Woman's Hour - Late Night Woman's Hour: Viv Albertine

Episode Date: March 30, 2017

Lauren Laverne interviews Viv Albertine at the Free Thinking festival for the first edition of BBC Radio 4's Late Night Woman's Hour to be recorded in front of an audience. Writer and film maker Albertine reflects on being the guitarist in pioneering all-female punk band The Slits, whose 1979 album Cut is frequently voted one of the most influential albums of all time. But - as she outlines in her autobiography Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys - she hasn't always had an easy relationship with her punk past, and when her daughter was born, Albertine initially didn't tell her about her part in the punk revolution. Following the breakup of The Slits, Albertine briefly worked as an aerobics instructor before going on to film-making, acting (she took a lead role in Joanna Hogg's 2013 film Exhibition) and a solo recording career (debut solo album The Vermilion Border was released in 2012). When her autobiography was first published, with its frank reflections on (amongst other things) masturbation, sex, the punk ethos, IVF, and marriage, Albertine confessed to journalist Alexis Petridis that she worried "have I gone too far? I always go too far." In a frank and funny conversation, Albertine reflects on the resurgence of feminism after the 'desert' of the 1980s, the vital role her daughter played in her decision to return to music, and the advantages of not caring too much what people think.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Shall I welcome Viv Albertine to the stage then? Viv, come on! APPLAUSE Can we all admire Viv's boots for a moment? Because they are extremely spesh. Well, welcome to Late Night Woman's Hour. With me, Lauren Laverne, recorded live at the Free Thinking Festival.

My guest this month is no stranger to performing live. As a member of the Slits, Viv Albertine joined forces with bandmates Ari Up, Palmolive and Tessa Pollitt and made one of the most influential albums of all time, Cot, a pioneering fusion of punk, dub and feminism. The band's impact was huge, though the slits were together for just a few years. Albertine went on to be a filmmaker and spent time away from work raising her daughter before a solo album, 2012's The Vermilion Border, an acclaimed memoir, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys,

and a starring role in Joanna Hogg's 2013 film exhibition, which also her re-emerge as a cultural force to be reckoned with. Welcome Viv, thank you very much for joining me, how are you? I'm very good, thank you, yeah. It's great to be up here on stage with you, I know that you said you never get stage fright. No, not anymore. Really? Did you in the early days? I did, yeah, because we were going on stage in front of hundreds of people and I couldn't play. Quickens the blood, that, doesn't it? Everything shot through me very fast.

And, yes, I was terrified going on then. And also, not only could I not play, no-one else in the band could play either. So we all used to start at the same time and just hope we'd finish at the same time, which we never did. There's kind of like a metaphor for life in there somewhere, I think. Yeah, yeah. It didn't do us any harm. I mean, that kind of adrenaline and fear seems actually quite an appropriate point to start talking about the book,

because, you know, fear is one of the great threads, I think, that runs right through it. Yeah, because people say, oh, you're so strong and you're so brave. And I suppose I am brave. The definition of brave is doing things that you're terrified of all the time. So I constantly am pushing myself into arenas and areas that I have no real sort of expertise in. So, of course, I'm always on edge. So, yeah, I've always been on edge.

I was in a band when I couldn't play and girls didn't play instruments and I had no role models to follow and that was nerve-wracking all the time. Everywhere we went, we were questioned or put down or stabbed or spat at. You know, it was the heavy, heavy times. And then after that, actually, I got very ill. And then, you know, going into film, I was, like, the first female director in every company I went

into when I was freelance and now I'm writing yeah I haven't done that before either so yeah always scared so what is it then about the vanguard I mean you know we're joking about it being adrenal and but it's also exciting right it's exciting to kind of not quite know what you're doing to I believe the the word is pantsing is the present participle yeah flying by the seat of your pants and not knowing where you're going to land. No, exactly. And I don't know why, but I do need quite a lot of stimulation in life. Because if I'm not interested in what I'm doing, I just go to bed.

And I have been known to go to bed for three months. So I'm either on or off. But I'm not a manic person. I mean, I can be very slow, very quiet. I can be in bed for four months just thinking, but then when I'm ready to go, I'll accomplish more in the next year than most people would intend. So I've got used to that now,

and in fact, writing the book made me at peace with that because I thought, God, I'm a jack-of-all-trades. You know, I go from this to to that and then I sleep for ages and I actually heard about this French village where they went to sleep all through the winter and I thought I must be related to them

but then I realised when I got to the end of the book and it was all between two sort of cardboard covers that actually that was a life you know, love it or hate actually that was a life you know like love it or hate it that was a life and something about sort of containing it within the book made it valid yeah um and people found it valid because I'd put it between the two covers I mean it's it's such a fantastic book and it's had this wonderful response what I love about it though is that

you know while it kind of looks at a period that actually lots of people are reappraising that time now I think you know um we we have don't we this sort of industry of of what's the next music anniversary that's coming up and and you know let's kind of look back at that story but this is this is a version of you know especially when it comes to the music and the slits a different story and a different side you know this sense of of telling an untold story was that part of the reason to do it was that what you know you you kind of felt a responsibility to tell the story of you know you and the other women who were part of punk yeah um we we weren't innocent the slits of what we were doing i'd come from art school you know i studied sociology at school as an a level and everything so i was was pretty self-aware and aware of social circumstances.

And we were on a mission to change things for girls. I mean, that was our thing. We're going to change things for girls. And often in our rehearsals, instead of spending two hours rehearsing our songs, which is why we weren't very good on stage, we'd be arguing about, well, what length shall I wear my skirt? Because that doesn't look good with a guitar.

And how high or low shall I wear my guitar and do dms look weird because we'd never seen anyone with a skirt and electric guitar in our lives before nor had anyone in our audience I mean people would come and see us play hundreds of people and they even though they were gig goers had never seen a girl on drums never seen a girl on bass or electric guitar so you know we were sort of redefining so many things I mean that's apart from the music which we pulled to pieces as well so yeah we were very aware we were at the front of something we felt an immense responsibility for that and to be honest to sing in our natural voices not in American voices not in girly breathy voices you know to think about

the rhythms of our songs the notes the melodies the words every single thing we thought we had to be so precise and so strict on because we were at the beginning of something and I'm so glad we did because to me it still resonates today because of that honesty I mean absolutely and you know the the ideology and that the ideas behind what you were doing and and you know more broadly that the punk movement at the time I wonder how you think to what extent that has been incorporated into into you know the kind of normal the the ordinary music mainstream these days I mean what survives of of punk and its legacy do you think um well I'm not really up to speed on what's happening musically now because and I don't

know if it's my age or what but it doesn't really grab my attention and I much prefer working long form in a book than writing something that has to repeat every 60 seconds and rhyme you know so I find it hard and I also when our band split, I couldn't listen to music for about three years. You know, it was like a heartbreak times four. And every time I listened to music, it sort of reminded me of what I'd lost and I found it too unbearable. I've never really been able to go back

to really listening to music without finding it really painful, actually. You know, that sounds a bit sort of extreme, but I just can't. I prefer silence now. I really like my days to be silent, although I have the radio on all night. So it's really weird.

You know, and if I run around the park, I want to hear the sounds in the park and the traffic and the kids and the trees. And I want to be aware of my environment. I don't want to be filling up my head with sounds made by somebody that I don't know, that I don't trust, who hasn't been strict like I was strict about the music, who's relying on cliches musically, cliches

lyrically. I don't want that in my head. If you're going to get inside my head in those earbuds, you better be, you know, really thinking about what you do. I read that Neil Young actually does something similar. Apparently he spends a day just listening to nature. So you're in good company. Once a week. Yeah, once a week, on a Sunday. I think he spends the day just listening to nature. It is cleansing, you know, but I don't know,

because I've been so mad about music from so young, maybe I need to do it for years rather than on Sundays. Tell me about writing then, because I love the style of the book and the fact that you chose to write it in a way that was very direct as well as being you know in terms of the content and the story that you're telling extremely honest um also very direct and quite kind of unadorned in style and that tell me about making that choice and why you decided to write it that way um it's it's who I am and um I I don't know it was difficult because before that I had started writing songs again

and I found I was that still that person that I was when I was 17 and 18 that it wasn't a pose I really was that person who thought things should be short and sharp and clean and honest so when I started sort of creating again much to my amazement because I sort of went dead for 20 years, I found that, oh, I still am like that. That is my natural default setting. So when it came to starting to write a book, which I had no idea how to do, really, I sort of almost approached it like an album. So each chapter is almost like a track.

Some are sort of longer, maybe more experimental, more thoughtful, more reflective. Some are short, sharp and hard. You know, the first track, the first chapter of the book is sort of where I set out my stool and say, right, this is what the ride you're in for. You know, often the first track on an album isn't your best track. It's the one that sort of encapsulates or drags the listener in.

So I sort of, you know, I kind of just approached the book like that. And I think what's interesting about that is in the 70s when I was in art school, everyone who was interested in any kind of art went to art school. There were no music schools, no film schools, you know, no way you could learn to be part of sort of, you know, the machine. So we were always sort of cross-fertilising genres. And I think that makes for much more interesting art in the end. So there were loads of musicians at my art school,

there were loads of poets, there were writers, there were performance artists, there were painters, and we were all, you know, discussing... Multidisciplinary. Yeah, multidisciplinary and looking at other types of art to make our own. But now, when you learn to make music, you go to a music college and you study musicians and, you know, a music college and you study musicians.

And, you know, there aren't paintings everywhere and there aren't people talking about different artists, you know, the Dardais or whatever, approaching different kinds of... You know, so every musician went to art school in the 70s and I think that did a lot for our music. Viv, tell me a little bit about when you first fell in love with music because, you know, you describe your relationship with music as being very, very powerful.

When did that start? Was it when you were a kid, growing up in Muswell Hill? Yeah, I mean, I grew up in a very sort of culturally bereft home, very poor, but also culturally poor. Nothing, no books, you know. Kids didn't go to the art galleries with their parents. You didn't even go to a restaurant with your parents when I was young. You'd never call another adult by their first name.

Very restricted times and I went around the babysitter's house one day and she played a Beatles record you can't do that the B-side of Can't Buy Me Love and it was like a whole world opened up to me and I think when you've been quite starved as a young person of any input really more or less the first thing that you see you know in Russia it might be a young person, of any input. Really, more or less, the first thing that you see, you know, in Russia it might be a young child seeing the ballet, and often you hear of ballet dancers, you know, I went to this sort of royal blah-blah ballet, and, you know, that was it, I had to be a dancer. So the first thing that sort of went into my head

was the Beatles screaming, Can't Buy Me Love, and, you know, John Lennon singing, he was jealous, and it wasn't just music to me, I thought, oh, a whole world, there's a whole world here. I was about nine, and that was it, no looking back, all I thought oh a whole world there's a whole world here I was about nine and that was it no looking back all I thought was how can I get into this world not not how can I be a musician because there were none and no girls played electric guitar or were in bands as far as I knew you know until Susie Quattro and the Runaways sort of appeared a bit later but by then you know I was I was older older and they were manufactured sort of things,

so I didn't think I could be them. So that was it, the Beatles, and I never looked back and I just wanted to be in that world and I used to comb the back of, you know, record labels and record covers trying to see the name of a girl somewhere, thinking, what could I be? And it was always, you know, thank you, Jasmine, for making all the teas at CBS or thank you, Jemima, my girlfriend,

for putting up with me for the last six months. And I could see no way in. And there were no girls on the stages. But that was it. That was the beginning. I mean, it's interesting, kind of, you know, looking back through the book at the time that you grew up. The Free Thinking Festival this year is all about the speed of life. And I wonder about, you know, the time that you grew up

and your adventures with the woodcraft folk which really have to be to be read fully to be enjoyed but you know there's this sense of kind of the freedom that that you had and that children had at the time you know at the flip side to that to that kind of uh quite strict quite austere old Britain that you were just referring to see although it was austere and culturally bereft and there were no chances for girls and I could see no life ahead um I had the most terrifying amount of freedom my mother was a really hands-off mother and I was you know playing up and down the streets or you know when I was 16 said oh I'm going to hitchhike to Amsterdam mum with my friend

and she said okay for the summer and then I got halfway down the street and I had to run back and say, Mum, what country is Amsterdam in? And she waved me off with a £10 note. And I had an amazing amount of freedom. I can't believe I'm alive and I would not give my daughter the same freedom. So, yeah, in a way, it was both. In the slits, we were stabbed, we were attacked. London, I don't know if it's the same in Newcastle,

but it probably was. You know, London in the 70s was a very violent city. I just see greyness and violence, and we could never walk home alone. We always had to go everywhere as fours, you know, four of us would sleep on each other's floors. Couldn't even travel on the transport alone, certainly not the night bus. Yeah, it was very scary very edgy but then you could put me now in any city in the world and I am at ease

you know I remember doing a shoot with some people in New York and this was early 80s when it was still rough there and we were in Harlem and people were brushing past me knocking me as I walked past and the camera crew were going my god you're completely at ease on the streets. And I said, well, yeah, because I grew up on the streets, you know. But now a nice, normal girl wouldn't grow up on the streets, I think, as much as I did. And, you know, I wish I could trust myself enough to let my daughter have that freedom, but I actually can't.

I mean, thinking back to that time and, you know, the early days of the slits, as I said at the beginning, you know, you guys were together for just a few short years, but you've said that, you know, there's a lot that you don't remember, like specific things about touring, but that comes through in the book, that there is such a sense of love and warmth in your memories. I mean, can you kind of paint a picture for us?

Yeah, I think so. I think there's affection as well as, you know, through it all through like as you say there's a lot of kind of quite scary stuff happening there's there's a lot of strangeness but the relationships that you have with the the other girls in the band yeah we we were like sisters for you know better or for worse really where we got on each other's nerves we spent so much time together as I said we all had to we lived together non-stop for about six years, night and day, because of the streets and because how we dressed was so... We were like aliens.

It's not like now you can more or less wear anything and just about get away with it. We literally looked like we'd been beamed down. We'd take everything that was meant to be female and put it all on at once. So we'd have black eyeliner and maybe a bit of S& gear then your brownie uniform over a tutu with them you know with some sort of pop i had a duffel bag with all pop icons on it and we'd wear it all on all at the same time struck down the street with a like yeah what are you looking at? Sort of face. And men hated us and were terrified of us.

So, yeah, it was such a hard time. And then, meanwhile, the small band that were so-called punks in the first... It only lasted about 18 months. We were all very strict on each other as well. You know, why are you holding hands? What do you really think about love and romance? What's sex mean to you? Tell me some of the rules.

It sounds like there were quite a lot of rules as far as being a fun you know so people look back who weren't there and think oh you know what fun but actually you know you couldn't wear like wide lapels you couldn't wear flares you couldn't wear brown you couldn't wear any pastel colors hang on back up you can wear brown no brown was like you know people in the country middle class y. Yompers wore brown. Pastel colours were for secretaries. Beige, you might as well just kill yourself on the spot. Unless it was a brownie uniform, no brown. No, brownie uniform was taking the mickey.

Ironic, yeah. So we put all this on together and it was the most shocking thing you'd seen on the streets because not only did women not have any sort of place in society then but women like us it was it was sort of like the dread of the new I think that made them so violent towards us so definitely kind of confrontational and rejected by the mainstream what about the scene itself you know, I wonder whether, having had experience being in a band myself, you know, I always think there are two stories on there.

There's the kind of punk and then there's punk as a girl. And I think the two things are probably different. Punk for boys and punk for girls, probably pretty contrasting. Yeah, because punk male bands were really just rock bands. You know, they had icons. They had all the boys in the bands at the time had all practiced in front of the mirror with a hairbrush or a tennis racket what the interesting thing about the slits was we had no history none of us had been in front of the

mirror with a hairbrush none of us had imagined we'd be in a band none of us have perfected a way to stand with a guitar or you know copy david bowie or this or that or the other we were complete virgin culturally virgins in in the music arena and so what we brought to it was so fresh and so different but it was the source as I said as many many many arguments you know there was this big argument about whether the drummer Palmolive he's the wildest drummer she looks like animal from the Muppets when she drums can you please wear a bra Palmolive when who's the wildest drummer, she looks like Animal from The Muppets, when she drums, can you please wear a bra, Palmolive, when you drum? Well, I'm not going to wear a bra, I'm a feminist,

and it doesn't matter. Yeah, but even I can't take my eyes off them, you know. No-one's going to look at you drumming. So there were all these things. Is it more important that people watch her drum, or is it more important that they just can't... you know, watching her boobs flying about? And and um you know everything was a new conversation and actually in a way was a political conversation you know and wearing a tutu with an electric guitar was a complete sort of up yours

to the male rock industry from my point of view and how did they respond how did or how did musicians at the time respond because it's i think that's one of the most interesting aspects of the story um how musicians were fine about it and audiences came I mean whether they came because we were freaks I don't think so you know I think they got it I think they'd never seen anything like it and you know if quite often there might be a rush of skinheads to the stage I mean the slits gigs were terrifying that's that's what friends of mine have said we were terrified when we came you never knew what was going to happen, because we were all wild. We all had no boundaries,

and the audience had never seen anything like it and didn't know where the boundaries were. We used to be showered in spit. Gob would be in your eyes, in your mouth, in your ears, up and down. You couldn't barely play guitar anyway, sliding your hand up and down the neck of the guitar with Northern England

gob on it. Hey, it's just as good as Southern England gob. Alright, I am here to tell you. I'd say it's better. Better. Much thicker. And you know, so everything was

new, whereas the pistols, if they got spat at, Johnny Rotten would say, right, that's it, I'm not playing, smack down the microphone and walk off. Now, we felt we couldn't do that because it'd be like Violet Elizabeth Bott. You know, no, I'm not playing now. And off you go. So we stood and we were shouting gob every night, you know,

because we didn't leave the stage. So it was different in every single way to be a girl. I mean, when we toured with The Clash on the White Riot tour, it was our first proper tour, we played Newcastle, we weren't allowed in any of the hotels. So all the male bands on the bill were allowed to stay in the hotel, but the slits were only allowed in the hotel if we walked from the door to the lift without looking left to right,

straight to our rooms and were not seen again until the coach was outside in the morning so we weren't allowed in the bar weren't allowed to have breakfast we were not to be seen we were so threatening I mean it's bizarre so everywhere we went and they phoned ahead to all the other hotels saying don't let those girls walk anywhere you know better off if you say they can't come in. The coach driver had to be bribed every morning to have us on the bus. He was horrified at how we looked. I mean, we acted like we didn't care.

And how did you feel at this point, I wonder? I mean, because, you know, you said, like, kind of quite scary. There's a lot of scary stuff, a lot of scary experiences. We felt like we knew something they didn't. And we felt, you know, to us, the clash were like the establishment. You know, we were the rebels on the tour. We were the ones who were getting banned and thrown out of hotels and not being allowed to speak and not allowed to go on the tour.

You know, and Ari, our singer, was only allowed on the tour bus if she did not move from the seat for the whole journey. How did that go did you stay in it did you yeah she had her big you know her big sort of ghetto blaster on her lap turned it up loud and just rocked like a maniac for the whole thing you know but literally if she stood up even to go to the loo he screeched a whole it's unbelievable yeah so you know to say it was i don't say i have particularly warm memories because we were attacked so much. It's almost, even as a band,

how can you stay together with all that attacking happening all the time? You know, whether it was a marriage, it was a marriage, and that much strain will show in a marriage. And, Viv, you know, you were the organiser in the band. You just willed the whole thing into being. You made it happen. And I think that's the person in every band that that it's hardest on don't you yes yeah I do um and it was hell being that person you know who's always like oh god here goes granny again you know

trying to get us to rehearsal or get us to do this and I was always trying to get them to think about what they were wearing and what they were saying and how because of course in interviews the interviewers always want to speak to the singer when she was 14 and you know bonkers absolutely and she she I have a theory that we all had personality disorders everyone who was attracted to punk in any way was actually had a personality disorder and also um none of the slits had a father which I only realized recently I thought my god we could never have acted like that and ran around the streets like that and been so out of it and noisy and wrong in that society if we'd have had fathers fathers we loved or fathers we hated because men ruled the home then they well you know men ruled everything the

dentist the headmaster your uncles your father, your brothers they had the higher ground so if we'd have loved our fathers we loved we would still have wanted to please them I think so not one of us had a dad I think that is really the essence of it all in a way

because I don't think a man in the 70s would have let his little girl go out like that and act the 70s would have let his little girl go out like that and act like that. It would have been the worst, worst thing. It would have been such shame on him. I mean, do you think that there is a tendency to write female punk musicians out of history?

I mean, female musicians across the board. I think females in history, of course, are always being written out and still now being written out. And the slits were very much written out. The trouble is our music, we waited 18 months to make our album because we didn't feel ready to record what we heard in our heads. So we waited 18 months. So by the time we recorded, punk had happened

and our music wasn't three chord thrashes you know it was quite complex um you know we were we were drawing on musicals and dub reggae and all kinds of different you know motown all different kinds of music and we wanted to bring all that into our music we didn't want to record three chord thrashes but we couldn't play it we took about 18 months to get our fingers around it. And so, yeah, so by the time we came out, they didn't know where to place us. So we kind of missed being called punks. We were never on any punk compilations.

And the word sort of post-punk hadn't really come into it. I don't know, when would you say post-punk got coined? Well, I think... As a phrase. As a phrase, I don't know. I mean, I kind of think... I don't know when people were talking about it, but I would kind of think it starts to happen in 77, 78, you know?

Oh, it started happening then, yeah, but it wasn't a label that they could put on the record bins. It was a retrospective genre classification, wasn't it? Yeah, until the internet, really. And that's when people started to pick up on the slits again. So I've got great faith that actually good work will surface and you just got to live long enough to see it happen you know and I think there's almost like a 30-year cycle

I think give it 30 years and then tell me if you think my work's any good or not that's how I feel about it I mean that kind of brings us back to the the speed of life and you know you talk about making the the slits record making cut and you kind of did that sequestered away in the countryside and you know it took a while I mean things do tell me a little bit about life moving on after the band for you you know there was a point at which you move out of London and you you are um you know living out in the sticks in a fabulous house um and you know as you referred to earlier you you became very ill and you know there's a period when you dip out of the public eye. The thing, my theory about Britain back in the 70s

was because we didn't have the internet and we weren't in the EU, we had such a small, inward-looking attitude. There were about two radio stations, two music papers. So that's why we're so good at pop culture, because someone would run their course, you know, 18 months, two years or whatever, and then write, Ireland's too small, get off, we want the next person on the radio, you know, there's not room for you,

which is why we're so good at those little sub-pop culture sort of bands. And after the slits ended, and I couldn't bear to listen to music anymore, there was no room for me. There was no room for you if you'd been in the slits. You know, if you'd been in America, you could have gone touring take a year to go around the country you know they there's such a big country they can absorb the bands and they become historical and then they become sort of royalty but in britain it's like off you go into the channel you know

next person please um which is you know good and bad but so i i was in limbo and i i went back to our i went to film school which i thought because i'm always so I was in limbo and I went back to art. I went to film school, which I thought, because I'm always much more interested in a means of communication than the actual genre. I didn't care if I was a musician. I'm not like, oh, I'm deifying music and mythologising people who stand there with a hunk of wood with strings on it

as if it's, you know, they're gods. I didn't care. I care about communicating. And I thought, no, film's more interesting now. So I went to film. I was a director for a bit. And then I tried to have a child. It all went horribly wrong.

And then I had cancer. So basically, it was like, OK, God, you know, bring it on. What else have you got? And I had to fight all those things. And it took every ounce of energy that I had to get through. It probably took people. I remember the doctor saying to me, well, after 18 months, after all this,

you'll feel as good as you're ever going to feel. But that was so untrue. It took about 10 years of slowly recovering and not just my physical strength, but my mental enthusiasm with life. And it came back very slowly. And it came back when I moved to the sea because I didn't have that sort of rush of London on me.

And then, you know, when it did come back back there was a sense that you know the tides of your the tide of life had kind of taken you to a place that when you did re-emerge you weren't so happy with with where you'd ended up. Well I was married and I had a daughter at last you know much longed for child and when I started to come alive again I I don't want to be too mean, but my husband was very confused by it and didn't like it and wanted to stop it. And that's where the rub was because I thought he'd be so pleased

that someone who'd been so ill and so down for so long... I was like, honestly, a blob on the sofa. I had no life in me I couldn't speak you would not recognize me even physically there was no light um and that went on for quite 10 years maybe um so I was shocked myself and I started to feel a sort of surge of wanting to create again um and then to not be sort of supported in that was was a shock and then I had a big decision to make about whether I stay with someone who wants to squash it or whether I break up this home after I've wanted a home and a child for so long

to be able to express myself, which could be seen as quite a selfish choice. But it got to the point where I thought, when my daughter got to about nine, ten, I thought, what kind of role model am I going to be? As someone who says, oh, all right, then I'll stay at home. I won't do anything. You know, it's all very well when she's young being that. But as I get older, she got older, I thought, no, actually, horrible as it is to break up a home, I think I'm a better role model.

You know, and she used to help me with my songs and she saw me on stage and she saw me turn from nothing and one day she heard me playing guitar at the kitchen table trying to you know trying to knock something together and I'd just been mum I'd just been a pair of slippers and she looked up from her home where it said mummy you were born to play guitar and there's such passion in her she'd never felt or seen me as something separate before so that that phrase lasted was my only sort of encouragement for about the next six years so you did the scary thing again I did the scary thing again you taught yourself to play guitar twice I mean there can't be many people who've done that so talk me through that and and you know going to play open mic nights and yeah so then as a middle-aged woman with a cheap electric guitar started going to all these open mic nights at pubs along the south coast,

these pebble-dashed, horrible brown-carpeted places with men with ponytails who could really play chasing cars. And then I'd go out and go, something like Confessions of a MILF, my song Confessions of a MILf, and they'd laugh at me, and then I'd start strumming this sort of horrible thrumming drone, and they'd say, hang on a minute, thinking I was going to do Joni Mitchell songs. They'd ask me that.

Are you going to do Joni Mitchell songs? Isn't your guitar a bit too trebly? Oh, would they touch your amp? Yeah, they'd touch my amp. That's the Don't Touch Viv's amp. No, but I was so unconfident i let them touch my amp there is a point though i think twiddle my knobs i think there's a point where you kind of have had enough though that you describe in the book the moment when you when you realized and you just told them straight i did i did but i can't

say that on the radio. But no-one was listening, they were all chatting, I was pouring my heart out on this song, and no-one's listening. So in the end, I started singing every swear word I could think of in a round, just round and round and round and round, to the tune of the song. And gradually the pub got quieter and quieter and quieter. And then all eyes were on me at last and I said thank you and good night and that was the last one I ever did that was it I thought no never again because

the words had been so thought about and so carefully written and the tunes you know just like back with the slits strict about the music strict about the rhythms strict about the words you know and so you can see why I can't listen to other music, because they're not strict as me. Yeah, it matters. There's a sense of enjoyment of being in control or a necessity for control. Well, no, it's quality. Quality control.

Because I remember when Sid Fisher and me stood at the back of the room watching The Pistols, we turned to each other and said, there's no point being in a band unless you can be better or different than The Pistols. And I feel like that now you know don't push your music on me your music's not going inside my head unless it's better or different to what I could do and I did bloody good so you know that's my criteria I think that it's so hard

to achieve that though it's interesting to hear you say that because I think now you know we're constantly plugged in aren't we whether you want to be or not, almost, it feels like there is information coming at us in every form at all times. So to actually, you know, to have control of it is quite... In some ways, it's becoming unusual. It's unusual, and to me, the answer to that is to do what, you know, Neil Young did, what you said, Neil Young, is to sort of go inside. When I wrote my album after 25 years of not making music,

I hadn't listened to music for 25 years. I didn't know what was hip. I just thought I'm going to make the most honest music. It could be like a folk song. It could be like a blues song. Not like it, but it will be as pure and as broken down and sort of simple as that. And I'm just going to listen to what's inside my head.

And again, you know, you just make sort of unclassifiable music if you do that, which... And that's why I think, you know, in terms of the speed of life, the funny thing is to combat that speed of life and the way that there's so many things coming in, there's so much input for artists I think the way to combat combat that is only to silence it and to have the absolute nerve and it does take bravery to say do you know what I don't care what anyone else is making I'm and I'm not

going to listen to anything else for a year I'm going to sit in a hut in a field and I'm just going to make what's in my head and I'm not going to think for a minute, is it uncool or is it cool? I mean, I thought my album was going to sound like it'd come out of the ark, because I didn't know what was out there. I love that you toured it, though, and that when you got to New York, I think it was Carrie Brownstein's review that you quoted,

and I'm sure people might know Carrie Brownstein from her work with Sleeta Kinney, as well as her making Portlandia so successfully recently. You quote her review in full. You felt it. Do you think she really got it, didn't she? Yeah, I mean, I was playing solo and I could barely play guitar. I can't sing. And I've got these really, really meaningful words.

And I'm standing up on stage, you really bare and I think well that's that's that's the punk spirit and that's pure you know that no one can say anything you know it's just a conversation almost and the first time that anyone ever got it was Carrie Brownstein who wrote this lovely review just saying you know that she got that she got the pureness of it the bravery of it the punkness of it and my god she ended with you know have that she got that. She got the pureness of it, the bravery of it, the punkness of it. And my God, she ended with, you know, have you seen anything punk lately? Because I have. And, you know, again, like my daughter saying, Mummy, you were born to play guitar,

there's just one thing you need sometimes, one sentence from somebody that can propel you through what you have to do, you know. And then that was the second sentence. That's the next one that propelled me forwards, yeah. Such a beautiful thought. And I think that's a great moment to bring in some thoughts from our audience actually we do have questions if we put the light up a bit oh we can see you you look absolutely gorgeous hello everyone um if you do have a question uh please

do raise your hand questions for viv where we're going to start we've got mics on every floor madam over there if you talked a lot tonight and also in your book about being attacked and Cwestiynau i Viv. Oes gennym ficellion ar bob llaw? Madame, yno. Viv, rydych chi wedi siarad llawer heno a hefyd yn eich llyfr am bod yn cael cymryd llaw ar gyfer eich ymddiriedaeth fel dynion ifanc. Ac yna, ar yr un pryd, rydych chi'n dweud bod y dyddiau hynny, gallwch chi ddynu'r hyn rydych chi'n ei hoffi, nid oes unrhyw un yn gobeithio. Rwy'n adlewyrchu hynny o ran bod yn dynion ifanc. Ond mae ymddiriedaeth dynion ifanc yn dal i fod yn cael ei ymdrin yn dda iawn ac yn cael ei gyfraithio'n llawer. Felly, dydw i ddim yn gwybod, a yw'n gweithio'n well neu yn gweithio'n wahanol? are still very, very closely examined and criticised quite a lot. So I don't know, has it got better, has it got worse, or is it just different somehow?

Well, it's funny, because my daughter's 17 and she goes to a comprehensive school and all her friends wear baggy T-shirts and jeans. So for all the fact that people are saying, oh, my God, all the very sexualised images they have, they are so much more aware, so much more savvy about, you know, the media and how it's used and airbrushing models and things. So I think, you know, what we didn't have back then,

we didn't know that pictures were elongated and people were airbrushed and all those things. So at least they have that. And I think, yeah, I think young women are much more informed and that's got to be you know a weapon in itself and I think the internet is helping that even more those discussions about clothes and body shaming etc etc it's all very lively and I think it's better for that I think it's much better um what about older women because you know I'm listening to that question thinking well it's not just young women is it um oh I don't know I mean I don't I don't you know for once I don't really know what to say except that I mean I'd like to sound all militant but I think it's better

I think my I think my daughter's got many more choices than me not only you know in how she sort of presents herself but you know all I thought I would could be was either a police woman or a school teacher a primary school teacher my daughter thinks of all sorts of wild wonderful things she could be you know even to have them in her head is something whether she'll you know I know there's still only nine percent engineers and you know eight percent in in sciences etc etc but it's got to be better and I think the discussions that are going on amongst young women and everyday feminism etc i think it's better and i think it's lively and i and i like that it's a bit aggressive and militant i think it's there if you can find it and talking about in the sort of

so-called developed world obviously i mean there are women having to fight for very very basic rights in other in other countries but um not not to say be complacent because I'm never complacent and I I very much agree with being very loud and noisy and so-called unfeminine about things you know but um yes I'd say it was better and I think we have to be brave and we have to be outspoken and you know even now I think to myself I find it still very hard not to think of in terms of a man watching me I know it's really hard to say but I still feel like I've got a pair of men's eyes in my head yeah I have I walk around with a man looking at me all the time and it's only when I've got to this age that I begin to actually think

I don't care anymore I actually don't care anymore what what I look like you know I'm not dwi'n dechrau meddwl, dwi ddim yn gwerthu unwaith mwy. Dwi ddim yn gwerthu unwaith mwy beth dwi'n edrych fel. Dwi ddim yn mynd i fyny. Mae'n cymryd amser hir. Yn ogystal â'r ffaith o ddyniaeth a'r holl bethau, mae hynny'n fawr i'w That is a big weight to carry around. OK. Next question. Gentleman at the back with an excellent beard. Well done. One of my favourite things about The Slits is the sort of contrast between how raw they sound when they're live and that Peel Session record, which is very sort of raw and aggressive, which I really, really like. And then the album, which is very sort of calm and it's dubby

and it's maybe a bit more precise and relaxed. But I wonder what it was like for you as maybe someone that was not a trained musician and also a female going into that sort of very potentially sort of male and patronizing sort of recording studio environment and what that experience was like for you yeah well um we got the recording well no to do the peel, that was, you know, a couple of guys there who just laughed their heads off at us, you know, joked, pretended things were wrong with the equipment when they weren't, you know. And we'd never set foot in a recording studio before.

We're very, very green. But we were absolutely determined that we were going to get our four songs done. And I can't believe it when I listen to them now, how the energy pouring out of us. I mean, it's the sort of energy that, in a cliche, you'd think almost you could only hear from boys. And it just goes to show that if that energy was in us,

then it was in lots of girls. But you never heard it. And in a way, you still don't hear it quite as it is in that first Peel session. And then we were locked away in a barn somewhere in the country with Dennis Bevel, a sort of reggae producer, but he's also into rock and all kinds of different music. And we had a beautiful time there because he's a very open-minded guy.

He went to North London Comprehensive, same as me. We have the same sort of backgrounds. He's very open musically and um he just brought our music alive he was like the fifth slit almost because whereas we we got laughed at for saying maybe maybe bringing nursery rhymes or playground chants into our songs so dennis bevel loved all that you know he loved that he never laughed at one idea and it made us you know when when you're trusted you expand and you get wilder and we brought you know okay let's bring in pan pipes there or let's you know let's sing a bit of an old

nursery rhyme there because as girls they were our musical that was my musical background I hadn't been taught music all I'd known is play you know and I thought well playground chance playground chance for a big part of my musical background. That's all I've got, really. And it was hearing people like Don Cherry and some of the jazz musicians, Sun Ra, use them, that gave me almost the permission to do that. Think about the clapping song, you know, Shirley Ellis as well. I think there's a tradition of that in girl groups and female musicians.

Although that was more pop, wasn't it? Very different, but then I think it's interesting the way that there are connections there if you want to look. So actually, yeah, the studio was a very wonderful experience and he's ruined it for me, you know, for the rest of my life because he was the most amazing producer.

And to get a producer who gets inside your head and drags out of you the very best of you, that's what he did. Have I got someone waving at me there? Yeah. Felly, gael cynhyrchwyr sy'n dod o fewn eich llyfn a'ch llwyddo'n gwych. Dyna beth y gwnaeth. Mae rhywun yn ffeithio arna i. Pwy sydd â'r mic? Helo. Roeddwn i'n meddwl, fel icon ffeminist, pan oeddech chi yn yr Aheady, beth ydych chi'n teimlo am y icon ffeminist sydd gennym ar hyn o bryd

a beth ydych chi'n teimlo am y symwyr ffeminist? Mae'n ddim yn gyflym iawn. that we have at the moment and what you feel about the feminist movement? Sorry, that's probably not quite a quick question. No, it's all right. But what icons are you thinking of at the moment? Oh, I think I have quite varied icons. My first... I would say Michelle Obama is a massive feminist icon to me. Yeah, yeah.

Beyonce is also a feminist icon. But, again, very different icons. But my problem is that I feel like as a modern day feminism, you kind of like, it's a stick to hit people over the head with. And if you don't quite fall into a certain category of feminism, you're not allowed to be a feminist. I'm used to that because it was like that in the 70s as well. It was like that in the 70s, but actually that's the sort of price you pay for being noisy you know

between the sort of early 80s and now it all went dead feminism no one spoke so if it's a choice between that and you know being told off when you say the wrong word or you don't do it right I'd rather have the aggressiveness and being told off occasionally than the quiet that was the oasis in the middle of the desert. You know, feminism was actually, it was not mentioned. It's so lovely it's being mentioned again.

And that people... In the 90s, I guess, that would have been when, you know, I remember just kind of, you know, discovering, I mean, actually discovering the slit and going, oh my God, at last. Yeah, exactly.

You know, so, yeah, so I agree. You know, it does get a bit like oh for god's sake sometimes you know it gets a bit factional and everything but that's what comes with passion and I've been in the middle wherein it wasn't passionate at all and no one spoke so it's better than that but I think it's interesting the two icons as well because you know it's funny that you can be Beyonce and be half clothed and shake your booty or you could be Michelle Obama and be serious and be a lawyer and you know they're both role models um and they're both sort of doing things and making their own money and you know that women have more to choose from them when I think I didn't have anything to choose from except being a policewoman and a primary school teacher and so it's kind of about I mean it sounds like you're sort of saying get

out there and have the conversations anyway and try and don't worry about getting it wrong you know because you can always try again yeah and you can always say something rude you can always say oh bugger off you know that's me trying to be polite for the radio but you know the point is when the lovely thing about punk which I've sort of carried with me, is you can just say, oh, so what? You cannot care. You cannot care what people think. You can actually, for God's sake, before you get to your grave, live at least ten years where you don't care what people think.

Enjoy that last ten years. Oh. Wow. Absolutely sensational piece of advice to end it on. Thank you so much to my guest and thank you to my audience, of course. But ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. Viv Albertine. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year,

I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know it was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain

from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.