"I count in the first song and off we go…" writes Vivienne Albertine of an early performance by the Slits. "We all play at different speeds. Ari screams as loud as she can, I thrash at my guitar, Palmolive smashes the drums – the stage is so big and Tessa's so far away, I can't hear what she's doing… We all play the song separately, we know we should play together, but we can't. I hope that if I remember my part, and the others remember theirs, with a bit of luck we'll end at the same time. This doesn't happen."
In retrospect, the Slits were perhaps the most subversive punk group of all: four unruly girls – Ari, Tessa, Viv and Palmolive – high on attitude and a shared sense of possibility so strong that their initial lack of musical ability seemed somehow unimportant. Their adventures, musical and otherwise, and their often brattishly confrontational attitude are at the heart of this searingly honest memoir by their lead guitarist, which is as much about adjusting to life after the Slits as life during the punk wars.
Albertine writes well about the fledgling London punk scene, a community of like-minded misfits united by boredom, frustration and a collective self-belief that soon became viral. She recounts her friendship with the doomed Sid Vicious, her on-off relationship with the ever-supportive Mick Jones of the Clash and the one time she took heroin while under the spell of the charismatic but amoral Johnny Thunders. At times, her honesty is excruciating. "After a while of licking away," she writes of a sexual encounter with Johnny Rotten, "I hear an imperious voice from on high, like Quentin Crisp and Kenneth Williams mixed with the Artful Dodger… 'Stop it, Viv! You're trying too hard'."
But Albertine's writing really comes alive when she describes the visceral thrill of being a Slit. Their very presence antagonised male roadies, promoters and hoteliers wherever they went, while their girl-gang feminism once reduced Mike Oldfield's sister, Sally, to tears such was the force of their contempt for her winsome songs.
At the centre of the mayhem was unruly, untamable figure of lead singer, the late Ariane Daniela Forster, aka Ari Up, who was just 14 when she formed the Slits with Paloma "Palmolive" Romero. Ari was much the same off stage as on: loud, attention-seeking and utterly unselfconscious. During a packed London gig, she famously dropped her knickers mid-song and had a pee onstage. Such gleeful nonconformity came at a cost. "Being attacked, spat at, sworn at and laughed at is all part of our lives," writes Albertine, recounting how Ari was stabbed twice during the tabloid-fuelled anti-punk hysteria of the late 1970s.
The book takes an even more confessional turn as Albertine leaves the Slits behind for a grown-up life that, however fulfilling, could never match the excitement of those few tumultuous years. Unlike many of her contemporaries, she did adapt to life after punk, attending film school and working for a time as a promo video producer. Her struggle to conceive through a long course of IVF treatment is rendered powerfully, as is the diagnosis of cervical cancer that came soon after her daughter was born. She writes uncompromisingly of her illness: "I see life differently now. I can't ever go back to the well side. And I'm glad… People who haven't seen the other side, or aren't close to someone who has – they seem a bit half-baked to me. Lifeless."
When the Slits reformed in 2006, Albertine instead moved to Hastings to recover and raise her child. Then, as her marriage floundered, she slowly started writing songs again. A series of solo albums followed and, as I write, she is being acclaimed for her role in Joanna Hogg's film, Exhibition, where her raw honesty finds another form. It is the bedrock of this illuminating, often painfully revealing memoir.
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