Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. (23 page)

Mick: ‘It’s me.’

Me: ‘What?’

He tells me that I had better go and get myself checked out as he’s got something. He doesn’t know how he caught it.

Me, bored voice: ‘OK. Thanks.’

Pause.

Mick, hysterical voice: ‘You knew, didn’t you! You knew and you didn’t tell me!’

Yes, I knew.

When I got home from the tour my period started. A couple of days later I went to the bathroom to change my sanitary towel. It was clean and white as I had almost finished. In the middle of the towel was a tiny black dot. I recognised that tiny black dot. I knew immediately what it was. I went straight to the chemist, got some anti-lice lotion and on to the clap clinic to get myself checked for VD. Then I waited to see what Mick would do. The thing is, I knew I hadn’t given it to him, because I hadn’t slept with anyone else. Somewhere along the line, before we even went on the
White Riot
tour, he must have been unfaithful.

Postcard to me from Mick Jones – when the Clash were touring the States – mentioning a line from ‘Ping Pong Affair’ (‘dreaming on a bus’), the song I wrote about him, and complaining about how we split up

47 JUBILEE

1977

Rob and I are going out together now, we still haven’t had sex but our relationship is intensely romantic. I’m wary of making a move on him because he’s so shy. I know he’s a virgin, maybe he wants to wait? Or he’s too nervous. I feel a certain responsibility not to mess him up. If I’m the first girl he sleeps with, I want it to be a nice experience. One night we’re holding each other and we start touching and although he’s trembling we do it and it’s beautiful. I would rather have sex with this intense, strangely old-fashioned boy who has no preconceptions, no ‘moves’, just his imagination and his passion, than some Lothario, any day.

Meanwhile Subway’s singer, Vic, has started going out with Nora and for a while Vic and Nora and me and Rob become an odd foursome. We go to places in Nora’s car, like a Jean-Luc Godard all-nighter at the Paris Pullman, holding hands and kissing in the back row. We see the Fall at Alexandra Palace, and in June we go to the River Thames for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Malcolm’s hired a boat for the Pistols to play on as they float down the river past the Houses of Parliament. We turn up, but have no hope of getting on, I see Palmolive try and leap across the gang-plank but she’s turned away. There are lots of record-company people on board.

Rob says that’s it. It’s all died for him right now at this moment, tonight. This is the end of the dream. He’s really upset. I know what he means, but it was over for me at the 100 Club with the glass-throwing incident. Commercialism and press coverage is what’s important now, that’s the message coming from Malcolm today.

Nora and Vic aren’t bothered, they want to go and watch the boat sail under Tower Bridge, so Nora drives us onto the bridge and parks haphazardly, on a double yellow line. We abandon the car and lean over the railing looking down into the choppy old Thames.

I don’t know what gets into Vic, he’s usually so restrained, but he picks up a huge piece of hoarding that’s lying on the road and chucks it down into the river as the boat is coming towards us. The bridge police arrive and arrest him. Nora tries to get him off the hook in her slinky German accent: ‘I made him do it, he did it for me, to be showing off.’ But they don’t buy it, they take him to Bow Police Station and down into the cells. We spend hours there, sitting on a wooden bench, staring at the shiny green tiled walls. After Vic is charged, we all go back to Nora’s. Johnny Rotten turns up later.

The Slits’ contribution to the Queen’s Jubilee comes when Derek Jarman asks us to be in his new film,
Jubilee
. We’re not sure. As usual, we talk about the offer for days, arguing whether it’s right for the image we’re putting across. We take too long to get back to Derek, the first filming day arrives and we don’t feel we can say no. Nora drives us to the location somewhere on the North Circular and Derek shows us a spiral staircase going up to a bridge crossing the motorway. He tells us to run up and down the stairs a few times. After that we go to another location, a street, where we have to smash up a car. We give it a good kicking and then go home. But we’re not happy about being portrayed as violent. Although we often get into fights, it’s only because we’re being attacked; we don’t do mindless destruction, so we decide we don’t want to be in the rest of the film.

I call Derek and tell him. I feel very grown up, normally we just wouldn’t bother turning up again, but because I like Derek I make a huge effort to do this embarrassing thing and let him know. I’m sorry to let him down because I imagine it’s very annoying when you’ve already started filming and then someone drops out. He’s very sweet and understanding about it, but he uses the footage he has already shot of us in the final film, even though we asked him not to. Can’t blame him really.

With pick in mouth, pausing mid-show to sort out a common occurrence – a skinhead attacking Ari (note the bouncers: teddy boy haircuts, woolly waistcoat and stitches above right eye). Woolwich, 1979

48 PEEL SESSION

1977

John Peel and his producer, John Walters, come to see the Slits play at the Vortex in Soho. I’m impressed that they seem more interested in us than the Heartbreakers, who we’re supporting. We have a laugh with the two Johns before we go on and Palmolive throws a drink over John Walters as a dare – he doesn’t seem fazed by it. The club is packed, even Keith Moon is here, dressed in a floor-length fur coat and sunglasses. He sits in the corner with a bunch of cronies. Tonight means a lot to me because it’s the first time Johnny Thunders has seen me play and I want to show him I’m in a great band and I’ve recovered from being chucked out of the Flowers of Romance. There’s nothing between me and Johnny any more, we’ve drifted apart, but I still want to impress him. Shame the club’s so hot and sweaty that my hair’s gone flat. I’m wearing my blue ballet tunic and Sid’s leather jacket. We play a great show, our energy is ferocious, I think we’re better than the Heartbreakers by miles. Let’s see if they can follow that.

John Walters comes up to us after the show and asks if we’d like to do a John Peel radio session for the BBC. We tell him we’ll think about it, we’re not sure we want to put our songs out until we can play them better, we’re perfectionists. We’ve turned down offers from labels that just want to get a record out quick whilst there’s a bit of interest in ‘punk’. We have a different vision, we want to make a record that lasts, that stands the test of time. We have faith in our songs and our message. Eventually we decide, yes, we’ll do the radio show, we’ve never been in a studio before, it’ll be good practice and we really like the two Johns, they’re the only men we’ve come across in the music industry who talk to us like we’re normal human beings rather than savages.

The recording day comes; Nora drives us to the studios. The main BBC recording studios are booked so we have to use the old Decca studios in Broadhurst Gardens. Decca was the Rolling Stones’ label. I remember the blue and white logo in the middle of my singles. We jump out of the car, unload the equipment and barge through the doors into the hallway, heaving the gear backwards and forwards past two grumpy old doormen who look like they’ve been there since the sixties. One says to the other, ‘You can’t tell if they’re boys or girls.’

‘I bet that’s exactly what they said when the Stones came through the door!’ I say to the other girls as we tumble into the studio.

I can tell immediately by their expressions that the studio engineer and producer are not happy to be doing this session. They keep telling us we can’t do this and we can’t do that. The same obstructive attitude and closed-mindedness we encounter wherever we go. If we didn’t have each other, we would’ve been crushed by guys like this ages ago.

Our guitars keep going out of tune and these two guys 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.

John and John come down to our session, which is rare for them, but they really rate us and are intrigued, wondering how the engineers will cope. They think it’s funny that these two old musos have to get their heads around working with people like us. We fight with them to sound how we sound, not to be polished up and smoothed out. It’s as if they’ve never heard a garage band, or never themselves been at that stage musically where they’re struggling to voice the sound that’s in their heads and the excitement and creative tension that come from that. It’s more than hating our lack of technical ability though, there is a real fury, which they attempt to disguise as ridicule and contempt. Resentment hisses out of their pores like steam off a cowpat.

Anyway, we know what we want, we aren’t daunted by being in the studio for the first time. We just want to get it right. At last we can hear each other’s instruments and all the components of our songs in time with each other. It’s fascinating to hear the tracks so clearly and it gives us ideas about backing vocals and different melodies to layer on top. There’s not much time though and we don’t want to fail on that count: no way we’re going to be the one band that didn’t get all their four tracks finished (‘Vindictive’, ‘Love und Romance’, ‘Newtown’ and ‘Shoplifting’).

When we get back to Ari and Nora’s house in Bloemfontein Road, we listen to the session over and over again, thrilled to hear our songs captured on tape at last. I’m amazed at the ferocity of the music. We sound like we have enough energy to conquer the world.

Slits flyer 7/7/77 (note the time – ‘after
Top of the Pops’,
the only programme anyone watched on TV)

49 ABORTION

1978

It’s a waste of time to think that if you coloured a painting red what might have happened if you painted it black.

Yoko Ono

Anxiously looking for blood. Please come, blood. I forgive you, blood. I will never be so stupid and careless again. I will never be horrible or have a fit about you again, if you will only come.

I’m pregnant. Mick’s the father. We got back together after we bumped into each other at the paper shop in Shepherd’s Bush. I was looking at the magazines when I heard his lovely soft voice behind me, asking for a paper. I turned round and there he was with Tony James (Generation X’s bassist), my heart leapt. I just can’t get him out of my system. I’m twenty-four – just the age I always thought I’d be ready to have a baby – and pregnant. But now it’s here, I’m not ready at all. I did what my friends said worked for them and always put a contraceptive pessary up myself after sex (although it is supposed to be combined with a Durex). I haven’t had a period for a couple of months, which isn’t unusual for me, but my breasts are all swollen and painful so Mum bought a pregnancy test. My friend Becca was with me when I did it. She was shocked at how calm I was when we saw the result was positive. The thing is, I knew.