Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. (10 page)

I have a little bit of money because I’ve got a grant to go to Hammersmith College of Art in Lime Grove, to study fashion and textiles. Same college Rory goes to, he told me to apply there, said it would be easy to get in, and it was. When the grant is paid, I have loads of money for two weeks then I have nothing for three months until the next instalment. Alan doesn’t have a job, he’s on the dole and nicks food from the local corner shop. They really like us in that shop, they’re the only people in the area who treat us like human beings. When they catch Alan nicking from them they’re very upset. We’re banned from the shop now and have to walk miles to get provisions. I feel really bad about letting them down and I’m upset with Alan because I have certain principles that I adhere to, like no stealing (except bog paper from pubs).

Our neighbour, Sue, now regrets ever mentioning the flat. When she told me about it at Dingwalls, I was a ringlet-haired, flowery-topped girly girl. When I turned up at Davis Road with a hammer and screwdriver, I was a shaggy-haired scruff. She asks us to move out, says we’ve disrupted the whole street.

20 PEACOCK

1974

I’m getting worried. Hammersmith College
looks
like an art college – paintings on the wall, big windows, easels – but this lot don’t look like art students. I thought I’d meet interesting people here. The only person I’ve met so far who has any sense of style is Jane Ashley, daughter of the owners of the Laura Ashley clothes shop. At break, Jane and I wander down the corridor towards the canteen – we’re in no rush, we’ve been told that going to the canteen is an ordeal because the art school shares it with a building college that trains boys to be plasterers, electricians and plumbers and they all sit at the back of the room heckling the art students. Whilst Jane and I are queuing up amongst the builders, trying to ignore their sarcastic comments about our clothes, I see a flash of movement and colour – a blur of dark hair, high-heeled shoes, fluttering chiffon scarves and the longest, thinnest legs I’ve ever seen. And then it’s gone, disappeared into the men’s loo. ‘Was that a
guy
?’ I ask Jane. I keep staring at the door and eventually the creature re-emerges and I get a better look. Yes, it’s a guy. He’s stick thin with tight red-and-white checked trousers, black high-heeled slingback shoes, a girl’s fitted jacket that’s too tight, all topped off with fluffy, backcombed hair. The building students erupt at this spectacle, shouting and cat-calling, but he ignores them and struts confidently to the middle of the canteen queue, pushing in to join his mate.

I just know this boy’s going to be my friend; even though my look isn’t as extreme as his, I like his bravery and style, he’s my kind of person. I make eye contact with him and burst out laughing. I laugh with a mixture of recognition and relief because I know our friendship is inevitable, we’re obviously like-minded people so we may as well get straight to it and dispense with the slow polite phase of getting to know each other. But I’ve offended him and my laughter is met with a wounded expression.

So I say, ‘Hello, I’m Viv.’

In a soft, shy voice with a South London accent, the boy replies:

‘Mick Jones.’

Mick Jones, about seventeen years old. He’ll kill me for showing this but I think he’s cute

21 HORSES

1975

Every week I buy the
NME
. I find it difficult to read because the writers use such long words, but it’s not a chore because I’m interested in what they’re saying. One day I read a small piece about a singer called Patti Smith. There’s a picture. It’s the cover of
Horses
, her forthcoming album, a black-and-white photograph taken by Robert Mapplethorpe.

I have never seen a girl who looks like this. She is my soul made visible, all the things I hide deep inside myself that can’t come out. She looks natural, confident, sexy and an individual. I don’t want to dress like her or copy her style; she gives me the confidence to express myself in my own way.

On the day the album’s released – I half dread it in case the music doesn’t live up to the promise of that bold cover – I don’t go into college, I get the bus to HMV Records in Oxford Street instead. I’m so excited I feel sick. When I arrive, I see Mick Jones loitering outside the record shop.

‘What are you doing here?’ I ask.

‘Getting the Patti Smith record.’

I rush home and put the record on. It hurls through stream of consciousness, careers into poetry and dissolves into sex. The structure of the songs is unique to her, not copies of old song structures, they’re a mixture of improvisation, landscapes, grooves, verses and choruses. She’s a private person who dares to let go in front of everyone, puts herself out there and risks falling flat on her face. Up until now girls have been so controlled and restrained. Patti Smith is abandoned. Her record translates into sound, parts of myself that I could not access, could not verbalise, could not visualise, until this moment.

Listening to
Horses
unlocks an idea for me – girls’ sexuality can be on their own terms, for their own pleasure or creative work, not just for exploitation or to get a man. I’ve never heard a girl breathing heavily, or making noises like she’s fucking in music before (except ‘
Je t’aime
’ by Jane Birkin, and that record didn’t resonate with me). Hearing Patti Smith be sexual, building to an orgasmic crescendo, whilst leading a band, is so exciting. It’s emancipating. If I can take a quarter or even an eighth of what she has and not give a shit about making a fool of myself, maybe I still can do something with my life.

22 FIRST LOVE

1975

There are all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

There’s only one public payphone in college and it’s in the entrance hall. Whenever I go in or out of the building, Mick Jones is on that payphone. Every time I go to use the phone, Mick is hogging it. Mick is in the hall, on the phone for hours and hours every day. What the hell is he doing? Maybe he’s having relationship problems, probably breaking up with someone. Next time I see him in the canteen, I ask what he’s up to.

‘I’m putting a band together,’ he says.

Mick is that person in a band – and there’s always one – who does all the organising, who takes the pain and the losses of the band to heart, who lives, breathes and would die for the band.

Mick’s eyes shine and he waves his hands around excitedly whenever he talks about music. He tells me that he plays guitar and is trying to get some musicians together to rehearse. There’s a pretty boy with long blond hair called Kelvin who’s a good singer, and a couple of others, but none of them take him or his guitar playing seriously. They treat him as a bit of a joke. They only come to a rehearsal – that he’s spent a week arranging – if they have nothing better to do. He laughs it off. He’s self-effacing and philosophical about it. He wants to be in a band so badly that he’ll never give up. If no one turns up to a rehearsal he’s organised he arranges another one. If the bass player leaves, he hustles around to find someone else. Often he gets chucked out of his own band and has to start all over again. Calling, calling, endlessly calling. Shovelling coins into that payphone.

I see bands a couple of times a week, have done since I was thirteen, but this level of fervour – I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never met anyone my age so committed to something before. Mick is willing to put his ego and his pride aside and pour every ounce of his energy and time into fulfilling his dream. I’m jealous of his passion.

Mick and I sit around in the college library discussing the bands we like, then I start rambling on about some boy I’ve slept with. ‘God, Mick, he’s so handsome. He’s got really long blond hair. I’m a bit worried though, ’cos my period is late. I think I might be pregnant. When we were lying in bed he said my back is like a boy’s. Is that a good thing? He said it turned him on. Do you think he might be gay?’ Mick listens patiently but doesn’t offer any advice. Eventually, when I’ve run out of steam, he asks me if I want to go and see a film with him tonight. It’s called
The Battle of Algiers
. Well, I don’t like the sound of that, but I love hanging out with him, he’s so funny and I can talk to him like he’s a girlfriend, so I say yes.

Mick and I meet outside the cinema, a very cool arthouse place called the Electric, on Portobello Road. It begins to dawn on me that he is not only much cleverer than me, he’s also much more sophisticated. The film is spellbinding and emotionally captivating, the intensity of the experience amplified by Ennio Morricone’s pounding, percussive soundtrack.

We emerge from the warmth of the foyer onto the dark cold street. The lamp posts give off a golden glow, people hustle by, the smell of fish and chips is in the air, white dragon breath puffs from our mouths as we bundle along together talking excitedly about the film. Then we bump into Rory. I’m embarrassed that he’s caught me with Mick.

‘Hey, what are you two doing out together? Something going on?’ he laughs.

I’m mortified. How could he possibly think there’s anything going on between me and this flamboyant-looking beanpole? I’m about to protest that we’re just friends, I look up at Mick, he looks down at me …

… Fucking Hell. I’ve only gone and fallen in love.

An outtake of me and Mick modelling for Laura Ashley at the Clash’s rehearsal studios, Chalk Farm. 1976

23 THE LEAP

1975

Leap and the net will appear.

John Burroughs

‘Malcolm’s new band is playing at Chelsea School of Art tonight, want to come?’ says Rory.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘No,’ says Mick.

Mick already knows about the Sex Pistols and even though he’s friends with the bass player, Glen Matlock, they are his rivals. He says he’s going to rehearse with his own group tonight, not watch someone else’s. He tries to put me off but I’m going anyway. They sound interesting.

The Pistols are playing in the school hall. It looks like every other school hall, bare wooden floor, stage at one end with tattered green silk curtains pulled to one side, vaulted ceiling with metal struts and grey plastic chairs stacked high along the walls. Smells like floor polish. Not many people in the audience, just a few clusters, clumped and dotted around the edge of the room. An impish-looking guy dressed in a powder-blue drape jacket, with pale orange curls falling onto his forehead, heads over to us.

‘Here’s Malcolm,’ says Rory.

Malcolm McLaren looks a bit older than everyone else and is better dressed, like he’s got a bit of money. Rory introduces us. Malcolm’s friendly and charming but not flirty, he seems pleased to see another person at the gig. I can imagine him thinking,
Good
.
There were ten people last time and now there are eleven
. He has a very open, non-judgemental expression and a look of amusement in his eye. There’s no up-and-down look to check out my clothes, which I would’ve expected from someone who owns a boutique. As Malcolm touches my hand, I think,
I’m wearing the wrong clothes, in the wrong colour, in the wrong place
. The thought just comes to me in that second as we touch. I’m wearing a tight, kid’s-size brown leather bomber jacket, like something Marc Bolan would have worn, handmade baby-blue leather boots and jeans. My hair’s been cut and coloured by Keith at Smile in Knightsbridge, very blonde on top and very dark underneath. I just know it’s all wrong. I’m mortified. I was quite cool at Dingwalls. I’m very cool at Hammersmith. I’m not cool here. I look around to see what other people are wearing. Black.

The Sex Pistols come on.

They’re loud and raucous but not bad musicians. I’ve seen bands that have this anarchic quality before: the Pink Fairies, the Pretty Things, the Edgar Broughton Band. It’s the singer who stands out. Johnny Rotten slouches at the front of the stage, propped up on the mike stand. He’s leaning so far forward he looks as if he might topple into the empty space in front of the audience. His face is pale and his body is twisted into such an awkward ugly shape he looks deformed. No dancing about, trying to entertain or attempting to make us like him. He looks ordinary, about the same age as us, the kind of boy I was at comprehensive school with. He’s not a flashy star like Marc Bolan or David Bowie, all dressed up in exotic costumes, he’s not a virtuoso musician like Eric Clapton or Peter Green, he’s not even a macho rock-and-roll pub-band singer – he’s just a bloke from Finsbury Park, London, England, who’s pissed off. Johnny sneers at us in his ordinary North London accent, his voice isn’t trained and tuneful, it’s a whiny cynical drawl, every song delivered unemotionally. There’s no fake American twang either.