Viv Albertine Interview - VIV AND LET DIE

Murder, miscarriage, abortion, cancer, blow jobs, divorce, heroin, stabbings, Malcolm McLaren, Sid Vicious, Johnny Thunders, The Clash and Vincent Gallo. That’s just a rocker’s dozen of the subjects covered by Viv Albertine in her beautifully written and searingly honest Clothes Clothes Clothes, Music Music Music, Boys Boys Boys memoir.

While best-known for her six-year tenure with all-girl London punks The Slits, the whole of the Londoner’s life has been stranger and often more fascinating than fiction. It’s one thing to spill your guts out to your word processor, quite another to see those confessions in paperback form on the shelves at W.H. Smith. Was there a little bit of pre-publication “I’ve revealed too much!” panic?
“Oh, totally,” winces the 59-year-old. “It was exciting to confess to the page. I made myself laugh – or cringe or cry – at how far I’d gone but thought, ‘Oh, I can always take it out.’ I didn’t want to take it out though because it was so much more visceral and exciting, and I knew it would resonate with people.
“Then it went off to the publishers and I was like, ‘What the fuck have I done?’ I practically had a breakdown. For a couple of months, I felt really ill, really worried, really frightened. I didn’t sleep a wink. Now, though, I’m glad it all went in. There’s no point doing anything if you’re not truthful.”
Was there anybody who already knew the whole story?
“Apart from my 15-year-old daughter who’s more worldly wise than I’ll ever be, no,” Viv proffers. “I was with my ex-husband for 18 years but I only gave him the edited highlights of before we met – I think we all do that, don’t we? – and he’s no idea of what’s been going on since we split. Not, of course, that he’s necessarily interested!
“I can’t let my mother read it because there are things I never told her. She’s bed-bound though, so I feel safe!”
Sadly, Viv’s mum, who she spoke of with great fondness, passed away last week. Albertine shared a bed but didn’t exchange bodily fluids with two of punk’s most notorious junkies, Sid Vicious and Johnny Thunders. Both receive a more symphathetic portrayal in Clothes Clothes Clothes, Music Music Music, Boys Boys Boys than they do in other books covering that period.
“I didn’t think, ‘I’m going to put them in a rosy light.’ I just wrote what occurred between us. One minute with Johnny there was kindness, the next he was being a predator and trying to stick a needle in your arm knowing full well you’d never taken heroin before. There were plenty of things that Sid did wrong – like chucking the glass that blinded the girl in the 100 Club. For me that was when punk died. Suddenly it wasn’t intelligent and creative anymore. It crossed the line into mindless violence and stupidity. But Sid could also be very sweet and loving and tender.”
The Clash’s former tour manager Johnny Green tells a great story about Sid helping old dears home with their shopping who were then adamant that that “nice young man” couldn’t possibly have murdered his girlfriend.
“Yeah, that was Sid,” Viv smiles. “He turned himself into a caricature, but he was actually quite shy and worried about what other people thought of him. He was also, contrary to reputation, absolutely useless at fighting!”
Another person who features prominently in Girls Girls Girls... is Viv’s on-off boyfriend during the Great Punk Wars, Mick Jones.
“Mostly off,” she laughs. “I’ve sent him a copy and he’s heard me read bits from it. How do you think he came across in the book?”
Himbo-ish when The Clash started selling records, but otherwise quite well.
“Good, he makes me laugh so much,” Albertine says with obvious affection. “I think he comes out as almost the best person in the book. I’m still incredibly fond of Mick.”
The cringeworthy moments she referred to earlier include the afternoon when Johnny Rotten requested that Viv perform oral sex on him. Neither party was enamoured of the experience.
“John has no idea that it’s my first time giving a blow job,” she writes. “I slide down to his crotch. He gets his willy out. He smells of stale piss. I’m not squeamish about bodily smells, I’ve grown up with them. I expect it to smell different down there and to be dark and hairy. Maybe even a bit crispy if you haven’t been home for a few days. I tentatively start sucking. After a little while of licking away, I hear an imperious voice on high, like Quentin Crisp and Kenneth Williams mixed with the Artful Dodger – ‘Stop it, Viv. You’re trying too hard!’”
Chuckling she says, “That always goes down well – if you pardon the pun – at readings! Seeing John, who came from a North London council flat, just like me, and had no discernible musical talent, just like, was a real epiphany. He was like the boys who sat next to me at school. Shane MacGowan, on the other hand, was more like Joe Strummer. You smelled something wasn’t quite right and, sure enough, we found out later that they came from money and were faking the whole boy of the street thing.”
Although they released only one album – 1977’s deliciously dubby and defiant Cut – The Slits remain an influence on everyone from Lily Allen and Bjork to Crystal Castles and Warpaint who told Hot Press last year what huge role models they are.
“It’s really sweet of them to say that because not that many people have admitted to it. We wanted to make a classic record that in 40 years time would be still pertinent and I think we achieved that. I love Warpaint and was absolutely transported when I saw them live. In a trance, really. I actually cold called their bass-player, Jenny, on Facebook and asked her to play on my solo album. Straight away she went, ‘Yeah, great’ and flew over to London to do it.”
Albertine had spent almost 30 years in the musical wilderness before recording 2012’s richly textured The Vermilion Border.
“I wouldn’t have been able to come back in my fifties if it weren’t for the internet,” she states. “It feels more like it did with the fanzines. I didn’t have to suck up to a record company or get on with an A&R man or an old school journalist or a DJ. I found the whole experience incredibly liberating.”
As someone who’s been through the industry grinder herself, Viv is interested to see how Miley Cyrus deals with the intense scrutiny she’s under at the moment.
“She’s growing up in public and who doesn’t make mistakes or do stupid things? Miley’s a good pop star who’s starting to collaborate with some interesting people. She’s worked hard – perhaps a little too hard – to prove that she’s not the squeaky-clean Disney girl anymore. I think you judge her in a couple of years when she’s got a body of work.”
Albertine’s main reason for dropping off the musical radar was that she didn’t want to be an absentee mum.
“It isn’t very hip or rock ’n’ roll to talk about, but you never know how motherhood’s going to affect you,” she reflects, “and I absolutely fucking had to stay at home. It was so fascinating to see a new life. If it was a choice between doing that or a couple of gigs, there was no competition for me. I never ever regretted it.”
While firmly Pro-Choice, Viv admits to being haunted by the abortion she had in 1978.
“You have to own and take responsibility for the mistakes you make, even if they’re as serious as that,” she reflects. “The alternative is to have governments decide what you can and can’t cope with, like they do in Ireland. You can’t say that every woman who gets pregnant has to carry the child to term. It’s not taking into account rape or the emotional devastation it wreaks on some people. Make it a law that every guy who makes a girl pregnant will be tracked down and made to pay for the rest of his life, but don’t have the state in control of people’s bodies.
“I say in the book that women have a power over life and death, which is quite scary for men and possibly why they’re so engaged in wars and killing.”
You can imagine Clothes Clothes Clothes, Music Music Music, Boys Boys Boys making a wonderful biopic and, sure enough, Viv has been having meetings about a possible film version whilst plotting both a follow-up book and new album. Seeing as she’ll always be inexorably linked to it, what does Albertine consider to be punk’s legacy?
“Hopefully not 40-year-old men with spiky hair like Green Day who, to paraphrase The Clash, have turned rebellion into lots and lots of money,” she says sniffily. “It was probably the first time music in the UK became truly democratised. Take Ian Dury for instance – no way before punk would a band with a handicapped singer have got to number one. It also brought black and white kids together through the reggae crossover, and encouraged girls like ourselves, Siouxsie, Poly Styrene, Gaye Advert and Pauline from Penetration to enter into what had previously been a predominantly male world. Suddenly the rules changed.”

Clothes Clothes Clothes, Music Music Music, Boys Boys Boys is published by Faber & Faber