickety clapboard houses with stoops, stopping and asking directions whenever we get lost. It’s Hallowe’en, we’re dressed in our usual stuff but the people we stop peer past Christine, who’s driving, into the back of the van and ask if those are our Hallowe’en costumes. We arrive at Sun Ra’s small terraced house; it’s very ordinary and modest with a front gate, short path and plain front door. Not what I imagined at all, I thought there’d at least be a plaster planet on the gatepost or something. We knock, hopping from one foot to the other like children on the doorstep of a birthday party – Christine and Dave stay in the van so we don’t overwhelm Sun Ra – no answer. We knock again. The next-door neighbour opens her front door: ‘You lookin’ for Mr Ra?’ ‘Yes!’ we chorus. ‘He’s away on tour right now.’ She gives us a quick look up and down and immediately shuts the door. Still, we got to see Sun Ra’s house and Sun Ra’s street and talk to Sun Ra’s neighbour. Result.

  My old Sun Ra fan club application

  By the time we reach Ann Arbor we’re exhausted but have to go straight to WORT Radio for an interview. Ari’s in a foul mood, she’s young and all this touring is difficult for her. As we sit down in front of the microphones, I say to Ari, ‘The only way we’re going to get through this is if we make it fun.’ Every tim
e the interviewer asks a question, we mess around, drum on the desk and shout out the answers, luckily the DJ joins in the mayhem. Next there’s a competition, the winner gets tickets to our show tonight. The DJ asks us what the question is, I say, ‘Ask the listeners to list the colours of the stains on a girl’s knickers throughout her monthly cycle.’ Me and Ari have been talking about writing a song around this subject (‘Girls and Their Willies’), we think it could be quite beautiful. The switchboard lights up, we get loads of insults, which we laugh hysterically at, then a girl comes on the line and says, ‘White, pink, red, dark red, pink, white.’ ‘Yeah! She wins!!’

  In LA we’re picked up at the airport by a big burly guy, the manager of a reggae artist we’re playing with. As he drives us to our hotel, he tells us he’s a Vietnam veteran and he’s seen some terrible things. He was in the vanguard of men who slashed and burned the villages and killed the inhabitants. He says he’s now a changed man, has discovered reggae and wants to put things right by promoting artists from Jamaica. When he laughs, his face twists into a hideous tortured death mask, full of pain. Everything he wears, his trousers, his shirt, his underwear – which we can see poking over the waistband – even his wallet, is camouflage-print. This guy is in charge of us for our stay in LA. We say we want to go to the desert, Death Valley – he takes us, says he knows how to camp out in the desert. We believe him. Off we go. The photographer Anton Corbijn comes half the way with us and takes some shots of us looking like we’re in a Diane Arbus picture – I’ve got socks tied in my hair and am holding a child’s parasol – they’re for the Christmas cover of the NME. We arrive in Death Valley, I can’t believe Americans come here for a holiday, it’s barren, bleak. The Vietnam vet says it takes time to see its beauty.