For a genre which is
stereotypically seen as little more than dumb rage, a massive branch of the
publishing industry has dedicated itself to explaining the brief phenomenon of
punk music, far outweighing the number of books given over to grunge, say, or shoegaze. Many of the protagonists have told
their stories by now, with a second volume of Johnny Rotten’s memoirs soon to
join efforts by fellow Sex Pistol Glen Matlock, Adam Ant, Dee Dee Ramone and
more, while biographers have detailed the lives of Johnny Thunders, Sid
Vicious, Ian Curtis, Joe Strummer and other deceased stars. However, considering
one of the most positive legacies of punk was its inspirational effect for
female musicians, there has been little written about the first female punks. Zoe
Howe’s biography of The Slits, Typical Girls, was a good starting point. Now,
Slits guitarist Viv Albertine takes the story further with her autobiography.
There’s no holding back here; opening with the line ‘anyone who
writes an autobiography is either a twat or broke. I’m a bit of both’, Clothes Clothes Clothes... is
unsparing throughout. Albertine has a talent for getting inside a scene and
then scandalising it. As a teenager, she becomes one of thousands of squatters
occupying empty buildings in West London, but the scary looking people who come and go at all hours, and the bricks through the window, are too far even for this
milieu, and she is asked to leave: ‘our neighbour regrets ever mentioning the
flat… we’ve disrupted the whole street’. On The Slits’ first tour they are an
equally disruptive presence, their youth, gender and unconventional musical
style making them ‘definitely the most controversial band’ on a bill with The
Clash and The Buzzcocks, banned from hotels and attacked by audience members. Most
punks writing their memoirs describe the physical danger they faced walking the streets,
and this was especially true of The Slits. Albertine endures run-ins with
bouncers, skinheads, teds and mods, while Ari Up, the uninhibited but
vulnerable 15 year old singer, is stabbed twice.
In a recent Guardian interview, Albertine said that she
hoped her story would be appealing to teenage girls, and her descriptions of
the process by which she came to feel empowered to make music is especially
strong. As a young girl, she tells her dad that she wants to be a singer, but
his reply is ‘you’re not chic enough’ – no question of whether she can actually
has any talent or not. Many punks have spoken about a feeling that before the Sex
Pistols, musicians seemed like they came from another planet – Albertine shares
this belief (‘I thought that actually being
a musician was something you were born to’), but also faces an additional
barrier: ‘there wasn’t that equality at the time, it was inconceivable that a
girl could cross over into male territory and be in a band’. Before Patti Smith,
the only females in music she could think of were groupies, and Yoko Ono, defined by their relationship to men. Going to art
college, and mixing with the likes of Sid Vicious, Keith Levene and Mick Jones
(who she thanks for taking her seriously when she wanted to learn guitar),
gives her the confidence to make her own sound. Like most punk bands, The Slits
were trying for a very different sort of style (Dionne Warwick singing Burt
Bacharach was a particular inspiration, apparently), but, filtered through their energy and
lack of expertise, something far more original and idiosyncratic came out.
As in Tracy Thorn’s recent Bedsit Disco Queen, Albertine is
interesting when she discusses the debates about politics and personal
philosophy that take place behind the scenes in any new band – from how to
create a distinctively female style (‘I don’t want to copy any male guitarists…
I keep thinking ‘what would I sound like if I was a guitar sound?’’) to whether
the drummer should wear a bra onstage. The book also contains interesting
portraits of her fellow punks, from Mick Jones (controlling and conflicting,
but ultimately loving and generous), Sid Vicious (intelligent, impulsive, shy,
loyal but ambitious), Nancy Spungeon (‘boring’ but vulnerable) and, most memorably,
Johnny Rotten as a cross between Quentin Crisp and Kenneth Williams. Her photos
from 1975 – 77 are also a treat, capturing the cute awkwardness of the punk
scene before the ‘look’ turned into a cliché ('we have quite a limited existence,
we’re not very worldly’).
The second half of Clothes Clothes Clothes…. is far darker,
dealing with the post-punk years, as Albertine tries to adjust to normal life.
At first she works, incongruously, as an aerobics instructor, before getting
into film-making, where she is reasonably successful but faces more
discrimination and threatening behaviour from male colleagues. Most affecting,
though, is the harrowing description of her ectopic pregnancy, her repeated
attempts to conceive through IVF, and her struggle with cancer, diagnosed weeks after
the birth of her daughter. Feeling pressurised to conform to life as a
housewife, Albertine sells off her musical gear, and tries to become anonymous, never
mentioning her former career to other mums she meets through school. The oppressive atmosphere of her married life, described in Confessions of a MILF from her comeback album, is expressed in greater deal here, a stark contrast to the exuberance and energy of her youth.
There is a Hollywood arc to the story, as Albertine is
nurtured back to confidence by the attention of Vincent Gallo (Clothes Clothes
Clothes contains quite probably the most sympathetic depiction of Gallo you’ll
ever read), and an invitation to rejoin her former bandmates in concert, but
the skill of Albertine’s writing is that the dark times and domesticity are
equally as important to the reader as the parts of her life lived in public, rather than a
means of making her comeback feel more euphoric. The unsparing honesty of the
storytelling gives voice to a silent, private sort of despair which still
struggles for expression today; as Sleater-Kinney guitarist Carrie Brownstein
says, 'if there is a voice... that is seldom heard, it's that of a middle aged woman singing about the trappings of motherhood, traditions and marriage'. And what could be more punk than that?
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