Viv Albertine

By her own admission, former punk rocker Viv Albertine played the chatty, entertaining "buffoon" in her dysfunctional family of origin. For the first half of this memoir, which picks up where her earlier Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys (which I haven't read) leaves off, she continues this role. Whether she is delivering frank talk about bodily functions or fighting with her sister at her mother's deathbed, Albertine comes across as an honest, earthy, and show more outsized personality. The second half of the narrative is rougher going, as Albertine excerpts and comments on the diaries both of her parents kept during their acrimonious divorce. This book is not for everyone, but those who stick with it will find many unvarnished truths about the nature of sisterhood and parent-child relationships. show less

I’ve been aware of this since it came out in 2014 and I’m currently feeling a bit embarrassed that it’s taken me ten years to get around to reading it. In fact I’ve only read it at all because I happened to come across a copy in my local charity bookshop a few weeks ago. Well, better late than never, and at least I can now say what everyone else said years ago: this is a terrific book and light years removed from your standard issue rock musician autobiography.

I heard the Slits many show more times on the John Peel show but I’m not sure if ever actually listened to them. Listening to their Peel sessions again for the first time in half a lifetime, as a result of reading this, they seemed even more uncompromising and confrontational than I remember. This is partly to do with context, of course. Back in the day there was no shortage of mutinous upstarts making exuberantly alien noises, so one almost took them for granted. Curious now to think that music as unapologetically singular as this was once, if not exactly in the mainstream, then at least just bubbling under it.

Albertine’s memoir reads something like the way the Slits sounded: raw, thrillingly alive and unsettlingly real. The book is divided into Side One and Side Two. The second side gets distinctly harrowing - miscarriages, cancer, an unhappy marriage - but the first is a wonderfully evocative account of a working-class girl growing up in the 1960s and feeling the empowering effect of the counter-culture and rock music when it was, or at least felt like it was, something more than just entertainment. Her warm memories of Oz, International Times, free concerts in Hyde Park, and the way music, literature and politics interconnected, are really very touching. Her obvious love of that era reaffirmed my own view that punk and post-punk were continuations of the spirit of the ‘60s rather than a rejection of it. She also conveys the liberating effect of punk without ignoring its nihilistic and boneheaded aspects. The great thing about this book is that Albertine doesn’t romanticise anything and makes no attempt to ingratiate herself with the reader. She just tells it as she saw it. Writing autobiography in the present continuous tense usually strikes me as a bit cheap and irritating, but here it works, adding to a genuine sense of immediacy and unfolding experience.

I don’t think you have to be a fan of the Slits, or even interested in punk, to appreciate this. It’s the authentic voice of a lifelong nonconformist and what she has to say is compelling and alternately moving, hilarious and scarifying. It tells you a lot about Albertine but also post-war British society. Near the end of an often uncomfortably honest and intimate book she reveals, with impeccable comic timing, that her manager had suggested it should be ghosted by a young music journalist. Sensibly Viv sacked her manager and wrote it herself. I’m very glad she did. This is one of the most powerful and unguarded autobiographies I have ever read (eventually). show less

One of those books where you read it and think, "How have I missed this in all the years since it came out?"

The chapters are all very short, 2:45 long, and it's one of the fastest and best flowing memoirs I've read. It's even labelled as "Side One" and "Side Two". The stream of consciousness style suits it well and she's good at doing it (maybe that time in film school is showing?). No ghost writing or over-editing here.

If you ever wondered, "The Slits were good, why wasn't there more of show more it?" or "What happened to Viv Albertine?" then here you are. Unless you're chasing that "happy and deadly dull life as a housewife" line from too many bad interviews, then you can get in the sea.

But mostly it's about middle age. When your bright young career didn't, then your body falls apart and what do you do about it? That second half doesn't have the name-checks for every obscure punk musician, but it's the more memorable read.

Also one of the few books with anything good to say about Sid Vicious. show less

This was interesting—much darker than her last, which had a basically positive message (about re-creating yourself artistically and personally as a middle-aged woman). This starts out full of righteous female anger, very much of its time—not #metoo so much as #allofus. But the second half gets heavy. Albertine has the opportunity to read both her parents' diaries after their deaths, chronicling their angry and abusive relationship before their divorce—a chance most of us should feel show more fortunate we don't get. Albertine progresses through and processes several layers of realization as she reads, especially when it comes to her mother—the central figure in her life besides her daughter—who was always a source of strength but, as Albertine comes to understand, a wellspring of great dysfunction, and for good reason. This kind of Rashomon-on-the-couch could be oppressive, but Albertine's voice is so great—profane, funny, literate, and self-deprecating—it elevates the book into an interesting study of what happens when we uncover family secrets, and how to consider them in light of being a fully-formed (or as much as anyone can ever be, which is actually a parallel theme) adult. Not a light read, but interesting and—I'm guessing for many—relatable. show less