Review: Clothes, Music, Boys
Viviane Albertine released her autobiography under two titles - the first Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys and the second more succinct Clothes, Music, Boys which we will further abridge here to CMB. Reading CMB is an uneven experience - the book is separated into two ‘sides’ like any scrawled on punk cassette each side consists of short punk-style chapters. The first details her ascent as the lead guitarist of all-girl punk band The Slits, throughout which she is immature and self-absorbed, the second more interesting side in which Viv becomes introspective and involves her post-Slits battles with divorce, cancer and IVF.
Viv has earned the right to have her story told and now is the moment to tell it. For decades women excelled in silence while their male equivalents were lauded with honours in arenas from skateboarding to modern art. Now, in a slate of new documentaries and texts, the stories of women as every bit as exceptional as the men are finally being told. Certainly on paper Viv’s story is a fascinating one. Thrashing it out in the male dominated punk scene while mates with Sid Vicious and a full cast of music celebrity cameos, then moving to film then her battles with health, motherhood and middle age - it’s a ripping yarn.
Yet there are problems not with the story but how it is told. For one, none of the supporting cast for Viv’s story really have lasting purchase in her tale. They flit on and off stage. They only really exist in relation to Viv, relevant simply for the clothes they wear, the music they make or the fact they are boys. In the latter category Viv meets her fair share of deplorable men - when they’re not ignoring her, they’re trying to molest her or in the most extreme case sexually assault her under the guise of gynaecological examination. Her husband turns out to be a pig and her father walks out on her in the first few chapters - in a hilarious turn her mum doesn’t seem too concerned with that development.
Given that Viv leads with her feminist foot, there seems to be little camaraderie with other women. Consider The Slits themselves - perhaps the creative process is simply a messy one but their common purpose as an all girl punk band fails to serve as a rallying cry. They endlessly fight and bicker - Viv admires how they dress, dance and sing but she is constantly frustrated by their lack of creative discipline. Her seriousness makes her feel dowdy and far from a liberation, punk’s rejection of rules and structure hinders progress. Yet somehow great music is made. Then, the band’s battle does not seem to be with a society or a music industry not willing to hear an all girl band or take their music seriously. In fact, the industry, on the prowl for novelty, is all too happy to sign up four beautiful edgy and talented young women. So too with the male dominated punk bands they tour with - a rare moment when punk’s anti-establishment bent aligns with the market’s embrace of the new. The fight is actually within the band itself - the centre cannot hold.
For all punk’s ability to shock and its desperate yearning for authenticity - the society’s basic rules remain intact - young is hot, serious is boring - and subversion resorts to the usual cliche’s of the caged artist. Maybe this is the reason why, for all their innate talent they never seem to develop a warmth and a mutual love for one another, and, the moment the band ends, their friendship wanes. Like any other musical movement punk’s promised social revolution never eventuates and in hindsight it is revealed as a decade long tantrum with safety pins and hair bleach replacing the joss sticks and tie dye of decades earlier.
The book is also in urgent need of slashing - Viv does not pick up a guitar until the hundredth page or start playing it for another fifty. Her early experiences growing up and going to gigs in London are tedious. They are recounted in rote, where Viv rarely interrogates why she does the things she does. She claims to be political and a feminist musician - yet travelling to Yugoslavia or seeing Stevie Nicks perform onstage fails to stir a reaction in her. Instead the most interesting is the book’s second part - once the music stops - when the Slits dissolves and Viv deals with IVF and cancer. These are unflinchingly rendered as her miscarriages are relayed in gruesome detail.
Yet for all her trials with her body, with men and with society - Viv rarely hints at much deeper meaning until very late. Despite deep and protracted suffering she moves easily onto the next project - her band, her career, her child, her affair. Her character shines through even when her literal and clunky prose falters - she is tenacious and deeply creative - the way she defeats post-Slits ennui through raw energy redirects the inner strength and courage of her as an artist.
Only in the final chapters does Viv arrive at something like peace and wisdom. As punks she knew begin to die - she retreats from the fury of her those remaining unsatisfied creative impulses - whether in art or within her own body. This reviewer found moments of inspiration here in her tenacity, her courage to give up those false consolations like a bad marriage or her relinquishing that relentless punk rage that can never survive youth. Finally she accepts that life maybe worthy even for its imperfections.
The most important legacy of punk is the abhorrence of cliche and thank god that CMB is not another band biography that charts the same weary arc of youth, fame, drugs, exploitation and dissolution. Instead there is more to Viv and her story than just The Slits one just wishes that she could dig a little deeper and bring it all together into a unified version of herself.