 Felly rydyn ni'n golygu digon i'ch gyrraedd. Rydyn ni'n gynnwch ei ffondol. Rydyn ni'n gwybod yma i fod yn cael ei ffondol yma, byddwn yn ogymru mai gyd ac yn ogymru yma, yn rhoi'r ysgol iawn, yn ogymru i'r ysgol iawn. Felly mae'n llunio i'r rydyn ni. Rydyn ni'n gwybodaeth i'r ysgol iawn, gan wef o'r Cate Mosman. Fy fawr bwch. Felly mae'n gwybod yn stiyl, eich gweithio eich ffondol. Fy fawr. Dwi wedi gweld llawer y panel y pwn ffahanol a fel dweud y ffahanol yma, dwi amdraethau'r bwysigon, mae'n ymhlidio cyntafol. Fe yna. Fe yna. Fe yna. Butyn nhw i chi wnaeth yn awgol i chi oedd ymddangos. Rwy'n ddyfod ymlaen. Dwy'n gwro, dyma'n defnyddio. Mae'n gweithio'n Prince houses yma'n glas. Ion ni'n rhaid i ti'n gweithio... Rwy'n adru o ran yw gael. Fnw'n arweithio'n meddwl at rydyn. Yn i ddweud gennych, dwi'n meddwl o'i wanthalyn beth yw un will yn mynd i'r amser, a dwi'n meddwl ti'n meddwl. A dwi'n meddwl gyda'r eisteddio am arnyndo. Mae'r rhai ddweud o'r clwfydd.wn i'n gwybod, feature enclosure o'i ychydig gwaith i chi'n mynd i cofnodig arno ar y Cymru, ac rwy'n meddwl i chi'n baith ymlaen ffordd iawn. Er dim yn cael ei prif ychydig ydw i'n meddwl o'r lleion gwybodaeth. Mae'r bwysigol eithaf, mae'r maxim gweithio, ychydig i chi'n byw. Mae'n rhaid i wneud yn dod o'r band o'i twfyrdd, fyddwn yma'r gwaith yng Nghymru, o'r band o'r twfyrdd, mae'n ddim dyma'r ddym ni i ddweud, oherwydd mae'n ddweud yn y brosug o'r Cymru yn y llun o'r llun o'r llun o'r Llyfrgell, yn yng Nghymddol, mae'n rhaid i gael, rwy'n meddwl yn hyn i ddweud o'r fodr, your body to the world, you know, or I foder in a way. The more Ric jeans, more leather jackets, more snarls, more, you know. Twelf bar chord structures. And that's what we thought, but the slips really followed it through. Whereas, you know, bands like the pistols and clash were still rock bands playing. Those formula, those rock formulas, and you know, sort of cocking the whole way of moving and etc. Felly mae'r drol modell ymlaen nhw'n ychydig. Felly, nid o'r blwyslith yn gyfynu y bydd hyn yn y band. Felly, nid yw'r gwahodd yn y ddiwedd ar ôl. Mae'r ddiwedd i'r ysgolwch yng Nogol, a'r gw tan yw'r gwahodd yn ei ddweud gyda'r blwyslith. Rwy'n meddwl am ymwyaf i'r ysgolwch, rydyn ni'n meddwl am y ddweud ac rydyn ni'n meddwl am y cyfnod. Mae'r ffordd ac rydyn ni'n meddwl am ymweld. I think we brought not only a really fresh take, but we were much more rigorous than a lot of the boys as well in our songwriting, in our politics, etc. So when you were a teenager you really didn't think it was an option to be in a group? I didn't think, it was like thinking of another dimension, I mean it didn't even think of it. I mean I brought up in a council flat, went to a comprehensive school, one of the first ever comprehensive schools. By then I'd already been damaged by dysfunctional family, etc. So by the time I was a teenager I had no self-worth as most people who were gravitated towards punk didn't have any confidence and were dysfunctional in some way or another, which has become more and more apparent as we've got older. Who was I going to look at? I knew about Susie Quattro, I liked Susie Quattro, but I wasn't an idiot. I was reading enemy and sounds, I knew she was sort of manufactured by Mickey Mouse. I looked at the raincoats, sorry girls, at the runaways, I opened my mouth. Oh my God, do I have to look like that too? No, do I have to look like that to be in a band? I just thought they didn't even trigger anything in me that that's something I could be in their corsets and their sort of jailbait, you know, Kim Fowley put them together. So they were no different to me, I was no more fooled by them than I was by Sandy Shore or anyone who'd been manufactured basically in a Bay City Rollers. I was no, they came after, I think I can't remember, but anyway. Yeah, so they just looked as manufactured as everyone else. So it didn't trigger in me, I could be that because I wasn't 15 year old jailbait probably or because I couldn't play an instrument like Susie Quattro or have that sort of American confidence that she had. I wasn't a genius like Joni Mitchell. You know, there was nothing to trigger me until I saw the pistols really. But I mean, I'll probably ramble, you have to shut me up or jump in. But you know, people got off to say, what made you pick up a guitar then? You know, it's 1975, 76 when there were no girls to follow. You couldn't play, you couldn't sing, you came from working class background. And it would be so neat and sexy to say, oh, it was the night, I saw the sex pistols. But you know, whenever you look back over your lives and think, you know, how did I come here? It's never one big light bulb moment. You know, there were all these threads building towards, you know, me being a slit. Patti Smith was a influence. Yeah, you know, Patti Smith record, you know, but which the picture of Patti Smith in Sounds or Enemy, it probably was a shark, Charles Shell Murray who Jon mentioned, but it was probably him I think writing about her. And to see this picture of a young woman who, and I thought, it's that thing you don't know, you missed it until you've seen it. I saw this picture of this young woman who looked what we'd call nowadays gender fluid. You know, half boy, half girl. My God, I thought that's how I feel inside, but she looks like it on the outside. But I never realised before why I felt so uncomfortable because I felt half boy, half girl inside. Half aggressive, you know, half this, you know, the stereotypes in the 70s of what was boy and girl were extreme, very binary. And you know, so that was a big thing, let alone her music on top of that because again, it's just incredible to think that I even probably at the beginning of the slits thought girls shouldn't make a noise when they had sex. Nice girls don't make a noise when they have sex. And then to hear Patti Smith grunting and growling and she's obviously a very private person, very intelligent person, very poetic, very well read. But I've never heard, ever heard a female let go. I mean, there were no, almost no female athletes at the time, you know, you know, even if I'd seen them and when we had one TV channel. So there was nowhere that was hearing a girl let go or seeing a girl let go or see a grunt and she threw a javelin or in a tennis match or, you know, they weren't televised. There was nowhere to feel that you could let go. And I used to look at boys just sort of play fighting sometimes, you know, older boys, boys 19 and 20 at art school and wish I could let go like them. Was it about wanting to be a boy at some point? I never wanted to be a boy, but I was furious at the lot I was given as a girl. You know, periods being shut out, being overlooked, looked past, never looked in the eye, still happens now. Yeah, I was furious about it. I never wanted to be a boy though. Yeah, why were you reluctant at first to join the Slits? Well, the Slits existed before me with Kate Corriss on guitar. And, you know, it just seems incredible to say now, but I thought, no feminism has come so far that I don't need to be in a all-female band. In fact, you know, maybe that's overreading it. You know, it was actually an incredibly new thing to be in a mix band even. I mean, when I was walking down Portobella Road holding hands with Mick, who was my boyfriend at the time, Mick Jones, we were at art school together and Sid Vicious and John Rotten came walking towards me and I immediately dropped Mick's hand, you know, mustn't look wet. He's trying to kind of appear like a whole person instead of Mick's girlfriend. I didn't have a guitar, I couldn't sing or play. I wanted to be still seen as a whole person, which seems quite radical still now, in a way. Still girls are fighting for that. And I said, my granny's died and left me 200 quid and I'm going to buy a guitar. And this boy called Sid, I didn't know, said, oh, I'll be in a band, would you? And that moment, that was a big moment actually, because I saw Mick Jones and Johnny Rotten's mouth drop open and I thought, God, that's brave of him because girls and boys weren't in bands together then. And this was the Flowers of Romance. That's the Flowers of Romance, yeah. So, you know, I said, what do you play? And he said saxophone and Johnny Rotten went like that. But it didn't matter then. It did not matter if you played or didn't play. If you looked right, if you had the right attitude, you were in the band, which was so fantastic, which was this little crack-hotend up for a minute where you could be disabled, you could be ugly, you could be unmusical, but you could still be in that elevated space on stage being looked up at... Not clapped, OK, spat at. You know, you could be in the music business, you could be in a band. Is it true that there were journalists actually sniffing around you and Sid before you'd even written a song or played a gig? And then we didn't ever write a song or play a gig. But yeah, we'd go around because we looked so extraordinary and people come up into us in pubs and say, oh, when you're going to play a gig, what's your band called? And we say Flowers of Romance, yeah, we'll let you know when it's, maybe we'll give you an invite. You know, we never played a gig. And it's amazing we're still talking about that band that doesn't exist. And that is pure punk, I think, you know, 40 years later. Yeah, it's still being talked about as if it existed, you know. I got chucked out. I mean, to be chucked out in a band that can't play anyway. Yeah, so that was gutting. That was the worst thing that ever happened to me for a very long time, to be chucked out, you know, to have sort of found your people and then be chucked out of that. But then I saw the Slits play in Halston. Or loads of bands were playing that night, Clash, Buzzcocks, Subway Sect. But I went to see the Slits who were on first because they were girls. And I've seen all the other bands and I knew what they were about. And, you know, I got so blase, I wouldn't even turn up at Clash gigs or Pistols gigs because, you know, they were just mates or whatever. But I went to see the Slits and not expecting anything at all. And I was absolutely, I don't know, elevated by them because that's what you started with. You know, it's not worth being in a band unless it's better or different than bands had gone before. That was the Slits. You know, Ari, who was 14, the singer on stage, had a sort of lack of self-consciousness, a wildness that not only rivaled Johnny Rotten or, you know, or Tina Turner or anyone, but absolutely exceeded it. She'd never seen anything like it in the way. This girl, I mean, she was 14 from Bavaria in Germany, that area. And she was like a Casper Hauser type. Tessa Woodgreed, Tessa Zare, the bass player. You know, she was self-imagined. There was no, you know, she still had posters of ponies on her wall. There was no wanting to be David Bowie, wanting to be Susie Quattro for Ari. She had invented herself from scratch looking at animals, listening to birds and seeing something on the street or hearing a cargo by. That's how she made up her vocal style. And we were just talking earlier about palm olive on drums. Absolutely feral. And everyone who came to see the slits, you know, so eventually I badged them until they let me join after, you know, I rang them up the next day and said, I thought you were really great. And when I put the phone down, apparently they all went, oh, now she's interested. But it's funny I have this thing that when I really want something, all my pride goes out the window. I just thought they were extraordinary. That being all girls thing was completely irrelevant. They were just extraordinary in her own right. I like the fact that you said that if Ari had a bad day, she felt fine about showing that on stage. And it's a bit similar to what you said about when you first saw Johnny Rotten, that he looked pissed off up there. And that was different, wasn't it? We didn't want to be showbiz, you know, if you had a bad day or you're depressed or, you know, whatever, Ari would just come on stage and be grumpy all through the set. And, you know, that's how I feel now. I pissed off about that thing over there. I wasn't schooled to be entertaining. We were schooled to be, you know, by Malcolm and Vivian in a way, and other things we'd read and I'd been at art school and drawn to, you know, confrontational artists. We were schooled to be agitators. And it didn't actually matter what the medium was. The only reason in half of us chose that medium, guitars, was the only one we could get in. And it still is in some ways, but almost not, because it's become so upper middle class now. You know, the art is still just about you can sneak in a different way without your degree and your social standing, whatever, whatever. Then, for those 18 months, it really was a matter of get your foot in that door and don't be told no. It was a lovely moment where you described a state of physical confidence that you reached with the slits, where you almost felt like you had fur on. Did I? It wasn't about looking pretty necessarily or fashion or anything, but you felt sort of so strong in yourself. I do remember, and I still remember, walking down the street thinking, I feel a bit like Patty Smith. I look on the outside how I feel on the inside. Confrontational, a bit angry, a bit plain with my sexuality. It's nothing to do with prettiness or beauty or thinness or anything. It's just like I perfectly embody where my head is at on the outside. I mean, and almost nobody does that. Almost nobody dresses how they feel. If they did, I would now have knives. How much was that galvanised, that feeling by the kind of attitude you were getting from people coming up to you on the street? And because you were fighting a fight all the time with the slits? Well, my God, we're still recovering 40 years later. How did it galvanise? I don't know. I just feel that because we were four, we had a certain protection and we felt we really had a mission. We weren't naive about it. We knew what we were doing. We knew we were fighting to change things for girls. We really were very passionate about our mission and it wasn't just about how we looked. It was how we wrote a song, what the rhythm of the song was, how the chords progressed or didn't progress, what note followed, what note, the melodies, the accent we sang in, the words we used. Every single thing the slits did was broken down, ripped apart right down to ground zero. And we would even stand in rehearsal studio or whatever, not that it was a studio squat, and talk about, what height should I have the guitar? Because there it doesn't look right with the miniskirt and there it doesn't look right. Because we've never seen girls with guitars before and everything was new. Should I stand with my legs open? No, I'll stand like a bloody rock and roll bloat with big bollocks dangling down. What's the new way to stand isn't macho? So it was exhausting. Whereas other bands just went in and just lowered two notches down. I'll be like, you know, Scotty, I'll be like whoever. No, we were rewriting musical history but sort of pop history. John was talking earlier about the violence being just a part of life at that point and the slits were very much on the receiving end of that. I mean there's all sorts of misogynists who wouldn't actually knife. I mean, Ari was knifed. Ari, stabbed. At least twice, in my presence. Why did that happen to the band? It's just very simply, we were just so incredibly threatening that it drove people to violence. I suppose you threaten people and if they don't feel powerful or if they feel their power has been taken away they turn to violence. I mean, that's just still happens. We're not that evolved. To see a bunch of girls walking for a breath on the street dressed partly in SNM gear that you've only got in a few magazines tucked at the bottom of your wardrobe and then partly in old men's boots and then partly with children's clothes on top of them and then with this horrible smear on their face and as you walk by looking at it and they go fuck off and gobb at you it was too many mixed messages. That's what I meant. We were there to agitate. We were there to fuck with their heads and know whether they wanted to fuck us or kill us and mostly they wanted to kill us because they probably thought they couldn't fuck us because we were good fighters. When you joined the band you actually felt I want them to want to be us rather than to fuck us. I had spent my whole from probably age 11 looking at boys in bands looking at them to guide me. My junior school in Muswell Hill, the Kinks I would think I'm following in the footsteps of the Kinks not that I was ever going to be in a band but somewhere, somewhere in my life there was someone who'd made something different of themselves so from 11 onwards I was trying to copy them well not copy them but copy bands copy the way they looked maybe the way they stood this that or the other not as a musician but just as someone who was living a more interesting life and I thought when we made a band I want boys to want to be us not want to fuck us I want them to think which was unheard of in those days I want a boy to say I want to be in that gang with those girls that's why Sid Vicious saying I'll be in a band with you was a huge moment where a cool boy would want to be in a band with a girl let alone the fact there weren't any girls in bands but I wanted them to copy us we didn't want their sexuality we didn't want to be we wanted them to want to be us which almost could only happen now a gender fluidity and everything but to copy our clothes we did have a whole gang who followed us from Liverpool I know Hilary's here tonight who turned into Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Big in Japan a bunch of boys who did copy our hair and our clothes and everything and did follow us around all over the country what kind of guys were they it was Paul Rutherford from Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Budgie who ended up being in our band a lovely bunch of very very fluid gender fluid boys another thing you were up against was because Ari was so young tell me about the white riot tour which is famously 77 wasn't it with the clash the first gigs we ever properly played in fact we were asked to go on the white riot tour with the clash and the buzzcocks and a few other bands we'd never played any gigs before Ari was 14 she had to be pulled out of her school she wasn't pulled out but she just went the 70s were a bit lawless in that way and again if anyone tried to attack Ari on stage which they did a lot she really did trigger things and quite often guys would rush the stage and try and pull her off and attack her and we would all unplug our guitars in a great big slabs of wood heavier than that table and whack them over the heads with it and they'd be carted off bleeding by the bouncers but no one would ever go to the police no Ari was stabbed a couple of times we were attacked all the time we'd never go to the police they were lawless times I'm not saying they were good for that but we were very street smart and as John said it's amazing we came through it without being killed it was amazing at the same time as that you had people trying to tell her to go to bed at half 10 because she was only 15 very rarely did her mum say that in fact I've only worked out recently that actually none of the slits really had a father present which was I think very potentious because I don't think in the 70s there if our girls had had a father present in our lives one that we'd loved or one that we were fighting against I don't think we could have lived those wild free on the streets shouting, rampaging lives we lived for one reason or another we weren't in close proximity to our fathers and I think that's quite interesting and our mothers also actually we were almost Dickensian orphans and possibly one of the first generations to have divorced parents because it wasn't going back it was still not the done thing so if you were the child of divorce you were actually quite an outsider because when my mum and dad divorced it was the same time as Wallace Simpson who was a scandal to be divorced there were people at the pinnacle of the country not being allowed to rule because they were divorced so it was still very much not the done thing everyone drawn to punk the interesting thing is everyone drawn to Viviana Malcolm's shop which was sort of the epicentr in a way we were all damaged people we were all fragile one way or another and nowadays we get asked to do these talks and things and we still don't really behave and we still don't really deliver like we should deliver and the thing about musicians now so much is they look the part but then you can also talk a bit about Latin with them and you can also talk about football and that's the people that are being young boys who are being signed up now it's not the real dirty broken thing that we were and of course no record company no one wanted to touch us which is why I haven't done anything except this at the punk year because we were pariahs and we still are fucked up one of the things that you capture so well is this and I think maybe people forget this about punk that how merciless everyone was with each other and how critical of the bands and how you if you didn't stick to your commitment then you get out you don't have a shirt I think that attitude is very much filtered down from Vivian Westwood who was ruthless in her criticism and her expectations it's quite interesting in a way she was only about four or five years older than us but so you couldn't really quite say she was a maternal figure but she was like she expected the best from you I remember once she said to Sid Viv's talented but she's lazy I haven't been in a band or anything You haven't done anything yet at that point I've done anything but for her to say I was talented I knew I was lazy but you know she made me anyway and I think a lot of us reach up way beyond because she was northern she was working class she was a tough thinker she told it straight she had a massive influence on how we all thought she wasn't playing the part of mentor but you know you gather round people and there was Malcolm who was also very well read very smart brought a lot of different art movements and political movements and the theory of it just lightly would mention it then I'd go off down compendium and nick the book about the duty or whoever he'd mentioned situationism or whatever that's why compendium shut all the punks were going in there everyone was stealing from there it was in Candon Town I've heard Johnny Rotten say before they were the adults was there that feeling a bit like they were there was a feeling they were the adults but not uncool adults and other things like that you never saw them hold hands you saw no physical contact between Malcolm and Vivienne at all no one knew they had a child they were all the time under the stress show but we we sort of were greedy and hungry to find people that we could be inspired by because there was no TV they weren't in the papers a name for me the moment I saw Patty Smith I was inspired the moment I saw Vivienne Westwood I was inspired I was greedy to grab something and I'd never seen a working class woman be confident in my life before and let alone be an artist so that was another huge thing just to say the way Vivienne to actually see the way Vivienne made her clothes which I saw quite close up because I was hanging out with a guy called Rory who was Malcolm's assistant she would get the pile of old t-shirts sent from India or somewhere cheaper than anything and she'd get them out of the box and go the sleeves are horrible because mechs and sleeves were very important back then so a neck or a sleeve on the t-shirt was not to be so she would say oh god ok cut them off just cut them off can't be bothered to sew them can't sew anyway I'm not going to spend my life sewing leave them ragged it's too long cut the bottom off and then just think of the most outrageous thing or something intelligent and screen print like that on the front and it seeped into me that it didn't matter how good I was at anything I didn't have to be a virtuoso player I didn't even have to be able to play I had to have ideas I had to have something to say and I think that helped me be able to write a song and I thought I could write a song my kid has had piano and bass lessons since she was 6 she's too frightened to write a song at 17 and I said oh my god I've created a monster because everyone I know who's trained in music can't write a song and yet we all wrote songs because of how Vivian approached life and how she approached art and because she was working class well didn't Sid teach himself to play bass overnight Sid had a very good ear actually he was up on speed all night one night in the squat in Shepherd's bush and got up in the morning and the bastard had learned to play bass but you know it's taught us in the air because Sid was very musical he had a great ear he had a sort of a confidence that I didn't have even if it was bluffed he had a good brain but in the end he wasn't radical so I was absolutely I won't lie I was gutted when he learned to play bass overnight and I'm struggling to try and hold the chord down and I can't be bothered to do the work you have to do to do it but I think that's what's interesting and what young people are sort of fetishised punk or whatever don't understand that it wasn't all these sexy moments it was sometimes a matter of persevering or hanging on in there or being the one with the ideas or not being the one who went down the heroin route why was he not radical? because he went down the heroin route and then you can trace that back to his mother was a heroin addict he didn't have a father if you've got one strong person in your life when you're growing up I think you can more or less make it through Sid didn't have that he had no foundation a turning point for you was when there was the incident with him throwing a glass and a young fang got injured in the eye tell me about that why was that so important for you? I can't remember what it was called I don't know if the word punk was being used by then because we all refused to use it but there was some sort of festival down at the 100 club and two or three nights in a row and on the second night the damned were playing we all went because we had nowhere else to go and at some point Vivian came up to me and said oh Sid's been arrested and taken I honestly had no idea what had happened Sid's been arrested, he's been picked on because a glass has been thrown and it's hit somebody it only emerged later that the young woman lost her eye but first of all I was against that sort of violence not because I'm a nice good person or anything but it just doesn't resonate with me at first did he? I went a long time thinking Sid was innocent visiting him at Ashford remand home never seen him so broken he was a changed person maybe that's the moment that he broke actually in a way because he had none of the confidence none of the arrogance he was gone, there was a little frightened boy sitting there who was terrified absolutely terrified not long after that he joined the Pistols and it was just downhill from there joined the Pistols, not one thing joined the Pistols through the glass blinded a girl in one eye as it turned out met Nancy's function it's all these things that come together had a junky mother all these kind of things add to the picture of a person they're not black and white you took quite movingly in the book as well about realising that the people who were into her they were able to sniff out people who were vulnerable and might might start so for instance when you when you took it yourself that one time and you had a you had a bit of an epiphany after that didn't you you kind of went to the slits after that one her own experience that you had as I said we were all quite vulnerable people one way or another and even now I could say I need something to get me through we were all vulnerable, we were all raw people you know they got tempted towards heroin some have been tempted towards religion my drug was romantic love I looked to you know to love and partner to love you know as my saviour to make me feel alright about the world you know and I've still given up on that and I'm now looking back at heroin and religion as a better option and these are slightly more reliable yes so I mean that's you know it's you know there's certain areas of society that attract people who are damaged which is you know maybe why they write raw stuff or why they're willing to push a bit further and go and be seen as something that doesn't fit in and take all the shit that comes with that but at the same time of course then they maybe need other sorts of help you talk about there being a prevailing kind of anti-emotion doctrine as well in punk and I wonder was that quite difficult as a young woman or a young person generally to be around that it was interesting to me because you know I like to question everything I came from a broken home parents were foul to each other I've been moulded in that but at the same time every day I've been played love songs not on stop from the radio which I believed I believed you know never gonna let you go my heart's breaking I thought boys thought like that and I just feel so duped you know and when I hear you know boy bands now doing it I scream to my daughter you know he doesn't really mean that he's just trying to get your money boys don't actually think like that but I thought you know and especially my favourite was John Lennon who actually did think like that he would talk about his aunt and his mother he's Aunt Meme and his mother Julia and then her owner you know to have a young man at that time in history talking so openly about his emotions writing about them this revered man you know bigger than God it really made me think that there was a chance of this wonderful meeting a soulmate thing and then all the music music music I was listening to night and day on the radio saying you know love this love that and all sung by boys how heart hurt they were how heart broke and what power you've got over them so I had that one end and my mother and father killing each other on the other side and who wouldn't drift towards the romantic dream given those two choices I can be different to them I can fall in love and all that kind of thing I can't remember the question now about the anti-emotion the anti-emotion then to find Vivian Westwood and Malcolm McLaren who was sort of at the focal point for a lot of us never touching each other thinking that you know I don't think they ever said it was wrong but they never did it so it was observed by us who were all very observant that it was obviously uncool to hold hands in public to kiss and smooch in public to and it also began to be you know through Johnny Rotten especially and Sid who were all constantly you know like two little boys in the school playground you know practic not girls are smelly but they wouldn't say it was girls but it was all like you know bodily fluids and I'd rather wang and do this all this sort of fantastic episode about Johnny Rotten just going will you give me a blowjob oh yeah my god care yeah I mean you know the conversation around now I think nothing's changed there I've told my daughter don't just have sex don't do the sex just because the conversation's run out that's just an easy ploy yeah you'd run out of things to say yeah I should do that probably as well what I still love about your book is that sense of just takes you back to even little things like personal hygiene in that day and age the fact that people wouldn't necessarily wash for a week at a time oh no we wouldn't wash I mean we would all be sleeping on each other's floors and in squats that possibly had cold running water there wasn't this you know the whole American vibe of being groomed didn't really come until the 80s when people started sort of actually filing their nails and washing themselves I mean if you went on a tube and you until easily into the 80s English men stank no English man until well into the 80s would wear a D-Uldren absolutely not you know so yeah it was a very stinky smelly place and we were used to it and now I feel almost nostalgia I hate nostalgia but I feel slightly nostalgic for the bodily smells you know and crispy pubic hair you know we've all we've all got pubic hair it gets crispy if you don't wash it for weeks Mick Jones and I know this has probably been going down in the archives had a pair of leather jeans from sex which was literally so crusty here because he didn't wear a pan from dribbles of piss but it eventually broke it just broke like like a plastic dish yeah hard plastic got distressed literally broke till he couldn't wear it anymore just a piece cable tell me a bit about the um I let that go in me that's the really upsetting thing we weren't informed we weren't told make sure he washes it anyway we were dirty there was nothing to compare it to tell me a bit about the actual the physical process of going down to sex the shop and how you know we were talking earlier about the t-shirts that are on display here and those clothes were quite expensive weren't they it wasn't that you could just go there and kit yourself out and you probably wouldn't the first time I came across a concept of spending a lot of money for clothes because until then I'd dressed in from jumble sales which was okay because in the 60s was like a bit vintagey and you'd buy sort of 30s dresses or old things you know whatever from um and basically I always say Britain was a very binary country back then and it doesn't seem to be heading that way again it was a matter of you had your school uniform and then what you wore on a Saturday you had your school shoes and plimsoals there was two of everything you had the Beatles or the Rolling Stones it had the ITV or BBC if you were lucky so what was the question again yes how much would you actually spend on a piece of art the first thing I spent money on was Levi's when I suddenly realised it actually mattered what the cut of your jeans so Levi's was the first thing and then the next thing was Vivienne Westwood's shop and um I would just get my grant because I was at art school go straight to the shop buy two things and then not eat for three months literally you know you can see pictures you know sort of scabby faced grey sunken thing you know and um food was a real currency then I mean you know we'd steal a bit or we'd eat cornflakes every single day or you'd eat around someone's house I just was hungry all the time how long could you get away with spending in the shop could you hang out there for three or four hours just chatting you could spend there it wasn't um an easy place to be in you know because the people who were there were friendly as they were it was a bit scary and yeah but as long as you had to be brave you know Vivienne Westwood and other people you know around then but especially Vivienne and Malcolm they didn't care who you were what you'd done what you looked like what you believed in as long as you had something to say and you were bold you know because I remember once being around Johnny Rotten there was a whole load of bloke bloke's wobble and everyone and um it was getting a bit heavy and a couple of people said oh we're going to go now and I think wobble said to me you're going to go Viv and I said no I'm going to stay and you know just one thing like that could make you acceptable you know you weren't scared I'm terrified but yeah you just had to be very very brave and that's just so very different to now in a way I think um how long did it take you to thank God in a way you don't have to be that brave yeah maybe you aren't they're not fighting so much against that kind how long did it take you to feel that you sort of belonged within that world um I thought I felt more I belonged in myself at least you know gave me permission to be in myself you know we didn't all play the same style of music we didn't all agree with the same sort of things it wasn't a matter of it was you know cliquey in that way or that we were you know it was the best thing about it allowed for different points of view allowed for intelligence it was an intelligent grouping and loose grouping and what was wonderful is it allowed me to feel like myself but it only lasted about 18 months till it began to be co-opted by the media and you know stupid bands copied it and were thought of as punks and then you know things it dissipated within 18 months 2 years it was gone what were your memories of the of the boat day because we were talking to John he was actually on it for me and the people I was with I mean I'd already felt punk or whatever it was called was finished but with the gas throwing and the violence of that night and the girl being blinded but Rob from subway sector who I was with and Vic and Nora actually I mean none of us were allowed on the boat no friends of the pistols were allowed on the boat I think they were allowed two friends each and the rest was all long hairy you know virgin record company people and journalists so it was in our eyes a complete and utter sell out and we went up onto London Bridge and as it came over Vic threw an old hoarding down on to the boat I mean it was also thoughtless and got arrested and you know we ended up at the police station and all that and then we ended up at Nora's later and I didn't know there was a budding romance going on between Nora and John Rotten but he came there later and he was very unhappy with it as well because they hadn't wanted to do it I don't know I can't remember but I just remember he was not happy and so from our point of view it was completely this is Malcolm has gone too far he's sold his soul to the devil and it's shit he's fucked you were at that point going out with Rob from the subway set didn't he feel as well that that was the day the tit that was the end for him what was so special about the subway set what was so special I mean what was so special I don't know they were just good they were pure they were intelligent what they wrote about they were more but they weren't just cliched everything they did was thoughtful and they were so they had school trousers and a school jumper on they had no clothes they were just unpretentious they were great they were the real thing in a way it shows the many different ways in which you could be punk that you could be Rob from the subway set can still be crucial to it you could be polystyrene you could be Susie Sue you could be Ian Drury what do you think I was talking to John earlier about the idea of the sort of misconceptions that people have about this very short sharp period in history what do you feel that you wish you could correct people about I don't know I think they know now it was hard I think a few more balanced things have been written the slits were very written out completely written out most of the females were written out except Susie because she was so photogenic and the songs were sort of poppy but I think the slits very much and I know Ari died thinking the slits got written out of history and she would have liked to have seen how we have been rediscovered and I feel we've been rediscovered by the young via the internet who sort of assiduously trace things back and realise it started the slits the female side especially your things maybe followed the female or even Kurt Cobain saying about the slits or whatever so I feel like we've got our place in history back why do you think they were written out I think literally people who were writing a lot of most people who were writing at the time certainly DJs on the radio we would never be allowed on all radio stations they couldn't see us for fear you can't see through fear whereas young men now going through the internet we're not frightening we're not challenging anymore partly because they probably think we're dead anyway we're at the end of the line we're at the end of a cable it's not threatening now although I still managed to threaten men really yes at my age because sometimes you pick on the wrong middle aged woman and guys on buses don't know that do you feel that anger is part of your life the way it was back then I really like that John called his last book anger is an energy because that's all some of us had we didn't have anyone saying go on dear you're good you can do that or get three A's at A level or you'll be great at uni we didn't have anything except fury and anger to motivate us a lot of us that's all we had and I think I'm really still running on that I've said to secondary modern school overlooked as a girl all the time constantly failing that's what I wanted to sort of probably what I would readdress is people say oh they tell you a CV when they introduce you and I want to do in my book write the alternative CV failure failure failure crack crack crack that's what I really put down not believing in myself because that is my real CV not the few little moments where I've managed to get through a captain to make something so I can't remember now sorry I keep forgetting I go off on tangent and you've managed to preserve that anger all the way through I've still got it my daughter who's 17 said to me oh god my anger's so old fashioned and you know she would almost seem anger as if I'm being a bit like a teacher instead of seeing it as something raw because I've come from a housing estate et cetera et cetera et cetera I've been expected nothing of all my life because she has no concept of that she thinks anger is just what teachers do to you like scolding so if I say to someone you talk once more through my fucking gig I'll bottle you she thinks I'm being teacherish and instead of seeing how absolutely radical it is for a middle aged woman with a telecaster to say that to a bunch of guys so yeah but I mean she'll eventually because the thing the young don't really have is an overview and you know they don't have an overview of history and yet and I'm only getting it now 30 years later and realising things don't change overnight lots of things I in my mind have a cycle of 30 years I think it's quite a big 30 year cycle feminism or this or that music even comes round in 30 year cycles whereas the slits were all thinking where the fuck is the next bunch of girl we thought we'd done our bit no one wanted to play us anymore Britain being such a small island so so narrow minded is once you've done your bit musically island because there's only two radio stations and two music papers so we haven't got time there was no room so much whereas in America you could be sonic use of going round and round the states playing forever and ever and ever and turning into rock gods we were just not interested not going to sign you, not going to play you not going to write about you couldn't get anyone to write about one of our re-releases the slits cut was re-released no journalist wanted to do it they're fucking irrelevant they said and yet the funny thing is that 40 years later the band looks almost futuristic there hasn't really been anything we can't believe it we thought we were all these girls coming up and eventually about 8-9 years later you know the right girl thing happened but it just felt musically not to be as radical I don't think much you know has been as musically radical as the slits were do you feel I mean Lisa's back to what we were saying before do you feel that punk could happen now I get asked that so much because I do talks in universities and art schools and stuff and they all sit there like this all the way through and then at the end all they want to know is when is punk going to happen again I get furious because I've just told them what crap life it was living in the 70s punk to happen again girls you'll have to be stabbed in the street again you'll have to not be able to walk from here to there there'll be no buses, no buses at night there'll be no Primark to buy a sheep t-shirt and you know there'll be no nothing on TV, no internet nothing you know then punk will happen again but it's like they're saying when's the world when's world war 2 it'll never happen the same way again you know why would you want history to keep repeating itself you hopefully want it to move on don't be nostalgic and looking back for something that happened then we can learn from it we can appreciate the good points you know we can take forward stuff from it that was inspiring but please kids don't want it to happen again is there anywhere where you can almost see that sort of energy in a different art form or in a different part of society well part I must say that I'm talking about in the west because you know I think in very repressed regimes where a young woman who's trying to be a rapper can't leave her house in Afghanistan because she will be killed you know or bloggers are being killed because they're saying they're atheists or whatever I mean their music has that edge and that danger and you know you're willing to try and change minds with it but I'm talking about in the west so you know I think the most I think one of the most interesting things I'll have got great faith in the younger generation is gender fluidity I think it's incredible you know it's great and some of the times these sort of gentle revolutions change things as much as you know like my daughter says it'll be old fashioned now to go around kicking in doors and gobbling it's not necessary in this climate it's not doable in this climate because the internet has made us so global and so attached to so many things that you could say it's dissipated or you could say it's a more Zen style sort of multiple rooted way of living now and therefore you know by definition you can't do binary things like that I saw them so much which although that has happened a bit but even that I think is more complicated than it has been made to look us and them you know I've got very very hard left voting friends who voted out you know so even that is not as clear cut as as things were back then it just may not be a musical movement next to what would be now I mean you know I'm tempted to say it's never going to happen for popular music in the west again it has been commandeered by the children of the ruling classes and how can they possibly make revolution the children of the ruling classes so we may have to look to the third world and we may have to be enablers and not be the twats on stage with the guitars and the legs apart you know what is radical about that people say to me you know what would you be doing or what would you play I would not be in a band as a young woman now if I was a radical person I don't think it's a radical medium I don't think even though I'm on stage I don't think being on stage and being looked up at is radical it's the only one I've done this year it's at least a bit more intimate than just singing something with a guitar in front of me and repeating something over and over every three minutes and then you're clapping at least how do you feel when you are on stage now singing I don't do it I think it's naf I think it's more radical to write a book and tell the absolute fucking truth or to piss off a guy on the bus I've got my little I've got my little battles you know and you're writing a second book now oh I believe the reviews when they said I could write foolishly and if I hadn't spent the advance I'd be giving it back Dan so we'll see will it be a book about punk no I mean it'll be written by someone who is angry still and tells the truth still so if you can call that punk it won't be about punk it won't be about that time in history I think that is punk now I think as I said to you earlier I think Mary Beard is more punk than Stavages you know because she goes against the norm she goes against the norm in how she looks she dares to have long grey hair she was absolutely vilified for being on TV with long grey hair and may not agree with everything she says but she's brave she's brave to say what she thinks and not be cowed would you feel when you see bands like Stavages I'm not going to go into Stavages because who cared about this band or that band I could honestly just as equally talk about breakfast cereals what do you think about the new organic well it's actually got too much sugar in it I wouldn't touch sugarpuffs or any of those and anyway they might be by conglomerates I don't want to pull out bands really but I'm just saying Stavages and Mary Beard because I think people need to reframe what they think is radical and Stavages are great and they're a great band and you know as are actually most kids can write really good music now they've had so much practice they've seen so much on the internet they know how to write a good tune and how to do harmonies but how many people know how to be fucking different and stand out and go against the norm at the risk of being nostalgic which I know is something you don't like I was wondering if you could if you can you think of one moment when it most made sense to you what you were doing with Slitz I don't know I mean there's a few moments that moment walking down the street feeling like my inside my outside matched my inside was pretty huge and then we played Alexander Palace which is where I was brought up I mean I spent all my childhood kicking around Alexander Palace at night you know again amazingly not attacked nothing to do and then to be on that slope of grass with thousands of people I think it was a rock against racism gig playing to my hometown as a girl who'd never ever conceived of being in a band or holding a guitar that was huge to beat it would have been more acceptable if I'd become an astronaut because I had no concept that I could ever be this thing that I'd grown up you know knowing was a way a pathway but had no idea how I could be part of it and yet somehow so you have dreams and you chase dreams but what had happened all my dreams had fallen through but what had happened was something way beyond my ken something that's the moment when I thought I could never and I was aware of it I thought I could never have conceived if only I'd known as a kid that I would reach this and it wasn't matter if it was being famous or anything but it was a big loads of bands were there and it was a big day not because of the slits but to be on my home turf on a palace where I'd just hung out you know day after day after day having come back as something different well that's come back as a a guitarist I mean it was extraordinary in a band not just as a guitarist but in a band yeah I mean it's very hard to explain how extraordinary did a good job there that vision was thank you so much fantastic we're going to do some questions now applause thank you I just had them waven out applause so John it's going to come actually have you got a chair oh yeah oh thank you so how many minutes of questions we have yeah about about five minutes this week cool so who has a question for our illustrious guests you see this is always the awkward but they're always shy gentlemen done it we can repeat so John mentioned the English version which I'm also can I ask you both what was your record of shame on my memory going on a boaty boat and buying it takes two to tango cos I thought I would get it on a square vine on a dim but I still bought it so what was your record of shame well I remember saying Mick Jones saying to me in the squat you know what do you think is the best record that has been released this year when you think Patty Smith and the Ramones and the Pistols had all been released that year I said this will be by Natalie Cole I ashamed for that so I still love that song though there you go you see yes but you weren't allowed to like I suppose mine was magic fly by space or was it space by magic fly I always forget it which is a Euro disco record and it was synthetic and then I still like it now so I said questions for Viv I heard a few great guys in my public and you probably the greatest cover that has ever been recorded and I was just wondering what it was about that song that no two guys choose in and it's such a success I think we just stumbled across it I mean we knew it I mean I loved it and I remember I loved the video that went with it because it's a very unusual video as I had a black woman dancing into a fisheye lens seeing it on top of the pop so you know it's quite just one of the ones we covered three or four but it got better and better live as I remember so I can't remember if Chris Blackwell or someone suggested because I think they wanted that to be our A side of our record and we said no we're not going to do a cover we're not going to compromise so it was a double A side so that's how it came about and you know I felt a bit shy but I personally felt a bit shy about covering what I thought was one of the best records I still do of all time a bit embarrassed about it but I can't believe that over the years it's played in a lot of a lot of dances and discos and you know I think it is good and I remember you know I was being very conscious when we sat we couldn't afford horns you know to do great so we did it with our voices great vine great vine and we made sure that we sang in our normal register because girls used to sing in very high breathy voices then you know another thing we were very strict about the girls and boys voices you know at that age oh that different that we'll have to sing up here you know all the time so we always used to be we used to say to each other imagine you're shouting across a playground at a mate you'd say Oi Tess you don't go Tess please come over here how girls sang then cause you'll do a lot of them but so if that's sort of partly how it came about yeah thank you anyone else lady at the front here hi this is Emily I was really interested in your point about how do you think being radical I'm wondering how your daughter feels about that and if what you think about young girls to that I've got a daughter myself what do you think well I think they're much emotionally smarter than we were I think they're actually academically better taught I mean my daughter's at a comprehensive school in north London I went to a comprehensive school in north London and you know even comprehensive education is just leagues ahead and you know the praise they get and the encouragement they get is leagues ahead of what we got so I think they've got a lot to process you know what with that and sort of being fairly growing up at the beginning of the internet I think they've got a lot to process and I can't I don't even expect a young generation to be too outgoing whilst so much is incoming really and I just think they they need time I don't know what do you think John about I agree I think you're totally right so you know I think maybe they don't want to be stars so much maybe they don't mind going to Calais and helping maybe they see that as radical and I think if you're in a privileged position that's what you should be doing you should be enabling and helping and that is more radical compared to when I left school I had no options I thought I could either be a teacher or a policewoman my daughter thinks I don't want to be an architect I don't want to be a doctor I hate science but there's no thought that she can't be those things she's actually got saying in those 40 years the difference in choices young women have got even though you may say they don't seem radical they've got so many choices so yeah and that's quite radical in itself that she could be a scientist she knows of female lawyers I knew of nothing like that no women who did anything like that so you know that's radical really and I'm going to have the choice and let's see what they do with it in their own time just a question for both of you actually I'm quite interested in the period that followed what we're talking about today a lot of the bands that came from the 76, 77 period by 78, 79 a lot of them were unrecognisable solidly do you think that any of the bands in terms of the smiths do you think a lot of the bands were under any pressure at all from record labels to actually learn how to play and actually move into that what commercial market well I'll just say quickly about the slits and John got better overview than me but basically as we kept playing we got better and then as we kept hearing we'd hear Don Cherry or someone turn you on to this record or that record you learn another chord or copy something of it and it just was organic from the slits point of view what do you think I agree well I mean the slits are a very good example that used the energy from punk and used most particularly the DIY aspect because in fact wasn't your first LP on Dick O'Dell's label that was a DIY thing wasn't it no island it was island it was island what the demos he put out wasn't that one on Y records oh yeah that was later though so there was a lot of independent labels and so you have people had the freedom to experiment and so the new I always like punk because it was new and obviously it stopped being new when it got old and so new for me was in 78-79 was a kind of mixture of what had been going on with reggae with funk with more black music and with electronic music and so that to me in way music play although I loved punk and the distorted guitar it was a fantastic example what bands would you say then have shifted sonically so much pill I think we got more confident I'll probably stop listening then I have to admit I've gone back and listened to Clash recently I enjoyed them much more than I did at the time I stopped listening to them as well I didn't particularly like giving enough rope seemed to me quite overblown and kind of American type rock thing and I really really did like the first album but I was less interested in the Clash by 78-79 like a lot of people perhaps unfairly because I think combat rocks are a good record and actually I really like the last Clash album that everybody hates cut the crap I think it's brilliant but you know I was long gone I mean punk burnt itself very out punk burnt itself out very quickly for me and it was I just became obsessed with electronic music I loved electronic music ever since because that again seemed new and I was always looking for something that was new not cliched and that was of most important to me really and you know there was such a British male punk groups in particular it was such a straight jacket it was like the 1, 2, 3, 4 Ramelana Ramones and you know great when the Ramones did it but that was you know a year and a half before time for one more one or two more time for both in really I was now look back at my childhood and thinking about punk which massively formed me as a person every band you've mentioned massively formed me as a person as a mould I can contextualise culture most of the individual players to my own satisfaction right there only I can contextualise culture most of the individual players within punk rock I mean I've come down to the conclusion that everything that fascinated me fascinated me about the sex based on this instance probably came through Malcolm and Vivian the records of the sex pistols exciting as they are are fairly traditional to my mind other than John Leiden now the one person that I can contextualise in punk rock you can see where the clash came from you can see where the dam came from and I was wondering whether either it could account culturally or contextualise where John Leiden came from well he's Irish so am I my father's Irish I'm getting an Irish passport thanks thanks dad I've only just remembered this cos he only lives in Ireland for a year I think Leiden was the wild card in the sex pistols and I don't think it's fair to say that the sex pistols were entirely Malcolm and Vivian I think they all they all put towards it and I think Glenn was a great songwriter great bass player and an arranger he was the arranger of the group and after he left the sex pistols didn't really had songs they had barrages bodies, bells and the gas etc which were something different but they weren't the songs that Glenn helped to write I think Leiden had the ability to channel everything for that period he had the ability to channel quite deep things he unconsciously had the ability to turn what was going on in this society into incredible lyrics and then front them out in an extraordinary way for that he deserves eternal credit Viv? I agree but let's not deify the whole time was very against fetishising deifying certain people it really was about we can all do it one way or another I'm sorry to tell there's no need to lord anyone really I wouldn't dare to fail I think that it's turned into a fool myself sorry or it would suck anyone but I think that the person who was in 1976-77 isn't personally he was boss back in 1982 let's not get into oh it's not personal last question that's enough isn't it that's enough on that subject let's grab one more I think strict mummy it's golden teacher you could be prime minister looks like we might be up time actually one more come on somebody put your bloody hat we got one here lady over here it's like the whole internet thing you're saying like about me before you did but I was just curious do you get that same feeling when you hear a song for the first time that's amazing do you guys still get that feeling when you hear new music do you still get that feeling when you hear new music excitement or that well yeah I love music people always making good music new genres do you yeah I like modern electronic music whatever it is I personally can't bear any music I like records to sound as though they made in 2016 I hate one of the reasons I hate modern rock music it all sounds old honestly I don't know what's happened to me I think I'm post traumatic stress syndrome I can almost not bear to hear any music I have radio 4 on all through the night if any music comes on I'll quickly change it to radio 4 extra I'm absolutely you know I've become hyper super sensitive to it why is that do you think partly if it's partly I don't want to think which is my own problem which I won't go into now but as I said we are all quite damaged people from those times I don't like to think and music without lyrics can make me too reflective which is alright during the day but not at night but the other thing is do I want someone who hasn't thought a lot about what they're saying ranting in my head anymore you know repeating every every one minute a phrase which is you know just ripped off from a phrase it's been ripped off from a phrase which is not thought about it's not interesting it's not going to teach me anything so it's not I don't really like music but I can't stand the whole concept of the laziness of it because I was as we've all just said I was mentored and formed in a time when you were rigorous about what you said and if it was going to go out on a radio or you were going to put it out there hey hip hop and grime I'm too old for that I must admit grime is great Kano but I think they were offended but I don't think it was thought about whether they thought it was thoughtless or not at least it was thought about a movement who cares it's something's movement be suspicious we weren't a movement we weren't a movement I'm suspicious you know we didn't want to be called punk we didn't want to be all lumped together we were individuals who were allowed to be individuals you know so I do agree I think grime if we're going to go into music is the most interesting thing but I don't think and I know there's clubs in Croydon South London where they're not allowed to play grime and they're not allowed to have grime nights where music is actually the police have banned it so there are moments now you know and it's not actually so much against new genres but just that I am a bit burnt out and I completely come clean about that and whatever you're disciplined if you're a scientist or whatever you're strict about what you accept and if I was a scientist I would be reading pamphlets and magazines and saying that's a load of rubbish no they haven't been rigorous in their testing so that's partly because I've cut that's the punk discipline that's my punk discipline so I won't take any shoddiness and it's shoddy a lot of it I do like electronic and I like that a lot of women play it as well electronic music and glitch and I do like that I was very turned on by Layla's stuff she's great but who cares who cares about this or that let's be a bit more rather than pick this name and pick that name and no room for shoddiness people it goes back to the first thing you said if it's not going to be better or different than what went before that was our maxim don't do it discipline, rigor and disgust that's something that we could say doesn't really get understood about how rigorous and how hard we worked in those times when there were no buses and no telephones to organise a rehearsal took a week and if someone didn't turn up you couldn't call them and yet we made something that is still being talked about 40 years later the rigor is what has kept it relevant thanks everyone thank you so much Viv and John and I'm sure you've all read their brilliant books but if you haven't read them and read all the other books they write as well signing in the shop and thank you so much for coming and I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have fascinating wealth of topics we've had there