De fringues, de musique et de mecs

by Viv Albertine, Anatole Muchnik (Translator)

Itinéraire d’une enfant du rock, le texte de Viv Albertine, guitariste du groupe de punk féminin The Slits, est une évocation candide et franche d’un mouvement musical et social qui allait changer l’histoire de la musique.
De fringues, de musique et de mecs regorge d’anecdotes sur les Clash, les Sex Pistols, Vivienne Westwood, Johnny Thunders et tant d’autres. Mais ce serait minimiser ce livre féroce et attachant que de le limiter à un énième document rock, car le propos va bien plus loin. En retraçant sans tabou ni biais son parcours de gamine de la classe moyenne anglaise des années 1970 fascinée par la scène musicale et bien décidée à y faire entrer les filles, puis de jeune femme embarquée dans un mouvement aux excès et au nihilisme affichés, et enfin de femme confrontée au grand vide post-punk qui tente de survivre aux excès, à la maladie, et à l’ennui d’une vie rangée, Viv Albertine livre un texte brûlant d’honnêteté et d’engagement.
Choquant parfois, brutalement émouvant par moments et toujours drôle, ce livre est une ode aux femmes, un texte féministe qui regarde en face ce qu’il en a coûté – et ce qu’il en coûte encore – d’être une femme, d’être irrévérencieuse, et d’être têtue au point de croire à son destin.

Viv Albertine est une musicienne et parolière britannique, figure du mouvement punk auquel elle participe activement avec son groupe, The Slits. Dans les années 1980, elle mène également une carrière de productrice et de réalisatrice. En 2012, après 25 ans de silence, elle remonte sur scène et sort un album solo. Elle vit aujourd’hui à Londres où elle se consacre à l’écriture.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Punk, Autobiography, Feminism

516 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 12, 2014

About the author

Born Sydney, Australia. French/Corsican father, Swiss mother. Brought up in North London (Muswell Hill). Quite poor. Comprehensive school. Favourite subjects, buying records; clothes, boys, art, English. Age17 went to art school. Dropped out and worked at Dingwalls, music venue Camden Town. Went to another art school met Mick Jones, saw The Sex Pistols first show. Bought Horses, Patti Smith. Dropped out. Bought Les Paul Junior with £200 my grandmother left me. Formed a band with Sid Vicious, Sarah and Palmolive called The Flowers of Romance (named by John Lydon). Started to learn to play guitar. Taught by Keith Levene who I have known since we were kids. He taught me that any sounds can go together, he really developed my ear and loads of other stuff. Johnny Thunders taught me how to do screamers (his name) and Joe Strummer, to tap my foot and play at the same time. I didn't have sex with any of them. Saw The Slits play their first show, called them the next day. We got together I back-combed their hair like The New York Dolls. We looked like a band. After The Slits I went to film school. Didn't drop out. Directed stuff for about ten years. Made some money not art. Now making sculpture and writing / recording / performing my own songs.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not big on music memoirs, in fact I’d rather ram a dead water vole up my nose than read one, but there was something about the ten thousand good reviews of this book which persuaded me. Turns out, they weren’t wrong.

Rock music is so tediously predictable. As the sun rises in the east so there will be white boys in a rock band. It’s such a white boys’ club. How many female rock bands have had any sort of career? Ten? Maybe. What about female rock musicians in otherwise male bands? There’s a notable few but it’s unusual. (Compare that with pop music where women have practically taken over.) When English punk jumped up into something in 1975-77 The Slits were the girl band. Some people think they were great. (They sounded like a bit of a tuneless racket to me, but I’m not a punk head, all I’ve got is the Clash’s first album. I defy anyone to listen to The Slits’ 2nd album Return of the Giant Slits and spot a single tune in there.)



Viv Albertine was the guitarist. Embodying the punk attitude, she blew £250 (a colossal amount in 1976) on an electric guitar when she couldn’t play at all, had never tried, but she wanted to. She couldn’t be bothered learning on an acoustic first & also couldn’t be bothered with all those tiresome chords. So her style was unusual. But that was okay, same thing went for the bass player and the drummer. And the vocalist was a 14 year old nutter who squawked and roared and flailed around wildly on stage all the time. I wished I’d have gone to a Slits gig. It would have been something.



Viv Albertine from an interview

because we hadn't seen any girls on stage before we used to have massively long discussions about how we should stand on stage. Should we stand with our legs apart? No, all the guys with guitars in skinny jeans stand with their legs apart, and you'd think, we can't stand like that. We'd spend hours and hours, days and days, discussing how to stand.

So this is the story of the beginning of punk, Viv is in on the ground floor knocking around with Sid Vicious, John Rotten, Mick Jones and all the later well known crowd, then comes the tale of The Slits and all of that is great, alarming and funny and she has this voice, kind of deadpan and a little bit spaced out and weirdly compelling. The Slits split up after 5 years, which she doesn’t properly explain, and she then becomes poor and alone, and we are on page 249 with 162 pages to go.

The rest of the book is, well, the rest of her life which is like snakes and ladders, down down down then up up whoosh then tumbledown crash then painfully dragging herself along and up a bit, so, like that. It wasn’t all Little House on the Prairie. She’s always falling, always rising, always falling. She has been through a lot & had three different careers excluding the domestic non-bliss 17 year hiatus.

In 1987 she formed a Bridget Jones-style pact with her singleton best mate. These were the rules :

1. We’re going to go out with anyone who asks us. And we are going to give that guy three dates, even if we want to kill ourselves after the first date.
2. We have to ask out two guys a month. It doesn’t matter who they are, if we like them or not, it’s the act of asking that’s important.
3. Whenever we go out, men must be included in the party. It’s so much easier to take refuge in the company of your girlfriends after a hard day’s work but it’s not going to help us meet anyone.
Conclusion: after three months our expectations are considerably lowered.



You can expect many contradictions here – she believes in love, no she doesn’t; she needs a boyfriend, no she doesn’t; she can live without music, no she can’t. And some forthright opinionating:

Look at most of the couples I know, they’re not in love., they’re scared of being alone., financially entwined or hanging on to a partner to try and convince the world they’re acceptable human beings. I can’t think of one couple I’m envious of. When a woman comes up to me and says “I’m so sorry to hear about your marriage” I think No, I’m sorry to hear about yours.

Ok that might sound like Viv is all up in your face all the time, she’s not. She has a great voice, it rises and falls, she’s great company. But some people will be a bit revolted, I can’t deny. Your maiden aunt may not like the I shot up once & my arm went black for months tale. And you know how people describe Lena Dunham’s “aggressive nudity” in Girls? Well for Viv it’s more “aggressive bleeding”. So much blood on so many pages, as she herself says, it’s like the final scene from Carrie all over again and again and again.

There are a few things I really wanted to hear about which she skips – nothing about the 2nd Slits album after lavish brilliant pages all about the first; nothing about how Johnny Rotten became Ari Up’s stepfather (she was the Slits' teenage singer - come on, that rates a mention Viv); nothing about what she thought of the other punk bands’ music. But hell, I’m so glad to have 418 pages of stuff from Viv Albertine. Maybe there will be a volume 2.



PS- her new-ish album The Vermilion Border sounds great….there are tunes!

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Year of Women--in which I'm devoting 2021 to reading female authors only--continues with Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys, the 2014 memoir by Viv Albertine, former lead guitarist of the punk band The Slits. I considered skipping this based on its purchase price ($14.99). Another tale of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll in the days when they were great? But the reviews sold me and I am glad they did. This book is electric. I felt myself being plugged into an amp and projected across space. Albertine's romance with Mick Jones, songwriter and lead guitarist of the Clash and stories of punk rock's founders were exciting, but it was Albertine's writing that put a spell on me.



-- I can't imagine what a happy home life is like: parents cuddling and laughing, music playing, books on the shelves, discussions round the table? We don't have any of that, but if Mum's happy, I'm happy. The trouble is, she isn't happy very often because my dad is odd and difficult and not as quick-minded as her--and also we're poor. Every night I lie in bed listening through the wall to Mum tidying up in the kitchen. She opens and closes cupboard doors, bangs pots and pans, and I try to interpret the sounds, to gauge by the strength of the door slams, the ferociousness of plates clattering together, the way the knives and forks are tossed into a drawer, if she's in a good mood or not. Usually not. Occasionally I think, That door was closed gently, that saucepan was put away softly, she's feeling OK, and I go off to sleep, happy.

-- To keep my mind occupied, I fantasised about musicians. There was nothing else to think about. We had no TV, and there was nothing on it anyway, I wasn't missing much. (We eventually got a second-hand black-and-white set but the living room was so cold that we had to sit under a pile of old army coats, blankets and sleeping bags to watch it. It just wasn't worth the effort.) A children's feature film came out in the cinema once a year at Christmas, not many people had telephones (landlines), there was nowhere to go: youth clubs were a joke and I wasn't interested in lessons, except art and English. Music and guys in bands were a way to let your imagination loose. I'd fantasise that Donovan or John Lennon was my brother, or that I'd bump into Scott Walker and he'd fall in love with me; cooking up an interesting world in my head.

I studied record covers for the names of girlfriends and wives. That's how I connected girls to the world I wanted to be in. I scanned the thank yous and the lyrics, looking for girls' names. Especially if I fancied the musician. What are these girls like who go out with poets and singers? What have they got that I haven't?

I read the book Groupie by Jenny Fabian and I'm ashamed to say I thought it sounded OK, being a groupie. But I knew I wasn't witty, worldly or beautiful enough to even be that. The only way left for a girl to get into rock and roll was to be a backing singer and I couldn't sing.

Every cell in my body was steeped in music, but it never occurred to me that I could be in a band, not in a million years--why would it? Who'd done it before me? There was no one I could identify with. No girls played electric guitar. Especially not ordinary girls like me.

-- Nina Canal is in my year (she later formed the experimental New York band Ut). She's tall and willowy with olive skin, short black hair, and moves like a gazelle; she's languid and self-assured, the most elegant girl I've ever seen. Nina hangs out with an equally stunning girl called Perry--such a cool name--who has long messy blonde hair, is outspoken and interesting; she lights up any room she's in. Nina and Perry don't wear makeup, their hands and clothes are covered in splodges of paint, their fingers rough and gnarled, ringed with plasters covering cuts from scalpels and Stanley knives. Working hands, creative hands, the hands of girls who do stuff, who have ideas. Sexy hands. They smoke roll-ups. These two girls eclipse Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Suzi Quatro and June Child (not Yoko though) as role models for me--they're real girls, my age, that I can copy. Although they come from a more privileged background than me, which gives them confidence I don't have, I think if I watch them and listen to them for a couple of months, I can get there. This is the kind of girl I want to be: natural, passionate about work, articulate, intelligent, equal.


Walking down Davis Road with Keith Levene and Mick Jones, 1975

-- Expressing myself through the guitar is a very difficult concept to grasp. I don't want to copy any male guitarists, I wouldn't be true to myself if I did that. I can't copy Lita Ford from the Runaways or the guitarist from Fanny: they don't sound like women, they sound like men. I keep thinking, "What would I sound like if I was a guitar sound?" It's so abstract. As I experiment, I find that I like the sound of a string open, ringing away whilst I play a melody on the string next to it. It sounds like bagpipe music or Indian or Chinese, oriental and elemental. I try to play like John Cale in the Velvets, I don't realise for ages that he's playing violin and viola, not guitar. I want my guitar to sound like that. I like hypnotic repetition, I like the same riff played over and over again for ages. I like nursery rhymes. I love the top three trebly strings, the higher up the neck the better, and I turn the treble knob on the guitar and on the amp up full.

-- I can't wear my beautiful Terry de Havilland boots because they're brown. You can't wear brown. It's the most reviled colour. Not just because it's considered lame, being a mixture of other colours--even a colour has to state its position--but because it's bourgeois, worn by people who live in the countryside. It's too comfortable. Acceptable colours are black, white, red, shocking pink, fluorescent yellow or green (almost impossible to find anything in London in these colours), tartan, anything bold. Pastels are weak, unless you wear them ironically or in a contrasting fabric like rubber; grey is for old people and suits. As for beige, you may as well be dead.

-- I bump into Chrissie Hynde at the Speakeasy and tell her I've changed my mind, I've decided to join the Slits if they ask me again. She says, "If you didn't go for it, I would have!" If they ask me I'd better say yes before Chrissie moves in on them. But they wouldn't ask Chrissie. No one wants to be in a band with her, she's too good.


The Slits -- me, Ari, Tessa, Palmolive

-- Ari is wonderful and terrible in equal measure. She's great when we're writing, rehearsing or playing, but the rest of the time I find her difficult to be around. She'd loud, boisterous, rude, unstable and desperate for attention every second of the day. She's not an ordinary fifteen-year-old, they discovered that about her at her last two schools; in the end they asked her to leave, they couldn't control her. She makes enemies wherever we go, pissing off soundmen, promoters, potential managers and other bands with her attitude. I know she's young and just beginning to discover the adult world but she's so extreme: at one point she was convinced she was god's mistress reincarnated. It's worrying.

Because Ari's the singer of the band she's our mouthpiece. The trouble is, she doesn't know enough about life yet to be a mouthpiece, and she doesn't know that she doesn't know--that's the worst thing. I'm not very patient with her, I hardly ever let her naïve comments pass without a withering look or a sharp retort. I wouldn't care what she says or does if I wasn't in a band with her, but I am and it's important to me.

-- The Slits go through managers very quickly. No one can control us. I don't think a manager should control a band, ideally they should guide and facilitate, but control is what they seem to want to do. Also, when girls have an opinion, and the manager is a man, sexual politics rears its ugly head. They don't hear, We don't want to play those kinds of venues, we're trying to create a whole new experience, so even the venues we play have to be thought about carefully. They hear, I don't want to fuck you. They try and treat us like malleable objects to mould or fuck or make money out of.

-- A friend of Dick's turns up, he's just been in Africa. An older hippy guy, we don't mind him hanging about, he's very relaxed. He's watching the shoot and we're smearing mud from the rose garden on each other's arms and legs, mucking about and using our eye makeup and crayons to look a bit tribal. He gets what we're trying to do, and says we remind him of a tribe he saw in Africa; we ask him what marks we should do, he suggests, he shows us how to tie a loin cloth ... Yeah! Let's cover ourselves in mud and wear loin cloths! This is pretty late in the shoot, and we've been at Ridge Farm a couple of weeks so we're all a bit stir-crazy. We strip off in the garden. We wouldn't have done it if it had been a male photographer, but we feel safe with Pennie.



-- Our first show in LA is at the Whisky a Go Go; we walk onto the stage acting like Stepford Wives because we've just watched the film back at the hotel and we think it perfectly describes LA--a tranquil surface with sinister undercurrents. I'm surprised how much I like it. Whilst we're here, we try to meet up with a friend of ours called Ivi, a sweet, gentle Jamaican guy Don Letts introduced us to in London, but when we call his apartment we're told he's been shot dead in a drug feud. We dedicate Return of the Giant Slits to him.

-- Even though we love our new record, it was exhausting to make without any support and things are disintegrating within the group; the musical climate has changed in England, it's more careerist, bands go to record-company meetings dressed in suits with briefcases and do business deals. It's not an environment the Slits fit into at all. Honesty and outspokedness are yesterday's papers. In the back of the van on the way to one of our last gigs Ari tells us she's pregnant; as she talks, she tugs absent-mindedly at her eyebrows, pulling them out one by one. By the time we arrive in Bristol, she has no eyebrows left.

-- The pain I feel from the Slits ending is worse than splitting up with a boyfriend, my parents divorcing or being chucked out of the Flowers of Romance: this feels like the death of a huge part of myself, two whole thirds gone. Now the Slits are over and Tessa has recovered, I've got nowhere to go, nothing to do; I'm cast back into the world like a sycamore seed spinning into the wind. I'm burnt out and my heart is broken. I can't bear to listen to music. Every time I hear a song I feel physical pain, just to hear instruments is unbearable, it reminds me of what I've lost.


The Slits memorial photo, 1982. L-R: Tessa, me, Ari, Bruce Smith, Neneh Cherry

This takes us to the end of "Side One," or 59% of a whirlwind memoir. Teaching aerobics, graduating film school, marriage, cancer, motherhood, Vincent Gallo, divorce and more music are to come. Albertine does a sublime thing with Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys. In addition to the clarity and wit she brings to her writing--as if the Brontës started a punk band--Albertine pens each episode as if a journal entry from that time. She rarely comments on events from any wiser, healthier perch but from what head space she was in then. I found this remarkably alive and also so honest in autobiography that delves into the creative process. I loved it.

Viviane Albertine was born in Sydney, Australia in 1954 and grew up in a North London council flat.



In the event you missed them: Previous reviews in the Year of Women:

Come Closer, Sara Gran
Veronica, Mary Gaitskill

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir delivers a multi layered reading experience. This book covers much more than sex drugs and rock n roll although it does that too. The raw quality of Viv Albertine’s writing is startling and I was captivated by her insightful musings. Much of her writing is open and she is often self denigrating, never shy in adding the humiliating parts of her sexual encounters. There’s many.

As much as I love a good rock memoir. I particularly love reading about women forging a path for themselves in the music world. A place that is openly hostile to women. This being the case for Viv and the members of her band the Slits in the mid 70’s. These girls where heckled, spat at, abused and derided on stage and on the street for daring to look and be different. I particularly love the story of how Viv first decided that she wanted to pick up a guitar never once considering that it was even a possibility, as there simply was no female rock guitarists as role models. Watching The Sex Pistols at a school hall, watching Johnny Rotten being completely himself with no attempt at being flashy just some ordinary blokes from her working class area sparked a powerful message to Viv that she too could be a musician which led to her picking up her very first guitar. I love that she doesn’t gloss over her difficulties learning her new chosen instrument, she struggles and hates it at times, almost gives up but ultimately perseveres, also being surrounded my many talented musicians at her beck and call kept her determined to prove herself musically worthy. This book takes you on a rollercoaster of events told in two parts first part talks about her childhood, her days living in squats, hanging with band guys from Mick Jones to Sid Vicious (many great stories) to forming an all female band, and all the ups and downs of touring. Clothes, boys and of course music playing big parts of the first half of the book. The second part is a contemplative one and as a woman and a mother I could identify with her loss of identity and her sacrificing for her family and her suppressing her own creative impulses. It’s a riveting read and I was sad to finish.

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although she'll forever - and rightly - be known as the guitarist in that most original, uncompromising, and essential band The Slits, Viv Albertine has brought the same questing, creative, feminist principle she showed as a musician and songwriter to bear on all aspects of her subsequent life. One of the results has been a series of second careers as a filmmaker, ceramicist, solo musician, and latterly actor. Another is this inspired memoir, by far the best I've yet read by a veteran of the Punk Wars of 76-77. It's a sequence of episodic recollections rather than an attempt at spurious autobiography, by turns affectionate, scathing, heartbreakingly honest (particularly in the chapters dealing with her cancer and hard-won motherhood) and infused by a sharp, dark, and genuine humour. She's particularly good at character sketches of family, friends, acquaintances and adversaries, and entirely lacking in the self-importance and desire for justification that afflict so many old rockers who turn to the printed word as an attempt to eke out a failing career. This is a book by a real woman who has done extraordinary things and still has plenty of life and creativity left in her.

[Nigeyb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like The Slits and I'm very interested in the punk era however significant parts of this book are not about punk. What's more even if I had no interest in punk, or indeed no idea about Viv Albertine, I am sure I'd still love this book. I devoured it. It's just brilliant.

Split into self-contained chapters, Viv variously describes growing up in Muswell Hill, her family, school, teenage experiences, working at Dingwalls, punk, The Slits, close relationships with some of punk's biggest names, making records, teaching aerobics, filmmaking, cancer, trying to conceive, marriage and domesticity, and creative reinvention. That inexhaustive list is just the half of it though, it's all interesting, and Viv describes everything with honesty, candour and plenty of hard won wisdom and insight.

This is not a punk memoir - it's a life memoir. It's also a memoir about a courageous woman and original thinker. A true artist. The writing is clear and concise - the contents fascinating, and frequently profound.

[K.A. Laity · Rating 5 out of 5]

I kept thinking I'd already written this review because the book has so completely seeped into my consciousness. This is a warts and all memoir that tests you at the start to see if you're strong enough to make the journey, throwing the messy chaos of her early life at the reader with both hands. I doubt the teen Albertine and I would ever have bonded as friends -- she's just too much of a girly girl for me, I never dealt well with the 'boy crazy' types -- but I so admire this woman, I cannot tell you how much. She had a lot more chutzpah pursuing the things I only dreamed of like swanning her way into the music scene and picking up a guitar and keeping at it. Her life is tough from the get go but she persists through it all. She was there at so many of the pivotal moments in punk and beyond. Our culture does not idolize women except for beauty (which she has plenty of but never mind) or she would be mentioned in the same breath as Mick and Joe and Johnny and Sid, but they Slits don't even get more than a grudging mention as one of the 'girl bands' of the era. The obsessiveness any art requires (the title comes from her mother's lament about the young Viv's preoccupations) is scorned in women as 'narcissistic' which seems to be what all women who create are disparaged as being. How dare they spend time on themselves?!

Like the Raincoats the Slits stretched so far beyond the simple punk chords so fast that in part their identity didn't really sit with that particular genre. An amazing bunch from the singular Ari Up and fabulous Palmolive on drums with a vengeance. They moved onto more experimental stuff, changed, changed innovated added the amazing Neneh Cherry for a time and like most bands, broke up, moved on and found new things. Albertine pursues everything with the same zeal, throwing herself headlong into filmmaking, pottery, marriage, and a desperate fight to give birth, which is almost immediately followed by an agonizing battle against cancer.

And one day she wakes up to find herself a ghost of what she was, living in the country, which had once been an escape and had become an exile. And she resurrects her love of music and starts to battle back to it one pub gig at a time. She's still a work in progress (thankfully!) at times frustratingly abject (there were times I just shouted at her through the pages, "What are you thinking, woman?!"), at times so amazingly strong that you have to cheer. It's a remarkable journey that will leave you feeling exhausted but thrilled, just like a great gig.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This gritty memoir was written by Viv Albertine who was at the epicenter of the London punk rock scene and was in one of the few all girl punk rock bands (The Slits). I loved this book because it was written in a a strong and distinctive female voice. Topics include: crushes on boys, periods, fashion, pregnancy, the quest for the perfect pair of shoes, abortion, finding and losing love, motherhood, domestic malaise, relationship violence, and sexism in many forms.

The book captures four time periods: the early days, The Slits, making a family, and rediscovering self & music. I found the part about her band the least interesting. What happens as she ages is much more compelling. My new favorite song is "Confessions of a MILF" an anthem for the unhappy housewife,

I've peeled the potatoes, there's not much left to do/ Lovely lemon drizzle cake, heat up the fondue.

[Nat K · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book! While I knew of Viv Albertine (and The Slits), I've never actually listened to their music. However I'm intrigued by that whole era of the 70s when music was still evolving, along with fashion, and so many new paths were created, which is why I started to read this book.

I found the cast of characters in this book to be absolutely fascinating, you couldn't make something like this up!

I appreciated Ms Albertine's honesty about her life and struggles as a woman, artist, musician. Also her truth in the relationships around her, which did and didn't work, but she continued to learn from her experiences and grow. This is definitely a book that I'd be happy to re-read in the future.

Postscript! 12.Jan.2026
I've accidentally stumbled upon a documentary on You Tube titled The Slits: the first female punk band which is absolutely fascinating. Well worth watching, especially if you've read and enjoyed this book. And yes, Viv's book appears briefly at the 1:18 mark. But don't fast forward just to that section! This is a great doco that takes you back at a very different time and place.

[Graham Power · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been aware of this since it came out in 2014 and I’m currently feeling a bit embarrassed that it’s taken me ten years to get around to reading it. In fact I’ve only read it at all because I happened to come across a copy in my local charity bookshop a few weeks ago. Well, better late than never, and at least I can now say what everyone else said years ago: this is a terrific book and light years removed from your standard issue rock musician autobiography.

I heard the Slits many times on the John Peel show but I’m not sure if ever actually listened to them. Listening to their Peel sessions again for the first time in half a lifetime, as a result of reading this, they seemed even more uncompromising and confrontational than I remember. This is partly to do with context, of course. Back in the day there was no shortage of mutinous upstarts making exuberantly alien noises, so one almost took them for granted. Curious now to think that music as unapologetically singular as this was once, if not exactly in the mainstream, then at least just bubbling under it.

Albertine’s memoir reads something like the way the Slits sounded: raw, thrillingly alive and unsettlingly real. The book is divided into Side One and Side Two. The second side gets distinctly harrowing - miscarriages, cancer, an unhappy marriage - but the first is a wonderfully evocative account of a working-class girl growing up in the 1960s and feeling the empowering effect of the counter-culture and rock music when it was, or at least felt like it was, something more than just entertainment. Her warm memories of Oz, International Times, free concerts in Hyde Park, and the way music, literature and politics interconnected, are really very touching. Her obvious affection for that era reaffirmed my own view that punk and post-punk were continuations of the spirit of the ‘60s rather than a rejection of it. She also conveys the liberating power of punk without ignoring its nihilistic and boneheaded aspects. The great thing about this book is that Albertine doesn’t romanticise anything and makes no attempt to ingratiate herself with the reader. She just tells it as she saw it. Writing autobiography in the present continuous tense usually strikes me as a bit cheap and irritating, but here it works, adding to a genuine sense of immediacy and unfolding experience.

I don’t think you have to be a fan of the Slits, or even interested in punk, to appreciate this. It’s the authentic voice of a lifelong nonconformist and what she has to say is compelling and alternately moving, hilarious and scarifying. It tells you a lot about Albertine but also post-war British society. Near the end of an often uncomfortably honest and intimate book she reveals, with impeccable comic timing, that her manager had suggested it should be ghosted by a young music journalist. Sensibly Viv sacked her manager and wrote it herself. I’m very glad she did. This is one of the most powerful and unguarded autobiographies I have ever read (eventually).

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clothes, Music, Boys: Personal preferences: I had almost no interest in the clothes; a deep interest in the music; and a passing interest in the boys, though I enjoyed reading about those I already ‘knew’ (yes, Mick Jones especially). In the 70s, the punk scene was, of course, dominated by male groups. I knew of the Slits then. I heard some of their music then, but I also remember the group being (unfairly) dismissed as just a female version of the Sex Pistols. Viv writes of her friendships with some of the Pistols even before they were Pistols, but her band’s music is not like theirs. The Slits had their own style and ethos, presented through visuals (themselves) and deliberate lyrics.

The dismissal of their music isn’t the only misogyny they encountered at the time: They were also denied hotel rooms during the White Riot tour, though the other bands were not. Their young lead singer was a target of violence, not just during shows, but outside of them too. She was once stabbed as the women were on their way to a movie; the perpetrator knew she was the face of the Slits.

I didn’t really ‘know’ Viv before reading her memoir, and I’m so happy to have 'met' her. With this book, she was determined to find her voice in writing, as she did in her early days with her guitar (and later through film, before finding her way back to music). She’s succeeded on her own terms and with a lot of trials and effort. She rebelled against constraints, found her aesthetic, and championed herself, all while being an anxious introvert, though she didn’t realize that last part till much later: Relatable.

[El · Rating 4 out of 5]

Viv Albertine is interested in three things. Can you guess what they are? Spoiler alert: They're a part of the title.

She talked a lot about these things, which upon first thought made me think she was incredibly shallow and superficial. But what I came to realize as I read was these are things that have had a significant impact on her life over the years. Most people know Viv for being the guitarist for the Slits, which is what made me want to read the book to begin with. I didn't know much else about her, and here she is, spilling her guts for everyone to read, telling us about her stylish side, the beginning, the middle, and the end of her time with the Slits, and the men-folk she has met along the way who have made an impression on her.

This is not always an easy read. Viv has done things that she is not proud of. There is a very open discussion of an embarrassing encounter with Johnny Rotten that she had no reason to want to share other than it was an important experience for her. She is fairly no-holds barred, something that I felt was missing from Kim Gordon's recent memoir, Girl in a Band. In Gordon's book, there was always this sort of weird distance that never made the reader feel super comfortable with Gordon's confessions; Albertine, on the other hand, makes her readers uncomfortable with her stories at times, but is very direct about it, sharing every hairy detail. Even in some of the briefer excerpts, I walked away feeling I had a better understanding of her as an artist and as a person. There's the sort of resigned air about Albertine - not in a bad way, but more in a "Hey, this happened, and this is who I am now" way, which I fully appreciate.

I didn't want this to be a roster of all the men she has loved and slept with. There is a lot of that, but I still found it fascinating - probably because Albertine wasn't being braggy or name-droppy about it. She did have a powerful relationship with the Clash's Mick Jones. She did know Sid Vicious and had an opportunity to know his softer, smarter side than was ever show publicly. She did have a brief and strange almost-affair with Vincent Gallo. These are the people in her neighborhood, so to speak, another great time in music history.

I've seen a few complaints that for as honest as Albertine is in this book, she still fails to talk about other things - like it may have included the shortest mention of Sid Vicious's death in the history of mentioned of Sid Vicious's death, which is strange, right, considering how close they were. Or that Ari Up's mother, Nora Forster, eventually married Johnny Rotten, and isn't that sort of weird after that thing that Albertine did to Johnny Rotten, and did Albertine and Forster even have a relationship after the Slits anyway? Yes, I agree, there are a few weird things missing from this account of Albertine's life, but that's the nature of the beast. We're always so hungry to learn more about the people we look up to that we almost take it personally when they leave out things, or treat the discussion of other things in a way we wish were different.

Because we're the audience and audiences are assholes.

What I especially liked is that, yes, she didn't gloss over the music industry end of her life, but she was just as honest about what life is like for her after the band. She is still making music and it's still pretty awesome. She's doing it her way, which is the way it should be. She's a middle-aged woman with a teenage daughter, and she had heartbreaking experiences with fertility issues and cancer and divorce and learning how to find herself again and to continue growing from all of those things, even when she felt defeated. She's not trying to be the old Viv Albertine, she's not trying to maintain what she was in her teenage years and in her 20s. She's not shunning any of that, she appreciates everything she has been through. But this is who she is now, and it's just as awesome.

This song is pretty great, btw, off her album from a few years ago. The mouth-clucking thing she does in this song is fucking great.

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to both devour this and savor this; which is telling that a book is really, really good. Don't let the reviews and interviews about this book fool you; everyone wants to focus on what this book talks about regarding her relationships to household punk names that precede her: Sid Vicious, Johnny Rotten, Johnny Thunders, Joe Strummer, Siouxsie Sioux, etc. These parts of the book are rich, yes, but Albertine was more than a muse; she was literally a superhero, and punk as fuck. This book tells the story of a girl who didn't know shit about playing music but did it anyway (none of her friends knew shit about it either, but being a girl and without any other punk lady guitarists to look up to, was up against much more). Throughout the book she approaches her endeavors this way, including writing the very thing (turns out, Albertine is a compelling as hell writer, too.) This was truly inspiring, and when you think it's going to settle into adulthood: marriage and motherhood, it picks right back up again. This woman said "yes" to a lot of things, and her humility is palpable on every page. It didn't have to be, the book hopefully proves to not only the readers but to herself that she is fucking remarkable, but it made her path through life relatable, like I could do it all too if I just said "yes" more often.

[julieta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me encantó. Una historia buenísima, la vida de esta mujer, no solo porque habla de música de la época más punk (y cero desde el punto de vista de una groupie, todo lo contrario), la mirada de una mujer música, buscando mostrar su visión. Super entretenido, cercano, triste, y de todo. Como la vida.

[Caroline O'Donoghue · Rating 5 out of 5]

I find most memoirs by fascinating women hard-going because they usually make me feel boring, and frumpy, and like I was born twenty years too late. I avoided this book for several years for that reason. I didn't have the energy to be jealous of Viv Albertine's life. But what I was surprised to learn was that, even though Viv Albertine has every good reason to be a narcissistic writer – she is, after all, the First Lady of the London punk scene – Clothes, Music, Boys is brilliantly funny, genuinely moving, and is far more than a simple snapshot of a moment in music history. I laughed, i cried, I immediately bought 'To Throw Away Unopened'. Truly one of the great music memoirs, in that it's not really a music memoir at all, but a story about self-discovery, survival and reinvention.

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb. Great book. Viv Albertine was in the band, The Slits, that were a great big deal in my young age. For years I totally forgot her and the band. Then recently, and by mistake, I heard her latest album "The Vermilion Border" which is fantastic. The lyrics were witty and wise, and the music itself sounded so fresh - there were traces of The Slits in the mix, but it came out sounding totally new to my ears. Then there is this memoir. Probably one of the better music memoirs, almost ever. On the same level as Dylan and Patti Smith's memoirs. What makes the book special is the essence that is Viv Albertine. Totally human, honest, and genius like. The book works in two parts. The first part is the childhood and punk years, and then the second deals with middle-age, illness, and ...Making music. The fact that after a marriage and having and raising a child, she decides to go back to making music is an inspiration in itself. I would recommend this book to any young female musician and anyone in my age bracket who want to pick up a guitar, write songs, and especially when the world around you says "No."

Also she writes about others quite well - of course her band mates in The Slits, but also Johnny Rotten (Lydon), Keith Levene, Mick Jones - and she brings a lot of color to their personality. Her observations are sharp, which is one of the ingredients that make a writer great. And she is without a doubt, in one word, "great."

[Lynx · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow what a fantastic memoir!

You don't have to be a fan of The Slits, or even punk for that matter, to love this book. Albertine courageously pours her heart and soul onto each page, recounting not only her involvement in the early UK punk scene but her relationships, her struggles trying to become a mother, her battle with cancer and her search for identity outside of being just "wife" and "mother". Such a powerful woman proving that allowing yourself to be vulnerable is not a sign weakness but one of strength. Wonderful.

[kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love music biographies, and it was definitely interesting to read about the 70's british punk movement from the perspective of Viv. This was feeling like a 4 star book until I got to the last part, which I really loved. Not only is this a great reflection on a seriously influential moment in time, but there are so many great bits about being a woman, artistic inspiration, and how to keep your identity intact while having a family (or NOT doing that). My heart was kind of breaking for girls in the first part - the expectations heaped upon them, and the boxes they are expected to stay in. It was a real delight to see her break out of that & bust some stereotypes. When she comes to the realization that she doesn't need a man to believe in her but rather can inspire herself it is just a real delight.

[Cassie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Full of contradictions, but not the interesting, nuanced kind that you’d expect from an autobiography. Just the convenient kind.
I loved the Slits. I really wanted to love this, and even though I tried, I couldn’t. If anything, I wished I never read it in the first place.
Also: the brand name-dropping in the second half of the book is unbearable. I don’t care what make your stove is (Bosch), or your car (Audi), or which designer made your V-neck slate-grey jumper (Donna Karan). Despite constant references to her punk upbringings and beliefs throughout the novel, Albertine sure gets hung up on the most inane consumerist details.

[TL *Humaning the Best She Can* · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this via Goodreads First reads in exchange for an honest review
-----

An interesting sometimes "Meh" read for me... Overall it was an enjoyable ride. Some stories made me laugh,other had me raising my eyebrows. It was a journey into the past, getting a glimpse of her life and the times back then.

It had an abrupt feel to the story-telling style, but in a good way... she keeps ya on your toes not sticking to a straight 'Point A to Point B' writing style.

Would recommend :) Happy reading!

[Kathrin Passig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ich kannte 1% der Personen- und Bandnamen, die hier vorkommen und musste ständig googeln. Es war trotzdem sehr interessant und ich habe viel darüber gelernt, was es alles in den 60er und 70er Jahren noch nicht gab. "I didn't aspire to be a musician - there wasn't that equality at the time, it was inconceivable that a girl could cross over in male territory and be in a band." Angenehme Erzählerin, der ich (im zweiten Teil des Buchs, nach der Auflösung der Band), auch durch die Sümpfe von Aerobic und Töpferei bereitwillig gefolgt bin.

[Ria · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Language is important: it shapes minds, it can include, exclude, incite, hurt and destroy. If language isn’t powerful, why not call your teacher a cunt?”



i don't care much about The Slits but it still was an interesting and fun read. it's a memoir. i don't have much to say about it.

[Fred Garnett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific book, I love, love, love Viv Albertine! (Just been voted by MOJO magazine as the best music book of 2014) I think this is possibly the best book on the punk era in British music, although England's Dreaming by John Savage is kind of "definitive" about the scene overall. Viv Albertine's more personal memoir tells us more directly about the scene, how it began and emerged, then developed, as she knew many of the key players (Mick Jones, Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious). She was part of the amazing Slits (Cut is one of my all-time favourite albums) but then faded away. As the book is a warts (literally) and all autobiography of her full life we find out why she quit and what she did in her quiet years, as well as being a Mum. I was one of many who responded a couple of years ago to her crowd funding of comeback album The Vermillion Border and the story behind this is also fascinating. Her directness and honesty, and her enduring principles, ensure that this is rivetingly honest, include lots of crap sex, and is never less than insightful. Well worth reading, even if you aren't enamoured of the UK punk scene, because this is a great autobiography by a modern woman.

[Alex Sarll]

"Anyone who writes an autobiography is either a twat or broke. I'm a bit of both.” What an opening. And then into a first chapter in which the former Slits guitarist gets straight into how she never saw the point of masturbation, but did once have a fantasy about a pack of rabid dogs, and then got embarrassed lest anyone ever find where she’d written it down. All of this as if unaware that she has just written it, not in an old computer, but in an actual book. She’s not unaware, of course, nor even being screwed over by a ghostwriter, having rightly decided (as we later find out) to dispense with the one her shitty manager insisted she needed. It’s not that she has no shame, as such, but that having spent much of her life penned in by one constraint or another, the main lesson she’s learned (and then painfully relearned) is feeling the fear and doing it anyway. At first it was not being a pop star because her dad told her she wasn’t chic enough, then Sid Vicious complaining she never wrote any songs, the other Slits playing up for one or another reason, her husband just plain being a dick…and yet she made it, often by getting some reminder from the cosmos (twice it’s Patti Smith) that she can. So perhaps part of the impetus behind this book, aside from the money thing and the twat thing, is some obligation to pay that same inspiration forward?

Which could risk painting this as a misery memoir or a load of pseudo-inspirational bollocks, either of which would be unfair. It’s the record of a life, and one lived through interesting times and much-mythologised scenes. It’s novel hearing about punk from someone who wasn’t one of the boys (and indeed, since writing this vandalised the bumph at a punk exhibition to protest its erasure of punk’s women) but who got to see most of them close-up. Very close, in some cases: she dated Mick Jones (who comes across as a bit of a sap, bless him) and bedded Pistols, Johnny Thunders, one of the Pop Group, a Subway Sectarian…every bit as impressive a roll-call as any of the great celebrity swordsmen manage in their memoirs, but the really fascinating thing is how many of them she didn’t actually fuck, because the moment was wrong or they were too fucked-up or someone walked in at the wrong moment. And one wonders how many of those famous shaggers are in much the same boat, but never had the guts to admit to it. Meanwhile, out of bed, there’s the usual story about how punk opened the doors - but then the more seldom mentioned other half of the story, where the scene’s judgemental attitude could in many ways be at least as restrictive as any previous emphasis on musicianship. Yes, there were interesting and creative people, but also too many who (precursors of a certain subspecies of modern troll) felt like giving a fuck was losing the game, so what better life than acting like an absolute prick to everyone and, when they finally snap, making out its their fault for not getting the supposed joke? The epitome of this being the pathetic figure of Sid Vicious, only briefly able to drop his emotionless façade once he's on remand and properly shit-scared.

And if the punk scene is a distinctly mixed blessing, the world beyond is worse. All the grime, the beigeness, the street harassment you see on old footage are powerfully and painfully evoked, and you can understand why against this any counterculture would appeal, even if it was in many ways just as tolerant of absolutely shitty behaviour as the straight world. This age of Wimpy burgers and unwashed genitalia is definitely not something to read about over dinner, even before you get into the various read-through-fingers tales of crabs, blood and shit. Curiously, there’s even a reference to the significance of Omo washing powder seen in a window, something I’d only previously seen referenced in another of the most lunchtime-unsuitable books I’ve ever read, Jonathan Meades’ grotesque Pompey. Nor do matters get any less visceral once the Slits’ all-too-brief moment in the sun is over; there’s just as much gory detail of cancer and miscarriage when Albertine attempts to settle down as a wife and mother. But the real pain here is psychological, the sheer bloody boredom of what rapidly becomes a domestic prison. These are the lost years most rock memoirs seem obliged to have in the second half, but where usually it’d be heroin or coke colonising the personality and suppressing the talent, here our narrator is totally subsumed into motherhood instead. And it fucks with her head just as much. The post-partum loathing of her husband is apparently natural (though like so many natural things detailed herein, you see precious little mention of it elsewhere); the slow breakdown of what love existed between them is probably not so simply biochemical, but sounds worse still. And by the end of the book she’s wondering if there’s any third way between being lonely single, or bored in a couple. I suspect if they were honest an awful lot more memoirs would express similar ambiguity, but seldom is life’s quiet desperation given this much unabashed page space (at least not without being palmed off on a fictional avatar).

All that, and I’ve barely mentioned the art. I only really know the Slits through the two ‘hits’, which I clearly need to remedy, but her solo album sounds even more interesting, simply because you don’t get that many middle-aged women singing about life as a middle-aged woman (I mean, I love Kate Bush and Grace Jones and Marianne Faithfull and the work they went on to do, but none of them are exactly chronicling the thoughts underlying life as a Hastings housewife, are they?). And then in the interval between the two, for a time there was film (during which time Albertine gave Christopher Eccleston his big break) and after that, of all things, pottery. Ten years ago I would barely have remembered ceramics was an art form, but between this and Edmund de Waal and Grayson Perry, something’s stirring there, isn’t it? I digress. Love, death (I’ve not even mentioned the fiasco of Malcolm McLaren’s funeral!), striving to find a purpose and a contentment in life…all the big stuff is here. And I suspect if I played or even really understood the guitar I’d find all the stuff about her process and her (re)learning and her sound more interesting still. At least as good as everyone says it is.

[Uri · Rating 5 out of 5]

M'ha encantat ❤

[La Tammina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bah:
- per lei dormire in uno squat con degli sconosciuti che non si lavano da giorni, o su un materasso recuperato dalla spazzatura, o con Sid Vicious che se la fa addosso mentre dorme tutto ok, nessun problema. Invece pernottare in un b&b con le lenzuola in nylon è disgustoso e dormire a casa d'altri la mette a disagio
- si dichiara una femminista convinta ma per tutta la vita è in cerca del principe azzurro che si prenda cura di lei
- si dichiara punk ma è ossessionata dai vestiti firmati (dei quali ricorda la marca a quarant'anni di distanza)
- etc., una contraddizione continua e a tratti grottesca.
La parte con la scena punk britannica vista dal punto di vista di una donna è l'unica che ho letto con interesse nonostante le perplessità sulla sincerità dell'autrice, che anche nei momenti apparentemente più schietti mi ha dato l'impressione di affettazione punk.

[Marc Nash · Rating 5 out of 5]

Video review https://youtu.be/6jzF-P_S4sg

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

refreshing, shocking a bit, profound even, i think, autobiography of viv albertine's first memories coming by ship to england from australia, growing up a bit feral in single parent home in london in muswell hill, art school in 1972 (she didn't get through it), hanging with crews in squats, the success of sex pistols and sex clothes shop, the start of the clash, the start of the slits, the dissolution of the slits, her marriage, her horror of trying for a baby and IVF, having a baby and right away getting cancer, her survival of cancer, divorce after 17 years, her re-awakening as an artist and singer songwriter, her writing this book...quite a trip and very honest seeming and thoughtful. here's her work dot com http://vivalbertine.com/
here's an excerpt about being in the slits and Ari, the singer
Excerpt from “clothes clothes clothes…’ by viv albertine page 163-165
“Ari [15 year old singer for band the slits] would like to play the bass and drums as well as sing in the band if only she had extra arms, so she does the next best thing and helps compose the bass lines and drum rhythms too. (Luckily for me she’s not very interested in the guitar so I’m left to my own devices.)
There’s another trait that adds to Ari’s liberations: she’s not bothered about looking pretty or moving seductively for them, she only does that for her own pleasure. She doesn’t see her body as a vehicle for attracting a mate, and she doesn’t squash bits of her personality to avoid overshadowing boys. I realize I’m learning a lot from her, and it would be foolish of me to dismiss her because she’s young. Since knowing Ari, I’ve become more aware of how uptight I am about my body, bodily functions, smells and nudity. Ari moves her body with unselfconsciousness of a child, and I don’t see any reason why I can’t reclaim that feeling, even though I’m older. I’m constantly questioning stereotyping through my work but I’m still enslaved by the stereotype of femininity in my mind. (‘It’s hard to fight and enemy who has outposts in your head’---Sally Kempton) Ari has no such hangups. When we played the Music Machine in Mornington Crescent, halfway through the set she was dying for a piss, she didn’t want to leave the stage and couldn’t bear to be uncomfortable, so she just pulled down her leggings and knickers and pissed on the stage---I was so impressed. No girl had pissed on stage before, but Ari didn’t do it to be a rebel or to shock, it was much more subversive that that: she just needed a piss. In these times when girls are so uptight and secretive about their bodies and desperately trying to be ‘feminine’, she is a revolutionary.
The Slits get a lot of shit on the streets but even though being in the group is uncomfortable for all of us in different ways, we’d fight to the death for each other. We feel as if we haven’t chose the band, it’s chosen us----that’s the funny thing about bands, sometimes the chemistry works because it’s not all cosy, it’s more critical and outspoken, like family. Life’s more frightening when I’m traveling around London without the rest of them. Like when I was getting eyeballed by a gang of skinhead girls on the tube, I thought to myself, I may have to fight for my life here, if they follow me off the train and attack me (and no one would intervene with me dressed like this…I’ll have to do what Sid told me, smash one of them over the head with my belt buckle. The prospect of being attacked is terrifying. It’s a very real threat. Chrissie Hynde was attacked by a gang of skinhead girls and stabbed with a stiletto heel.
Ari is the one of us who gets the most hatred channeled through her. She’s been staff twice, once when we all left a rehearsal studio in Dalston. It was getting dark,….”

[Meghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It's OK not to be perfect, to show the workings of your life and your mind in your songs and your clothes. And everything you do in life is meaningful on a political level. That's why we're all so merciless about each other's failings and why sloppiness is derided." I really liked this memoir by a woman punk pioneer, the guitarist from the Slits. I liked how it was structured - Side One and Side Two, since it did feel like there were two different sides to her life. Side One is about growing up, running around the streets with other girls with no makeup, short skirts or your one pair of jeans, stubby fingernails, and dirty feet. It's about the freedom in the late '60s and early '70s, going to art school and painting life studies of your friend that focus on the blue tampon string hanging out of her naked body, and then eventually it's about deciding to be a musician and learning to play guitar. Then the story turns into one of exploration, success, and learning."I want boys to come and see us play and think 'I want to be part of that.' Not 'They're pretty' or 'I want to fuck them' but 'I want to be in that gang.'"

Side Two is more immediate feeling, and seems less distant from her current life. Marriage, fertility treatments, a child, cancer, emotional abuse, and a life in small towns and suburbs where she sells all her guitars and is surprised by how happy this makes her husband. After almost dying of cervical cancer, it takes her ten years to fully regain her health and life. Eventual triumph in the form of a year of saying yes, making pottery, relearning the guitar, playing shows, and writing songs about being middle-aged.

Side One also focuses on her friendships with Sid Vicious & the Sex Pistols, Ari Up & the other members of The Slits, and her relationship with Mick Jones. I really liked that she never really ended up committed to Jones, but instead had lots of liaisons with men.

Things that come up again and again in this memoir: blood. The album Dionne Warwick sings Burt Bacharach.

Listening to the Beatles for the first time in 1964:

"Until today I thought life was always going to be made up of sad, angry grown-ups, dreary music, stewed meat, boiled vegetables, church and school. Now everything's changed: I've found the meaning of life, hidden in the grooves of a flat black plastic disc. I promise myself I will get to that new world, but I don't know how to make it happen."

DIY:

"Our guitars keep going out of tune and these two guys act [studio engineer and producer] act like they're so superior because they know how to tune them. They think the whole music industry turns on whether you can tune your guitar or not. Well, maybe it has, until now; we've only been playing a couple of months and yet here we are in a studio. Nobody's recording THEIR songs, no matter how well tuned their guitars are."

"Lots of girls' history of music is playground songs; chants, folk songs and nursery rhymes, passed down through mothers, aunts, older sisters and friends. I want to incorporate these rhymes into our songs, they are all I have in terms of a musical background and I intend to use them, however small and insignificant they are to other people. This is one of the ways we can build an identity for ourselves - we're starting from zero, no rules, no role models. Of course we're going to be derided by people who haven't heard music used in this way before, played by a bunch of wild, scruffy girls: new things are often threatening or considered frivolous and take a while to sink in."

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I absolutely loved the first 2/3 of this. Reading about her early life, the inception of the slits and punk in the UK in the 70s/80s was fantastic. Loved it. But because its a memoir, and an autobiography, then she delves into the complete tedium of her infertility struggles, her marriage, her boring life in Hastings, an embarrassing infatuation with fucking Vincent Gallo--and it all just eroded the enthusiasm i had in the first 2/3. Maybe it's a common thing with autobiography, that as the writer who's living it, it ALL seems interesting, not so much to the reader. She is also still writing music and performing which is great and she has interesting things to say about being a middle aged woman writing her experiences in music....but some of the segments about her playing in pubs are just cringe inducing.
She doesn't write all that well but I got over that pretty quickly since the first part of the book was so amazing. And of course i still love the slits.

[Jacqueline · Rating 2 out of 5]

Surprisingly the majority of readers have given this book three, four and five stars! Is this because they are ex Slits or ex punk fans - or even existing Slits or punk fans? I read it as it was a chosen book for my book group - and although I knew many of the high profile names within the book, I have to confess to never having heard of Viv Albertine so needless to say I wasn't over excited about the prospect of reading her auto-biography. That said, I did find it quite interesting but wasn't particularly impressed with her writing ability or her for that matter! For me its strength was really in the musical and social history interest.