list.co.uk/festival Zoe Howe & Viv Albertine | FESTIVAL FEATURES
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There’s a multitude of musical icons appearing at this year’s Book Festival. Stewart Smith chats to Zoë Howe about the return of the Slits’ guitarist Viv Albertine and her own new book about the Jesus and Mary Chain
A s guitarist and co-songwriter for the the Slits, Viv Albertine blazed a trail for feminist punk. Her riveting memoir Clothes Clothes Clothes Music Music Music Boys Boys Boys, which she will discuss at the Edinburgh International Book Festival with broadcaster Vic Galloway, is a candid account of being a woman at the heart of a scene which, for all its anti-establishment ideals, reproduced many of the old sexist power structures. Albertine’s honest approach to the punk era is continued in her frank accounts of her struggles to have a child and her cancer treatment.
‘Punk will certainly have helped to shape how Viv expresses herself today.’ says music writer Zoë Howe, author of the 2009 biography Typical Girls? The Story of the Slits. ‘It was all about being honest and questioning, but it was also about being courageous, determined and resilient – particularly for the women involved in the movement. They would be spat at in the street, Ari [Up, the Slits’ singer] was even stabbed in public – it took some bravery to stick to your guns when you’re faced with that kind of treatment on a day to day basis. But on the other hand, looking “shocking” and behaving in a manner that would be deemed by some as outrageous will have made people sit up and listen, and not enough people had been doing that.’
For Howe, the Slits were one of the most interesting groups to come out of the punk and post-punk movements. ‘They seemed like this creative bolt of lightning in musical history, burning through some prejudice but also producing some seriously mind-bending music, particularly from 1979 onwards. The Slits were vital in changing how many, albeit not enough, people – both male and female – viewed women, women musicians and simply how one can approach music and art.’
And despite the years that have passed, their music still retains its original vibrancy. ‘I just think you can’t even compare the Slits’ output with anyone else’s,’ Howe says. ‘The humour in the lyrics, the strange melodic twists and turns and Ari’s elastic voice going to such unexpected places, blended with the kind of deep dubby bass you’d hear booming out of a Ladbroke Grove shebeen in the late 1970s, jagged, broken glass Beefheart guitar chops: innovative is the word. I think people still need waking up to the Slits; they’ll be glad when they do start that Slitsy voyage of discovery.’ Howe will be speaking to Vic Galloway at this year’s Book Festival too, about her latest book, Barbed Wire Kisses: The Jesus and Mary Chain Story. In it, Howe tells the story
of the cult Scottish band whose noise-pop set the 1980s indie scene alight. ‘To hear a band combining feedback with (sometimes) softly- delivered, melodic pop was a revelation,’ she says. Although a very different band to the Slits, Howe feels the Mary Chain share the same DIY punk spirit and attitude. ‘They represented the weirdos, the oddball spirits adrift in a sea of jocks and straights, bursting with ideas and frustration and working out a way of focusing that energy into something creative. Same spirit, different generation.’
Growing up in cultural isolation in East Kilbride, the core of the band, brothers Jim and William Reid, ‘created their own genre in a way’, explains Howe. ‘They drew on the music and imagery that resonated with them, and they were coming from a very pure place in that nobody was telling them they should like those things – they barely socialised so who would have told them? They found what they liked themselves and via that, they created something new and they did it at their own pace. Just the idea of that is so exciting.’ Some of the most colourful passages in the book are on the band’s anarchic early gigs. ‘Well, the Mary Chain were reliably pissed whenever they played a gig – and often when they weren’t playing a gig,’ says Howe, ‘mainly because they needed the dutch courage. And thus antagonism would spill over between the brothers, or just between Jim and any equipment that happened to be lying about. But Alan [McGee, band manager] knew this kind of thing was publicity gold. While there were dei nitely some early gigs during which, as Jim admitted, they “weren’t sure whether [we] actually played any musical notes”, they became more coni dent with every show. There would always be someone there who was struck by the sheer power and sonic attack of the Mary Chain onstage.’
to perform Having split in 1999, the Mary Chain recently reformed their classic debut Psychocandy to new audiences. ‘The last words of my book, i nished long before the news of the Psychocandy shows had been announced, are [bassist] Douglas Hart’s’, says Howe. ‘He observes that, while the Mary Chain lived through years of relative obscurity, “things come back round, don’t they?” And haven’t they just?’
Zoë Howe: Linking Up With A Cult Scottish Band, 9 Aug, 8.30pm, £10 (£8). Viv Albertine: My Life As A Punk, 10 Aug, 8.30pm, £10 (£8). Both events at Charlotte Square Gardens, 0845 373 5888.
5 MORE . . . MUSICIANS AT THE BOOK FEST Charlotte Square’s musical invasion
AIDAN MOFFAT In contrast to the abject despair / binge drinking / furtive groping often covered in his songwriting, the spoken word artist and ex-Arab Strap member presents his latest offering with not even a PG but a U rating. The Lavender Blue Dress is for ages 7–10 and tells of Mabel’s preparations for a special party. And it rhymes. 10 Aug, 3.30pm, £4.50.
JULIAN COPE Ex-frontman of the Teardrop Explodes, krautrock obsessive and rigorous historian (pictured top) has turned his hand to writing fiction. One Three One is a thriller set in Sardinia, featuring football hooligans, a posh rapper and an appearance from Half Man Half Biscuit. 15 Aug, 9.30pm, £10 (£8). WILLY VLAUTIN The lead singer- songwriter of Richmond Fontaine has just released a debut album from his new band, the Delines. He’s in Edinburgh with his fourth novel, The Free, which looks at the fallout of the Iraq war from an injured veteran’s point of view. 19 Aug, 8.30pm, £10 (£8).
GRUFF RHYS The Super Furry Animals and Neon Neon singer took a break from collaborating with Mogwai, Sparklehorse and co to write American Interior. This true life-inspired tale of a 22-year-old Snowdonian who went to America in search of a Welsh-speaking Native American tribe is part psychedelic travelogue, part tour diary – and pure nuts. 22 Aug, 8.30pm, £10 (£8). JAMES YORKSTON A few days after releasing his new album, The Cellardyke Recording And Wassailing Society, the Fife singer throws a launch party at the Book Festival. He’s accompanied by friends the Pictish Trail and KT Tunstall, who sing on the album. 24 Aug, 9pm, free. Part of Jura Unbound.
(Claire Sawers) All events at Charlotte Square Gardens, 0845 373 5888.
7–14 Aug 2014 THE LIST FESTIVAL 23