Interview // Viv Albertine

Viv Albertine is a woman who should need no introduction. You may want a refresher as to what she means to the music industry now, but her legacy is screamingly apparent – you just might not realise it. As guitarist and main songwriter for 70s punk band, The Slits, she played her part in establishing a place for female bands in the punk scene way before ‘girl’ became ‘grrrl’. She invented what lay at the end of the path, and has led female bands down it ever since. We are simply honoured to spend a little bit of time talking to Viv ahead of her Ladyfest gig this month…

Our guest editor this month, Maxie is currently winging her way to Glastonbury to see you…
Oh, I’m not going! I’m sure she wouldn’t miss me anyway. I was only on the campfire bit, so you know, you never get to see what you set out to at these festivals anyway. Or you’re trekking across a field really fast and you only catch the last number.

Maxie is also responsible for putting on the Ladyfest gig in Norwich that you’re playing.
Oh fantastic, excellent.

She’s doing a lot for the Norwich music scene herself as she’s also in one of Norwich’s most popular homegrown bands…
What’s her band’s name?

The Brownies…
Aw, cute.

So you’re not going to Glastonbury, but have you got a hectic summer ahead of you, Viv?
Not hectic, and do you know what, unlike when I was in The Slits, I don’t mind. It’s not to do with, ‘oh, I’m too tired’, because I’m absolutely driving – my energy is absolutely focused, but it’s more because I trust, I dunno… I just trust a sense of timing a lot more. You get to a stage where you think ‘if I put the work in – it’s like that build it and they will come type of thing – if I put the work in and put the love into the songs and the energy and the belief, then I don’t have to be out there hustling like a maniac’. I actually can say no to some things if they’re not right, or don’t show me in the right light or whatever, whereas I think when you’re younger, you grab at everything and strangely, you think you’ve got no time. I just feel pretty cool about it. I’ve got just the right amount of stuff, like I got this phone call the other day from America and they said “Oh, we’ve got this gig in Dallas we’d like you to come and play; it’s a one off gig and we’ll pay your fares and you can bring your band”, and that’s just great, that you can trust those things to happen. I usually have a gig one or two times a week and then I’m recording a couple of days each week. It’s just so good at the moment; I just can’t believe how good I feel about life nowadays actually.

It’s great to hear someone speak so positively about the process, because you talk to so many younger bands now who very much treat it as an arduous job, when in fact, it’s a gift. You think actually, just soak this up guys…
Yeah, exactly, and it has become just such hard work for people. And it is hard. It was hard in the 70s in a different way, you know; you had to claw your way out of absolute grime and poverty then and find something in yourself that had not been groomed, had not been inspired, there was no girl singers that I wanted to be like – you know, the girls around me and indeed the guys had to start from ground zero really, we trashed everything that went before and said no, let’s clear the decks and start again. What should we be writing about; what sort of chords should we be playing; should there be solos; should we play this instrument or that instrument? Everything was reconsidered. So it was hard then, for those reasons – plus you got spat at all the time. They were very violent, aggressive times if you walked down the street looking a certain way. You know, I literally was in fear of being stabbed every time I was out and many friends were, and I was attacked many times as was Ari stabbed and things, so although it was hard then in a different way, nowadays everyone’s like ‘oh, the internet – everyone downloads and you don’t get any money’ – YEAH, so it should be hard. You go and work in a bank then if you want it nice and cushy.

I think it’s forcing people to be inventive again as well, rather than go with the formula that had previously been laid out for them…
Yeah, and people say there’s this massive wall of dross that you have to get through you know, because everyone owns the internet, and it’s like yeah, come on then, let’s break through the massive wall of dross then. I very much believe that if you make something good enough, eventually people will lead a path to your door and you don’t have to go out there and hustle and I think you have to be very present and in the moment and I think you have to be in to what you do and honest about it, and anything that comes after that, treat with suspicion almost. The main thing is how you’re living your life – that’s the mood I’m in at the moment anyway.

With the internet as well, feedback is usually user-generated, rather than just the industry telling you what you should like. The power of someone blogging in Norwich can be enough to get you being booked for gigs, so it’s almost like you have to prove yourself before people will just accept it –
- The other side of the coin of course is that if there’s someone writing a horrible blog about you, you know, just Joe Blo from down the road, then that gets sent all around the world as well! But you just have to deal with those times.

So you’re not playing too much, but you’ve been playing solo and with The Slits again, is that right?
No, I don’t play with The Slits at all anymore. No. I’m utterly not in The Slits, I don’t want to be in The Slits and I’m not saying that aggressively, but I just feel like that was then and it was of that moment back then, but good luck to the girls if they want to do that, but I totally do not want to do it. I just see myself as a new artist really.

Sorry for getting that wrong Viv…
No, put it in, let people see it so people know, because there’s probably a lot of people that still think I am. But what I do do is like last night I played a gig, just drums, a bass and me as a trio, but then last week I played a gig at Shepherd’s Bush that was cello, me and harp and Theremin, so I quite like to turn it on its head so that each time I go out, it turns out slightly differently and I tailor it with a really interesting pool of musicians that I can work with. Sometimes I just go out completely solo, completely bare, just me and the guitar. It’s exciting; you can make it so interesting for yourself if you don’t tie yourself to formulas really.

Do you know how you’re going to be appearing at Ladyfest in July?
I think it’ll be me, drums and bass.

Have you been to Norwich before Viv, do you know?
Is that in Norfolk?

It is, yes, in that giant boobie that sticks out from the country’s landscape…
I’ve been to Norfolk before and had some very pleasant times on the Broads on drugs, just puntng and floating, completely out of my head. I remember that. I’m sure we must have played as The Slits in the 70s, but not for years.

Do you like playing gigs like Ladyfest with this sort of message behind them?
I did do a Ladyfest last year in Manchester with The Slits, because I did play two gigs with them to see how I felt about it, but I guess in the 70s, I wouldn’t have liked it, because in the 70s we were very much against labels, but I think Ladyfest has built itself up to be quite open minded and chooses really interesting bands, so I think it’s sort of transcended that slightly hardcore excluding type thing. It’s proved itself to be just quite an interesting sort of festival and I think there’s room for that. If they want to make it female biased, or female only, I think that’s cool now, because of how they do it. There are other ones that I won’t do, because they don’t have as much of an interesting vibe about them but I think Ladyfest is fine, yeah. That’s the only criteria I have, that they celebrate and don’t exclude.

It was borne out of the idea that some women were being marginalised in the music industry – do you ever experience that?
Well… yes, I do and I know people say “oh, no”, but it’s almost more on a personal level – the guy you meet at the record label, or the blogger in the audience, who instead of writing an objective review, completely shreds you because they’re completely freaked out. That’s what it’s always been, more on a personal level. And especially because I’m coming back now and… I’m not a cartoon, you know, I’m not a rock chick with red lips and black dyed hair, shouting and swearing, but I am saying really quite near the knuckle things. I think the thing was the same with The Slits; we always had these mixed signals and messages and sort of – not exactly symbols, but we gave off all these mixed messages that really confused men. Not so much women, because women know, and girls know that we are a whole mixture of good and bad and wild and cautious and all these things, but the way that The Slits expressed it, and the way that I’m doing it now – almost like a cartoon – does threaten still. I do still get the same reaction now as I did when I was in The Slits, which is horror, haha! Horror, but then other people will be moved to tears and feel like I’ve told the story of their whole lives. What I do is not for everyone, and I’ve come to terms with that now. It was the same before, but because I was in a gang, a band, we had our mission together. But I’m still very much having that same reaction that I’m not for everyone and I really do polarise the audience quite often, but because I’ve been there before, I can take it, even though I’m on my own. I can deal with it because I can recognise it.

You say on your website that you’re only interested in love and sex as subjects for your art – I love that! Why is this?
Well I just think that’s all there is in life really, and I’m not sure which comes first really, sex or love, because sometimes I think every power trip, every war is based on a desire to procreate and be the best procreator from men’s point of view, or from women’s point of view, to choose the best person to procreate with, so is it down to sex, or is it a much more spiritual thing and actually humans have developed this capacity to love, which is very beautiful and very spiritual and which is often totally without gain for them sometimes. The two take turns and go round and round for me and are very intertwined and that’s the core of life, either the propagation of the species or the growth of the spiritual beings that we are and have become, setting us apart from animals.

Love could be seen as a cunning mask for sex though, couldn’t it?
I’m so glad to hear you say that, because sometimes I seem such a cynical old cow, haha! But yeah, is it just really a construct, which is a line of question in my song, ‘Couples are Creepy’, which is ‘Couples make a big deal out of an evolutionary device’, which is basically that anthropologists think that this feeling that that we call love, that hormonal rush that lasts about 18 months was just long enough to conceive, bear a child and get it to about 9 or 10 months old where it can start to function on its own. That’s your 18-month honeymoon period basically and then the human child is strong enough and robust enough and the woman is recovered enough to be able to gather her nuts and barriers and do it on her own, basically. And we’ve made this huge card industry and music industry and film industry and the books, haha… all for this little 18-month blip of evolutionary strategy!

So this obviously comes through in your art and music, but when you were film-making, did you approach it from another way? Are you an expose on the fallacy of it?
Well I haven’t really made films for about 12 years, and in fact I am going back to that now, but what I’d like to expose – I’d just like to be honest. I’d say I’m more questioning, because I haven’t got a conclusive thought or answer on it and one song may be on the beauty of that feeling, you know, I call my band limerence, which is that heightened chemical feeling you have when you first fall for someone, but I’d say mine was more to question, because I haven’t got the answer on that one. I’m going to go back into filmmaking, but my only goal is to be honest about whatever I tackle. I think if you do that, you know, really bloody painfully honest almost at the risk of everything around you in your life, then that’s enough to get things stirred up. You know, I think there are still very few people who do that. I think the film industry is sometimes really more poignant than music in the way that they tackle the subject of relationships. I think they dig a little deeper and don’t always show their heroes, especially nowadays, as completely perfect. Film comes out of old story telling, which has always had the dichotomy of the lead character ultimately being this very flawed person, so yeah, I think film tackles it better than song. Great songwriters maybe, like Leonard Cohen, maybe they can pull something apart and question it in a song, but not often, so yeah, I think film would tackle the subject better in some ways.

Nowadays though in film, that dichotomy is often characterised by the anti-hero, which is in a way saying it’s something different from the norm.
You mean that bad boy thing? Yeah, someone was saying to me the other day that that bad boy thing that’s so attractive in England and America doesn’t happen in Europe. It’s a cultural thing that happens in England and American and I don’t know where it comes from, but it’s possible that it has come from the film industry because of that picture of the apple pie mum was created by the film industry, as was Santa Claus – well that was Coca Cola – but yeah, it’s a construct that doesn’t have quite as much appeal in Eastern Europe apparently! They do say that you’re more likely to be attracted to that kind of guy biologically, but when it comes to procreation, you wouldn’t choose him…

Well maybe not twice!
HA! Yeah, or maybe again and again and again if you’re a fool! I don’t know what it is about that bloody anti-hero, maybe they have survivalist genes that you want to pass on, I don’t know.

I think it’s just the invention of the leather jacket myself…
Yeah! It’s got a lot to answer for. That’s very primal isn’t it, wrapping yourself in an animal skin!

It has to be said that you’re up there with the most iconic and influential female artists in the music industry, but who inspired you?
No-one inspired me. That was the whole point – that I had to drag it out of nowhere. The only person who ever meant anything to me artistically as I was growing up was Yoko Ono, which I think was amazing when I look back, because I was young, very young, about 10 and in a way she was very sophisticated and was an artist as well and she had a huge effect on me. The rest were just like girlfriends of the band – people like Marianne Faithful or Anita Pallenburg, you know, people who had a bit of something about them, but I certainly didn’t want to be Joan Baez or Joni Mitchell, I mean, who was there? There was no-one I wanted to be, but I found Yoko Ono utterly inspiring and everything that I saw of hers or she wrote completely changed my head. I thought that was fantastic. I loved John Lennon and I loved that he loved her. That relationship had a massive effect on me in so much as a template of what to find in life as a relationship, because John Lennon was so emotional about her and he was one of the first guys, apart from poets, who wrote his feelings in his songs about her and didn’t care and she was this sort of lateral thinker, this artist who turned things upside down and in many ways was more dominant than him. That had a profound effect on me, that relationship. Musician-wise, no, no-one. I more wanted to be Marc Bolan frankly, in fact I liked very feminine – Marc Bolan, David Bowie or whatever – I liked very feminine Arlo Guthrie boys…

You liked Marc Bolan because of his curls – isn’t that a line in one of your songs?
Haha, no, it’s just because it rhymed! But I’ve often wondered why girls like these very feminine, girly boys and I think it’s often because you feel they could be you, you could be them and they’re not threatening sexually, you know, they’re not like, scary with deep voices, cock-rocky types, because no young girl actually likes that. But these feminine boys, it’s like you could actually be them, or be stronger than them and they’re no threat to you; it allows your sexuality to blossom without being threatened. I’d rather have been Marc Bolan than any girl that was around.

You’re signed to Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label, but how did that come about?
How did that happen? Well, of course we’ve always been very aware of each other, you know, Thurston was very aware of The Slits back in the day and had respect for us, then we met at one of his gigs via The Raincoats – Gina from The Raincoats introduced Thurston and we just hit it off immediately and he was so supportive and excited about what I was doing that I let him hear my songs and he said, ‘right, I want to put them out’ and it just happened really quickly and really organically and he was really supportive. We’re in touch now because of it and it’s good.

Emma Roberts

Viv Albertine headlines Norwich’s Ladyfest as put on by our guest editor for this month, Maxie Gedge at Norwich Arts Centre on July 31^st. For tickets, go to www.norwichartscentre.co.uk. Read the uncut version of this interview at Outlineonline.co.uk