Bandsplain - The Slits with Zoë Howe

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

In the mid-70s, four not-so-typical teenage girls came barreling into the nascent UK punk scene. The Slits split in the early 80s, but their impact on punk was profound and foundational. Zoë Howe, author of Typical Girls, the Story of the Slits, joins Yasi to talk about the revolution of the Slits. Follow Zoë Howe on Twitter @ladyzoe2dots, and check out her book, Typical Girls, the Story of the Slits, on her website, zoehowe.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait like Bandsplain? Hello and welcome to Bandsblane. I am your host, Yossi Salick. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to explain a cult band or iconic artist to me and to you. Today's episode is about the slits. If you've never heard the slits, they were not to.

Typical girls. This is what the slits sound like. First and foremost, my guest today, I am a known anglofile, and I am so excited to have a British guest. My guest is British. Her name is Zoe Howe. She is a journalist and an author who wrote the book Typical Girls, The Story of the Slits, in addition to other books, including Dayglow, the polystyrene story, Stevie Nix, visions, dreams, and rumors, barbed wire, Kisses, the Jesus and Mary Chain Story, and the novel, Shine On Markey Moon. She's a little bit accomplished, you guys. She's written a couple books. Zoe, welcome to the show, first of all, isn't it? And also, can you, besides the fact that you literally wrote the book about the slits, I guess tell me what, like, why did you write that book? What made you so interested in the slits that you wanted to literally write the book about? Well, thank you for having me, first of all. Thank you for your lovely introduction, very kind. It's lovely to be here. I was very into punk music anywhere and I had a very, very underground internet radio show, which had about three listeners.

And I think possibly one of them was me listening after the fact. It was extremely underground. But it was a kind of punky reggae show. And so I was listening to a lot of punk, a lot of reggae. And I remember listening to The Slits and thinking, why, you know, because I love, I love bookshops, obviously. I like, I love books. But I just thought, why is there no book about the slits? There's a book about the clad. You know, several books about the clash. There's books about the pistols. I'm very interested in knowing about the slits and there's no book. And I, you know, was very much a kind of a novice writer in those days. I, you know, I wasn't a professional at all. But as time went on, I realized there was not going to be a book about the slits. And I just thought, I think I just have to do it. You know, and it was in sort of true punk style that I was like, you know what? I have no expertise. I'm completely uneducated, but this has to be done and done in their spirit. So I kind of just thought, let's just try. And I knew that an anniversary was coming up. It was coming up to the 30th anniversary of their album cut.

So we're coming up to 2009. So I thought, I think that would be a good publishers like an anniversary. So let's see if we can kind of hook it on that. And so that was sort of the starting point, really, just a kind of sense of injustice that they didn't have a book and so many other groups did. Yeah, that's, I mean, thank you for your service, first of all. Yeah, I think they didn't have a book and a lot of other groups did is like sort of like a microcosm of like everything right about the slits. Like it's like so many things that a lot of other groups had they didn't get to have.

And it's quite insane actually, given the massive impact that they had on music. and how many, you know, generations of artists were inspired by them. That's so true. So I'm really excited to talk about them. Oh, likewise. I wanted to just like set the scene a little bit around. A lot is made, obviously, about the slits being women. So I just want to set the scene a little bit of like what was happening in terms of like

female rock music in this vein, maybe prior. and up to contemporaneously with the slits. I guess you could say like, you know, there was the pleasure seekers, right? Susie Cuatro, obviously very different. But just starting to make some intros, that was around 1964.

Fannie, who our producer Dylan did produce a gorgeous podcast episode about for Lost Notes, a great podcast, was basically the first all-female rock band to reach the top 40. They were 1969 to 19. There were the Pandoras, 1964 to 1968, obviously Blondie, and the Patty Smith group both formed in 1974. We have the runaways formed in 1975 and put out their first album in 1976.

And then we get into like more punk stuff, right? The X-ray specs. Who obviously had the fantastic singer Polystyrene who you also wrote a book about. about that was 1976 when they formed the Avengers in America, Penelope Houston, 1977, Plasmatics, Wendy O Williams, 1977, and Girl School, which was not a punk band, more of a metal band, right, British metal band, but all women, 1978. And I guess I should obviously include Susie and the banshees in this grouping. While I think genre-wise ended up being quite different from the slits were mates and that's right i'm using my british terms today you guys um

with the slits and sort of like tangentially in the same scene is that right so yeah very much so and you also had groups like the modettes and Kleenex from switzerland you know there was quite a bit of hybridization there was a lot of crossing over and so you know the original uh guitarist in the slits kate korek would then go on to be in the modettes with romona who was also in Kleenex And so there was a lot of that kind of cross fertilisation going on. Because I suppose an important thing to mention about the kind of scene that they were all coming out of is that it was this kind of West London squat scene. There were a lot of beautiful old buildings, you know, especially around the Ladbrook Grove area, Portobello Road, that had just been completely either, you know, blitzed during the war and just left. You know, there was a lot of bomb damage or just kind of these houses that had just been left to kind of rot.

And actually that was a really key part of this scene because, you know, a lot of arty kids would either come in from the regions or the suburbs or, you know, Londoners. And they'd build a kind of community. And, you know, in these amazing houses that, you know, they couldn't really afford rent, but they kind of made a community. And that meant that a lot of really exciting things happened that might not otherwise have happened because it was almost like a big extended punky family. Totally. it's almost as if we need to subsidize housing and such things so that artists can focus on creating art. So interesting that that might be a thing that nobody seems to pay any attention to, still to this day. But yeah, that's very cool.

And also I think you make a good point around at least the scene we're talking about. It was very art school, right? if the people, even if some of the people weren't enrolled in art school. Like, for example, I'm struck by how Viv Alperteen did go to art school, but then her, like, best friend was Sid Vicious, who was not in school at all. But they were all sort of hanging around this scene. And she met Mick Jones, right at art school from the clash. Yeah, I guess, like, these days, I mean, for me anyways, and Patricia don't correct me if I'm wrong, we think of art school as this, like sort of like prestigious, expensive, you know, like nobody can go to art school anymore. But,

but I guess in London in the late 70s, like you, you know, you could go to art school, even being working class. And maybe it's still like that in Europe since you're a superior to America. I don't know. Well, I mean, perhaps in Canada. I don't know. Where are we still allowed to go to art school for a free album? I mean, there's so little support, you know, for any of that now in Britain, that's for short, but in those days, it was an option for people who, you know, maybe you really did want to be artists, and it was also an option for people who were leaving school and didn't really know what to do, but they were kind of interesting and creative. And I think it was just a little bit easier in those days, certainly financially, to do that. And then you'd be thrown in with other

interesting, like-minded people. And you might not want to kind of go on to be a painter or whatever, but it was more about an open mindset that was engendered. And I think, again, being in that squat scene, As you say, Sid Vicious was not an art school person. Viv was. Mick was, I think Johnny Rotten went to art school. So, you know, art college. So I think just being around those kinds of people also sort of filtered in to like-minded people who might not otherwise have enrolled. But just to be around that was really important. X-ray specs, you know, polystystyering, not an art school girl. But, you know, she was an artist. She thought like an artist, like a visual artist or a pop artist. I'll tell you what, your friend Yossi Salik here at UC University of California, Santa Barbara. really surrounded by like-minded pukashel necklaces and people who really loved Jack Johnson music. So just like a little challenging for me. We won't get it. This is not about me, but I'll just say rough times for Yossi's all in the three years at Yossi Sama. Be strong, be strong, Yassie.

Listen, I overcame. Still she persevered. Okay. So I actually want to start with Palm Olive. because I think in many ways while she was the first to, well, let me not even, the formation of the slits and the members is a true whiteboard red string situation. But anyways, I feel in all the reading I did, it feels that Palm Olive was sort of the driving force of the beginning of the slits. I would definitely agree with that, absolutely.

Those early years, you know, she really was the founder of the band. And, you know, she, again, she was going out with Joe Strummer at the time, again, living in that sort of squat scene. And so, and she was very inspired by what he was doing. He was in the 101ers, which was one of those kind of pub rock bands that kind of crossed over into that punky thing. So she was like, yeah, I want a bit of that, you know, that looks fun. Yeah, totally. She was born on December 26, 1954, a Capricorn, for those of you at home, starting to chart the astrology. she was born in Spain brought up a bit in Africa

is that right? Oh I'm not sure actually I can't remember actually anyways born in Spain she was Spanish Paloma Romero was her birth name like you said she met Woody which is I believe what Joe Strummer went as back then in those punk squats

that you're referring to and he got scooped up by the clash to be their singer. I loved this that Paul Mollav got her punk name from Paul Simon

and by the way the hottest man in punk rock maybe ever I think I would say I'm going to go ahead and make that distinction just a gorgeous specimen of a man

I must say yeah but he couldn't say her name right so he called her a palm olive and she liked it and took it on right is that kind of how that is correct yes yeah Absolutely, that kind of classic punk name thing, which I think everyone was sort of trying to think of their punk name. And that happened quite organically because he said, you know, what's your name?

She said Paloma in her gorgeous Spanish accent. He was like, oh, palm olive, which is obviously a, other soaps are available. But it is a, yes, a famous brand of detergent for the body. That's very funny to me. Okay, from your book, I learned something that I absolutely loved, that palm olive initially wanted to be a mime. That was her dream was to be a mime. Yeah, yeah. She was very much kind of into the theater.

And she actually wanted to, yeah, be an actress, you know, she was very into mime, physical theater. But yeah, she kind of fell into the drumming thing because it was also very physical. So she's this natural performer. And it just went that way because she was, I suppose she was just surrounded by music and musicians all the time. Right, totally. I was very struck by that. But also, you know, it kind of isn't keeping with what you sort of, hinted up just a bit earlier that this was like a scene of artists, right? And it kind of ended up

not mattering much or at least just falling into place sometimes what kind of art they would end up doing, like for a lot of them, right? I mean, I think you could say that Mick Jones was always going to be a musician. He was clearly like one of those like actual proper musicians. But the rest of them, it just, you know, they took up a palette, whatever that palette was and ended up making art out a bit. I think that's so cool. Yeah, yeah, that's really true. And I think it's, it's not surprising in a way when you actually look at the kind of, you know, you look at the long view and pick out any of those people and look at what they subsequently went on and did. And, you know, in many cases, it would be music, but they would also be painting and they'd also be making ceramics or they'd try making films. It was natural to

them. It was, it was sort of pure creativity, I suppose, and there was no one there to say to them, well, you've just got to pick one thing and stick with it, because otherwise no one's going to take you seriously or you've got to focus. You know, there would have been people who would naturally have wanted to do that. But generally speaking, it was hugely creative. And I love the way you put that, you know, the palette. That's absolutely true. You know, let's try this. What happens when I do that? What happens if I do these two things together with that person? And I think that it's such a kind of unique time, I think. And it does make you wonder whether that can ever happen again. I think, again, what you touched on with the sort of lack of support, the lack of housing, that sort of thing,

it does make it very difficult for people to be free and creative unless they're, you know, they've already got kind of a private income or something like that. Totally. So Palm Olive was in this band, Flowers of Romance. She had taken up drumming, like you said, like sort of accidentally because the mime troupe was looking for a drummer, not a new mime to join their ranks. And so she was like, all right, I'll pay drums. And she joined this Flowers of Romance, which was Sid Vicious's band.

with Viv Albertine and Joe Fall and Sarah Hall, who were the girlfriends of the Sex Pistols, Steve Jones and Paul Cook. We were a group of people just hung out together, and I went to a pub in Westbourne Grove one night and was introduced to Sid Vicious. And he, I said I had a guitar, which I probably had had about three weeks. And he said, oh, why don't we form a band? And I was quite taken aback. But I was up for it, of course.

It's great. Can't play a thing. But never mind, nor could he. Yeah, that's right. The flowers of romance that have this kind of, mythical quality now, you know, in the kind of punk story. And there's this sort of, I think there was a sort of feeling of a kind of slightly fluid line up and a sort of conceptual nature to them.

And of course, the flowers of romance would go on to be a song title of a Public Image Limited song. I think Keith Levine was involved as well. You know, there was a lot of coming and going, but it was kind of a bit of a joke to call it the flowers of romance. And I think they were named by John Leiden because it was obviously really, you know, there was nothing romantic about it. The idea was that they were the kind of the flowers, the fruits of romantic love.

And here we are and look at us now. They formed this fake band and they didn't have a name. So I came up with Flowers of Romance because I thought it was the most absurd title in the world. They were kind of, they were doing their thing, you know, in quite a sort of maybe, yeah, no one really talks about flowers of romance. I don't think there's going to be a Flowers of Romance biography. But they were an important part of. the story. Yeah.

But it wasn't easy. It doesn't sound like they did, they'd ever made music. It sounds like it was more of a theoretical situation. And me, Sid Vicious, palm olive, and a girl called Sarah are rehearsing every day in that boiling hot summer, all dressed in blacks, in Joe Strummer's basement in a squat in West London. I think it was one of those sort of concept. things rather than anything else. But it has a, the legendist.

Yeah, I think so. And again, a sort of a bit of a community thing where sort of people were kind of, you know, trying stuff. But I think Sid Vicious was, you know, a bit of a malign influence in some respects. And Palm Olive definitely didn't have very good memories of, I used the word working with him kind of advisedly, but, you know, being in the flowers of romance with him. And Sid, it's on vocals of sex. And this is where Sid invented the pogo dance when he jumps up and down.

Anyway, so we do it every day, every day, every day until September comes. And we emerge from the basement into the sunlight and white as ever. And without one song. I don't know what happened. Yeah, apparently, I mean, from several accounts, including her own, she didn't want to sleep with him. And so he kicked her out of the group. Yeah. A familiar story, I think, in many different versions.

for women throughout the years of, you know, you sort of reject the advances and then suddenly you don't have the job anymore or you don't get the promotion or you get kicked out of the band. It's just, you know, it was ever thus. Totally. I liked what she said about it, though, in an interview later. She just said, we were young people and sex was up in the air. It wasn't a moral code. I just didn't find him attractive and that was that.

He was actually a very insecure guy. She think it's like kind of cool. She didn't make like a huge deal on it, right? She was just like, well, you're ugly. And so, Godspeed to you, and I'm going to go make a girls punk band. Exactly, yes. Yeah, I don't think he was terribly mature in how he handled things. They were all like teenagers, right?

That's the other thing I think that were not talking about. Were any of them mature? They were like 18, 19, right? Yeah, no, they were kids, absolutely. But it is quite interesting to sort of see how the girls would often handle things as opposed to how the boys would handle things. Totally. Yeah, I mean, of course, you know,

they had plenty of evolution to do all round. I mean, we have honestly said vicious to thank for being a bit of an ass for getting us to the slits because, you know, lit a fire in Palmol to be like, well, I don't fucking need you. I don't start my own band. Absolutely.

Thank you, Sid. Thank you, Sid. And so she also had this quote, which I liked. She said, imagine the turmoil. I'm having problems with Joe, her boyfriend, Joe Strummer. I lost a lot of friends because I was tired of hippies. She cut out all the hippie friends of her life. So I was alone. Out of that turmoil, I started writing songs. And out of that came the forming of the slits in 1976. Those initial songs were very punkish and true to how I felt. Some of the songs were just angry. Number one enemy, Newtown, shoplifting. But then as the group progressed near the end, I wrote Adventures close to home, which was almost like a farewell. I say don't take it personal. I think Newtown was an originally called Drugtown around the time that she wrote it. So she's writing, I brought that up to just be like, okay, so she's having this turmoil, she's kicked out of a band, she's having problems with her boyfriend, she's sick of hippies,

and she just starts writing songs, which is very interesting to me considering she was a drummer. Like, it wouldn't occur to me that the drummer, no shade to any drummer's listening. I'm sure you're all very capable of writing songs. But I guess I was kind of surprised that she was really the one that wrote some of the earliest slit songs. It's quite interesting actually because, yeah, I mean, the way she approaches the drums is very different to, I think, you know, a lot of drums. I'm a drummer myself. I'm married to a drummer, you know, so drums are a big thing. No shade to you or your husband is what I mean by that. No, entirely, no shade taken at all. But if that's the right way of saying it. But yeah, no, she, you know, there's something about, there's something of the artist about palm olive. And so, you know, the way she would approach the drums wasn't just sort of boof, kiff, boof, boof, kiff. She was a approaching them in a very kind of open way and an experimental way. And again, she was drawing musically on the things that she grew up listening to. So that would be like flamenco music and African rhythms and all that sort of thing that was feeding into Spanish music. And then she was,

you know, there was the influence of the bands that were just around her in London at that time. And so she was funneling all of that through and then playing in absolutely her own way. Because again, you know, none of these people were schooled in music, which is actually a kind of a really great thing because she just absolutely did it her own way. And people would often sort of criticize that for sort of, you know, she speeds up, then she slows down. But actually it's kind of, you know, it's a mistake to not think that is sometimes deliberate because, you know, it was pure expression and imagination through the drums. And it's just not something we're used to hearing, even now. So we're like, oh, you know, that's not how I would imagine a drummer to sound. Well,

you know, she was kind of beyond that. And so with the songs that she was writing, She had a kind of, you know, she has a very poetic soul. She's a seeker. She's very spiritual. Totally. So again, she's sort of processing her feelings and expressing those things through her lyrics, which would be quite surreal in some respects and, you know, almost psychedelic. So like in Newtown, the song that you referred to, there's something very poignant about

that song for other reasons too. But she was observing the new towns in sort of suburban British society, many of which were kind of built in the 60s, very boring, very blue. leak, you know, are often sort of uninspiring places at best. And Newtown kind of goes into that theme, looking at sort of the sort of stuff that can kind of bubble up there, the tensions, the darkness, the addictions just from boredom. And of course, in punk, boredom is a huge theme. You know, so many people have written about boredom. And again, you know, like, you know, as we were saying, with Sid Vicious, you know, if it wasn't for boredom, maybe we wouldn't have

so much of this great music. We wouldn't have punk because everyone would have stuff to do. They wouldn't be kind of driven to creativity. But there's a lot of really strange kind of poetry in Palmolive's lyrics. And she refers to sort of sniffing televizino. You know, she's talking about kind of the addiction to watching TV, but also talking about it like they're sniffing glue and then televizino. I mean, it's not even, you know, she's kind of swapped the letters around to sound more Hispanic. You know, there's just so many interesting things going on there.

So yeah, I've probably gone wildly off the question. Yeah, no. We'll get more into Newtown a little bit later for sure because I think it's such. an important slit song. But yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because I do think Palm Olive's like point of view and her sort of like inherent otherness and being foreign to London. And, you know, I think her fluency in a romance language is really, really evident in a lot of her lyric writing. And it's very cool. And again, we'll get more granular around that. But yeah, a Newtown is an incredible example of that. You know, honestly, the OG Rosalia over here just

taken on all her inputs and putting out something brand new. So Paul Molliv's writing songs. Paul Molliv is fired up. Now we get to Ariup. My name's Ariup of the Slits, the greatest girl band ever. Born Ariana Forster on January 17th, 1962, also a Capricorn, interestingly, in Munich, Germany. She was very German. I think moved to London when she was like 13. Tell me about Ari's family, specifically,

obviously Ari's mother, but in general her family had a lot to do with making her the way she is, but also her being so musical. Yeah, no, Ari is a really interesting person. I mean, it's just like the understatement of the century, really. But she, yeah, came from a very unusual background. in that her mother was a newspaper heiress from Germany, and she was a real character. She is a real character. Many people will know her as, you know, Nora Forster, partner of John Leiden.

They're still together now. They're living in L.A. And, you know, that's just, yeah, a beautiful thing. But, yeah, so she kind of used her money in a really great way and became a promoter. of rock shows in Germany. This is Nora I'm talking about now. So Ari would have been a school girl when she was doing this.

But, and so she kind of was a real kind of mover in a shaker on the rock and roll scene. She had loads of contacts. And she was, you know, just a really kind of important part of that. So when they moved over to London, that kind of continued, those contacts continued. And so she was a really good person to have, you know, moving forward in time, I suppose, a little bit. at the helm of the slits, maybe not necessarily an official manager, although I think she did kind of act in a sort of managerial way, but she was a really important part of the story as a matriarch and also someone who'd kind of been there, done that and could sort of guide them

in a certain respect. It also helped, you know, having a bit of dosh in those days because, you know, when things started to get going, you know, the slits and lots of punks would stay around at their house and they had underfloor heating and it was just like the luxury and comparison to the squats that they'd been surviving in was just sort of, you know, blew their mind. So she was a great support. And she kind of reminds me of that Baroness, really important woman within the jazz scene who took in a lot of kind of jazz musicians like Charlie Parker and the Baroness, I won't say Vita, but I should know. Anyway, she was kind of almost like a patron figure. Baroness Nika.

Baroness Nika. Yeah. She kind of reminds me of the Baroness Nika and this kind of very supportive role, who just was very much loved. And so when they kind of came over to England and settled in West London, it was, it was Ari and her mum. There was no dad on the scene. That's always been sort of sort of kind of slightly mysterious to me. There was lots of comings and goings, let's put it that way, of, you know, chaps in the business that she knew and she'd worked with and all the rest of it. And so Ari was used to a lot of people coming and going in the house, which I think was probably quite a destabilising influence, really. But, you know, one of the musicians who sort of stuck around for a few years was Chris Spedding, a guitarist. And,

you know, he was apparently very kind to Ari, you know, gave a little piano lessons and that sort of thing. So she had just, music was around her all the time and musicians and this of a kind of very bohemian household. But, you know, Ari was a wild child, you know, literally. she was kind of unmanageable, but there was something really kind of great about that, very free, and she was allowed to be free for better or worse. I don't know if there were many kind of boundaries or an awful lot of discipline at home when she was growing up. But of course, if it had been different, we wouldn't have had the area up that we, you know, this incredible creative, free, inventive person who just did things like nobody else did.

I think she could frighten people sometimes, even as a kid. And I think as you mentioned earlier, you know, it's very easy to forget how young, you know, we think of these people as kind of punk legends, but it's very easy to forget that how young they were, but particularly Ariup, who was 14 when she joined the slits. So, you know, that's, she was, she was a schoolgirl and a very innocent one in many ways. So there's a lot of kind of different reasons for how she, why she is or why she was, who she was. but having that creativity around her all the time was really important. I think you're so right. Like, I mean, there's so many inputs to Ari Upps, Ari Ups upbringing, that I think we're crucial in creating this like absolute unique person.

This is just pure speculation, just a little armchair psychology from your friend Yossi over here. But, you know, I have to imagine having just loads of people. people and very interesting people in and out of the house. Like to get any attention, you had to really work for it, you know? And I think one thing that's been said about Ari up over and over is that she was very captivating and charismatic, but she loved attention and she sought it out, like, you know, time and time again. And you can see that sort of being engendered in her as a small child. It's like a survival thing almost. Like I have to get some attention maybe from my mom, who there's tons of other people here who are very fascinating.

Jimmy Hendricks is over there. Like, how am I going to get my mom to pay attention to me? That's so true. Yeah. And then just also the musical training, because I was struck by the fact that, like, we talk about this band a lot. And I personally was so inspired by the, like,

the true amateurness of literally all of them, not knowing how to play instruments, except for Ari, because Ari was, you know, she did play piano since she was a child. she could read music. Like she was actually semi well trained in music. Certainly in comparison. Yes, you're right. And it's quite funny that you pick that up because Steve Beresford, who would join a later lineup of the slits on tour, and wonderful, wonderful musician, flying lizards. And he's, you know, an amazing free

improvisation legend. But he said, you know, it was, you know, you mustn't like mention the name of a chord or sort of like let anyone know that you knew what a C-sharp was because then you were kind of accused of being hideously academic, but he said, I know, Harry knew what a C-sharp was, and she knew what she was doing. She knew her way around a keyboard and a piano, and there were times when, you know, she'd be called upon to sort of maybe pick up the bass. For example, on Adventures Close to Home, which you mentioned earlier, you know, Tessa, who was the bassist, took the vocal, so Ari picked up the bass and was all over it and absolutely brilliant and quite intimidating and how brilliant she was. So she was a very naturally musical person, but she did

have skills and they didn't come from nowhere. That's absolutely true. But I think the point you make about the attention is so key and really perceptive of you because that is so true. And there were moments of really confusing rivalry, I think, as well, she obviously adored her mum, but also felt like she was kind of a rival as well. So she had rivals for her mum's attention. But there were also, you know, and I'm thinking particularly one person here, John Leiden, you know, when they when the sex pistols first kind of burst onto the scene in 76, well, their first gig was 75, but I think that they would have seen them in 76, you know, that early part of punk, you know, the kind of year zero.

Ari was there and she apparently leapt up on stage afterwards and threw her arms around John Leiden and said, you are the greatest and kissed him. She just thought, you know, he was the most wonderful thing that she'd ever seen. And, of course, he would end up coming around the house, meeting Nora, you know, because it was all part of that kind of punk scene, comings and goings. And then, of course, he would strike up a relationship with Nora. And so Ari would be watching this and be like, hang on a minute.

But I love him. And so there's kind of all these very confusing feelings flying around. Totally. It was very interesting to me Nora's place in this whole thing. Because to your point, like, I mean, she sounds like she was an extremely cool woman, impeccable taste, popular with the lads. But, you know, John Leiden was arguably Ari's, contemporary or, you know, call it, even though, you know, she was quite young, he was still

probably closer an age to her than he was to Nora. Also, I read that Viv was good friends with Nora, like on, again, more of an even level. They double dated a bit. But then Ari was her bandmate, you know, so it has, it was very interesting to me this mix, but that's Bohemia for you, babe. Sure is. No boundaries. Yeah, there was just so many people around. I just, I think I was just, struck by oh okay Pradesh Jeline says that John Liden

was actually six years older than R.A. Yeah, that's not that much. That's about how much older the slits were like five years old the rest of the slits.

Barry Gibb was around John from the band Yes. John Anderson was around a bunch. This is the story of R.A. She also really loved she loved musicals.

And I, and I, I only bring that up because I feel I can hear that in her vocal stylings. You know, like, she's a very theatrical singer. It's awesome the way she sings. But she's not a straight punk singer in any regard. She actually has quite an impressive voice, and she does use it very theatrically. Would you agree?

Absolutely, I would. And, you know, yeah, I mean, the first time I heard Ariup's voice, I didn't, for a start, I thought, this is genderless, this voice. I don't know if it's a girl or a, but I don't know what's going. I don't know what. It's like almost from outer space in some respects. And there was often something kind of quite, you know, cosmic and an alien about Ari. In fact, it reminds me of something that Vivian Goldman, the journalist, said she sort of insinuated that kind of like these amazing dreadlocks,

you had this bird's nest of dreadlocks and that they were kind of, are they her antennae? And they're kind of picking up signals from other dimensions and kind of funneling them through. Who knows? But the voice, yes, definitely. That operatic quality is there. can completely hear it. And the musicals thing, there's something really childlike about that love of musicals and the fact that when they were in the studio and making cuts specifically, working with the brilliant producer Dennis Beauvel, they were able to sort of say, you know, oh, that song

in Mary Poppins, you know, that would be a reference point. And he'd be like, yep, he'd be on board for it. But, you know, there was this sort of girlish excitement about things like that, which was really sweet because I think there was a lot of, you know, cynicism in the punk era. It was nihilistic to a lot of people and it was about being cool and a bit monochrome and throwing all that stuff out. But Ari was young enough and confident enough, you know, to not really care about that and bring all of that with her, which just made for this incredibly unconventional mix. I guess the last thing I want to say about Ari before we get to the fateful meeting, she said in an interview, she credits her mother.

She says that there's no way I would have a discovered punk or been born into punk if it wasn't for my mother. And I think even her mother sort of has something to do with Joe Strummer teaching her guitar chords. That's very cool. There's been some misinformation, I guess, or I don't know if it's misinformation or not. It's been said that Paul Mollav met Ari Up at a Patty Smith show. And I guess heard her sort of screeching at her mother, yelling at her mother. Ari Up says that it was a clash show. So anyways, we'll never know.

Well, all I can say, you know, I do remember this contradiction. I think, you know, I was maybe just in the kind of mood to sort of do things down a little bit on that day. That happens sometimes. All I can say is I know the story that Palm Olive told me. And that's what I put in the book. And subsequently, I remember sort of being quite taken aback. I know the quote you're talking about when I saw that saying, oh, there's a mistake in the book. and she said this and actually I met at a clash gig, you know, and I was like, well, A, Palmolive told me this story.

Right. And I think I've actually heard her talk about this, you know, elsewhere about meeting at a Patti Smith gig. But also I was complaining to my friend John Rob about this. I was like, what? And he was like, well, Ari told me that they met at a Patti Smith gig too. So, you know, I think she was just maybe in the mood to kind of do things down that day for whatever reason. That happened sometimes. Strew apart a little bit.

There was definitely that element to her character, I think. But, you know, I try and sort of remember things with love. Well, either way, Patty Smith is sort of important here and we'll get into that. But, you know, I think Patty Smith, at least for Palm Olive and I think Viv was quite influential in just seeing a woman be sort of like so early free and punk in that sense. do you have a sense of like how they would even come to know about Patty Smith and like her putting out a record? Because I read something. I must have been in Viv's book that, you know, she was so excited to like go to the record store the day horses came out. To go purchase it. I think she ran into Mick there and was like very like, oh, you're here too to get horses. But how, you know, I guess is it just like music press stuff?

or this is like an NME situation or like how how do they know about this stuff? Well, there would have been definitely. Yeah, I remember her telling me that story too for the book and it was just such an exciting moment. And I think it can't be underestimated how important someone like Patti Smith was for all of the reasons that you state. But I think definitely NME and Melody Maker, those were, you know, the Enkies sounds. Those were that was those were the portals to what was going on.

And, you know, it's so different now. it's kind of hard for people to kind of understand that you had to kind of take a chance on a record. You know, you wouldn't be able to check it out on YouTube or Spotify first. You'd hear about, you'd read about it, think, okay, you know, this writer, I trust. They like it. They've said all sorts of amazing poetic things about it. So I'm going to take a chance with my hard-earned cash or hard stolen cash. Yeah, sure.

HMV and buy it. And, you know, I think there was a lot of that. But, yeah, the music press was hugely important and very trusted. in those days. And in the 70s, that really was the era for the NME. They were absolutely, you know, the king of all that. Totally. Okay. So Palm Olive is at this Patty Smith show with Kate Chorus, is that right? Because that was her friend. Yeah. That's right. And they encounter Ari. And apropos, I love this, just apropos of nothing, just hearing her yell at her mom. They're like, mm-hmm, not should be the singer of our band. She's 14. Who cares? That's fine. And,

I guess, you know, I think I read in your book, just marched up and was like, do you want to be in a band? Let's be in a band. Yeah, it was essentially, it was as simple as that. Yeah, she saw her basically having a massive tantrum. And just, yeah, it was like, oh, my God, who is that person? Never seen anyone like that before or probably since. And yeah, it was meant to be. So it's just as well that actually, you know, maybe it was a kind of, I mean, Palmore was quite a cosmic person as well. So she might have kind of been picking up intuitively that she was the right person. as well because it's not just about being a character or the attitude or how that person might perform on stage. You know, Ari, as you said, she's a hugely musical person with an incredibly expressive voice. So that was, that was lucky. Yeah. So, I mean, we always say on this show that like

for at least, you know, the most iconic artists and bands, mainly bands of our time, like there has to be like five different points of magic that happen, you know, that maybe if it was a different day and they didn't go to the Paddy Smith show, like, this band wouldn't exist, you know, and this is definitely number one, I think. Well, maybe number one is Sidvish is kicking palm all about of the band, but number two is definitely this. So where did Susie Gutsy come from? Because that was the original bassist. That's right. And Susie Gutsy seems to be the kind of mysterious character in the Slits story. And I heard that, you know, after the book came out, I was like, damn it, because someone said, oh, you know, I actually tracked down Susie Guts.

Gatsy, she's, I think at the time she was like a security guard at the British Museum or something like that. Oh, wow. Oh, I wish I'd known. I would have loved to have spoken to her. But again, it was just, she was one of those sort of rather enigmatic figures in the punk story. So I think even, you know, Palm Olive said, I don't know where she came from. I don't know if she was just in the band. So she couldn't help me in terms of where Susie Gatsy came from, unfortunately. I mean, she was a short-lived band member. Yeah. What a great name, though. Such a good name. Apparently she was obsessed with Susie Gatsy. Quatro. I only know this from

there, okay, and this I want to ask you about, but there is a profile on the slits, which I'm sure you know about, December 11th, 19796 by Vivian Goldman, the goat, the greatest of all

time. This band has not played a show. This band is, again, just a theory. This band is an idea. But Vivian Goldman is like, I've got to go talk to these people. I'm going to sniff this out. And she writes this little piece on them for Sounds Magazine.

And I wanted to ask you, like, how did she even know about them? Is it just the thing that like this community was so small at the time? And Vivian Goldman was ostensibly part of it. So she just knew that the girls had formed a punk band and called it the slits. Well, I think, yes, definitely. But it was a small scene. And also, I don't know. who she was going out with at the time, but she was later going out with Mark Stewart from the pop group.

And so there was all these kind of, you know, everyone kind of knew each other. And I think also the writers from NME sounds and Melody Maker were just on the ground all the time. They were at the gigs. They would be sort of coming across the same people over and over again. And also it's important to remember that, you know, at the beginning of punk, there weren't that many dedicated punk rock venues, you know, other than maybe the Roxy, which is the famous one. but at the time it would be pubs, you know, that sort of thing. So it was kind of, it was a small scene and it, you would keep seeing the same people over and over again.

But she'd also written a piece before that sounds profile, I believe, which is kind of amusing because it's for this tabloid called The News of the World. Right, right. And she was kind of quite keen to do this for a very, you know, smart reason in that she wanted to kind of spread the word to a more mainstream audience about the kind of stuff that was happening. exciting stuff, you know, this wasn't meant to be like a kind of massive expose that was, oh my God, how shocking, which is how the tabloids would often cover punk. But it was very celebratory. And at the time, yeah, she mentioned this kind of very nascent slits that existed, but she also mentioned other artists like, you know, the castrators. And the castrators were basically two girls, one of whom was Tessapollet, who would go on to be the basis in the slits. But again, you know,

that was like the flowers of romance, probably more of a conceptual thing that, you know, it was, you know, but it was, it was, it was part of a movement. And so she kind of wrote about these two groups and then would later find that they'd actually kind of become, you know, come together and was really thrilled that when she then interviewed the slips for sounds, that she was like, oh, hang on, it's you. I had no idea, you know, so that was kind of like another magical thing. guess. But yeah, Vivian Goldman has always been a huge support of the slits. And I think, you know, just from the very start or before the very start even. I really loved the end of this piece. It's quite short. She basically talks about what they're wearing and they say some pretty like

profound things. I think Kate Corr says something like politics are into making people think a certain way. We just want to make people think, which is like a pretty profound thing to say at like 18 or 19 years old. But I guess at the very end, she finally meets Ari and Ari says, are you Vivian Goldman? And Vivian's like, why shouldn't I be? And Ari goes, I don't know. I thought you'd be much younger. Which is just so cunty and gorgeous. And I'm like so obsessed with this like 14 year old girl. Just being like, yeah, I don't know. You're old. Amazing. Wonderful. Yeah, there's quite a lot of cuntiness, I think. Yeah, definitely. I mean, the idea that everything was a bit of a sisterhood and everyone was sticking up for each other in the girls, you know, is a bit of a myth, unfortunately. But yeah, no, she, she could be very cutting and

very witty and quick. And, you know, that's, you know, part of her brilliance, I guess, as well. I love it. So like you just said, Tessa Pollitt was in this band The Castrators, that again, maybe just an idea. And she learned about the slits from that profile that you mentioned, the News of the World feature. She was born January 1st, 1959. Are you ready for this? One more Capricorn. Three Capricorns. I'm sorry to, this is talking of misinformation. Sadly, that is not true. She was not born January 1st, 1929. I don't know where that came from. She's a Taurus. Her birthday is in May. I can confirm, because I went to her birthday party a few years ago. So yeah, she's definitely a Taurus, and it's a May birthday. So shocking, even more shocking than the Patty Smith

slash clash, which is it, gig, which actually had me kind of second. guessing myself because it's like, but no, I'm sure they don't. And then you just like end up thinking, oh, God, life's too sure. Yeah, I mean, listen, I don't know. I'm going to, I'm going to trust you because I know my grandfather, we used to celebrate his birthday on January 1st, and it was truly only because no one knew when his real birthday was. So I'm going to go ahead and take your word for it. So, A Torres, I like that better. Three Capricorns is too many. No shade again to the Capricorns of the world, but like, you know, we need a little, me and myself being a tourist, I'm a little biased, but we need a little tourist energy here. Definitely. So, Ari saw Tessa in that piece, News of the

world, and she tracked her down to be the new Slits bassist. Also, apparently in Viv's book, she said that Nora had called her Viv prior to Tessa becoming the bassist to ask her to be the bassist and Viv said no. Yeah, that's true. I didn't know it was definitely Nora, but I remember when I was working on the book that Viv saying they had approached me to be in the slits. And I was like, oh, no, I don't like the idea of an all-girl band and, you know,

turned it, turned it down. She also didn't play bass, which, but I guess neither to Tessa. Tessa was also a guitarist, so didn't stop Tessa. And Tessa moves in with Ari and Nora after this. Is this correct? Do you know what? I don't know. I can't remember. I'm sorry. That sounds right, though. That sounds right. And their very first show is two weeks after Tessa joined the band. March, 1977, opening for The Clash at...

Haraldon. Harlsden Coliseum. Okay. So Harleesden Coliseum, London, March of 1977, the Clash, the Slits. The Valbertine is in the audience. Why? Because her boyfriend is in the Clash, Mick Jones. Also because she wanted to see the Slits. She was a musician. She was curious. What's going on with these girls? What happens with Kate Chorus? Yes. So Kate Chorus at this time is the guitarist in the slits. And the thing is, you know, from what I remember, you know, from doing the interviews for this book, I remember Viv telling me, you know, I went to this group and I was just blown away by the slits. I just loved their energy. You know, they were kind of amazing and incredible. And I thought, what was I thinking saying, no, I do want to be in the slits, actually. And so, you know, she kind of got together with the slits. And so, you know, she kind of got together with the. and they were like, yeah, let's do it. And so, you know, where does that leave Kate Horace? So Kate was very philosophical about this. You know, she was very kind of very cool about it when I spoke to her. But she said, you know, the one thing that she wasn't so keen on was the fact that, you know,

after they kind of booted her out of the band, Palmoliffe said, do you want to be our manager? And she was like, not really. So, you know, and she also just said, you know, I don't really want to manage, you know, for crazy musicians. I don't, I'm not a manager, I'm a musician, so it's fair enough. So she went on to be in the very cool modettes and just a fantastic person. So, you know, she's kind of, you know, she's like cool about it. Like, yeah, you know, that was the right thing, I guess. And, you know, it was just, that was the way it went.

So, and Viv, I remember, as she's saying, she was hanging out with Tessa and Palmolive and and they all kind of, you know, were just kind of fooling around being girls, back combed their hair and they looked like a band. And, you know, it's such a kind of, I don't know, it's just part of the story, isn't it? But, you know, Kate is a fantastic guitarist and a fantastic character as well. But this is just the way the slit story went. That's the story went. First of all, people don't talk about that nine-tenths of being a band is looking like a band, and that's just facts.

And also, a reason that I really loved your book is because it was like, first of all, so detailed and amazing, and also so full of gossip and gorgeous drama. And I loved this, this like sort of allegation, um, that perhaps Joe Strummer had something to do with Kate being asked to leave the band because perhaps Joe Strummer was the little birdie that whispered in Palmol of Zia, that Kate was not right for the band and was not good on stage. Again, this is an allegation. It was an allegation. We don't know. We're just simply bringing up speculation, wild speculation. No, no, I remember. that being talked about and I remember Kate saying, you know, Joe was at once very supportive of what Palma Lev was doing with the slits and at the same time could well have been the person

who said, you know, maybe get her out. But we don't know that. That was just something that Kate sort of mooted as a possibility. Totally possible. Yeah. Well, you can't know. But nobody really except for maybe Joe Strummer and God. Okay. So enter Vivib Albertine, born December 1st, 1954 Sagittarius in Sydney, Australia, but raised in North London. So like we said, Viv, I mean, you read her gorgeous memoir, I'm sure. Yeah, her book, close, close, close, music, music, boys, boys, fantastic. I really felt spiritually connected to Viv Albertine reading her book, because I was like, man, like, like she talks so much about just being so captivated by musicians and like pop singers and rock groups

and the kinks and like just like the first fascination just being like they're so cool like I want to like not really the first thing being like I'd love to play um D chords and see the intersection of them with an E major or whatever but just like fuck that's cool I want to do that you know And I was so heartbroken by the part in her memoir when she goes to tell her dad, Dad, I want to be a pop singer. I think she was quite young, like, you know, eight years old or something. And her dad said, according to Viv's memory, you're not chic enough. Oh, that's horrifying, isn't it?

Yeah. Really cutting. Not like, can you sing? Can you carry a tune? Just like, you don't have it, babe. You don't have that sort of quality. Like, first of all, what do you know, dad? And anyways, he was wrong.

Yeah, that's really sad, isn't it? Very, and just, yeah, that's a big thing to fight against. And I suppose that, you know, there are two types of people, I suppose. One type of person might hear something like that and think, oh my God, you're right. I hadn't thought about that and just allow the dream to be crushed or do what obviously Viv did and was like, fuck you, I'm going to do what I want. And actually, I am chic. In fact, I'm, you know, amazing. And so on she went.

And I think Viv was a really important part of the slits and the punk scene in terms of her coolness. And in terms of her sartorial style, she was always elegant, you know. And it's just kind of interesting hearing you tell me that because I didn't actually know that quote. And, you know, that's really sad. But it's interesting because to me, I think, you know, style and looking good has always been important to Viv. And I think it's been a really interesting element of the slits, you know, the sartorial element, the way it looked, the way the aesthetic. Oh, my God, totally. It was very much.

I mean, we look at sort of how Madonna dressed in the early 80s. you know, there's no one who looked like that before other than Viv Albertine, you know, the little tutus and the lacy gloves and the kind of layers of necklaces. And they all had, I think it must have inspired them all to have very much their own look. And again, yes, looking like a band is really important, but they didn't look like a band in terms of, you know, like sort of the early Beatles or with the same haircut and suit on. They all look very much like individuals, like completely different types of people, but who were very much cut from the same kind of cloth. And I think that's one of the most, you know, I suppose that kind of visual impact is so arresting, isn't it? And it caused problems for them as well. Because, you know, to see one person looking like that is like, oh, that's an unusual looking person. But to see four people like that striding down the street without care in the world in a very conservative kind of black and white 70s England. And, you know, people felt threatened by that.

Yeah, I mean, we'll get into that, but I, again, maybe because I didn't experience the 70s because I was not born. It's so crazy now to think of a time where, I mean, let me just say that they're, the slit style, if you haven't seen it, go ahead and hit your Google. It was so singular and it clearly influenced so much. rock fashion to come. And not just women. Like, you know, like, I think we talked about the Valbertine. She was, you know, she was fond of wearing like children's dresses. Hello, Courtney Love.

Or the Babes in Toiland and all that stuff, which obviously in a bit of a different sense. All the ribbons in the hair, the tutus. Madonna, like you said. So much stuff coming on. And then, you know, Ari had this, like, wild layering that she would do, like, dress with a skirt over a pants with a blazer. I mean, grunge, you know, like so much of grunge was just like layer over layer. Tessa had such a cool style, right?

She was like, I don't want to say but like a very masculine sort of like more like a very cool, charismatic extra Patti Smith. Like Patty Smith was quite toned down in her, you know, men's clothing. But Tessa was just like wearing all these cool like vests and I don't know. They just they all looked so cool. And they had such a wild impact. I was I was really interested in that because I think while like, you know, in many ways punk is like, oh, it's about freedom. It's about expression. But like almost not really. Because even in that, you know, enclave of 70s punk, like, and I was thinking this from Viv's book where she talks about how much power and influence Vivian Westwood had. And obviously Malcolm McLaren and their shop sex where it was like there was things that were you were not allowed to wear. It was brown. You couldn't wear. Brown was like a normie. That's the word, I guess we would use now. They didn't use it then,

but that's a normie color. You didn't wear pastels, right? That was gross. Like there was like six colors you were allowed to wear and it was like the shocking ones, red. You know, I just, I think it's interesting that even within that construct, they were sort of really doing their own thing. Absolutely. And it's true. I mean, I remember Viv talking to me about that and saying the rigidity of punk was, was intense. There were, there were rules that had to be kind of, you know, followed and that that kind of spilled out over the kind of sartorial side of things. It was also how you acted. You weren't allowed to hold hands with your boyfriend. You weren't allowed, you know, it was soft and soppy and all these rules, you know, which kind of contradicts how I think a lot

of us look back on punk and celebrate it and that, wow, you know, suddenly you were free to do whatever you want. Yeah, I hear you. Not so much, maybe. But I think for a lot of people who were artistic and creative and connected with the right people. during that time, it did kind of open a door and shed a little light on a possibility that you could push that door open a little bit further and see where it took you. And, you know, again, I suppose I think of, I suppose if you are a particularly creative person like, for example, you know, the members of the slits or polystyrene, you are more likely to sort of find your freedom within that because it's a kind of vehicle for your expression. And then where you take

that can often be seen as very unpunk, because it's not falling with. within those rules, but actually that's particularly punk because you're just doing whatever you want into hell with what anyone thinks. So it is, I think it's very much dependent on how certain individuals interpreted what punk could give them really. But yeah, I hear you. I think it must have been quite restrictive in those early days until you kind of basically got someone like, you know, Ariup or Polystyrene going, well, fuck that, you know, I'm actually going to do my thing. And actually kind of that's quite a childlike thing. And I think when I think of Ari and I think of Polly,

there's something very beautifully childlike about them and the things they did. And it really bucked the trends. Like so, for example, Polystyrene would smile, this fantastic huge beaming smile in promo photos, which is so unpunk. You wouldn't know. But then that's like super punk, isn't it?

Because it's like, no, I don't give a shit. I'm going to smile. You know, because no one else is actually doing that, actually, that's much more unconventional. She'd play with colors and she'd wear sort of like, you know, kiddie colors and kind of crayon colors and stuff like that when everyone else was wearing like black leather jackets and kind of it was all very monochrome and tough and studs and all that malarkey. So I find that interesting. It's a little bit of kind of colloquial all that malarkey in there for you. We love the word malarkey here on this program. No, those are excellent points. And I like especially what you said about the childishness and childlikeness, if you will. because I liked that Viv even pointed out that she was so, one thing she really liked about, Ari and was so struck by her was that she did not care what men thought about how she dressed,

right? Whereas Viv, and this is not an indictment on this program, we know how I feel. I think it's totally fine to dress for men that you dress however you want. And if you like to have, do you like people to be attracted to you. Gorgeous, do that too. But I think that contrast was very interesting. Like, Viv was actually quite self-conscious. And like also, you know, she was a very, sexy and sexual person and likes to sort of play up her attractiveness and then sort of contrasting that with Ari who was just like, I don't literally care about that. I'm going to twirl around in this thing and have a giant rag in my hair. I think those coexisting in the same band is also so interesting to me. Very much so. Yes, definitely. And I think, you know, Viv being around that

kind of energy was probably really kind of great in a way because it's like, hang, she does not care about what anyone thinks. You know, she was very free about her body. I remember Viv saying that Ari was like a kind of ballet dancer in that way that she was completely free about how she moved and how she used her body and how she looked. And I think, you know, it's really important to talk about Slit's sense of humour because the humour works its way through sartorially as well and, you know, that, you know, wearing the kind of underpants over the, over the tights kind of Superman style. That was something that Ari would do. You know, there was no kind of well, you know, Superman's a man, so I can't do that, even if I think it's kind of funny.

She just did it. And it was, again, you know, that filters through into the voice as well, as I say, that kind of genderless quality where we're not thinking about, oh, I want to sound girly because I want to sound, you know, lovely and attractive and unthreatening. Or actually, I want to sound like a man because I want to outman the men. She wasn't doing either of those things. She was doing something else. And I think that was one of the things that just first hooked me onto their sound, really, because it was like, you know, this does not conform to anything I've heard before. It's fantastic. We'll get into it when we hear the music, but it's really just striking me that, like, I think maybe something that makes the slits so profound and so unusual is that a lot of the songwriting was done by Viv, right? Yeah. And Viv is writing from this place of, I find her very fascinating because she's very open and honest about how, like, tentative she was about her relationship with these things about sexuality, about not wanting to be objectified, but also about. about being a very romantic person and very into boys and very into relationships and sort of

this internal tension she had. And then those lyrics being taken up and sung by Ari who did not give a fuck about any of that stuff and was able to just sort of imbue them with this like boldness and who caresness. And I think that's such an interesting intersection. Because often, you know, these days we don't really associate the singer of the band not being the. the one that wrote the words, right? I mean, it happens, obviously, but it's, it was much more common, it seems back then, right? Because even the clash, right? Mick Jones wrote most of those songs or a lot of those songs, but then you have Joe Strummer singing them. So it's like, I don't know, I found, I found that particular interplay very interesting between Viv and Ari and, you know, this huge

five, five year age difference, which, but five years when you're 14 and 19, might as well be two decades. Like, you're completely different, you know, this 19 is basically an adult. 14 is still a child. No, you're quite right. And that is a big difference. There's a big difference in terms of maturity and experience and the kind of thing. And also just in terms of their personality is very, very different. And so I suppose, yeah, as you say, that's such a good point. You know, when you're writing your lyrics and Viv's lyrics are very much like diary entries, aren't they? They're very, you know, they're literal and they are open and they're bald and they're beautiful for that. And then you hand them over to someone who is not you, expressing

these very personal things. And again, you know, I love Viv's lyrics. They're very, they're about what's around her and what she's experience. They're very observational. Whereas Parm Olive, who was also, you know, wrote lots of their songs as well and that ended up on cut, even though she was no longer in the band by then. Her lyrical style, as we said earlier, very different, much more kind of surreal and symbolic, lots of symbolism and poetry in there and kind of quite strange themes in some respect. So quite different. And hearing Ari interpret. both of those very different kind of lyrical styles is really interesting and imbueing them with her own kind of strange magic. It's fantastic. But one of the things that I thought was quite

amusing when I was going back through the book in preparation for our chat today was, oh, what's the song? Is it spend, spend, spend? Which is one of Viv's songs, Spend, Spend, Spend, which is kind of like a kind of critique of consumer culture. And, you know, I think there was like a kind of a winner of the pools at the time. That's like the lotto. Yeah, exactly. Right. Exactly.

The lotto. And I'm going to spend, spend, spend. So that was obviously caught Viv's imagination. You know, there's a line in there saying, imagine myself moving in the kitchen. Imagine myself. And when Harry was first singing it, she'd sing it as imagine myself moving in the kitchen. Just because, you know, she was just sort of thinking about how the world, you know, obviously she was German.

And so she's, you know, she's thinking about how the world. words are going to fit within the music. And I was saying, no, no, it's imagine myself moving in the kitchen. Right. Not Imogen. Imogen doesn't come into this. She does not part of the kitchen. I know. A bit of an accent. Love her. She's like, she's like if Nico could actually sing. Sorry, I know this is so much pretext before we get into the albums. But again, I think the story of the slits is largely pretext and context. And the albums are super important, but there's only three and only two that were like within their first run as a band. But people are not going to like me for saying this, but I'm going to say it. And I mean it. And allow me to just explain myself. A lot is made of the slits being like the first all-girl punk band, which I don't even know. I don't know if that's absolutely true, but it feels true to me. Does that feel true to you? It feels true to me, yes.

Yeah. You mentioned earlier, like Viv wasn't really interested in that. It felt sticky to her. Like, I don't think that was a motivating factor in a really meaningful. way. And I think that that's a bit reductive, you know, to say that that was their thing. And also, men play a big part in the story of the slits and not in a bad way. Well, namely, the absence of fathers plays a big part, which we've talked about, you know, Ari's father, who knows where he was. Viv's father said that mean thing and then left and did not come back. So he was out of the picture. I know Tessa was quite close to her father and he didn't die and he passed away actually later I think during like the Slits first tour or something. And I'm not really sure about Palm Olive, but I think that absence of fathers had a lot to do with.

Viv said it that they were allowed to be wilder than they probably would have been if there were fathers there to say no, you know, or to like stop them. And then also there's sort of these. like fatherly figures in their communities that pop up. You know, Keith Levine being the one that strikes me first and bringing him up because, you know, he in conjunction with her boyfriend Mick teaches her Viv how to play guitar. Yeah, absolutely. Keith's hugely important, definitely. And as you say, that there are other people around, you know, Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, lots of very supportive people who were around. And I completely agree. I mean, when I first wanted to kind of write about

the slits. It wasn't like, because I'm a girl and they're girls. And that's, it was, that wasn't really part of what I wanted to do. I actually thought, why have they, why have they kind of been rejected? Is it because they're girls? No, I don't think it's just because of that. I know that cause, you know, there's lots of things we can say about that. I think that was a huge part of, of why people didn't know what to do with them. But I also think another huge part of that is that they were really avant-garde and they were going into some really, really interesting musical and creative territory and people just were like what I don't know what to do with them let's just move on and I think that is something you know I felt that when I started writing the book and I still feel it now I just

think they were experimenting they were fearless in their experimentation and their creativity and that is one of the things that I found really exciting about them and also as you say you know there are some really important male characters in their story um who were just very sympathetico it doesn't matter what their gender was they were you know budgie the drummer budgie keith Dennis Beauvel People like that Just hugely important And very supportive

And Don Letts You know There are so many So it's more about kind of Being a certain type of person I suppose And those guys were around And I think also punk did allow

More sensitive guys To be themselves a little bit more I mean there is that side of punk That is very kind of macho and masculine and tough but it also kind of opened the way for a kind of sensitivity and a creativity. And again, I think it takes us back to the art schools as well, you know, that kind of looking at expression and how to go about things and spending time on that kind of thing.

Whereas maybe, you know, you might come from a kind of family. You might sort of sneer at that and think, oh, that's a waste of time. What are you doing? You know, it's sort of allowed for a new attitude to sort of be strengthened. Absolutely. Again, there's like, I think two really profoundly important things that we've touched on here. And I think one is, was there sexism? One gazillion percent, especially in the late 70s and early 80s. Did the slits do themselves any favors calling themselves the slits? That's no. That's a big no. I love the name. It's one of my favorite band names of all time. In terms of making it big, that's not going to help you. It's not until years later, you call your band whole and it's fine. But like, but I think. I think the main reason the slits didn't become as big as the clash is because of the clash is a straight up rock band in many ways. I mean, they're very cool and they do some really

experimental and cool stuff couched within pop structure. But the slits were just like fucking out there, man. And we'll get there when we get to cut and definitely to the return of the giant slits. But they were fucking weirdos. And they were making a weirdo. music. And your other point that I think is so important is that like, punk's had so many iterations down to the point where like you can go buy a punk t-shirt at H&M right now that literally just says punk and has the anarchy symbol on it and it's $6.99. Go ahead. The capital is we'll make the money off of it and smile about it. But, you know, this early iteration of punk was art school punk, right? And it was this like more sensitive, more cerebral punk kind of gave way to different

offshoots and one being, like you said, very macho, maybe slightly misogynistic, you know, whatever. But that's not what this was where the slits were living by and large. They were living amongst this, like, very supportive community of male punk musicians who wanted them to succeed, wanted everyone, you know, in their community to succeed, wanted to collaborate, wanted to help. Like, you know, Sid Vicious was in flowers of romance with a bunch of women, you know, he thought that was cool, you know, until he mucked it up. But that's right.

I'm using, once again, using my British slang. Anyways, all that, I just wanted to get that off because I, you know, I think Viv, Viv is a fascinating character to me because, you know, her relationships with men had a lot to do with impacting the slits in musical ways that were very cool. Her relationship with Johnny Thunders very early on, you know, like, I think that was very interesting getting her sort of having some confidence. I think she tried, they asked her to play with, right, the heartbreakers. And she literally never played a show before in her life. And she was like, I don't think I can do this. But like giving her some confidence, making her feel cool. We'll get into the pop group later.

But like, you know, she has a relationship with the guy from the pop group. You know, there's, Mick Jones has a huge amount to do with the slits. The clash is maybe the most supportive of the slits. Like taking them on tour, him teaching her guitar, him chiming in. often rejected advice, but giving advice anyway. You know, like, I don't know. I just, I think that is really cool and nothing to look like. I think if we want to be like militant about it, it would be like, no, you're assigning,

you know, some of their accomplishments to men. And that's not at all what I'm talking about. I'm just talking about that there was this strong community in punk. And like you just said, like gender didn't have much to do with how these collaborations were taking place. Definitely, definitely. And I think it is important, you know, to acknowledge that. And the fact that, you know, because the thing is you could be a brilliant, brave, creative person like Viv or like, you know, but if you, you know, if you haven't got people around you to sort of encourage that a bit, especially if you've had a really discouraging a relationship with your dad, for example, Yeah, sometimes you do need, you know, guys is much easier for guys in the respect that, you know, these things are just expected of them. You know, we don't talk about, you know, if we see a woman kind of just like going for it and being defiant, we call her badass or a nasty woman or whatever. We just, you know, if a man is doing literally those things or even less, we just, it's just a man.

You know, that's just what men are expected to do. So I don't think there's any shame in kind of allowing yourself to be kind of encouraged by, you know, guys who are like-minded who are supportive of what. you're doing because the door's already open for them. So if they've got, you know, if they've got something they can say that's going to assist you in some way and they've, you know, their intentions are, you know, coming from a good place, then, you know, that's just, that's what friends are for, isn't it? You need to be in a supportive community. It's very difficult to find someone who is so self-contained that they just don't need anybody at all. So I would, you know, I think it's a, it is, you're right. It's a very important part of the story. But I think also in terms of, as you

say the art school punk, the cerebral punk, yes, it was very much when we think a lot of those guys, you know, yeah, Mick Jones obviously was art school and a lot of those guys did come from that kind of background. Mick Jones was not middle class. Joe Strummer famously was, but I think it's also important to acknowledge another thing that punk did for a lot of working class men who often didn't feel that their voices were being heard by the way. You know, that also gave them a platform and an opportunity, not just to be heard, but also to maybe show a different side of themselves or to maybe try a different kind of music. Yeah, totally.

To not just do what was expected of them, to try stuff. And again, to sort of be part of a community like that. Maybe I'm romanticizing this, but you know, you certainly get the impression from what a lot of people say is that, you know, those things suddenly didn't matter anymore. Okay, so Viv does obviously end up joining the band. Apparently, I liked the fact that she brought the song. so tough to her quote-unquote audition. I don't think it was a full song.

I think it was like a riff in some lyrics. And that song is about John Leiden and Sid Bish's fighting. But in her book, she said it takes, she said this, which I thought was quite funny. 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.

And so she doesn't know about passion, sex, or love. How can she write songs? Very early, she's a virgin who can't drive moment. Do you know what I mean? Yes. I just loved the quote. And it didn't end up mattering because Viv had enough passion, sex, and love to put into the songs.

And it took them far. Yeah. And in Ari's defense as well, I remember her very proudly telling me that, yes, I was a virgin. and I was a virgin when we did the cover of cut, and I was a virgin for a very long time. And I was, you know, it was almost like a kind of, it was a point of pride to her. This was part of what she called Pumpum power.

And the power of the Pumpum, which is not to be underestimated. She was like, this is me respecting my body. This is me making my choices about, you know. And she was very, that was really important to her. And, you know, fair play to her. She didn't bow to any pressure from that point of view, that's for sure. Totally. She doesn't, I mean, at least in the music,

she doesn't strike me as particularly a sexual. Do you know what I mean? Some singers are quite sexual. Ariup to me is not a sexual singer. That's true, but there are some songs that I can think of where she kind of. The music is very sexual, but I don't find her to be a sexual singer. No, no, I know what you mean. I'm just thinking there are times when she affects these sort of gasps and giggles and sighs,

but it's done in a very mocking way, which I think is kind of interesting in itself, really. It's like she's just taking the Mick out of all. It's almost like if you kind of imagine her as this sort of queen from out of space, it's like, look at you silly humans, the things that you do, you know, well, you know, she's just taking the piss, really. So it is, she's quite an enigma from that point of view, I would say. Yeah, she's so interesting. Okay, so Viv Albertine has been playing guitar for a smooth five months,

and she's in the band for two whole weeks before they go on tour with the clash for the White Riot tour, obsessed with this, obsessed that she's only been playing guitar for five months. There was a funny part in her book, I think, saying that the first show, Mick was like, I'm so sorry, you guys didn't get to sound check. And she was like, babe, I do not care because I don't know what a sound check is. I don't know how to do it. And that's quite right with me. It's totally fine. A lot of that, again, so inspiring to me as the listeners who have been following my musical journey will know that I have been trying to learn guitar. And I have reached a point where I will not learn anymore. I'm just going to, I'm just going to play now with the five things that I know. And that's that.

I don't need to learn anymore. Inspired by Vivalb routine, except that I'm 40 years older. So you brought up Don Lutz earlier. And I do promise everyone listening, we will get to the music. But this is all important information before we get. to the music. Tell me a bit about Don Lutz. Don is a super cool guy and, you know, he was one of those people who just kind of had brilliant musical taste. He was very much had his finger on the pulse. He was super stylish. At the time

he was running a shop on the King's Road just up from Sex, Vivian Westwood and Malcolm McLaren's famous shop. And his shop was called Acme Attractions and he ran it with Jeanette Lee, who is another very important figure. She obviously, many will know her because of rough trade. But Jeanette Lee, again, Jeanette and Don were just these kind of gurus that people would go to. And they'd be like, you know, I think it was Jeanette who told Sid Vicious how to cut his hair. So I think she can be credited with his sort of famous punky hairstyle. And, you know, they were just, they just were cool, you know, they were cool in the true sense of the word.

And I think, you know, their shot, people would just go there. and listen to the music that Don was playing. Don was born in London, but to Jamaican parents, right? So he had a Jamaican heritage, and he was very into like reggae and dub and stuff. Yes, very much so. And he really brought that with him into the punk scene. So his mates were punks, but his musical taste was very much Jamaican music. And so when, you know, the Roxy venue, which I mentioned earlier, his friend Andrew Chachofsky,

I hope I've said that right, and Susan Carrington opened this club, the Roxy and he said well I'll you know I think he was invited to DJ but he there were no there were no punk records to play at the time none had been released so he said he just brought loads of reggae records and the punks just totally dug it so there were punk bands performing live on stage and between the bands they were listening to Don's record collection which was all just this fantastic reggae so he was very important from that point of view but also from another point of view he is a great archivist of punk he was documenting everything he had had, I guess, an incredible foresight that something really interesting was happening right at this

moment. I mean, how many people have that kind of awareness at the moment. He had it. And so he had a super eight camera and he was just filming stuff all the time and capturing, you know, just this treasure really of those early punk years. And so he was just very much an important person on the scene and an important connector as well. And he was actually the Slits first manager. Yeah, he's hugely important. And I think in many ways, I wanted to, I basically wanted to bring him up because like this intersection of, you know, reggae and dub and punk is really important, you know, a myriad of ways, but especially to the story of the slits. And, you know, Ari famously is so, all of the slits were very into dub and reggae. But Ari, you know, really, really took it and ran with it and was, you know, so obsessed to the point that you brought up, she ends up cultivating. dreadlocks and I think sort of maybe semi-identifying as a Rostovarian. Ariana became so engrossed near that, you know, she had longer dreadlocks than me and spoke Jamaican heavier than me.

And it became quite disconcerting because she was from Germany. But I was really struck by this one thing that I uncovered in my research. So apparently, Don Letts was good friends with Bob Marley. And Bob Marley's friendship with Don, inspired him to write the song Punky Reggae Party which name checks the jam, the damned, and the clash

and apparently initially name checked the slits. However, once Bob Marley found out the slits were girls, he took them out. And there is some corroboration of this. Again, this isn't proven because the demo

is not anywhere to be found, but Vivian Goldman wrote a piece, in 1977. And she mentions that the slits are in the song. So she also must have heard the demo where their name was still in it, which leads to me to believe that this is probably true. And it was really striking to me that that was like so off-putting to Bob Marley that they were women, that he removed them from the song.

Yeah. Yeah, no, that was a hugely shocking moment because I remember Ari telling me that story for the book. And just, you know, it was just shocking. You know, so insulting and so upsetting, because I know that they obviously, they really loved and rated Bob Marley, you know, as we all do. And so it was just like, what, you know, what is happening there? So, yeah, very, very upsetting. I can believe it. I think if Vivian, I didn't know Vivian had written separately about it, but I can believe it. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it's interesting. A lot of sexism in that scene, sadly. And, you know, I think that that was something that Ari, you know, she obviously embraced Rastafarianism, which as a culture, you know, isn't always that respectful to women.

And I think, you know, for Ari, who is held up as to many as such an icon of what we would call now as feminism, I know they didn't, you know, really relate to that term back in the 70s. They were quite rejecting of the term feminism in those days, but we can talk about that. you know, later if you like. But who can relate? I think it was a conflict, you know, a conflict because they all, as you say, they all loved reggae so much, Tessa, hugely into double reggae really kind of got that kind of base playing down.

And they would go to Chabines and they would go to blues parties and they would just, you know, embrace it all with open hearts. And there was a story as well when they went to a kind of a 12 tribes house in Brixton, I think and they sat down and they started drumming. You know, they started playing the drums with them and they were thrown out because it was like, hang on a minute, women don't play the drums out. And they were flung out. There's lots of stories like that.

And it's just, you know, I think Gary and the Slits, they were coming from a pure place of just pure enthusiasm and love and respect for the music and the culture. And, you know, I think they didn't always get a lot of respect back. Yeah. I mean, it's a complicated issue. And, you know, it's, it's, um, culture. culturally, you know, like back then it's not something we would say, but, you know, it lives in the realm of cultural appropriation, although at that time that wasn't a thing or it was, but it wasn't coined or named. That's true.

I am struck by two things. One, which is that like the dreads, as they were called, right? And the punks were quite closely aligned and were almost their own little community because they were the two subcultures. that were harangued and picked on and discriminated against. And they sort of, I think, bonded over that shared, you know, othering by society. And Don Lutz was not sexist or, you know, I think he did not kind of subscribe to those tenets of that culture. And he, like you said, was super supportive of the slits.

I also like, you know, Ari just, barreling in dreads first into, you know, Rastafarianism, ignoring the sexism feels very awry-ish and very, like, a very kind of, I don't know, interesting approach where she was just like, I'm not going to, like, fight people about it. I'm just going to be part of it. And like, that's that. I decided, you know, like. No, you're absolutely right. And I think, you know, when I referred to the sort of, you know, the disrespect, I meant more from the kind of more hardcore elements. I mean, certainly people like Don Letts and, you know, so many people that they worked with,

absolutely kind of simpatico. And they were, as you say, two communities that were very supportive of each other because of the outsider element. And I know a lot of kind of, you know, that was just really important. And that was a big part of the kind of enmeshing of kind of cultural influences, musically and all the rest of it. But you're right. I think, you know, looking back, I mean, when I wrote the book,

book. I was quite young myself. And so I have a better understanding now of certain things that maybe I didn't at the time of writing. And I kind of a look back and I think, well, maybe there was a, you know, and like no disrespect, but maybe a little bit of entitlement. I can't imagine anyone really ever telling Ari no. You know, she was, she was a, you know, she was a privileged young white kid. And, you know, she wouldn't have known any difference. So she wouldn't have known not to go barreling in, like she owned the place, or not like she owned the place. Or not like she owned. the place, but, you know, thinking, well, why wouldn't this be for me? You know, this sounds great. You know, whereas I think a lot of people might be like, how do I approach this without seeming

disrespectful or looking like I'm coming from the wrong place with this? I don't think she would have thought in that way. And as you say, yeah, I mean, looking back, the kind of the dreadlocks, speaking in Patoa, which she did, you know, Donis Beauvel kind of called it Germican. She sort of mixed her German accent with the Jamaican. He called it Germain, which I I thought it was rather witty. But, you know, that is kind of, yeah, it's cultural appropriation. Although I think she just was in love with it and wanted to be it. And so there was a kind of innocence about it. In 76, I heard Reagan. I was interested to the music, not because of Jamaicans, because I didn't really know Jamaicans. I haven't seen any, but I heard the music

first. And it hit a hardcore thing in me, right? So from that, I just make my way to change. Jamaica. And, you know, she did. She moved to Jamaica and she just lived the life and had a kind of another persona in Jamaica. She was known as Madusa, they called her because of her incredible hair and, you know, the sort of sense of madness. So, you know, she was just very much, I think, just coming from a place of love and I don't think she would have thought for a minute, oh God, you know, is this maybe not, maybe I shouldn't be doing this. Maybe this is cultural appropriation. I think we just didn't have those conversations the way we do now as well. Yeah.

No, I totally agree. I just, you know, again, I just, I found the whole, like, sort of like, subcultural scene of London in the late 70s is just really fascinating to me. And it really brought, you know, these different influences, especially art and music-wise together. I couldn't quite get a handle on who the skinheads were. Can you maybe illuminate me a little? Because the skinheads were not the punks.

No, they were not the punk. And although it's funny because a lot of skinheads now or guys who sort of, you know, adopt the skinhead style and listen to the music beloved by the skinheads, which ironically, you know, usually is black music, scar and all the rest of it. Totally. So they're like the two, they're like the two-tone people, like the. This is the thing because, you know, skinheads in those days were people you really wanted to avoid. They were, you know, mainly they were associated with the National Front, the racists, the far right.

They were not friends or allies in any sense. And so, you know, if Skinhead starts kind of like barreling up to the gig, you'd want to avoid it or you'd be sort of prepared for a fight. And they were a huge problem. And as I say, the irony is that a lot of the music that they would dance to would be black music. They sort of, you know, they didn't kind of make the connection for some reason. Horrible reasons. Because they were probably morons. That's why.

They were morons. Let's not beat around the bush. But, you know, and I remember going to two-tone gigs. I mean, two-tone was hugely important for so many reasons. I love two-tone and I grew up just listening to so much of Selector and the specials. Just adored them for so many reasons. But not least because it was important that the groups had black people and white people. And in the selector, you know, a woman at the front, you know, it was like it's about the music and it's about uniting communities.

And I think they did a huge amount of good and continue to do so from that point of view. And also, they were just brilliant bands. They were so exciting. And I think they really kind of stood up against a lot of that really horrible politics that was rife at the time, that's for sure. Totally. And then the Teddy Boys, that's just rockers. Yeah, there was a kind of Teddy Boy revival in the 70s, which might have spilled over a little bit into punk, I think, but it would be more kind of early to mid-70s. You'd get a lot of, you know, the greasers kind of going to these sort of rock and roll revival.

shows and, you know, probably trying to beat up members of the kind of mod revival at Brighton every bank holiday weekend and sort of reliving that sort of thing. But you can hear, you know, I mean, when you look at Joe Strummer in those kind of early years of the clash, he had the quiff, he had the kind of, there was that American rock and roll influence. And they were, as you said earlier, they were a rock band. They were rock and roll band. A lot of punk was those three chords, which just harks back to rock and roll in its earliest form, whereas, as you say, the slits, you know, maybe as women, they didn't have, they obviously had the reference points, but they weren't, it wasn't drilled into them because it wasn't expected of them. So that actually

left them quite free to go into sort of really strange and unconventional places. Absolutely. Okay, now that we've dissected the entire subcultural scene of the late 70s. I'm happy to move on to the tour. So let's play a song since we've talked for four hours and not played any music. I want to, I want to play number one. enemy, which does exist on the in the beginning sort of like later compilation of sort of early slits recordings and stuff. Because that was a, that was an early slits song that doesn't end up on the other albums and that they did play in their very, I must be stressed that their early sets were like 15 minutes long, right? They had like, they played like five songs or four songs

or something that was very compact. Okay, so let's hear, let's hear number one enemy. And then I want to talk a little bit about this. Just incredible tour with The Clash in 77. You are listening to a music and talk episode where full songs and talk segments live together in gorgeous harmony only on Spotify. Guess what? You can also create your own music and talk show for free with Anchor, Spotify's podcasting platform.

Get started at anchor.fm slash music and talk. That's anchor.com. music and talk. That was number one enemy. I wanted to play that just to sort of like illustrate. I think there's kind of maybe a huge gap between the slits performances for the first two years of being the slits and what cut is and what cut sounds like. And I think it's kind of important if you only just went and listened to cut. You maybe it'd be hard to really understand what the slits were doing.

And the slits were like very much a fucking punk band, you know? that's what they sounded like on stage. They still were learning to play their instruments. They had this chaotic energy, and they were writing these pretty straight-up punk songs. Would you agree? Definitely. Yeah, very much so.

And I think, you know, it's interesting because people, maybe less so now, because people talk about the slits more now, which is fantastic. But certainly when I was starting to write the book, people were still like, yeah, but they couldn't play, they couldn't play their instruments and, you know, blah, blah, blah. It's like, do you know what? Actually, no one could really play their instruments.

with a few exceptions, maybe like Mick Jones, Keith Levine. Yeah. A lot of punk groups who we now, you know, know and love, when they were first doing their first gigs, they couldn't play either. They just got up on the stage and, you know, there's that famous story of the punk rock festival at the 100 Club where, you know, people like Susie, you know, Susie Sue and, you know, members of the Bromley contingent,

they just literally get up on the stage and pick up a guitar for the first time and be playing it on that stage. That was kind of part of the beauty of it and the freedom and they're kind of the anarchy of it, if you like. So it's kind of a bit unfair, I think, that people still single the slits out as, oh, they couldn't play, they couldn't play. Because actually, yeah, okay, I mean, as Keith said in my book, you know, okay, yeah, they couldn't play it first, and then they kind of got better, and then they could play,

like pretty much all the, you know, a lot of the other punk bands. Like every band ever in the history of the universe. Yeah. Also, I love how they sound back then. Early punk slits is very cool, you know, like, I don't know, it's very resonant, even though they, you know, evolve and leaps and bounds by the time they get to their first album. Like, there's a real sound there that you can pick up on. And Ari is, again, we've said it, such a singular singer. And it's just, it's pretty captivating. I would agree. And I think, you know, it's funny because I was hearing all this, so they couldn't play, they couldn't play. And of course, at the time, I'd only heard cut. And I'd heard maybe some of the late appeal.

sessions and return of the giant slits. And then when I heard some of those really early recordings, I was like, they sound pretty damn good to me. I actually thought that was, you know, these myths get propagated by people who haven't actually kind of maybe even listened to it. They sound great. They sound like a punk band, as you say. And, you know, they're building on something there that is going to change. And of course, by the time they do get to cut, they've done a lot more gigs. And then they're kind of put together with a fantastic producer. But, you know, unfortunately, And he kind of debunked this myth as well. There was a myth that went around saying,

oh, well, Dennis Beauvel played all the instruments on their record, you know, so it's all them. That's why they sound so different because it's actually not them playing. It's just Dennis. And it's just not true. He debunked that as well. He said, look, you know, I'm not that kind of producer. I'm just not going to, they wouldn't have allowed it.

They are the slits. You know, do you really think, can you imagine? They were involved in the mixing of that album. That's how much they wanted to be involved. They were certainly were not going to let someone just do it. it for them. No. And whenever he did sort of get a bit carried away and sort of thought, oh, I'm going to add

a little bit here. And he'll be like, no, because no one is going to believe it. It's got to be us. They were autonomous and they wanted that kind of control of their music. So it just doesn't even make sense that they would have allowed such a thing. But again, you have to sort of ask yourself the question when those myths sort of come around again and again, you think, would you say that about a male band? Would you say it about a male artist?

Maybe not. The only person I ever hear people say that about is Sid Vicious. Right. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm not a huge Sid Vicious fan. I know some people, you know, see him as an icon. I don't see him as an artist. Whereas I, so I find it kind of hard to sort of talk about what he did in terms of what the slits did. You know, they were hugely intensive people on a kind of a mission, whereas I feel like he was probably, you know, he was a stylish dude.

And he looked good when he, you know, had this sort of low slung base. But, you know, he wasn't an artistic visionary, I don't think. Yeah, I would agree with that. I do love that he, according to Viv's book, he is credited by her for starting the safety pin trend because he had only two pairs of pants because they were all poor and he got really sick of one of them. And so he like cut it open like the pant like open and then he still had to wear them. So he just didn't know how to sew. So he safety pinned it all the way up and down. And then that like caught on like wildfire. That's the kind of detail that really took. goals my fancy, if you will. So they go on this tour with The Clash. It's the White Right Tour, the Buzzcocks, the Prefects, and Subway Sect. And this tour just sounds insane. From Get, I will say, and this is a lot in your book and a lot in Viv's book, they really had it tough on this tour. Like, the fact that they weren't allowed to, to stay at hotels. And I guess like they talk about it in your book and then Viv talks about it

in her book. You know, they get to the first hotel and maybe Ari spit on the ground. And the hotel manager was like, no, you can't stay here. And then because he was an absolute dick called every hotel in the city and then called every hotel on their tour going, first of all, why as a hotel manager, do you have this much free time, sir, don't you have work to do? And got them banned from like every hotel and they couldn't. And it's, I didn't realize this. And I think this will be interesting to maybe people who know how touring works now. The clash paid for the supporting bands, for everything, right? They funded the tour, which means the hotel rooms, the travel. It was every band's travel and hotel rooms was paid for by them. And they were meant to stay at this,

these nicer hotels, not as nice as the clash, but at least as nice as the buzzcocks. And they couldn't they say it in some like disgusting trash they call them bnbs or bnb is just like motels is that what we call them here yeah i think yeah bnb's like bed and breakfast yeah sort of kind of pretty sort of not very upmarket sure sure and then also the fact that the bus driver norman was his name norman norman yeah he would he would didn't want them to be on the bus i know i know why would why did he have say was he not a paid bus driver by the tour i don't understand why he He had so much power. That's a very good question.

And it kind of, it sort of shows you, doesn't it? It's like, you know, even if you're just a bloke who's driving the bus, you still somehow have more power than female artists who are actually on the tour. Totally. You don't get to do that. And I think, you know, it definitely shows this kind of fear of the slits and their kind of freedom and their unpredictability. And yes, Ari was unpredictable.

in particular, you know, she was, she was wild. She could cause problems and, and did cause problems, you know, and made things difficult. She sounded like she could be a bit annoying, let's be honest. Well, I think, you know, looking back, and I hope I'm not being disrespectful, but, you know, looking back and with the kind of conversations that we're much better at having now, you know, I'd say, you know, maybe there was some, some kind of possible undiagnosed mental health issues that certainly carried through into, you know, later life. But I think, you know, I have a real thing about kind of mental health and the music industry because I think a lot of things do go undiagnosed and a lot of people do go unsupported because it's like, oh, they're just crazy. It's just a part of the

thing and it's rock and roll. They're rocker, yeah. So many kind of like addiction problems and so many things like that just go unsupported and unlooked at if that's even a phrase because it's just like, well, it's just part of the thing, isn't it? It's like, do you know what? You don't have to go home with those feelings. You don't have to, you know, you're just here for the show. And it's just like a kind of really inhuman way of looking at things. And I think, you know, there were times that that Ari will have needed support or something that she wasn't getting perhaps. And I think that wasn't just now, but throughout her whole life. So I have a lot of kind of, you know, compassion really, looking back because it could be difficult.

And I think it could be difficult for the people around her as well. So I'm not denying that that it must have been difficult to have her on the bus, you know, going to be screaming a head off or whatever. But at the same time, I know that a huge part of this will have been misogyny. Absolutely. And the fact that he was like, you know, just making them feel like they didn't deserve to be there, I suppose. And I think there was a lot of that. A hundred percent. I mean, and Don Lutz, who like you said, was managing and tour managing them, had to pay off Norman.

Yeah, to bribe Norman to let them stay on the bus. To your point about Ari, and we'll get into it later, the way she's talked about in music press by men is absolutely fucking insane. And I will bring up some quotes and people are going to be like, how was this allowed? And it's psychotic. But we're not there. Especially considering that not only was she just, you know, whatever, being a woman that was, you know, experiencing misogy. She was a child.

She was 15. The way these men talked about a 15 year old girl. Holy goddamn moly. Okay. So the tour goes, the way the tour goes, it's rough. Palm Olive and Joe Strummer have broken up also, so there's some awkward tension there. To your point, they play a set every night.

They love playing and they get better and better. August of 1999, after this tour, they do their first peel session. Let's play a song off of it and then we'll talk a bit about everything. We'll talk about John Peel, while Peel sessions are important, how this came about. What song would you like to hear Vindict. please. Okay. So let's hear vindictive off of the Slits' first peel sessions on BBC Radio 1 from 1977. That was vindictive. I fucking love that song. It's very, it's, I kind of wish it was on a proper album, but I love having access to it from the peal sessions. It's so good. It makes me so happy

hearing that again. It is just ferocious. And like the first time I heard that, I was like, what the, it's like this kind of tidal wave of ferocity, just washing over you. And there's just great kind of reverb on those kind of backing vocals. And it's just something, I don't know, just the energy of that just lit me up when I first heard it. And it's just something kind of just really nasty about it and also joyful. Absolutely. Also, babe, what are you saying? No idea. Literally almost no idea. There's like some parts I can hear, but some parts I'm like, I don't know, but what are you saying? Well, it could be just as well.

But I mean, I know that, you know, to say, let's do the split and I'll shit on it. Let's do the split and I'll spit on it. It's like satanic. You know, there's something kind of like really devilish about it. You know, I don't think I heard women singing like that. All men, you know, it's just like, what is going on? So they were so completely different. And I think, you know, John Peel was very much on board for what they were doing.

If I was to make a list of the 10 best, sessions of all time. The two slit sessions would be in that top ten. They're just mesmerizing. Their inability to play coupled with their determination to play, you know, the kind of conflict between these things was magnificent. Yeah, John Pielman, what a ledge. What a ledge, absolute fucking legend. Okay, so it's very interesting to me, and I think this is, this was more common of the time, but like, if it were now, and the slits had this much press and appeal session, they would have an album in five minutes

because people would be like, let's make some money off these people or like, let's, you know. And they didn't want to make an album, right? Like, not yet. Like, they were so interested in playing live and just like playing shows, writing songs. It seemed like they kind of purposely put off making their first album. Maybe.

I mean, certainly that I know what you're saying, And I think, you know, things tend to unfold at the right time. And I think even though kind of with John Peel, you know, he was hugely, him and his producer John Walters were hugely supportive, you know, around them there was not so much understanding of what they were doing. And even doing the Slits, Peel sessions, was difficult for them. The engineers didn't understand what they were doing. They kept trying to tune their guitars.

They just didn't understand what was going on. and there was hostility as they faced every day, you know, just this hostility. So, you know, while on the outside, you know, great John Peel is championing them and always did, and they loved that, loved him for that. And people discovered the slits through them. There was really no other kind of, certainly no mainstream support for them. I remember kind of Ari talking about it. I don't know if other people have slightly different accounts, but certainly when Ari talked to me about it for the book,

you know, her saying that Joe Strummer came up to. her one night and saying, yeah, respect the slits. You know, you're the only ones who didn't sell out and sign up to a record company. And she was like, we want to sign up to a record company. But, you know, where are they? You don't feel any kind of, as it were, political commitment to the small independent label. No.

No. Okay. All right, see. There was a lot of kind of, you know, people felt intimidated by the slits. They felt like they were unmanageable, which they probably were in many respects. Although Viv was probably the most approachable, sensible member that could be communicated with, you know, A&R people could communicate with someone like Viv more than they could maybe with someone like Ari. But they were bemused. That was the impression I was given. They were bemused that they were kind of left behind. Yeah, because 77, yeah, was like people were getting signed. Like that was the time.

People, you know, almost sort of ridiculous numbers of punk bands that just, you know, were just being scooped up because they could be the next pistols. They could be the next big thing. So I think there was a level of confusion. But although from the outside, as I say, Joe Strom was like, yeah, you know, you didn't sell out. And it's like, yeah, you guys were cool. I think they had, like we said some things working against them. Like, they were banned from mainstream radio because of their name was offensive. You make a really good point. They had only existed in live settings and they had this energy of live. shows and you know doing some of the appeal sessions introduced them to this new thing which was like the sterile studio environment where they had to play properly quote unquote according to the people coming in I really liked that actually I think this was from your book um that apparently Mick Jones tried to help them um you know and Kep was like kept being like you guys got to tune your instruments but Keith Levine told them that there was more to it than simply being in tune and to embrace their mistakes and that being slightly out of tune never stopped Jimmy Hendricks, which I loved that, that little dig at Jamie Hendricks.

And, I mean, God bless them. I mean, I think Viv said in her book, she was like, I don't know how to tune my, I don't know how to do that. So who knows how to do that? That's crazy. And it's like, yeah, some people did and some people didn't. They did this really cool interview in ZigZag, Chris Needs. Chris needs.

Yeah. So in September of 1977, I just, I love any of these interviews that are just direct quotes from them because they just say the coolest shit. Like this is the famous interview where Paul Mollav says, we're not punks. We're the slits. And Ari says, and we play slits music. Yes, isn't that great? Oh, I love it too much. And Viv says something that many bands say and will say till the end of time, we've been labeled too much.

And really, like, they're not wrong. Like they eventually aren't really punks. You know, there's sort of something totally different. Yeah. I loved this. And then they're obviously probably in every interview, but asked about feminism or whatever. Viv says there are millions of girls around who are complete arseholes. Everywhere you look, there are.

I just hope they get the idea when they see us. Not to be like us, but just a thing for themselves. It's hard for them to look different because they've had 20 years of conditioning from magazines like this. she picks up a copy of the magazine called 19, what to look like. I loved this because again, this just harkens a little bit back to your earlier point where you said like, oh, I know people wish that it was like the sisterhood of traveling punk pants that everyone was best friends and supportive. But that's, first of all, not realistic. And secondly, that's not feminism. Like, it's not feminism that you have to like every other woman. Like, sorry. Like, not in my book, babe.

Like feminism is that you get to be like some of those girls are fucking assholes, you know, like, and some are this and we like some and we don't like some. I think it was very like refreshing to like just hear her be like, I hope, you know, our who caresness inspires some of those girls to break out of the cage that, you know, mainstream society has put them in essentially. I just that quote really resonated with me. Yeah, no, that's a really good quote. And I think it is important as well to, remember that what feminism will have meant to them, I mean, the word feminism, the term feminism in the 70s. It's evolved since then. So the feminism, you know, when my book first came out, I remember someone said, oh, it's, you know, there's quite a bit in there that's dismissive of feminism, which I was really shot. I thought, God, no, you know, I am a feminist. And then I realized they were referring to certain quotes by the Slits who were, you know, we have to think of it in the terms of a time and a context. where there was a different kind of feminism, and I'm certainly not throwing shade at that at all, but it was a feminism that they didn't relate to, and they didn't want to be co-opted by as a mascot or whatever. They just wanted to be themselves. They just wanted to be the slits, and they didn't want to kind of be adopted by any movement. So they were quite resistant

of that. I think that's enduring, though. I think that's a really good point that you bring up, And I genuinely feel like, like anything else, right? Like once it becomes a movement with doctrine and it's so restrictive, you can almost liken it to punk, right? Where it's like, that's not feminism. Like that might have been capital F feminism at that time. And there's been a capital F feminism at every time, right? But real feminism is way beyond that and way around that. And often I think people, especially back then, it's like, well, I'm not that. So I guess I'm not feminist. Whereas now I think we've, honestly, some of that should still exist today. But like, I think we've had enough waves of feminism that people can maybe step back and be like, I don't have to be that kind of feminist to consider myself a feminist. Whereas they didn't really have the language for that back then, you know, but that's what I hear them saying.

Totally. And I think we just have to look at actions as well. And, you know, to me, the way they were, the way they acted, the things they said were inherently feminist. It's just, you know, we have to kind of update our settings a little bit in terms of kind of what we see feminism as meaning. And I think, you know, from a contemporary, you know, for you and me, feminist point of view, they're feminist, but they are still resistant to use that term because they still kind of relate it to what was happening at the time and those formative years. And I think, you know, also polystyrene as well, hugely fated it as a feminist. on, but again, really rejected the term feminism, which is such a shame, you know, from our point of view. It's like, it would be really helpful, actually, if you kind of had to embrace that term. But we have to see it in the context of the time and, you know, for all the reasons we've stated.

And again, it's certainly no disrespect to, you know, that's that wave of feminism in the 70s, which is hugely important and just did so much for so many people. But we also kind of have to respect the fact that they just didn't relate to it at that time. And what they were doing was, God-given, right. Yeah, and they were subverting things, you know, so a lot of the things they did that actually upset a lot of militant feminists at the time, like the cut album cover with, you know, the muddy kind of like kind of warrior women, that upset a lot of feminists for reasons I think are obvious. You know, they probably like, hang on a minute, it's just another record cover that's using women's bodies to sell a record. And of course, that's not where they were coming from. But they were subverting those things. And again, trying to provoke thought and questioning and that sort of thing.

And so when they did that sort of stuff or when they kind of wore sort of fetish clothing but in a really subversive way and kind of messed it up, they were trying to provoke thought and question, not just lust, but other stuff as well. And I think that would be misunderstood an awful lot. Yeah, I think you're spot on with that and, you know, we'll get into it when we get into the cut album cover and just everything else afterwards. I wanted to talk about this NME article from October of 1978. You know, they're sort of being regularly written up by the music press, just around live shows and stuff. This particular piece brings up that it's kind of interesting. It's like saying that there's certain people in the scene that are saying that the slits are selling out. It doesn't use the word selling out. What the writer says is vaulting into dicey, slightly desperate territory.

And he says, this body of opinion was to be spearheaded by comments from Susie Banshee, for example, who told me that in her opinion, the slits, once a close kindred spirit to the banshees and strong allies to boot, now seemed lost and closer, if anything, to the spirit of the runaways, which is a fucking sick burn, if Susie really did say that. where do you have any sense of like what was going on because they again this is 1978 they haven't even put on an album yet like what what's maybe going on in the like public perception or like even within the scene about feeling the slits were whatever that is vaulting into slightly desperate territory to use the words of the writer do you know what i i would need a bit more context really to sort of make a comment on that or you know yeah i don't i couldn't find anything else either. This is the only thing I found and I was like, oh, that's kind of weird, a little goss. I mean, one thing that springs to mind, again, is I wasn't there. So, you know,

I can only sort of say what I know. But from what I remember, when they signed with Ireland Records and they signed with Chris Blackwell, in typical Slit style, they did a kind of quite sort of cheeky, irreverent signing picture that ended up, I think, probably in the NME and the Melody Maker. It was a big kind of, I don't know if it was a little advert or a full page, but it was a very striking image. because it was like it was Chris Blackwell, head of Ireland records, and the slits around him posing like kind of Bond girls. But it was kind of a joke. It was a piss take because they thought Bond girls were ridiculous and sexist and gimmicky.

And so it was a big joke that they were doing this because obviously they're not like Bond Girls. And so, I mean, things like that, I think, as I said earlier, like, you know, wearing the fetish gear, but then kind of sort of messing it up and sort of doing it in a sort of way that was like, hang on, that's not how I'm used to that kind of stuff looking. this isn't pitched to me in a sexual way or I don't understand it they were doing that kind of stuff all the time it was sort of part of their humour

and also kind of part of their you know what are you going to do with this you know now I'm going to do that what do you make of this and it was just they were kind of being playful so I think a lot of the time that that was ripe for misunderstanding or if it wasn't a genuine misunderstanding it would be kind of an easy thing to kind of

low hanging fruit if you like to say something like that and say oh look they're objectifying themselves or I don't I don't know if that's what she intended by the comment, but, you know, when I think of the runaways, I do think of genuine musicians, actually, really good musicians, but being pitched in a certain way, I suppose. Yeah, I think that's probably, like, I'm again, pure speculation, but like when I think of the runaways, I mean, two things, and the slits have said it many times, like, we weren't put together by a man, which is a criticism of the runaways, is that they were put together by Kim Fowley, you know,

sort of like arranged by a man a la, you know, the shang old duop bands or whatever. But also that they were very blatantly sexual, not cheekily sexual, right? I mean, maybe not Joan Jed, but you know, you had Lita Ford and and Shari Curry and they're in just like

full underwear lingerie. It was it was empowering, but it was, it was full, like, there's no irony in it. Whereas the slits to your point were like, what if we wore, what if, I think Viv said it in one of her things, like, what if we wore sex shop clothes, but then you don't want to fuck us because we're scary and disgusting or whatever. I'm paraphrasing,

that's not what she said, but, but like, what if sex shop clothes, but we are not sexual to you? And, like, I think that was such an interesting intersection. And maybe that was just sort of being, to your point, misinterpreted it at the time. Definitely. And I think, you know, for whatever reason, sometimes people misinterpret things maybe a bit on purpose to kind of fully if you will yeah to like put another another woman down you know it happens a lot and and again people who yeah I say should know better you know what we're talking about young kids human beings who are kind of rivals and um you know it wasn't all a big kind of jolly gang oh for sure and there is um later you know a couple of articles that i came across

in like NME and Melody Maker that are about the slits and Susie and the band. She's in one article. It's almost like, no, we just had room for to put the both. Which, the wildly different musicians and bands. So I can completely see where this is coming from. Maybe there was a kind of frustration there as well from that point of view. And maybe that kind of sense of being lumped in all the time was, you know, maybe a reason to sort of try and distance herself from the, not, you know, necessarily because it was bad or good, but just to sort of say, look, you know,

we are not the same just because we're the same gender. And I have a real issue. And I know that a lot of people are going to massively disagree with me on this because people are always celebrating this picture. Oh, all the women together. Yeah, I bite my tongue every time. I'm like, yay. Because to me, it just is that, it's like, you know, shove them all in in one go, then we get them out the way and then we can go back to talking about blokes and bands again. And I love blokees and bands. It's like blondey, blondie, polystyrene, Chrissy Hynde. Oh, by the way, a funny thing I really want to say about Chrissy Hind, which I forgot to say, but I must bring it up, is that apparently when Viv was deciding about joining the Slits, someone mentioned to her that they might go ask Chrissy Hine. And so she was like,

oh, I decided I had to do it. But then she was like, they would never have asked Chrissy. She was too good and everyone was scared of her. Like, she was too talented of a musician. They would not have asked her to be in the slits because she was too good at her instrument, which I thought was very funny. Because, I mean, Chrissy Hind is notably an incredible musician, you know, but that was not. the vibe back then. They were like, we don't need this girl who actually can play guitar. We need someone more like us. And they were right to do it. But Chrissy Hein probably would quit in five minutes. Anyways, yeah, sorry, the picture, Chrissy Hein, Blondie, Polystyrene, Viv. Pauline Black. Pauline Black. Debbie Harry. Yeah, Chrissy Hynde and Susie Sue. And so, you know, I think it was this

kind of artificial situation where they're all kind of being shoved in together. And again, you still have these kind of women in rock, things wherever. It's like they're all completely different doing totally different things, different spirit, different everything. But it's, so that must have been incredibly frustrating as it is now. It happens a little bit less now. But, you know, so I suppose maybe that that could probably cause someone to feel that they wanted to sort of distance themselves, perhaps, and not just get lumped in or in the same sort of sentences, the slits or, you know, polystyrene. I will say that in the same article, while this man is a messy bitch living for drama, stirring up goss.

He also says about Ari the only time she really seemed to become enamored with the interview is when I ask her if at 16 she's still a virgin.

Sir! My God. Sir. What? Sir. Sir. That's just horrible, isn't it?

That's like the least honestly offensive and shocking thing a person has said about a man has said about Ariup that I found. This was like

kind of a direct gross question. but later it gets really crazy. She also, you know, as per her, what she told you, she clearly like takes the piss. That's right. Did I use that right? She takes the piss. And she says, ah, that's a good question.

No, I'm not a longer a virgin. The first time was enjoyable. The second time was, oh, it was hideous, really bad. And she's just lying just for funsies. I will say famously, and honestly this is part of the reason I first wanted to become a music journalist. British music press is particularly insane and savage. And from like calling people ugly, disgusting cunts to like, I mean, I think of Tom York, that poor man, the press about, like the music press in

Britain was just super unfiltered in a way that was both now really shocking, but also really fucking cool and interesting. And it did, it did, it was what made not the meanness, but just the like freedom and liberation and the way you were. were allowed to write about music, particularly in the 70s, 80s and 90s, but particularly, particularly in British music press, man, it was just not like that anymore. Like, that shit is gone. And it was in many ways very cool. Yeah, I think. And also that that's why a lot of people bought those papers. It wasn't just, you know, I wonder who, you know, Nick Kent's listening to this week. They wanted to hear those voices. And music journalists had very distinct voices. And,

they were funny and they were savage, as you say, and it was entertainment. And, you know, it's sort of kind of cruel looking back to a lot of that. But yeah, that's how it was. And it was sort of a mark of the British music press for sure. And things are different now. And I think, you know, probably rather kinder now and needed to be kinder. But yeah, just such a, in and of itself, it's just something of the time, I guess, isn't it? That kind of sort of, yeah, savagery. It's awful, really. Okay, we've reached a sort of sad part of the Slits story. Paul Molliv leaves the band. She leaves. Yes. No more, no longer the drummer. No more Palmolive in the Slits. And yeah, it's a very sad part of the story because of course this was her vision in the first place. You know, and of course that's showbiz.

This is just the way it goes. But it is very sad. Tintletown, babe. That's what it is. Absolutely. It wasn't a lot of tinsle in Ladbrook Grove in the same place. 70s, but yes, indeed. That is a good metaphor for it. And yeah, it's very sad, but I mean, it's also kind of got this sort of sad feeling of inevitability as well. So you feel that, you know, there's obviously this anguish, certainly from Tessa, who was particularly close to Palm Olive and they were living together in the same squat. And it was kind of left to Tessa to sort of do the deed and say to Palm Olive, look, you know, we think it's kind of, you know, we don't want you in the band anymore, essentially. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,

Tessa was gutted, you know, she adored, they all loved Palm Olive, but there were various reasons behind this, one of which being they kind of wanted to sort of, I suppose they wanted to kind of shake up their sound and they felt that, you know, Palm Olive was, you know, hugely creative drummer. I suppose it makes me think of some of the drumming of Keith Moon, you know, very colourful, quite wild, often spilling out of control, but really exciting. And I think they wanted to go in a slightly more structured way to move forward with their music. And at the same time, Parm Olive was feeling dissatisfied and felt like she was changing and wanting different things. And she'd become very taken with this singer-songwriter of folk musician called Time and Dog,

who is very associated with Joe Strummer and the Clash and the Mescalaires. And he was very much there throughout that kind of West London scene. And I think there was a sort of spiritual element to it as well. And she was just more interested in that. And that's how the slits kind of presented the story to me, certainly. And I think from what Palmolive told me, it did seem to correlate. She felt, you know, something's not right here. She started to kind of experiment with kind of occulty themes, which is kind of interesting

to me. That's something I'm very into. So she was a seeker. So she was trying divination. She was obviously kind of trying to find some grounding, I guess, and just wasn't very satisfied. So it seemed like a kind of inevitable thing, I suppose. But what she did kind of mourn, being in the slits after leaving

and had that kind of period of mourning because it was kind of her baby. And, you know, a lot of the songs were hers. But she got scooped up by the raincoats and which is a really beautiful kind of, you know, development. Yeah, absolutely. They're such wonderful people. I absolutely love the raincoats as musicians and as human beings. I think it was just absolutely the right thing for everyone involved. They adored Palm Olive and Anna

De Silva just said it was like winning the lottery. She's just so wonderful. And that pushed their music into a different direction. In piecing together all of the stories around, you know, this time, Paul Malve was about 24. And she's been very open in interview. I mean, they all have the nice thing about the slits as them. They don't hold back. And being honest in interviews. And of course, like, you know better than anyone. Time does a must-up memory. But I thought, it really reminded me of the kind of thing, like, you know when like you're in a relationship, but you like don't want to be in it anymore, but you're also like, I don't want to be the one to break up with you. And I'm just going to kind of be like a little difficult until you break up with me. And I feel like it like, not that that was her in

But I feel like, you know, from like the stories, it was like, she didn't want to come to rehearsal anymore. She was clearly like kind of over it. Like you're saying, like she had newer interests that were like more experimental music. Let's see. I have a good quote here from her. She said that I started getting into the spiritual thing, like astral traveling. I became very fascinated. I started throwing the I Ching like divination.

I started contacting spirits. I sound weird, but that's what was happening. First of all, you don't sound weird to me, babe. I'm so into that. That's very cool. And she does seem like a very cosmic person to use your words. But then she also, you know, she was very open. We haven't really talked about the fact that the slits had like 42 managers, like even before they ever, you know, got signed or whatever.

And around this time, like right before Palm Olive leaves, Malcolm McLaren, the famed sex pistols manager and just all around famous. punk's Bengali man was trying to manage them and I think he did for like two weeks and Paul Molliv was not down like she was not into it she uh here's let me see what she said he said something to her that she really didn't like right okay she said i remember it i didn't want malcolm mclaren as a manager and i didn't want to go along with him and i had my reasons i didn't like him because i thought he manipulated the boys he said to me i hate women and i hate music and i thrive and hate hate. Yes. So let's do it. Yeah, you can see someone like Paul Molliv who's like, babe, I'm astral projecting over here and I'm really communing with the spiritual world and you're here with this

bullshit. I'm not having it. Producer Dylan says, all I wanted to do is mime. And here we are now with your shit. So yeah. And I thought it was, you know, there's so much going on. They all really went through the fucking ringer in so many ways. You know, we have, we talked about the really harrowing touring and they're getting spit on and all this stuff. And then, you know, Viv gets really sick also right before this and she's hospitalized for like, I think, two weeks because she had horrible asthma and she was a smoker and obviously no one's healthy when you're in a punk band and you're touring, you know, like who knows what you're even eating or drinking or whatever. And she is like, I don't want to fucking do this anymore if it's going to be such a fucking challenge. And in her book,

she says that I think Tessa and Ari came to see her and they were like, no, like, we want to keep doing the band. And she basically was like, fine, but like, I'm going to leave or Paul Malam has to leave. And she kind of gave them an ultimatum. And I don't, there's no their real side of the story in that. But like, just like you said, Tessa being the closest to her was sort of nominated to go do it. And, you know, she went and delivered the news. And, you know, it sounds like it was the best for everyone considering, you know, Palm Olive's divergent interests. And, and we haven't really talked about this, but, like, Viv Albertine was, like, absolutely the backbone in many ways of this band in, like, keeping it going, right? She was, like, the parent. Like, it was like, we have to rehearse.

We have to do this. We have to, you know, making the phone calls, like, all this stuff. Because, you know, Ari, obviously, an incredible driving force was still so young. We'll get into it later. and I'm not really sure when this starts happening. But Tessa did develop a bit of a drug problem. Yes, yes, that's right. I mean, there always has to be someone in a band who is a driving force and there seems to always have to be someone in the band who experiments with heroin at some point.

Of course, what is a band with that? Well, it's, but you know, I don't mean to be facetious because obviously it was a very dark period. And also it was something that kind of crept up as it does. And I suppose a lot of people around the slits maybe didn't kind of notice it quite because Tessa's personality is very kind of introspective and slow and kind of dreamy and so my Taurus queen that's right yes oh absolutely I love Toreans I'm a scorpio so we're kind of cousins so connected yes indeed so you know there was that going on and that also

caused conflict for Palmolive because she she noticed this was happening and she kind of tried to you know lay down the law a little bit with with Tessa who was very gender and lovely person. But it was the one time that she actually kind of acted out against Palm Olive and became really furious with her. She kind of dropped her drugs through the crack and the floorboard when they were sort of having a bit of a disagreement about this. And apparently it was actually an accident, but, you know, there are no accidents, are there? So, you know, especially not in Palm Olives, spiritual astral projecting world. That's right. Indeed. Indeed. Yeah, very, very much guided, I think, by other forces. So there was all this going on. And I think,

Viv, you know, Viv was that person in the band that there's got to be one. It's better that there is only one, really. Oh, yeah, totally. Because you've already got lots of power struggles there anyway. But really, even right up to, you know, she's just always been that kind of person because I remember when we were working on the book, this is just such a slits kind of story, really. This is just the kind of thing that would happen. You know, Ari, and I understand why, but Ari would sort of test you. So one minute she'd be very loving, very generous, very warm. And I believe that was real. But, you know, and then the next minute for no reason, she'd just sort of test you and go for your turn. And, you know, after a while, and this is before we had the book deal, I was really just doing

it, you know, fueled by pure love and a sense of injustice that they did never put, you know, and after a while, you know, this kind of turbulence, I just said, you know what, if it's, and it's similar to what you just said that, Viv said, you know, different circumstance, but if it's this much of a problem, you know, if it's really going to cause it, let's just not do it. Right. Because life's too short, isn't it? And I, you know, and then of course, you know, and so I just turned around and I said, I wasn't trying to kind of call the bluff, but I was just like, okay, let's, you know, I'm done really. I'm good. I'm good with that. I think I can do without this. And so Viv actually saved the day, saved the book and just said, look, please, you know,

we've never had this kind of attention before. This, this has happened throughout the whole slit story, this kind of sense of self-sabotage, when something good would finally come our way, and then it would get sort of messed up or the person who is actually an ally gets alienated, and this would just keep happening. And so, you know, obviously the book came out, and it meant a lot to me that it meant a lot to her and Tessa and Ari, I'm sure. But, you know, it's an interesting kind of thing, because looking back, I can sort of understand that with a lot more compassion and understanding because, you know, if you put yourself in their position, you know, fighting every day just to kind of survive, just to walk down the street without being abused. And of course,

they were always not just verbally abused, but they would be physically abused. Ari was stabbed. She was stabbed. And more than once. Yeah, absolutely. On the street, just like someone, this blew my fucking mind that someone would just come and be like, fuck you, bitch. Yeah, random person, producer Dylan's asking in the chat. Yeah, like literally, um, it, no, it was. It wasn't people they knew. It was like subcultural people in the world, but they weren't friends. It was just like they hated. Their very existence was like an affront to many people. The fact that you're walking down the street in, you know, Ari would wear this big flashes Mac, this big dirty old coat and, you know, have her crazy hair. She just looked amazing. But like, you know, essentially she's saying, I am a woman who is not for you, actually. I'm not pitching myself for your gaze.

I'm not kind of, I'm just me. And that alone was offensive to a lot of blokes of that time, obviously. And this happened and it's just, it's horribly symbolic as well. It's like, okay, you're not actually trying to make yourself attractive to me. But there's that kind of penetrative symbolism of the stabbing. And it's just so horrible on so many levels. So I suppose when you're going through that kind of thing every day and you never quite know who you can trust.

And then if someone does come, along and seems, you know, like they're on your side. It's like, hmm, there's that element of suspicion because you've been here before and you've been messed around again and again. And these formative years that I can understand this sort of paranoia, I guess. I think that's the only way I can describe it. So, and I think also Viv talked about it as well. You said in, you know, later years after the slits, I think she was definitely going through

some kind of PTSD, didn't want to play music, didn't even want to listen to music. It was just scorched by the whole thing. and so she caught sight of herself in the reflection of a shop window and saw this kind of hard face and she's like bloody hell that's me you know and you can understand that sort of having to build up a defensive mask yeah that's right yeah but it's like god they had to grow up fast and it was a hostile environment so yes they had each other not always easy either of course but you know you can only imagine what that must have been like day to day and for five years it's keeping that up as a band.

I mean, very stressful, very stressful. So I do have compassion for the changeable nature of, you know, how Ari could be sometimes and all the rest of it. Because I think underneath it was still a kid, still a child that was full of enthusiasm and love and joy. And it was just so sad that, you know, there was, she'd obviously just been through so many horrible things, as they all had. Yeah, no, you're so right.

I mean, true soldiers, honestly, considering everything that they went through. So Paul Mollove does leave the band, like you said, and it's a happy ending because she does join the raincoats. And the raincoats are amazing. And the slits signed to Island Records. So I guess Nora, I think we mentioned this a little bit earlier, but Nora, because she was, you know, move her and shake her, babe, in the scene. She knew everybody. She called Chris Blackwell, who was one of the founders of Violin Records, who was that the label was founded in the 50s in Jamaica.

Yeah. Because Chris Blackwell's from Jamaica. But by 1978, they were like a huge, you know, powerful label in England. Like, Roxy Music was on there. King Crimson. Sparks. The Whalers. They were powerful. It's soon to be you two in like maybe five minutes after this. So this is like a big deal. And it made me an even bigger deal. They had artistic control written into their contract, which was literally unheard of for any kind of artists, not just like they weren't the first female artists to put this into their contract. It was extremely rare to get this approved into a contract that you had pure artistic control. And they talked a lot about a Jimmy Hendricks album.

electric ladyland that's right and he wanted this like beautiful photo of him some children I think around a statue in New York and the label was like no and they were like

you have to have this whatever other art that became the art and he was fucking miserable about it but he couldn't say anything so anyways they were very smart to do that they were yeah and it was

I mean Ari was I remember Ari telling me about that and saying well look I was just a kid at the time. I didn't understand why we had to have this big lawyer. And I'm sure this would have been driven, as you say, by Nora. But thank goodness they did because it was. It was such an unusual thing.

And, you know, for a band like The Slits, it was so important for them to do this their way. So that, you know, right down to the artwork, you know, everything had to be their vision, I suppose. So, yeah, that is a huge thing, a huge part of their story. Yeah. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but to your point of not trusting people and being, you know, fucked about, in 2016, Viv posted on Twitter something about the rotters at Island Records still not paying any royalties for cut. So I don't know, I'm not a lawyer. I don't know what happened with that. But before anything goes bad, things are great.

Island Records has a ton of money. the girls go on tour with The Clash again with Budgie, playing drums from them, Budgie, who was formerly of the band Big in Japan. Like, I think a best mate of their friend Paul Rutherford, who later was of Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Budgie, more famously, was the drummer for Susie and the band. She is after this, but he is a ringer here for the slits

and also played on cut. It was a girl. It's a girl's unit, you know. Anyway, I don't know. Maybe I was a token girl. They're on Island Records. Island Records has a bunch of money. They're like, you guys, let's record that I heard it through the Great Fine cover

at the Island In House Studio. They have the drummer Maxie Feel Good Edwards, who's like this like sick, amazing, proper reggae drummer who had played with like Dennis Brown and big youth and stuff. And he, I mean, you can kind of. of really hear that right like the drumming on the cover of i heard it through the great finance so fucking good yeah it's truly incredible so they do that um that's the first thing they record and then they're off to record the actual album at ridge farm studios with dennis bevel which you brought up earlier who is a huge um important figure in this story dennis dennis dennis is a barbadoes born

reggae artist um he was a bass player and a producer um he was part of this base and a and Matumby, and he was also known under the pseudonym Blackbeard. He had produced the pop group's album, Why? Which I think was part of the interest in him as a producer, and we'll get into it, but obviously the pop group and the slits form a very solid alliance going forward from here. tell me a little bit about in your estimation like what the what dennis boval brought to the table well dennis you know he was such a legend already he was an incredibly musical person and he had very very wide musical reference points you could literally talk to him about anything and and he

would know exactly what you were talking about he could play everything he was just you know and is, continues to be a brilliant, truly musical soul and very open-minded. And so he was contacted with regard to sort of coming down and meeting the slits. And he was like, well, okay, hang on a minute. You know, he was a little bit skeptical about how this was going to work. And so, you know, he probably had heard all sorts of things about them not being able to play live and all that kind of thing. So he was like, okay, hang on a minute. I'm going to need to meet them first and get a feel for this. And they were like, well, they're going, you've got to meet them in the studio. We've kind of hitting the ground running.

So he's like, all right. So he heads down to Dawking, which is in a sort of leafy part of Surrey in England, just south of London. And they just sort of get on like a house on fire. He thinks Ari is fantastic. He loves them all. You know, Ari is, you know, completely, you know, just herself and wild and musical. And he was very, he respected the fact that she knew her stuff musically. And otherwise, he really respected that.

And he respected the fact that they all wanted to take this seriously and they all wanted to do this properly. He also respected the fact they wanted to do this themselves. So while, you know, as I say, there's this myth that Dennis, well, he just played everything on cut. You know, that is not true because, you know, he probably could have done if he wanted to, but they wouldn't have allowed that. And he said, every time I did pick up a guitar and sort of tried little lick and thought, well, that's quite nice. They were like, no, that can't go on because they're just, you know, we're going to come up for. for so much criticism and, you know, it's got to be us. So he just said, he described himself as the lollipop man who kind of walked them across the road. But, you know, he said, really, I didn't need,

it was just sort of, you know, kind of guiding them through. And keeping things disciplined as well. He said, I was like this kind of dad figure. It was like, right, it's bedtime now because it was a residential studio. They were all staying there in this lovely, it's gorgeous, actually. It's this beautiful rural place in the countryside and, you know, they would all stay there and eat there. and it was a beautiful kind of communal experience. And they were just so excited as you would be to be there. And it was like, no, bedtime. You've got to be fresh in the morning.

I don't want to have to be getting you up. And, you know, I've got to go to bed too. But Budgie, the drummer, he's an incredibly sensitive musician. He was kind of doing his own thing with reggae drumming. And Dennis was really interested in what he was doing. Budgie was like, you know, I want to learn from Dennis. So they would stay up a bit later and have these jams together and just have a great time. And then, of course, Ari would hear them and come like, you can't have a jam without me.

So there were lots of kind of things like that. It just sounded like a lot of fun, very hard work. I think they all kind of really put their backs into it. And it took longer than it was expected. And, you know, they had some sort of interesting times there. But one of the things that really kind of stood out from what they all told me was the food. Because I think they were just sort of bit malnourished in these kind of squats in West London, just all a bit hand to mouth.

And certainly on tour, you know, they were trying to be vegetarian and that was very hard in the 70s, you know, really difficult to find stuff to eat. So they had people cooking for them and they would eat around this big communal table and they all just became healthier. And it just sounded like a really lovely experience that they all seemed to have really fond memories of. And they worked through their back catalogue and, you know, there were a lot of palm olive songs in there. obviously a lot of songs that Viv had written and they kind of worked them up and they sort of reimagined them with Dennis and he really brought you know this is a really long-winded answer to your question of what did Dennis Bevel but you know he he brought his magic really and because he you know these are not his songs so he you know it often takes you know creative visionary outsider

to say oh you know I think I know what might work nicely on this one and I'm thinking specifically of you know, the song Newtown that we talked about earlier, a palm olive song originally called Drug Town. And so he had like a coin, a spoon, a glass, a little box of matches, and he'd sort of lay them all out in front of him. They're all going, what is he doing? It's like a kind of mad professor conjuring. Sir, are you doing, sir? And he's like, just watch, babe. Yeah, just go with it. Okay, trust me. So, and he goes up, any overdubs, this percussion track. over the top of Newtown, and it's a little shake of the box of matches, and then it's like the coin being dropped and the, you know, the spoon being dropped in the glass. And it's just this

very spare percussion track, but using these very specific items that are, of course, you know, very much associated with, you know, cooking up a fix, which is very much a theme of the song. And it was just so clever, but also sounded so good. But it had this kind of space. Nothing was ever overworked and I think you can really hear that through the whole album actually. I think one of one of his big things was was to sort of never let it be kind of overcooked. Everything has a kind of space in it and I think that's a very reggae thing as well. You have this kind of moments of space. I think it takes confidence to do that in music but it really yeah absolutely really works and dub yes absolutely. Yeah. Okay well I love that you mentioned this because I think you know there's several tracks on here

that we can really hear what an evolution the song went through between Inception and this album. So, like, you brought up Newtown as a gorgeous and perfect example. So let's hear a clip of Newtown from the Peel session in 1977, because that's more of the, you know, the earlier version, like you said, Paul Moller wrote this song. And now let's hear the full. cut version, just so people can really understand what a vast difference there is. So this is Newtown offcut. That was Newtown. You know it, a goddamn gorgeous beautiful song, if I've ever heard one. Really just hits every time. Just lands right on my, on my tender, my tender emotional

heart ready to receive. Perfectly put. Thank you. I, okay, I was just being struck by how my much like this is like an evergreen song, right? Like the idea of the idea of sniffing televizina, we can just change it, sniffing Netflixina that people are doing that fucking left and right every day, one day binge the entire 40, you know, episode series or, you know, sniffing phone callina. Just change that right away to sniffing iPhoneina. And we're right back here in 22. It's it never changed. Like it's so human nature, right? It's like, this idea of like the opiate of the masses. It's, it's so smart. It's so smart for a teenager to have written this song. You know, I'm just really struck by, I don't know, it's just

incredible. And we've, you know, there were a lot of drugs going on. I don't know. I just want to mention this because if it's true, I thought it was a very interesting fact. But Viv and her book talks about, and I'm almost positive I read it somewhere else. It might have been your book or it might have in an interview, that the heartbreakers and Johnny Thunders are the ones that introduced heroin into the punk scene in London. The prior, it wasn't really as much around, but when they came over from New York, they brought it with them and sort of that's how it started to infiltrate that scene. Again, I don't know if that's absolutely true. I don't want to malign Johnny Thunders, but I think many people have talked about that, definitely. And it's, I think it's sort of, you know,

from what I've heard from different people, it's definitely, it's a kind of accepting. did that that's what happened, that things were kind of, you know, it was mainly kind of weed and all the rest of it until, you know, the, speed maybe, everyone had speed. Yeah, speed. There was a lot of, a lot of speed going around. But, and booze as well. And I think when the, when the, when Johnny Thunders came over, I think everyone would just thought they were very glamorous and exciting, you know, they're coming over from New York

and they just seemed so. He was in the New York dolls, which was like a huge influence in punk for sure. Massive. Absolutely. That's certainly what I've heard. heard the kind of, that definitely came along with them. And of course, Nancy Spongen also came along with them. And that was another, yeah, exactly. Another story indeed. But yeah, now, I think it's fair to say, definitely. That changed things for a lot of people like Keith Levine as well, very much got into that.

Yeah, which, I mean, we'll get into Keith Levine, the mentor of Vivalroutine. We don't talk enough about the fact that Sid Vicious potentially murdered someone. It does not really come up a lot, which is very interesting. Again, I don't know what happened. I wasn't there, but it is sort of interesting that we've like enshrined this person in pop culture without that too much attached to it. Or maybe it is. Maybe that's part of the mythology that people, it's so removed that people think it's cool now. I really don't know. But yeah, no, it's very weird. I think you're right. It's very strange. I've always found that strange. And there's other, you know, there's certain, not quite so bad. things that rock stars that we love have possibly done and we kind of brush it under the carpet

because we just want to love them and you just think wow if that guy was anything else you know or he wasn't like a stylish sexy dude or he wasn't a rock star would and did exactly those things would we feel the same you know i don't think so so i think that there is a kind of myopic attitude towards that kind of thing that's uh yeah that's a little bit sketchy well i don't know we have a sick society in general. I mean, people think serial killers are cool. You know, like people love crime podcasts. Like there's just, there's something going on. That's a whole other conversation topic that we simply don't have time for today. Anyways, back to cut. So I think that was a really good example, you know, that amazing percussion

that Dennis brought to the table, but also the the room, the spareness that just makes, it just makes it hit so much harder. It makes Ari's vocals hit harder and just it's it's such an incredible song and it was it's just really produced so perfectly. It's crazy to me that people would say that they didn't play their instruments on this particularly because Viv Albertine's guitar playing is so singular and unique and I don't even know I don't even know if someone could too much imitate it right because she was so you know, you know, know, weirdly self-taught and like, let's have said this a lot. And I know people might take offense to it. And I'm not backing it or disputing it because I don't really know. But they've said they were like, you know, we learned that women play instruments differently. And I thought that was a really cool thing. Like I was like, you know, that probably is true. You know, just like, and maybe not women specifically or men, but like maybe that there's like a feminine approach. to playing music and a masculine and that can be in any gender, you know? And I, it's reminding me of

someone, producer, and you're, maybe you'll remember better than me, but there, there was some band that we talked about, I think was the Pixies. And they were talking so much about how like, every artist has this like mixture of femininity and masculinity in their music. And when it's to one way or the other, it becomes boring. That was not a point. That was simply a, a quick little ramble off the top of my head. But I don't know. I just, all back to this, Viv Albertine's guitar playing, I think, is very kind of like Paul Mollav's drumming, right? It is, it's fluid and it's free. And it's also, it's not super typical or trained. And so, anyways, I just, I think it's crazy to think that someone else could have, would have done that

or could have done that. They would have had to, like, imitate her super unique style. And it wouldn't have sounded that way. Well, that's right. And I think, you know, they all, we hear how they all sound on this album because of that space in the songs. We get to hear how Viv's guitar sounds. We get to hear, you know, those bass lines of Tessas. And actually, when you listen, you know, and, you know, everybody else as well, when you listen to the early recordings, the Peel sessions, for example, and you get that sense, as you were saying earlier, this is a sense of what they actually sounded like live in those early days. You know, the bass is, the baseline is there. The baseline is there. It's just been brought to the fore. It's not that different at all.

And so, you know, this is a person who can play a baseline. This is, this is not someone who needs someone to play their base for them. And I, again, as I always say, would people say that about a male band? I don't know if it would occur to them to do so. I think it's just that thing. It's like, you know what, just listen. Why don't you just listen? Give them your attention and then make up your mind, you know, tell me what you think. And I think the point you made is, is brilliant. You know, Viv sounds like Viv. So, you know, would you really need to do that? And I think Dennis, Dennis is guitar playing.

I mean, he said, you know, I picked up a guitar during the sessions and I was sort of like twiddling away. And I was like, that's genius. That's got to go on. And they were like, no, no, no. He said it was like Segovia. It was like a bit of classical playing, which obviously Viv does not sound like that. That's not, that's not disrespectful. It's just not how, I'm kind of glad.

I like the way she plays. But, you know, so if he was to play on their album, it would. have sounded like that. It just wouldn't. So, yeah, we all need to kind of get over that, I think, and just sort of accept what we're hearing. And also the thing about Viv's guitar playing, and again, it takes me back to sort of like, you know, Captain Beefheart and that kind of, you know, the magic band sound. That kind of dissonance, these dissonance, sorry, dissonant licks and strange kind of choices of notes that kind of shouldn't go together and as a result sound fantastic. That's very slits to me.

And I think that is just, you know, you can't, as you say, you can't emulate that. That's just them. It's come out with them. It's intuitive, which is a female quality. I'm just saying a feminine quality of intuition. So much to love on here. Sorry, just allow me to wax poetic. Wax on. I love the version of shoplifting that happens here. It's so gorgeous. Yeah. Jay Edward Keyes in Pitchfork made this kind of interesting parallel where he said, 10 quid for the lot, we pay fuck all. Feels like a forerunner to MIA's.

What can I get for $10? That's very true. I loved that because MIA to me does feel like a spiritual descendant of the slits. I think there's a million spiritual descendants of the slits. even musicians that maybe wouldn't say so themselves or are not actually directly influenced by them, but they're in the lineage, whether they like it or not, you know? And I don't know, I don't know, I is a relationship to the slits,

but to me that feels, that feels very like, it really struck me. I was like, oh, that's sick. But no, it just made me think that, you know, because I know what you mean, there's going to be a lot of people who maybe weren't even aware of the slits who do seem to be kind of natural successes. But I think, you know, without wishing to get, well,

I'll say without wishing to get too cosmic, I always want to get too cosmic. That's my happy place. But, you know, it's like they created a kind of, this is a safe place for cosmicness. It's like they kind of created a sort of a warp in the weft. It's like they kind of, you know, once the slits have kind of done their thing and, you know, even though about five years is it,

a decent chunk of time, something that intense, I think. But it changes things. And it's almost like it creates a new frequency. And whether you experienced it directly or not, it's there now. And it wasn't there before. And it can be picked up on by similar kind of light-minded spirit. So when I was a kid and I was playing the drums and stuff, I didn't know anything about the slits.

I'd never heard of them. So it's not like I needed to see the slits or see the raincoats to think, oh, I could do that. I hadn't occurred to me. You know, I just sort of, but who's to say that I'm not kind of picking up on some slits energy that is so intense. It doesn't, doesn't, it still hasn't dissipated. It's just getting stronger because I love this. I have the chills. Yeah. I'm going down a bit of a wibbly road there, but, you know. I love it. I think you're absolutely right. I think you're absolutely right.

I think that their impact both literally cosmically and spiritually because they changed, they changed stuff, you know? And like, it's not always awesome to be first. And this is a classic and perfect story of why. But they were first. And the fucking seismic shift that they created is immeasurable. And it just, it really does suck because, you know, more often than not, if you're first, you don't, you don't get your flowers for that, you know? Like the clash, God bless them. I love the clash. Listen to the clash all the time. They were not first in any fucking way, shape, or form, right? They were making some good, gorgeous songs. that literally could sort of be Beatles songs, but punky and a bit of reggae or whatever. And

people loved it and they got very rich and honestly good on them. But the slits, that's not what they were doing. I wanted, speaking of the clash, I want to talk about, let's talk about typical girls. Because typical girls was the lead single off of cut. The island really wanted, I heard it through the grapevine to be the lead single. Now, I can see why. And I absolutely am enamored with the slits as like refusal to listen to anyone else and just go with their guts and, you know, for whatever, however the chips fell. You could see why the label would want that. That's a fucking smash it. The way they, the way they cover, I heard of the great buying. It's like bittersweet. There's longing. It's so cool. However, what they wanted to be the lead single was typical. girls. Typical girls is so much more of a slit song, of course, because they wrote it. But also, it's just like, you know, now it's become the song that's been most associated with them, I think. And it's not in normal time. And I love this. Back to my goddamn queen, Viv Albertine,

she was like, when Mick heard the song, he tried to persuade me to put it into four-four time. I didn't know what he was on about. I didn't. didn't know about time signatures that this was in a strange time signature. It was just how the guitar riff came out. He said we'd have a hit if we put it in 4-4. And they refused to do that. And then she goes, we did not have a hit. Yeah. That was very funny. She was like, he said this. We said no. Anyways, we didn't have a hit. But I just love A that like, she was like, this is just how I wrote the song. I literally do not know what you're speaking about. And then the refusal to change it. And I can't imagine it in four-four time. I mean, it would just be sort of a straight-up

pop song like we're talking about. And what it actually is now is so much more interesting. Definitely. It's like a kind of crazy merry go-round. You know, there's a bit of a kind of schoolgirl chant sort of playground nursery rhyme feel to it. And yeah, I can't imagine it sounding any different. I wouldn't want it to. And I suppose it's all about intention, isn't it? They weren't doing this thinking, how can we make a hit? You know, you know, who was probably right? James was very good at making hits. But it's like, well, why are we doing this? Are we doing this to make a hit? Or are we doing this because we're fulfilling our dream and our mission and our creativity? And, you know, I think the slits were always going to take that road. I'm sure they would have

loved to have, you know, certainly Ireland would have, you know, they would have probably love to have made more money. But I think they would have liked if their mission also dovetailed with it being a hit. I think they would have loved that. But it wasn't worth sacrificing the vision. for the hit, which I think is, that's the unique part, right, about the slips. Definitely, definitely. And I think, you know, the fact that it was their own song is really significant and important. You know, their first single, it had to be their song. And it was like, no, of course.

You know, there was no question about it to them. They could, you know, that was really important to them. Let's hear typical girls because it's a goddamn word, beautiful song. And we just talked about it for an hour, so we should hear it. This is typical girls. That was typical girls. just beautiful proto I'm not like other girls I'm X Y Z song you know oh I don't know that one you don't

know the meme that's like I'm not like other girls I love astrology or whatever no I didn't I don't know that one but yes very much um yeah it's it's it's such a great sort of satire of that and I know that Viv kind of um found the title when she's looking through an old like sociology book she's like What a great title. And she started to kind of riff on what girls are supposed to be. And of course, you know, Ari up, when I was talking to her for the book, she was like, well, you know, of course, on the one hand, we're not typical girls. We're like a million miles from that.

But at the same time, maybe we are exactly what girls are like in their sort of natural state. Maybe we're doing all the things that girls would do. So it's this kind of playing with those sorts of stereotypes. But I love the kind of little moments, this sort of mischievous little kind of mocking moments throughout the song and the things that Ari does with her voice, as we said about her voice before, so elastic and so expressive and just does these mad things. But she was determined to, in the line, typical girls read magazines to sort of stretch the word magazines and sound like she's kind of like a buying sheep, like magazines. You know, and it's like, so you think, oh God, yeah, she's saying they're

like sheep and they're kind of just following whatever they're told to do. And so she was so clever just thinking about that and the stuff they came up with was great. And they used to record funny things as well, like just all the time. They'd have like little recorders with them and record bits of conversation and record sort of funny sounds. And I think they did this on cut. I think it actually might have been on an instant hit. Yeah, they put a conversation with Keith Levine at the end. That's right. Yeah. And he didn't know. And he didn't know about it. No consent, no release form was signed. You know, there's a different times. It's a different, totally a different time. that he would have sued if you had ever heard of it.

He was busy being on heroin, so probably didn't have them. Yeah, a bit distracted. It didn't, yeah. I love speaking back about The Clash. There's a line in this song that's typical girls stand by their man, right? It's like referential to the Tammy Winnet song. And, you know, Mick and Viv, on and off, babe. So much going on.

And the chorus of the song, Train in Vane, which was a goddamn gorgeous, beautiful song. is apparently a direct response to this song because it says, you know, you didn't stand by me. You know, like, it's, it's kind of sick. Like, this is the shit I live for. Like, people in conversation about their relationship through their songs, like, ugh. Stick it, stick that in my veins, literally. Like, tie up the arm, stick it in my veins. Yeah, that kind of dialogue between lovers through songs.

Yeah. And then there was ping pong affair as well, which is another response to Mick Jones as well. So yeah, it is. It's very Stevie Nix and Lindsay Buckingham, isn't it? Just like throwing songs at each other going, take that. This is what I think of you today. I think it sort of highlights the difference between Viv's songwriting and Palm Olive songwriting, right? Because Paul Molliv is like, again, she's like cosmic.

She's writing about like society's ills and like, you know, crazy shit going on in the world, right? And Viv is very much writing, while extremely atypically executed, things about personal life. You know, diaristic songs about love and romance, for example, even though that's a bit satirical, or the ping pong affair, which is so directly about an on and off again relationship. I love that Viv, again, it still strikes me so much that Ari, again, being such a creative and forceful person, would, A, not write that many lyrics and be perfectly happy singing other people's lyrics, but Viv said that Ari and I went through the lyrics of ping pong affair together, and I explained the emotions behind the words. We discussed that when she sings, life's better without you, she doesn't mean it.

She had to convey the underlying meaning of regret, not that. the actual meaning of defiance. And I loved that detail because it's like, yes, Ari didn't, it's not her experience, right? So like, Viv took the extra time to be like, I need you to understand where I was coming from so that you can sing it the way I was coming from it. And she does. And I just, I don't know, that really struck me. Yeah, it's like Ari's sort of playing the character, isn't it?

It's like she's an actor being given lines, like a squit. Totally. Yeah, no, I think that's very, that's very. interesting and makes a lot of sense because I suppose when you're writing songs that are very self-referential and you know as we're saying like like diary entries they're very it's literally this is what happened that night you know we are hearing the story in very kind of literal terms it's a real kind of window into somebody's life and I suppose if you aren't the one singing it you do have to make sure you know it's a very different kind of person as well so that's really interesting and you know I do love how how Ari puts that song across very much so

Me too. There's one song on here that's not sung by Ari that Palm Olive sort of mandated before she left the band that it had to be sung by Tessa, which I really loved that, considering how close they were. It's like almost like this gift, right? Like I know you're the background person. I know you're quiet. I know you're not attention seeking. But like, I need you to be the one that sings this. And she did. And she did. And she. She's, it's, um, it's the song, Adventures Close to Home. Um, and I like, the song is so great because we talked about this a little bit earlier, but Palm Olive's lyric writing style is so romance language, right? Like, and so like you said, like sort of like, I mean, cause, what's a better word than cosmic? I lost myself through alleys of mysteries. I went up and down like a demented train. You know, I, it's amazing. I love it. You know, I'm searching for something that makes hearts move. I found myself, but my best possession walked into the shade and threatened to drift away. It's so spiritual.

It's poetry. It's poetry. Exactly. It's literal romance language poetry. And I love that about it. And Tessa did a great job singing, I thought. I think she sounds amazing. She does.

And it does add another dimension to the record as well. And I know that, you know, Tessa was really kind of like, no, I don't want to do this. She was terrified. And it was really brave of her to stand up and do that. and Ari played bass on it. And again, that was also quite sort of intimidating as well because just Ari was all over the back. I think it was just like kind of a bit of a difficult day. But it comes across really, really well.

And I think it is a gift from Palm Olive to Tessa, but also I think it's a gift from Tessa to Palm Olive as well. And again, it's like that kind of, you know, that dialogue through the music, reaching out to people who, you know, who are out there who are going to be listening to this record. And they're going to understand those references and those. sort of messages. This is kind of really beautiful. Yeah. Paul Mollav took this song with her also and the raincoats did do a version of it themselves since it was her song. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about the cover art. Yes. So the cover art, apparently, and this was in Viv's book,

and I thought it was so interesting. Originally they wanted, they had these photos of themselves, was like nude on a beach on like a tour or trip or something. And they lived at Viv's mom's house. And so Viv had rung up her mom and been like, hey mom, do you know where those photos are or whatever, or mum, if you will? And her mom was like, oh no, I'm so sorry, Viv, I must tell you, I was drinking coffee and I knocked it over and it spilled all over the photos. They're just ruined.

They're not usable. And Viv was like, really? They're all, all of them? They're fully not nothing. And she was like, no, soaking, disgusting, coffee, wet, gross can't be used. And it was like, okay. And then they were like, well, they started to, you know, formulate this idea of like, okay, well, now we need to take a photo.

And, you know, famously, or you know what, why don't you tell me about it? Because I think it wasn't, you know, it sort of like evolved as they were doing it, right? As they were doing the photo shoot, they sort of like came up with the concept. Yeah, yeah, basically. I mean, I think, you know, it was a few different influences coming in. So there was a friend of Dick O'Dell. We haven't mentioned Dick O'Dell, but he would be the – he is the manager. He becomes, yeah, maybe the longest running Slits manager.

I think so. And I sort of lose track a bit, but yeah, he was a really important – obviously – and another really supportive guy in their story. And he was the manager of the pop group, again, but it's a little bit of an extended family feel. So he was there. He spent quite a lot of time at Ridge Farm. And he said, actually, you know, if I was older, I probably would spend less time, but I just wanted to be involved with everything. So he was just a fabulous guy, Dick. We're still pals now.

And he had brought a friend, I think, to Ridge Farm, who'd just come back from Africa. And he was teaching them how to make loin cloths, apparently, and say, you know, this is how you make them. And they were like, oh, that's kind of fun. You know, so the kind of ideas were starting to kind of spark. And, yeah, I think, I suppose, in sparse. I mean, I actually didn't know that story about the kind of the photos on the beach. But yeah, I guess if they were already thinking about doing something like that, then this was not a million miles away.

And so obviously, they're in this kind of muddy English cottage garden, very farmy. You know, and they just, you know, the idea, well, it was their idea. They had a photographer there. There were actually two photographers there. There was Dennis Morris and there was Penny Smith. And apparently, I think Ireland wanted Dennis Morris to do the photo. We don't like Dennis Morris here on this program. We don't like Dennis Morris.

Well, he apparently tried to get Viv kicked out of the Slits because she wasn't going along with his vision. This is alleged, but I read this. And she was like, fuck you. Yeah. I do remember that story. And I think, you know, when we put it in the Slits book at least, I was sort of shaded who it was that we were talking. about because I think that was, I can't remember really now, but I think that might have been how I was guided to put it across. Right. I think Viv confirmed it in her book. So that's it. Yeah, because I remember

in your book it was ambiguous who it was, but in her book, she says it was him. And so that, yeah, I mean, it was her story to sort of do that with really. So yeah, absolutely. But, you know, I kind of, you know, he was there and then it was like, and person from Ireland, you know, it was kind of, you know, if you know, you know, but it's sort of fairly obvious. But yes, sadly, that, that apparently was, the case. But Penny Smith, an absolute rock and roll photographer, legend, very, you know, just, she's an artist in her own, right? She's an art school person as well. So she has a very particular way of capturing people. And so, yeah, so she, her memory was that this was their idea. You know, if it had been up to her, it would actually be even less posed, she said, but it was

supposed to be very natural, very kind of, just like here we are, you know, like this is, This is us, not posy, not kind of standing in a kind of, oh, you know, this is the most flattering way for me to stand like we all do now for photos. Yeah. And, you know, and so, yeah. And our face tune. No face tune on this particular photo. Yeah. So, you know, for anyone who might not have seen this cover, it is essentially, Viv, Ari, and Tessa, topless, covered in mud.

They've covered each other in the mud just from the garden in these loincloths. and standing looking kind of just like these defiant warrior women in front of this beautiful white cottage wall with these cottages climbing up. So it's kind of this sort of funny juxtaposition, I suppose, with this tribal image and this very English cottage garden. Yeah, absolutely. You know, they were, there was something really English about them. And I feel like that about a lot of those punk bands, there's this kind of Englishness

that they can't, you know, really get away from, which is sort of kind of a bit old-fashioned as well. So obviously this was their vision. There were lots of things being said with this photograph. And it was, you know, ripe for misunderstanding and misinterpretation. Of course, this would all unfold. And Island Records had it printed up on enormous posters. And it was all, you know, billboards all over the shop. And, yeah, I think on the first day that they put these posters up,

Island said that somebody tried to sue them because they crashed their car when they saw it. They were so shocked and horrified. And it just caused this absolutely enormous storm. So, you know, it certainly got attention, that's for sure. Right. But like many of the decisions made by the slits, it didn't do them any favors in terms of blowing up or making money or, you know, being commercial. successful. But it's a very cool, it's a very iconic, cool image that, you know, is sort of

unforgettable. I did love the detail that Viv said in her book that, um, this is like a thing that is still done to this day, but it's much easier to do now. And I love that they made Island do it back then. Uh, there wasn't one photo in which the three of them agreed that they all looked good. Yeah. So the, the photo of Viv is, uh, cut out from another photo and sort of superimposed. And another thing that really blew my fucking. socks off was that we mentioned the girls were eating well at the farm. They're, you know, more than usual. They look incredible to me. I don't know what anyone's talking about, but there's multiple articles that say they look fat. Yes. Isn't that horrible? They're like, oh, they look fat and

disgusting. And I'm like, first of all, you need to get your eyeballs checked. Secondly, like, what? Like, insane. Yeah. I mean, it's just clearly not true. And I mean, that got to me as well. When they were saying that. And I was just like, what? You've got to be joking that it's just not true. You know, of all the things that you could say about this cover, that's just not true. And the more I thought about it, and, you know, the more I thought about the kind of people who were saying this. And so a lot of them were maybe kind of magazine editors. They were like, no, we can't, we can't print that. They look fat and disgusting. That kept coming up again and again, fat and disgusting. And I thought, hang on a second. Is this because you're seeing, essentially,

this very overt picture of three gorgeous, obviously beautiful women, and you're confused by it and you're thinking, I don't want to be attracted to them. I don't want to find them attractive. So I'm going to go the other way and just like, no, it's disgusting, it's ugly, it's fat. Oh, get it away from me. Because actually, you don't know what to feel.

And I really, and I see that sometimes. We all do, don't we? You know, sometimes you see a very attractive woman doing something that, you know, the patriarchy thinks you probably shouldn't be. like, you know, doing well at something. And she'll be immediately shot down or it'll be her looks that get used against her. Or, you know, and it's just like, hang on, what is happening? You can't.

It's like this cognitive dissonance. Totally. It's a bit the lady doth protest too much. Yeah, totally. It's like, hang on a see. Yeah, that's exactly it. You nailed it with that. Yeah.

Shakespeare said it all. It's already been said by Shakespeare. No, yeah, I was really struck by it. That was sort of their intention, right? They weren't trying to be sexualized or sexualized themselves. They were trying to be sort of confounding. And like a nude body can be non-sexual. A noon body can be strong and provocative in a non-sexual way.

Yeah, Purdue Dylan says they were trying to be punked. Pritian-Gillin also just literally told me that she didn't realize the lady Doth protest too much with Shakespeare. She thought it was a meme. And I'm like absolutely unwell. Like, I feel the school system has failed to her. I feel that I just don't feel good. I don't feel good about myself. I don't, I feel concerned.

I don't know which book it was from producer Dylan. I'm not a Shakespeare scholar. Okay, don't, let's not push me. It's probably like 12th night or something. Anyways, moving on, the artwork was controversial. They are not allowed to be on television because people are afraid that Ariup will do something crazy, which you probably would have. So, you know, this album, while Incredible, doesn't do as well as it should have. Let's hear, I heard it through the grapevine before we get into some of the reviews and stuff,

because I just need everyone to hear it. If you haven't heard it, you need to hear it. It's an extremely important song. This is, I heard it through the grapevine. That was, I heard it through the grapevine. God damn, gorgeous, beautiful cover. That, I bet, I bet, I bet, iconic. iconic beginning to a song.

Also, apparently they couldn't afford horns. And so that's why they're just, like with all their voices, because it's too expensive. Island not covering the budget for horns. Well, necessity is the mother of invention. Is that another Shakespeare? Oh, I bet.

He said it all, basically. Let's ask producer Dylan. Producer Dylan is a lot of Shakespeare. But no, I mean, that happened first. Sorry. No, go ahead, plays. I'm, I was having a stroke. I was having a stroke.

No, don't have a stroke. It's not worth it. It's just Shakespeare, honestly. It's just Shakespeare. It's just Shakespeare. We just have to move on from him. We can't. We'll be back there again with some other quote in probably about five minutes.

But grapevine happened. Great Vine was so, I think it's a portal for a lot of people to the slits, isn't it? And I think it kind of, because it turns up on so many compilations. and this is why it would have been obviously a great single because it would have been a great way in to be introduced to the Slits sound and it sounds so damn good and it's and I love that she didn't. You know how when a female artist will cover a song that was previously recorded by a male artist and then they swapped the genders round of the lyrics.

I love that she didn't do that. There's just so much to love. And I also love that it was actually mixed by the Slits and the lady who made the tea at the Island Records Studios. I love that. her name, right? Rima. Yeah. And I just think, and it sounds so good. It's like, yeah, you know, they were just, yeah, we can do this ourselves. We're just work it out. And she was like, yeah, I've seen people use this desk before. I kind of know what, just put the tray down,

start, you know, putting the knobs up and down. And it's like, you know, I love that. I think that's so cool. I think she came along with the guy that was supposed to mix it maybe, and he was like kind of a shyster. And Dennis Brown was supposed to mix it. Yeah. Yeah. They had some altercation. Yeah, with him and he didn't know how to mix. Well, he'd just never done it before. Yeah, he'd just been brought in because he was a dude and amazing and a big name and stuff. And it was like, he did not know his way around the mixing desk. And so, Ari just said, you know, we kind of kicked him out.

We were like, no, that's not going to do. But yeah, she had lots of praise for Rima, who, you know, just kind of there as a bit of a helping hand. Yeah, and I love that. Yeah, it was very cool. I wish you could play every song on here, but also people can just go right on. to their Spotify app and listen to the whole album. Okay, here's a sort of insane piece. Again, British music journalists in the 70s and 80s.

Hats off to you for being absolutely unhinged. This is from Sounds Magazine. It's by Giovanni de Dodo. He says, Still and all, ask me to name my least favorite slit. And until cut, I'd have unhesitatingly chosen vocalist. ari up. This young woman's caused me so as much oral and visual embarrassment as any singer I can remember, except myself, of course. For the great bulk of Slits time in my diary, the

immediate image of this screeching, infinitely irritating packet of arrogance. Bitch, what? Wow. First of all, again, this is a big lady Doth protest too much. Like, oh, does she make you a little uncomfortable? Is there some? Number one, nobody asked you. to name your least favorite slit. You simply volunteered this information. Yes, producer Dylan says the lady doth exists too much. That's exactly right.

You fucking nailed it on the head. Whether or not, or however much of the portions are mental illness and actual just, you know, personality and nature and nurture and all of the thing that made the tornado that's Ariup, it is very, it's true that her very existence was feminist in the sense that she was, was an affront to people in many ways. They did not. There's a great early recording.

It's like from a live show and you can hear her yelling, I want to hear myself. And it's so poignant, right? Like, it's just like she wants to fucking hear herself, you know? And like, that was just sort of unheard of at the time. And, you know, the men's at the music magazines, they didn't like it. No, they didn't.

And sound men didn't like it. And, you know, you could just, Just, it's the classic thing. But she didn't have, you know, there were no rules with Ari. So you think about the sort of things that ladies are not supposed to do. I mean, just, you know, she is beyond. She would piss on the stage if she fancied it. She would start fights with people.

She would, you know, I remember seeing her like just a few years before she died and she was like haranguing the sound man. You know, she never changed. She was all, you never knew what she was going to do. But it was always, you know, it was so beyond, you know, there was never a sense that she sort of thought, oh, I better not do that because, you know, what will people think? You know, that would never have entered Ariup's mind. And that's so wonderful. And, but it's so unusual, I suppose, especially not all men, because I think a lot of chaps were

inspired by that. For sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. No, but you're right. You're right. But just maybe several of the men who worked at music magazines and not all of them.

I mean, Chris need a huge champion, lots of other champions. Fun quick little fact because the slit story is just filled with these really cool synchronicities. The first time Ariap appeared on the stage was on a pedal board. And the man who the pedal board belonged to, another band, ended up owning the guitar shop that Viv Albertine went and bought her next guitar in her 50s when she returned to music. Isn't that insane? Brilliant. That is amazing. I love that fact. Also, it reminds me that England is very small. Okay. It's not normally that small. That is very circular. I like it. It feels like it to me. It feels like everyone in London knows each other. They're all friends. Okay. So he kind of redeems himself, Giovanni, my dude, when he talks about how good the record is. And, you know, he says it's restrained, tough, deliciously melodic in places. The playing.

I wouldn't call it great because I'm not sure what that means anymore. I'd say the playing was right, though. So right, so often, both in fancy and straightforward aspects. I mean, there's great moments from everyone on this record, not least producer Dennis Bovel. So calm down. His sense of texture, then he goes on to, you know, praise Dennis Bevel more than probably the slits. But he says, like they say in the ads, cut will mark you for life. Great ad copy, by the way. Incredible. The name cut came from Budgie. it certainly did yes yeah they were all kind of sitting around and kind of trying to think of the right thing and he just it was like he didn't sort of say how about the word cut but he was just saying you just need something really sharp you need something you know like slits cut and he just it was almost like an onomatopoeic thing that he was just playing with words and they were like hang on that is it you know cut that's perfect because it was it worked on so many levels and i remember Ari was sort of really enthusing about this because it was like, you know, it works because, you know, a slit is a cut, but then it's the cut of a record. And then it kind of reflects that

they're being, they feel cut off and they feel cut out of so many things just because of who they are. And then it's, you know, so it kind of, and also the sort of the violence that they would face all the time. Now, the stabbings, literally in Ari's case. So it had, it reflected so many things that were right. And it just had this really kind of high impact quality to it, Slits cut, you know, it's great. Good old budgie. Such a budgie, really. He brought a lot to the table. He did. Robert Crisgow, the goat. We love him. Sorry, not a British journalist. Good old American. We've noted on this show, he really has a unique sense of understanding where women artists are coming from.

And I don't know how or why, but he's just tuned in. And so here's what he said in his review. For once, a white reggae style that rivals its models for weirdness and formal imagination. The choppy lyrics and playful, quavering chant-like vocals are a tribute to reggae's inspired amateurism rather than a facsimile, and the spacie rhythms and recording techniques are exploited to solve the great problem of female rock bands, which is how to make yourself heard over all that noise. Ari Ups' answer is to sing around it, which is lucky, because she'd be screeching for sure on top of all the usual wall of chords. that's a brilliant insight, right? Like besides the fact that the sparsity of the production and the space put into the songs makes them, you know, just cool and interesting, it does also allow this gem, which is Ari's singing voice, to really shine and really be in the forefront. I want to hear myself, you know? Like, I just was really struck by that.

I was like, it's so true, you know? And those are good kinds, too, female punk fans that are just have the wall of sound. And, you know, you just r over the top. But like, man, this, this getting it by Robert Criscow, I was, I was like A plus. A plus. He gave the album a B plus, actually, but me A plus for the review. That's great. You know who else kind of did this?

Although they didn't, I don't think they did it for the vocals, but a definite, a definite sort of in the line. of the slits very soon after is delta five oh yeah try try i fucking love delta five with their they really pick up the like sort of like importance of the baseline and also all the all the spareness but um anyways yeah definitely that kind of jagged guitar sound as well yeah angular kind of quality and then it's two bass players very cool um anyways okay so the cut is pretty pretty well reviewed. It doesn't sell particularly well, but doesn't sell terribly. I think typical girls as a single doesn't break through, but it does chart. It's okay. Things are okay. No one's, you know, a huge star now, but it does okay. And I think islands like more or less happy.

Then they go on tour. This is simply what's happening tour. So once again, we talked about, I know me too. So it's so like, honestly, it's a little bit 80s, so I'm a little bit forward thinking. I use it all the time, just all the time. I'm like, it's simply what's happening. You know, we're doing this now because it's simply what's happening. It's just so great. It's really kind of like, I don't know, sort of impertinent. Yeah, it's a prettier way of saying it is what it is. We talked about this with the Clash tour earlier that, you know, the band pays for the support, right? they got 45,000 pounds as their advance for this album, which is, sounds like a lot, but isn't

probably really a lot given recording costs and all this stuff and promotion. And then they used a bulk of it to pay to fly Don Cherry, who is like, you know, the the known jazz trumpeter, Ornette Coleman, associate from America with who, And he brought his 15-year-old stepdaughter, Nena Cherry, which will, she'll play a bigger part coming up. And then also Prince Hammer, they flew him from Jamaica. And he was backed by a British dub band called Creation Rebel. And they paid for all their travel and accommodations. It's very expensive.

And this is a fascinating choice, right? Because, A, you're definitely going to confound your audience, putting an improvisational trumpeter on before yourself. and, you know, it makes sense in their interests, but, you know, people that were like, you know, we know the slits from back when they would play with the clash and the buzzcocks, this is maybe a confusing lineup to them. Also at this time, budgie leaves to join Susie and the banshees. So Bruce Smith from the pop group becomes their drummer. And I think around the same time Viv has started dating the pop group singer, Gareth Sager, who tags along on tour for social reasons. but then kind of has to fill in because their session keyboard player like kind of bails on them halfway through the tour

doesn't want to do it anymore. So that's handy to have a musical boyfriend who can fit right in, be a ringer. These shows, from what I read, it was just like a poorly planned tour. Like, A, they spent too much money on the openers. B, they were put in too big of rooms.

So they didn't sell out. They had half empty rooms. that's kind of a bummer. You know, like, I think they were very happy to be able to bring some of their favorite artists with them. Also, this is in your book and also in Viv's book, but Ari and Don Cherry got on really well, and Ari and Neneh got on super well, and they became, like, best friends. But I think early on Viv said something to Don Cherry to the extent of, like, I hate junkies. And he, like, became very cold and was like, I hate hate hate hate and sort of like made her.

feel very bad and she was like, oh yeah, like I'm such a loser. Like, I can't believe I'm like hating and being judgmental. And come to find out later that Don Cherry was a known junkie and probably didn't like hearing that about himself. So there was, I think, I think I bring this up to say like that tour was particularly difficult for Viv, who I think felt sort of isolated and was, you know, being frozen out by Don Cherry. Ari was off with Nenna. Tessa was presumably on drugs. We don't know. Well, she got on massively. well with, well, yeah, for lots of reasons, I'm sure, with Don, and she hung out with him a lot. And because she's, you know, into the jazz thing. And so, yeah, I think it's like the touring thing.

Everyone goes off into their kind of camps and their corners. So, you know, it's good that Gareth Sega was there. I don't know if he was there for every single date, but he was certainly there for a lot of it. Steve Beresford, I think, was on that tour as well, you know, a good pal. But I think, yeah, bands are difficult and, you know, it is very easy to feel alone. Well, I mean, anyone who's ever been on a trip with three people can understand a microcosm of what it's like to tour, you know? Like, it's human nature that people sort of form alliances and, you know, branch off and stuff. So it was rough.

They go to America in 1979 for the first time. Once again, their great mates, the clash. God bless the clash. some interview with Paul Simonanen around this time too that they ask him like, what band do you really like right now? And the only one he names is the slits. He's like, the slits are right. I know. So they play three shows with The Clash at Bond's Casino in New York City. One night, I think Ari refuses to perform because she says her voice is not working. But the other two nights, and the band still performs, they just do it instrumental. But the other two nights go off great.

one of the nights is with fucking ESG would cut off my arm to be at that show. ESG, the slits in the clash in 1979. Jesus Christ. Then they do a few shows in L.A. And then this is something I could not wait to bring up.

Anton Corbgen. Corbin. Corbyn. It's not Corpgin, but I like to say Corbyn. It's Corbin, I think. I just like to say Corpchin. I think it's funny. Why not? Say Corpgin. I like it.

Yeah, he's not listening. He shoots the band in Death Valley, Joshua Tree area. That's right, you guys. That's right. Before the iconic U-2 Joshua Tree photos, these were the prototype. The Slits fucking made that happen, you guys. I need you to understand that he took this thing that he created with the slits and then later used it for you, too. So put that in your fucking pipe and smoke a bitch.

Quite right. Important. Important. So like I said, 1979, they're in America. Bush Tetra's form in 1979. I'm not saying there's a direct correlation, but I am saying there's a direct correlation. And then in 1980, so they're touring a bunch. 1980, they put out a lot. Okay, hold on. Let me slow down. 1980 a lot happens. Okay, 1980 is a very intense year for the band. They don't make another album, but they put out a split single with the pop group on Y Records, which was a subsidiary or like off print of Rough Trade, called In the beginning there was rhythm where there's a will, there's a way. Let's hear in the beginning there was rhythm. There's like a, there's an early version of it on the deluxe edition of Cut. This is, in the beginning there was rhythm.

That was, in the beginning, there was rhythm. Let me just say about that fucking Slit song, it fucks, okay? And I really don't understand what happens, because guess what? Press did not like it. They were not into it. It's magnificent. It's so magnificent. And I think when you think about, again, when we talk about the cover of cut,

I know this wasn't on cut, but when you think about the cover of cut. Right. And the kind of music that they would go on to make as well, it makes complete sense. There's this kind of, there's an earthly, you know, they make songs like earth beat. It's earthy. It's kind of pagan, but also really funky. And there's just so many interesting things going on there. And they're going into such interesting areas that I think actually people just didn't know what to do with them.

And it's such a shame. It was like, well, hang on, you're not, you know, we thought you were this. And this happens all the time. But especially with women, it's like you've got to be this. But now you're doing this weird thing. No, I can't handle it. How dare you evolve? Yes.

So I wanted to read there's only because I thought it was kind of interesting. There's an NME write-up of this, right? Of the split single by Ian Penman. He doesn't like it. He says another gaunt jaunt. I'll tell you what, British writers, they love a rhyming. They love a rhyming most. moment. Another gaunt jaunt into their unaffected otherworld sphere of naivete, the zombie repetition

of old and pretentious phrases, high-sounding protestations and lofty effusions, flatly obvious bullshit one has learned to expect from those intractable Bernard Levens of white Western conscious block rock music, the pop group. And then here's where I literally need, I need a translator. It's like deciphering hieroglyphic some of these old enemy things. to me. But one really is disappointed with the slit sisters fall to disgrace. Their spiritual and managerial alliance with the Bristol Bases, Bases, has indeed rendered them more than a bit mutt and old Gurgif. Zoe, what the fuck does that mean? What is he saying? Bro, what? I think you might have needed a little lie down. Do you know what they didn't use to say? I need to

lie down. Is it like very, is it like British language that I don't, what's a Bristol bases. What's a mutton old Gurdjiff? What is a Gertjif? You don't know what a mutton old Gurdjif is. Oh, come on. No, I honestly... Why is Gurdjif capitalized? I'm so confused. All I can say to you is that I happen to know that in the NME offices in those days, they used to say... There was no copywriter or a copy editor. Well, I think they did let people just do whatever, but they said, don't ever stir your tea with the teaspoons in the NME office, because they've all been used for cooking up smack. So, you know, if you did make that mistake, you could come up with all sorts of flights of fancy, I'd imagine, before falling into a lovely sleep. So I couldn't possibly comment on what was going on there. But yeah, that was kind of like some sort of free-form

poem. Literally, word association. Producer Gillen has uncovered that George Gergif was a Russian philosopher, mystic, spiritual teacher and composer of Armenian and Greek descent. I wonder if it's a about them. Anyways, Ian Penman went a little too hard in the paint on this review. But it sounds like he's saying I don't like it. Because he says, in the beginning,

is an accomplished piece of lazy musicianship, sheepish, spin-dried funk. The flickety-flack guitars and servants' bass. Servant's bass. He said the servant's bass. What is that fucking

down to nabby-ass fucking criticism? I didn't bring this up just to bring up the shit talking, although I did find it very funny. He is the first person I do see, though, criticize the appropriation. So he says, I can only add my own little shopping list. I don't, I think it's just adding criticisms, bullshitting, imitating West Indian religions and patchwa. Taking a long time over the manufacturer of records, taking a long time seeing the obvious, blah, I was just surprised because I didn't think that that was a criticism so early on, but it seems like it starts to bubble up.

Yeah, yeah. And I can understand what, I mean, the thing is, it's like, you know, even sort of speaking to Arien in later years, you know, she was completely committed to this persona. And it was a persona, of course. You know, it was constructed, but from things that she obviously loved very much and just wanted to be and absorb.

And it was like, okay, we're, right, we're going to, we're going along with this then. Okay. We're not, this is a white lady speaking in Patua. No one's going to say anything. We're not agreeing not to say anything. Okay, great. Exactly.

Because I was about sort of, you know, well, quite young and just like, let's just kind of make this happen. I was like, oh, okay, yeah. Oh my God, I know who another spiritual descendant of the Slits is. Go on. Chet Hanks. Oh, I don't know Chet Hanks. He's Tom Hanks's son.

He does speak in Pachua. Oh, really? for being like to Instagram stories, Shaba, he's amazing. So I do feel that he is in the lineage as well. Producer Dillon, you can't disagree with that. There's no fighting. This, I'm correct.

Anyways, go on, sorry. That is interesting to hear that kind of being picked up on, I suppose, in those days. Because no one I spoke to when I was, you know, doing the book and the research, I didn't hear anyone ever sort of talk about that. Well, other than Dennis Vavelle, who was sort of amused by it. And it was just like, you just referred to it as Jermakin, because, you know, she's obviously German, so she just speaks her own kind of German,

you know, but it's, yeah, it's a funny one, that's for sure. We don't have the time, and I don't have the brain cells, to be quite honest, to unpack this whole thing within the context of imperialism and et cetera, et cetera. But I will say that there is something to be said about what you just said, which is the commitment. Like, she really meant it. And I think maybe in some ways that almost. makes it more palatable in hindsight, right? Because you're like, oh, it wasn't just like your flavor of the week I'm into Jamaican stuff right now. Like this woman lived in Jamaica. She's lifelong

commitment to this. And you know, like you said, she never gave it up. But this was sort of the first, again, the first criticism I saw. And it was it was couch within several million other criticism. So it wasn't like the main point of the thing. But I just wanted to bring it up. No, it's important, definitely, because it's a conversation that, you know, if this was to happen again today, we would definitely be talking about it, wouldn't we? Yeah, exactly. Oh, absolutely. I'm pretty sure at this point Island has dropped them, which is why they're putting out a split on the rough trade subsidiary. I couldn't get the exact date of when Island dropped them, but they put out two releases through rough trade, and that must be only because Ireland dropped them. So April of 1980, this is not accessible, maybe for a good reason. They put out this album of bootlegs that's just like really rough live.

It's pretty rough. I think you can hear it on YouTube. Barry Kane at Record Mirror. Oh, I love Barry. He did not like it. Did not like it. What did he say? Oh, it's so good.

Y3 is a loose album of very badly recorded Slits live music from the past with a few pieces of incidental ping pong thrown in. The hole is unsatisfactory, dreadful. It ticks time away for the slits only in so much that it's a round slab of plastic that moves at 33 and a third. He's like, yeah, it is a record. And if you put it in the record player, it will play. And that's all I can say about it basically. Yeah, he's like, I can't even, so good. I can't even recommend checking it out for curiosity value because it's wholeheartedly bad.

Tell us how you really feel, babe. Yeah, I know, don't hold back. So polite. Oh dear. So that was out on Y Records, because Y Records was actually a record. I'm sure you know, it was a label that was run by Dick O'Dell, who was managing Pop Group and the Slit.

So that would have been a sort of natural home for them at that time. But yes, this would have bridged the gap between Ireland and their move to CBS, which obviously seems like, you know, this wildly, you know, it's such a huge label. It always seemed like kind of quite amazing that they signed to CBS in a way. Totally. So that happens in 1981, right? So in 1981, here's a couple of things that happened in 1981. Nena Cherry joins the band as a backup singer. Very cool. Starts to kind of tour with them. They've already recorded the bulk of Return of the Giant Slits before they signed to CBS Records, which is cool. And I think that they probably had something to show for it. And to CBS Records, again, like you said, massive label, they were not trying to really, they weren't like. like, oh, here's our fucking money bags. Here's our ticket to wealth. They knew what they were getting into. Also in 1981, Ari gets pregnant. Tessa overdoses. This is not funny, but it was just the

overdosing was very serious and not funny, obviously. But what was a little bit funny to me was I think it was Dick O'Dell. I can't remember who it was talking about. And he was like, yeah, it's crazy. Like, Tessa could just fall asleep anywhere. Man, it was wild. On tour, She could just, right, take a nap anywhere she was. It's a great thing to have on tour. And I was like, yeah, babe, she's a junkie. She's not falling asleep. She's nodding off.

He just thought she was like a great sleeper. Yes, I know. I know exactly that quote as well. She was like, at airports, you know, with planes flying over and town was going to be a restaurant in the middle of a meal. And I'm just like, yeah, babe, she's on her. Yeah. I know.

But this is the thing. Well, because, you know, as she would say, you know, she has said herself, you know, It sort of suited her character because she was already quite slow-moving, very quiet person. And so I suppose to some people, it might not have been terribly noticeable at first. But yeah, no, it's a terrible thing that happened. And she was on medication. I think it was two and all or I think it's two and all. And she just took too many.

And she said, I think she was in this kind of state of apathy where she was like, It wasn't like I have to end it all. It was more sort of, she said, you know, whatever happens, happens kind of thing. And so she kind of crashed out on the sofa. And Viv was just sort of going about her day. And then as it started to get later, she was like, God, Tessa, come on, you know, wake up. And she just couldn't get her to wake up. And it was Tessa and Gareth, Sega kind of, you know, basically got her to hospital and got her sort of, you know, saved her life by the sound of things.

So it sounded like a really heavy, heavy time for the band. But there seemed to be this kind of, you know, things. I suppose the writing was on the wall because there wouldn't be an awful lot more, a lot of life left for the slits as a band. And I suppose that, you know, you're starting to, they're all growing up as well. They grew up together. They were kids at the start. And so you're starting to pull away.

You're starting to get into other things, connect with other people, want different things. you know, Ari getting pregnant and, you know, things are changing. Things are changing for them all. And I suppose there's a sense of a kind of inevitability maybe. Totally. Yeah. I mean, that's exactly why I brought up those things. So I feel like, you know, it's setting the scene for what's, you know, to come here. I want to say in 1981, punk is really fucking taking off, babe. Like, it's the wipers put out youth of America. Exploited puts out punk's not dead. Gang of four solid gold. The gun club fire of love. Adolescence self-titled comes out. I mean, there's so much good shit. T.S.O.L. Dance with me.

And the Minutemen put out the punchline. I really want to talk about the Minutemen for just one second. I was really struck so much the more and more I read about the story of the slits. How spiritually in line I find them to be with the Minutemen. Because the Minutemen really idolized the pop group, you know, and they also were doing sort of like experimental things within their punk music that made them not marketable. You know, like they were beloved and they also changed music in their own way. And they were also, you know, working class. And, you know, they were the first in some ways in and of themselves. You know, they were. You know, they were the first in some ways. In and of themselves. And I just like was like, wow, like much like the slits, like part of the reason that they're only now, you know, of course they had a fan base, but like the way they're held up now as these iconic acts that changed music but weren't appreciated in their time was because they were too experimental. And again, the both of them being so influenced by the pop group is very interesting to me. I guess this looked a little. a little bit less influenced by the pop group, but kind of, you know, they, they had Dennis Bevel had had produced that pop group record and that was part of the reason they wanted him. And they end up really getting influenced and co-influenced, you know, mutual influence between them and the pop group. But anyways, I don't know. I just wanted to bring that up because I, I, it really

struck me. We did a minute men episode and we talked a lot about the influence of the pop group on them. And I was like, they feel, they feel spiritually aligned to me, these two bands. That's really interesting. Yeah. I know that's, I'll have. have to listen to the Minutemen more, actually, because I've got to admit, I'm not terribly familiar, but you've intrigued me. Oh, they're so good. So good. Anyways, back to punk in 1981. Black flag, damaged. Joan Jett. I love rock and roll. Maybe not totally punk, but, you know, came out of it. It's taken off, like wildfire. Popular music is a little different. You know, it's 801.

So it's the cars, Mottley crew, Stevie Nix's Bella Donna, Rush's moving pictures, sticks. That's kind of what's going on. Holl and notes, private eyes. It's a gorgeous song. I'm not going to lie to you.

But that's a little bit what's going on in popular music. So all this to say CBS was not trying to make money off the slits in 1981. if that's what was going on in actual popular music. So they put out Return of the Giant Slits, October 1981. Tell me a little bit about this album. Well, this is a really interesting album. As you said earlier, you know, a lot of the material was already recorded.

And I think something that's interesting about this album, certainly in comparison to cut, and actually most albums, the way they're normally made, each song was like a little vignette in and of itself. You know, they were quite self-contained. largely because, you know, a lot of them were sort of recorded in different studios with different producers. You had different kind of, you know, people coming in on them. And so you get different flavors with these different tracks on the album.

And it's really, it always struck me as a terribly underrated album to the extent that certainly when I was about to start, you know, writing the book, I couldn't even get a copy of it. I had to get a Japanese import. And it was, you know, and I just adored it. I thought it was, it really, you could see their journey into a kind of mystical place, really, musically. It's quite a mystical album. There's something very much more introspective about it.

And I think, I suppose one of the songs that really stands out to me is one called or what is it. And sometimes it's credited as all what it is. But it's, or what is it? And it's very, it's really kind of intriguing. There's something very, there's something quite melancholy about it and a bit more. slow moving and a bit kind of mystical and strange in a beautiful way. Should we hear it? Should we hear the song?

I would love to hear you. Okay. This is or what is it? That was or what is it? That's a vibe yeah song. It's like art. It's like sound art. It's completely strange and beautiful.

And it reflects, I think, a lot of the stuff they were going to see as well at the time. You know, they were going to a lot of, especially Viv as well, you know, a lot of free improvisational evenings and opening themselves up to jazz and what we now call, you know, world music. And so you can hear all these influences coming in. I think that is Steve Beresford on the keyboards who, you know, as we said before, very, you know, we're all legend of the free improv scene over here, free jazz. And all of those things were filtering through. I mean, can you even call it punk anymore? I don't know. I mean, they'd evolved so far in so many ways that it's almost defies categorization completely.

Totally. Yeah, Steve Bears is heard of the Flying Lizards, like you said. They were also like, they had gotten very into Sun Raw. There's that like really charming story of when they're on tour and they're in Philadelphia and they look, they're like, we have to go talk to Sun Raw. Maybe he's in the phone book. And you know what? Listener, he isn't, he was in the phone book under Raw, comma, sun. What the fuck?

insane. And so they find his address and they just march on over to his house, but he was not home. It was on tour, unfortunately. So not a happy ending, but a gorgeous story. Like, oh yeah, first of all, Sunrah, babe, what were you doing having yourself listed in the phone book? Insane. Also, is that your real name? I have a lot of questions. But yes, they were, they were increasingly like interested in more and more just interesting music, world music, what you're talking about. And it's really reflected in this album. And it's not that this album doesn't sound like a slits album. It just sounds like you can really hear the slitsiness of it. It's just expanded and evolved in some very interesting ways that were not pop or marketable. Absolutely. And you've got a song on there called improperly dressed,

which it always amuses me just to have a song called improperly dressed because that is still, they're still kind of facing all those things as young women being judged for what they're wearing on the tube and sort of like, you know, are they improv? So it's kind of, but again, it's another really intriguing, strange, lovely song. And they're still drawing on those kind of slightly playground, chanty, kind of spooky, kind of girl gang vocals, sort of backing vocals, but it's starting to get kind of filtered through into something a bit more mature and a bit more, they're changing, you know, they're changing. And you can hear it.

And you can see it on the cover of the album as well. There's something foreboding about it, isn't there? There's something really dramatic about that cover. It's not humorous. No. They're not taking the... There's something, you know, almost apocalyptic about that kind of cover and their faces. They just look very, you know, like something's coming, I guess.

Something serious is coming. Totally. Yeah, this... Yeah, the artwork is very interesting. I love the stylization of the word slits, though. It's a very comic book. The producer of this album was Dennis Bevel again, but then there's also some additional production by Dick O'Dell.

We talked about Dick O'Dell, they're a manager. There's one other thing. I think it's very interesting on this record, which is VIV sings her first song, right? Like Life on Earth is sung by Vib. I really like Life on Earth. Yeah, yeah, and it's nice to kind of hear her voice, isn't it? You know, because we had, you know,

adventures close to home. We got to actually hear what Tessa sounds like. And it's always exciting if you hear, hear, you know, someone who doesn't normally sing, getting a chance to kind of show their voice. It sort of doesn't matter if they're the best singer in the world or anything. It's just, it's not about that. It's just like we're hearing their expression. And I suppose for a lot of people who really followed the slits, they were kind of invested in them as people, as humans and as personalities. And they were all so different.

So it's kind of a treat to hear, I think. I agree with you. I think it's a lovely song. Totally. I really like Difficult fun. I think that might be my favorite song. Yeah, it's my only note that I made for myself is V-ViB, which I guess you could say about the entire album. Should we hear Difficult Fun before we talk more about the reception of the album? Okay. This is Difficult Fun. That was Difficult Fun. We're really at the head shop now, babe.

The Nogchampa, it's flowing, it's in my nostrils, and I'm loving every minute of it. Can I make a recommendation? Please. Not an incense recommendation because Nagchampa is a big fave here. Shea Howe. You would totally go for that choice. But if you can hear the Peel Session version of Difficult Fun, it is, have you heard it? No.

I couldn't find it on Spotify, but I think I have it on CD. And it is like, I love that version, but it is a million times more magical. Instead of the since they've got real piano and there's this kind of disqual. and, oh, well, it's just fabulous. And there's something, again, very poignant and sort of reverby about the vocals. It's just magic. It's pure magic. Well, we're going to play a clip right here. It's very cool. Very cool. This album, maybe unsurprisingly, is not well received. To your earlier point, people often, it's a double-edged sword, right? They want you to do the same thing,

but then they want you to evolve. And there's probably like a one-inch area of margin that you can exist in that will make them happy. And so this was just too weird. This was just too weird for people. It was too weird for the critics. It was too weird, honestly, for some of the fans. It was just, it was just,

Maybe I don't, I don't want to say ahead of its time because I don't even think there's a time that this became popular. It just was really out there and it had a much narrower audience. There's some, once again, pretty crazy press around this time. So there's a live review by Andy Schwartz in New York Rocker that begins, am I the only man in the house tonight with the sudden and irrepressible urge to take Ari up over my knee and give her a good spanking? Not for any perverse sexual reasons, you understand. Yeah, I understand. But because I find some of her onstage comments unwarranted and annoying. First of all, why would you tell on yourself like this? Like Andy Schwartz. The lady doth tell on himself is what I'm saying. Indeed. Like, would you ever say, like, I got the irrepressible urge to take Iggy Pop over my knee and give him a good spanking? I don't think so. No. No one said they wanted to spank Johnny Rotten and he was right annoying.

Absolutely. This is the thing. It's like, would you say it to a guy? But you're right, the confidence with which he's saying that sort of makes him think. It's like, am I right or am I right? You know, obviously you all agree with me. It's like this. It's like, seriously. Oh, my God. I mean, it's just like, babe, come on. So, you know, fuck you. And then the Record Mirror gave this album three and a half stars. Now, I don't know what that really means because, you know, in some publication, three and a half stars is like, well, it's a record and it plays music. And in some publications, that's like a pretty good score. So I'm not super familiar with Record Mirror, but what they say, but the review. itself is actually kind of positive. So this is the one that I found that I was like, oh, they liked it.

It was Chaz DeWally. He said, long-term slits fans can relax. Just because the girl's latest album appears on the CBS label doesn't mean they've sold out gone soft or started to sing Eurovision songs. Couldn't be more true. Literally, even mostly the opposite of anything pop. Return of the giant slits is still a determinedly experimental collection. In fact, it often taxes the brain and squeezes the mind to the point of exasperation, presumably saying that positively. There's whimpering and wailing galore, native drumming that could drive a man insane, and creeping clutching guitar lines that cling to the stereo like vines. At any moment, you expect Tarzan to come swinging out of the speakers in psychedelic slow motion.

The atmosphere is so perfect. Yeah, that reads a little, I'm not going to say it, but you know what it is. It's a little like, should say that? Very much. Do you say that? Like what? The music of savages? Is that what you're saying?

Because I don't like it. Anyway. Okay. Enemy, this is where I say the second criticism of the sort of appropriation. This is by Richard Cook. He says, For all their protestation and espousal of the unifying earthbeat, there's something dissatisfying about three white women

rifling through some of the darkest aspects of black music and flaunting their discoveries as trappings of a style in sars. I'm not going to, this is the 14th time I'll say, we are not in the business of unpacking sociopolitical implications of cultural appropriation in 1981, because there's just too much to say there. But I guess I will point out that like the pop group never got this sort of criticism. Right. Did they not? Because I've not read, I don't, I can't remember the last time I read it any reviews of the pop group, but you're right. They were doing very much Never.

Maybe not never, but I did read, you know, the ones I could get my hands on. And I didn't, I didn't see that. I mean, there's criticisms, but I didn't see it, the appropriation being criticisms. You know, I think they were mostly criticized for just being too weird. But, and maybe like a little pretentious in their weirdness. So just pointing out. The pop group literally used like an image of the mudmen of Papua New Guinea. on the cover of why.

They did, yeah, right before the slits put out. Before, yeah, so there's that reference. Yes, absolutely. You can definitely see that connection between the two covers. But, you know, that I would think maybe using that in today's, you know, maybe we would think, hang on, there's all these white guys. Is it right to just kind of use that like a kind of badge or what's going on there? You know, is that okay?

There's no denying that the implementation of traditionally African or West Indian music was clumsy. But, you know, I do think in the Slits case it was coming from a pure place. And, you know, they did, you know, kind of constantly and consistently work with Jamaican and African artists. and, you know, I think it was the growing pains of world music being sort of brought to the forefront of the stage of music. And that's all I'll say about that. No, that's a really good point. Because also I think we have to remember as well that, as you said, you know, both the pop group and the slits were working routinely with black artists, black producers, they were promoting black artists on their tours. And also they were living in communities

with, you know, that were mixed, you know, that kind of, well, certainly I know the pop group were Bristolian and there's a big West Indian community there in Ladbrook Grove, the same. You know, those, as we said earlier, that was one of the joys of punk was that, you know, you had communities of outsiders coming together and, and inspiring each other and supporting each other. And so that would have been probably a very natural thing for people like Ari and Viv and to just want to sort of celebrate that and kind of that kind of cross-cultural, cross-fertilization probably would have just felt very natural. Whereas for us looking back and looking at it and not being there in that context, maybe it does feel like, oh, you know, is that okay?

You know, but I think we have to take those things into account. And you're right, is it cultural appropriation? But I do, you know, I personally would sort of maybe draw the line at kind of speaking in Patoa as a white lady. Correct. That's the ting. Yeah. Back to the matter at hand. This is the end of the slits. This is the last album they put out. They play their last show. And, you know, essentially, Ari's pregnant. She's having a pretty rough pregnancy, right? She still plays the shows, but she's terribly mourning sick. And I think the detail that really stuck with me was that she was pulling out her eyebrows because she was. She's so uncomfortable. That always stayed with me as well. That image always, oh, bless her.

And I think there was a lot of anxiety behind that as well, the kind of pulling out of the, blesser. Totally. Yeah, it was tough. And Tessa was, you know, had overdosed and was sort of like figuring out moving on from that and recovering. And, you know, by all accounts, VIV was tired. And I think it's VIV that called it, right? She was like, I don't want to do this anymore. Yeah, I think that's true.

Yeah, that's my memory of it, definitely. Yeah, so sadly, they call it quits in 1981, like, you know, in the same year that the album came out. Or it was 82? I think it would have probably been, yeah, 82. I mean, one of the sad things as well, and something that kind of surprised me when I was revisiting the book for this session, I'd forgotten that actually CBS were all lined up to do another album with them. They had a producer lined up and stuff. So the fact that the return of the giant slits obviously was not a tremendous commercial success.

It was just they just wanted to, you know, so I thought, well, fair play to them. You know, they were actually behind them presumably for the right reasons, which is not something we normally kind of associate with major labels. So, yeah, they were all all ready to go. They had like a Latin American producer lined up. And so I think they weren't expecting that. Totally. Now, this is the fun part. This is where Zoe Streethow gets involved in the story of the slits and becomes a character.

Zoe, okay. When did you first make contact with the Slits about writing your book? Okay, well, I think it must have been through Don. He will have connected me to Tessa, who he was still pals with. And I phoned her up and had a little chat with her. And then she said, come to this gig because Ari is over. Ari was living in, she was partly in Jamaica, partly in L.A., so sort of like she was going between the two.

But she was coming over to do a gig with her band, the True Warriors, who were absolutely fantastic band. And so she said, you can meet me there. We have a chat with Ari. And so that was, I went down there, met Tessa for the first time, hung out with Tess, saw the gig. It was absolutely brilliant. There were about three people in the audience, by the way.

What the hell? Enraged me. I know. This is the thing. This is the thing that people forget at the time. You know, there was a kind of hardcore of people who really loved, you know, the slits. But there weren't that many of us, you know, and it's things are different now. And everyone's going, oh, yeah, the slits. I always love the slits.

It's like at the time, you know what? I wasn't really feeling that. I will say that I used to DJ back in the, oh, 2008, nine. And I always played the slits. Well, I'm very glad to hear. Credibility. I'm so annoying. I'm so sorry. I would like a cookie and you have given it to me and now we can move on. But no, it's good to know there were light-minded people out there who was flying the slits flag and beating the drum because it just shocked me.

I was like this was such an incredible show and Ari just, you know, Ari is a superstar and she just played it like it was a stadium gig and it was just this tiny little room in Camden with just a handful of people there. And afterwards, I went backstage with Tessa, met Ari, and it was complete chaos, as you can imagine, but she was very warm and very sweet. And she took me by the hands. And I was like saying, what do you think? I want to do this book and blah, blah, blah. She's like, yes, yes, yes. But first, I want you to organize a Slits convention, like a Star Trek convention.

You must do it. And I was like, okay, I was sort of thinking of just doing the book. But right, you know, I would have come to the convention. If you ever still do it, I'm down. Do you know what? It may still happen. I'm just going to say, and I remember, like, at the end of the, it was this exhilarating evening with Ari and Tessa and all these amazing people.

And I remember as I was leaving, and they were kind of leaving from the back door of this venue, her shouting up the street to me, don't forget, Slits Convention! I was so, my God. So, you know, in a way, I think, okay, maybe the Slits Convention was the book, because a lot of people did convene individually to be part of it, because actually everyone I spoke to, they were like, of course, the Slits deserve a book. And, you know, absolutely everyone was behind it. I don't think there was anyone who didn't want to be involved that I reached out to.

But I do remember speaking to kind of other punky people and punky fans. And I was saying, oh, you know, I was like, I'm going to write a book about the Slits. And more than one person who was a punk devotee otherwise said to me, and I kid you not, yeah, but is there a story there? And again, I was just like, well, A, I am going to find out the story. I'm a journalist. I think it's, you know, I think it's quite easy to say that there is a story there. They're incredible, have you listened to their music?

And I just thought, you would not have said that if it was a, I'm sorry to sound like a broken record, but I don't think you'd have said it if it was about a bunch of guys. Cut to, you know, the book coming out and then things starting to, you know, perception starting to change. And it did the job I wanted it to do from that respect. And it wasn't a huge thing. but it did cause a little shift and exactly those people are like, oh yeah, the slits. God, absolutely.

Love the slits. So it's kind of funny to me to sort of remember back to those days and remember how different it was. It's a little funny to me. It's a little funny to me that back then you guys were like, is there a story there? And then I put out this fucking book and now you know there's an amazing story. There's an amazing story. But it's just like, why would you even ask that? Of course there's a bloody story.

Have you seen them? Have you, you know, just look at them. They are incredible, fascinating people. Listen to the music they make. Of course, they are amazing. So the interesting thing was that at this time, and you probably maybe know this, but I said to Tessa, you know, we were getting going. We were sort of amassing people to kind of talk to.

And I said, well, obviously, I've got to speak to Viv. And she said, oh, I don't think Viv's going to want to do this. Because we approached her a couple of years ago. We want to reform the slits. And she told us in no uncertain terms that that was. not something she was interested in doing. Is that when they put out Revenge of the Killer Slits, the EP? I don't. Oh, might have been actually what you... In 2006? Oh, yes, probably was. Yes. Okay, we'll clip a song from that. They end up putting out

this little EP with Paul Cook from the Sex Pistols and Marco Peroni and Slyth, three song EP. Anyways, please go on. So Viv was not involved. Very much not interested. And, you know, and all the rest of it, she's like, oh, you know, I don't think... But I have... said, well, look, I can't do this. It's got to be everyone. It's got to be. So I think I've spoken to Palm Olive already and she was fabulous. And so she put me in touch with Christine Robertson, who was the final manager of the Slits and a very dear friend and a brilliant manager and an artist and just a wonderful person. And so she said, look, I know that Christine is still involved, still in touch with Viv. So if anyone, she'll be able to put you in touch and we'll see what

happens. So I dropped Christina line. And lo and behold, Again, it's one of those sort of slits synchronicities. It just happened to be VIV's year of saying yes. And so she was like, hmm, okay, yeah, I will talk to you. And Tess was like, what? And Ari just couldn't believe it. She was like, what? Ask her if she wants to join the slits again.

And please speak to her. And I was like, okay, okay. So we met up and we had an amazing time. I have to stop you because I want to do a little backstory here on the Viv side since you didn't read the book. and then I'm going to embarrass you in a beautiful way because it's glowing price. So this whole, meanwhile, this whole time, right? So you're working on this.

No one's getting, this was not in touch with the rest of the slips. Like she was, and she had gone through a fuck ton, right? She had had incredible difficulty getting pregnant. She had had a million IVF treatments. She ended up having cervical cancer, a huge tumor, like just horror after horror. She did have a beautiful child. So that's the amazing part of the story. But she had been through the ringer. And she, you know, according to her book was like, her marriage was really suffering. She had not been a person that made art or did anything. After having a thriving directorial career, which we didn't mention, like post the slits, she went to film school, became an accomplished director, directed music videos for like the mecons and stuff, directed films. She was very, very celebrated in English director. So anyways, this is just painting the story of like where Viv was psychologically when she gets in her year of yes.

And she gets this call from Zoe. Let me just read you a little thing, Zoe. I'm obsessed with this. I drive to Hastings Station with a heavy heart to meet Zoe the journalist, expecting an aging goth with holy fishnet tights, pink hair, and a ring through her nose. This is how I imagine Slits fans must look. I've become narrow-minded and judgmental living out here in the sticks. she was living outside of London. I lean against the barrier outside the station,

scanning the emerging passengers, looking for a quote-unquote punk. There aren't any. What appears is a beautiful, fresh-faced, bright-eyed girl in a red coat, heading toward me smiling. This is Zoe Streethow. Zoe is writing the book.

Zoe is not any old girl. She emanates light and health and intelligence. I can't believe such a gorgeous creature is interested in the slits. I keep asking why, why, why? It's quite simple, she says. She loves the music, thinks it's still relevant, loves the look, loves the attitude. But that was 25 years ago, I say. She tells me a lot of young people like the band and that the message is still as potent today as it was back then. I'm astounded. Then she comes out with another bombshell. Tessa wants to know if I'll reconsider joining the new slips. That is really moving. You changed her life. You were such a pivotal figure in this story. And like, what a beautiful. again, cosmic. What a beautiful, like, you were truly like the timing of that could not have been more beautiful and perfect. Like, you brought this like confidence and light back to Viv around the slits. Like, that's an incredible thing that you did. That is really moving. Thank you for sharing that

with me. That's beautiful. And I'm extremely honored that she would write about me that way because she actually changed my life as well. You know, obviously that's much less interesting than it's life. It did. It did, you know, we ended up having a really lovely friendship, you know, for those few years. And, and yeah, Ari, it was actually Ari, rather than Tessa, although Tessa was obviously part of that conversation, but Ari was the one who said, you know, impressed upon me that I must ask Viv. You know, so we miss her. We really want, you know, we would love her to join, you know, come back. There's no one who plays guitar like her. I remember her saying that. So I passed that on very faithfully. And she's like, really, really? What should I do? what should I do? I was like, you've got to do it. So it was so exciting. So being with her at that time of sort of deciding and thinking, yeah, oh, maybe I'll go for it.

And she had started playing guitar again after all these years. Yeah. And making music and. She was playing at Open Mic. Yeah, so brave. It was so inspiring to me. I'm getting a little ahead, but there's an incredible piece in the book where she ends up going on toward the raincoats later, Solo.

And Carrie Brownstein writes, this really powerful review of it because she's like there's basically, I'm paraphrasing, but there's nothing more punk than a woman in her 50s singing punk songs about marriage and motherhood. And I was just like, fuck yeah. Absolutely. And you know what? One of my main, my massive regrets in life was that I was supposed to go, you know, she said, you know, the raincuts. And I was like, I've got a new book to write because I'd just been signed up like straight after to do another book. And that is one of my big regrets is not going to the states with Viv and the rank notes. What was I thinking? You were meant to write your book. Also, one other thing I must say that

is striking to me is that the unsung band of the Slits story is the most, the most unexpected one. It's yes, which you know, because the guy from yes, whose name I cannot remember right now, was Ari's godfather way back in the beginning, right? Best pals with Nora. And then you're married to, the son of another member of yes, right? That's right. Is this correct? Yes, is correct. And your husband also played drums for Viv.

That's right, yeah. Who would have thought yes would have been such a through line in the Slits story? And also Keith Levine was a roadie for yes, and he adored Steve Howell, who's my father-in-law. Yes. So all these strange kind of connections to this pro-fund. Owner of a fucking lonely heart, babe. This is some owner of a lonely heart hours right now. It is a bit weird, isn't it? It is a bit strange. I'm obsessed with it. This is the kind of shit that

I, like I told you, I live for this shit. I live for these weird connections that somehow yes plays a big part in the Slit story in the background. It's so good. It's a gorgeous bow at the end of the story that you and your husband are connected to yes and then are, you know, come back into Viv's life musically. It's so cool. It's very strange, isn't it? It's lovely. And we, we definitely, it was just such a treat to be with Viv and working on her songs together and, you know, trying stuff. She was so brave. And it was just for me, it was I had my own kind of issues with sort of confidence and I'd sort of not played the drums for a while and I didn't know how to get back into it. I was like, oh, that's in the past now. And she was like, well, I need

someone to do percussion on this and I need someone to do keyboards and I know you can do it and I just need you to it. She just thought, I was like, okay, okay, I just do it then. And that changed my life because it brought music back into my life when I thought I'd sort of, for some stupid reason, closed the door. So I was always very, very grateful to Viv for that. And, you know, it's, yeah, that's, it's kind of a beautiful thing. And she did join the slits for two gigs,

two festival gigs over here in the UK. And she was like, okay, you know, I've done it. And one, sorry. In one fashion week gig, two people instrumental in the resurgence of, the celebration of the slits, you and Chloe Seveny, who was obsessed with the slits, famously has the photo of her and her handmade Slits jacket, and she got them to play her fashion week, her debut collection for opening ceremony, the party for it, which I really would have killed to be there to see the Slits play. And she, I think, really helped also

get people back interested in the Slits because people thought. She was so cool, you know. Absolutely. Those are the kind of people that you need, you know, to sort of to back you up. you know, if anyone, people are going to listen to Chloe Savinia, absolutely. So, yeah, that was a, that was a fantastic thing. I remember that happening. Yeah, and also another of my regrets is that they said, come to New York. We're going to go to New York. We're going to meet Chloe Savina. I was like, oh, I don't know if I can afford it. And so I didn't go. And then it was like, another of those, oh, my God, what was I thinking? God's plan. God's plan. I guess you're right. Do you know what? I've never shared that with anybody. And I feel a whole lot

better, yes, so thank you. Of course. You know, listen, we can't, we can't, we can't know the cosmic plan for us and sometimes it means we miss some things because it's meant to be that something else was supposed to take its place. That's what I tell myself about a lot of things that I've missed out on. You're so right. That's very good advice. So this is why you were the perfect guest. Just to sort of fill in the gaps for the rest of the career of the slits, there is a 2009 Slits album called Trapped Animal. It's not available in streaming and Viv was not involved in it. But, you know, it came out, did it come out right before Ari passed away or right after? It came out in October of 2009. That was actually the same year the book came out and Ari

passed away the following October. 2010. So it was all very close to the end. And actually, I remember they were coming over rehearsing for some gigs and I did the final interviews with Ari when I was living in Soho and they were rehearsing in these little rehearsal rooms for two gigs with Viv. And it was like another chance to speak to her, get the final interviews down. And then the book was going to go to press and come out in 2009 in the summertime. And the mood was very strange. And I remember thinking, what's going on, what's going on? And Tessa and Viv took me aside and said, look, we've just found out that Ari is not well.

Oh, man. But Ari didn't talk about it. And Ari was just Ari, and she was being very, you know, just herself. You know, she was talking very animatedly and she was very generous with these interviews and lots of fun. But it kind of wavered into these sort of strange, difficult moments. And this was not helped by the fact that these two gigs that they were going to play. I think one of them was supposed to be at the Astoria, which was a really, you know, a cool, cool venue in the center of London. It got pulled because of poor ticket sales.

and that really got her down, understandably, and she'd come all this way, you know, and just, you know, not enough people to bought tickets. I remember it was just so awful and so, I just thought, God, they deserve, you know, this is awful. And I remember contacting a venue in Brixton called the Hoot Nanny, which is a really good, very sort of Slits friendly venue, sort of mid-range venue. And they're like, we'll do it, we'll put the show on. And they were up for it.

And I think she just kind of lost her mojo. She's like, no, I just don't want to. So she kind of lost her mojo. And she wasn't well, of course, and it was just so sad. And then, of course, you know, 2009. So this was the end of 2008. 2009 comes along, you know, she's gone back home. Then, you know, the book comes out and some gigs happen,

and they are better attended. And it starts, you know, and then the album comes out, trapped animal comes out. And the sort of slits buzz starts again. And it's like, yeah, you know, this is what they deserve. And I think, you know, certainly from my point of view, I didn't know Ari as well as, you know, Holly and Tessa and Viv and all the rest of it. But, you know, I just couldn't believe that she was going anywhere. You know, she was so young and she was so vital that you just thought, God, if anyone can beat this, it's Ari. She's going to beat this.

And I think a lot of us just weren't prepared for the reality, you know, when she went. And I'm just, you know, I'm so glad to have met her. And I know it wasn't, you know, it wasn't always easy. with Ari, but she was a very special person and just to kind of get her stories down. I'm, you know, if we'd have waited any longer, her voice, well, I wouldn't have done the book without her, that's for sure. You know, there just would have been no way. I couldn't have done it. But to have her voice in there and to have her stories and her wit and perspective and her talking about pump, pump power and just so alive, you know, seeing those, you know,

reading them again, doing the research for this session, you know, just really kind of brought her back in a really lovely way. So, yeah, so thank you for this. You know, thank you for keeping the slits alive. Of course. And, you know, I'm just, I'm so touched that I think, you know, who knows what would have happened, but it also seems like, you know, maybe without your book, Ari and Viv would never have reconnected before Ari's passing, you know, it was quite a fortuitous timing because they hadn't spoken for decades, you know, and like for that to be, to bring them back together and for them to be able to like reconnect and sort of maybe like heal some stuff you know before that is is I think pretty profound and pretty important.

Thank you for saying that. No, that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. You just never know what the plan is, as you say. Exactly. Okay. Let's wrap up the episode. Before we do, I think thanks to you, thanks to Chloe Sevs, thanks to a documentary that I have not yet seen, but I hope is good about the slits that came out in 2017. It's not accessible for me anywhere here. You know, there is definitely, I think, a renewed interest and respect for the slits. And I hope that people continue, you know, you see it all the way. We sort of talked about this earlier, but like you see it in so many bands. I mean, maybe most. most notably Warpaint. You know, a band that I absolutely love is a true direct lineage descendant of the Slits and they're big fans. And I think Jenny Lee Lindberg played on Vib's album, the bassist of Warpaint, a fantastic band. Yes, I remember that now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, she did. Yeah, similarly in the vein where their like existence is punk, but they play around with so many different forms of music. But anyways, the immeasurable impact, I'd like to. now hear from some of the other mega fans, speaking of impact. So we can hear people that feel like us about this goddamn gorgeous beautiful band. Hit it. Producer Dylan.

So I discovered The Slits as a 14-year-old girl living in the middle of nowhere. I found them on the internet when I was researching punk and riot girl. I wanted to know who inspired these genres that I love. God, the power of the Slits is so immense. and so underrated. It progressed rapidly, creatively, and mindfully, weaving their cultural influences into songs that brought attention to their intelligent

and distinctly female punk perspectives on the overwhelmingly male-driven musical playing field. Amidst the sea of very straightforward punk that started to all blend together, the slit stood out. They were abrasive, but dancing and fun and little jangly and then art. screaming, like, I loved it. I immediately loved it.

When I discovered them as a teenage girl, I felt that I had really found something special. Slits music will always be an enduring beacon of bravery, originality, creativity, and rebellion. I was lucky enough to become friends with Ari for a brief period before she passed, and she embodied those qualities right to the end. I remember making my own Slits patch because a Slits patch was no one. nowhere to be found, which I think is very telling. You know, they're so underrepresented, and they were one of the most impactful bands in punk.

They just had so much unabashed fierceness and lust for life and just fuck the rules. You have a band, like the slits, that completely were so unwavering in their representation and in their sound, experimenting with things like dub and reggae, adding to what came into being of their punk sound. And then you have a force like Ariup who is just, I don't think we've seen a front person or an artist of that raw, authentic power really truly since our. up and the slits in general.

I know all the words to cut, for instance, and I will sing along, and it is really challenging stuff. And it just comes out of her in such a natural way. They were at the forefront of punk. You know, they were the trailblazers. So if you dig, you'll find them. I had to dig for the slits, you know. And I think just, you know, real ones know about the slits.

That's so true. real ones do know about the slits. Absolutely. That was really moving hearing those testimonies. That was beautiful. Young people, you know, getting into it. I absolutely love it. Well, Zoe, this has been just transformative for me personally. What an incredible story. What a perfect and incredible guest you've been as you were part of the story in many ways and also just have such a unique understanding and appreciation of the slits. I'm so grateful to you for making the time to be on the show with us. Thank you so much.

That is really lovely of you to say. And thank you for this warm welcome as well to Bansplaine, which is a fabulous podcast. I mean, the name alone I just absolutely love. So I'm honoured to have been invited on to talk about the slits. It's really, really been a real privilege and a pleasure to talk to you. That's thank you so much. Right before we close out, I would like to read one last quote from Viv Albertine because I just loved it.

This is from an interview in 2001 in Uncut magazine. And the writer's like, I ask what she thinks of Madonna, the riot girls whole, the spice girls, all saints. Post-slit girl phenomena. And Viv says, Madonna came to see us in New York very early on. Six months later, she looked just like me. It might have been a coincidence. But that combination of ribbon, stockings, boots, and makeup didn't happen before us. I love Courtney Love and Hole.

I think she gets a raw deal. As for the Spice Girls, they're a good laugh, good pop music. I'm into pop, but they're not an equivalent. I wouldn't have minded all that dosh. I didn't mind that they took a feministic slogan-y thing and made it middle of the road. I love All Saints. They're so laid back and sexy. But to ask the slits what they think of them is a bit like asking the clash what they think of boy zone,

just because they're an all-boy band. And I was like, yes, bitch, you fucking tell him. It's exactly right. Like, what the fuck does all saints have to do with the slits, sir? What are you saying? Anyways, I loved that she killed them. Okay, Zoe, at the very last thing we do on this show before we close out, do you want to pick one last slits song that we haven't played yet to leave our old and new fans with at the end of this episode?

I think I've got to go for shoplifting, the cut version, which is so majestic in so many ways. not least, because if you listen very carefully, on her final screen, she puts so much into that final screen, she wets herself and you can hear her, giggling, I pissed in my knickers in the song. So Dennis left it in the cut, in the final cut of the song,

which is a little magic moment. And I didn't know that she was saying that before. I just thought she was saying something really cool and rhythmic under the music, but it's actually, I pissed in my knickers. So in honor of, Aries inimitable style and propensity to we in inappropriate places. It's got to be shoplifting. That's literally perfect because I too am on the verge of peeing almost at the end of every

Bansplane episode because it has been 400 hours and I really need to be. So could not be more perfect. Okay, Zoe, thank you so much. Come back next week for a new episode of Bansplane and this is shoplifting. If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bansplain, only on Spotify. Our guest today was Zoe Howe. Follow her on Twitter at Lady Zoe, the number two, dots, and pick up any one of her incredible books, starting with typical girls, the story of the Slits, via her website, Zoehow.com. Huge thanks to the Slits mega fans you heard on this episode. Lena Myers, Ionita, David Orlando, Angie Padilla.

and Giovanna Sarver. Bansplain is a Spotify original show. This episode was produced by the Taking Huncholina to My Sniffing Foncalina, producer Dylan, aka Dylan Tupper Rupert, and edited by Matthew Chalely, with help from Casey Simonson, Shannon Cornett, and Kelly Kyle. Executive producers for Bansplaine are Gina Delback and me, Yossi Salon. Her gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Kosentino and Jennifer Clayton and graciously recorded by Carlos Dillaigar.

in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to Robert Adler, Leah Edwards, David McDana, Dana Mearson, Jessica Hopper, and The Spicy Chicken from Popeyes. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bandsplain, only on Spotify. How you holding up there? Sorry. Is it full nighttime there? Do you want to turn the light on? I was just going to say, can I turn the light? Yeah. Absolutely.

It's getting a little bit tough. I can't read me notes. Thank you.