The Slits

The story of The Slits starts with a young Spanish girl called Paloma Romero. Later she will be nicknamed Palmolive by Paul Simonon because apparently, he couldn’t pronounce her name right!

Palmolive My sister Esperanza had met with Richard Dudanski the drummer of the 101ers and whom she ended up marrying.  So the second time I went back to England I met up with them and that’s how I met Joe (Strummer) and got involved with the whole squat thing. First I lived in 101 Walterton Road which is where the 101ers got their name from. We were at all the gigs.  I started living with Joe Strummer, who was at the time Woody, for two or more years.

Punk rock...

Palmolive There was a time when the Sex Pistols came on the scene. It was like a transition time for me and I had left Joe and told him I didn’t know if wanted to continue having a relationship with him. Anyway when I came back I had made my mind up that I loved him and wanted to be with him and when I got there he had started The Clash. We had been on the phone in contact and he had explained a little bit to me and I got interested in punk too. I was so tired and disgusted with the hippy thing, sitting around smoking dope. I thought this is great, this is what I need; it sounds good. And it went along with my temperament, my aggressiveness, like the whole in-your-face attitude and writing songs, not having to be perfectly correct musically. I thought I’d start a group.

I loved dancing and with the 101ers I used to love to dance and I figured that drums was kinda like dancing. I like rhythm. I’m not very musical, but I can feel rhythm very strongly.

So Palmolive’s first band is The Flowers Of Romance and is where she meets Viv Albertine for the first time.

Before that there was Flowers Of Romance. Because we were hanging out with the Clash and the Sex Pistols were rivals but we still went together to gigs or whatever. I had met Sid Vicious and he had asked me to be in his group and we practiced in the squat that we had. There was a girl Sarah [Faull] on bass. But it didn’t last very long because one day he just said you’re not in the group anymore. I asked why and he replied ‘You’re not right’. He wanted to sleep with me and I did not want to. That is why he sacked me, I believe.’ 

Palmolive What happened with Sid was the best thing that ever happened to me. Girls are usually treated all nice. But after I was chucked out of that group I really got my shit together. The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion, Caroline Coon.

Viv wants to play guitar in a band and is going out with Mick Jones who is also desperately seeking a band after a number of failed attempts. She is also being taught/mentored by Keith Levine. Her stint in the Flowers Of Romance is equally brief as Sid also sacks her too!

Palmolive So then I was thinking. I still want to have a group so I will form my own one and I decided I wanted to do a girl’s group. We went to a Patti Smith gig and I saw Ari and she was acting crazy. So I asked Ari because I had seen her yelling at her mom and just being like a brat. She was 14 at the time. I had a certain idea of what a front person should be like e.g. very little inhibitions, and she definitely had very little inhibitions and so that’s why I picked her. Suzi [Gutzi] was living at my squat at one point though I can’t remember how I met her to be honest. Kate I knew before because there was a connection with her boyfriend and the 101ers.

Ari (Arianna Forster) was the daughter of Norah, whose family had money and who had dated Chris Spedding for some years. In addition one of Ari’s godparents was Jon Anderson out of Yes. Completely naive, untamed and a sponge for influences. She was also fearless, as her gig performances show, and her front would allow her to visit reggae clubs, often in the company of Don Letts, without fear or trouble most of the time.

Norah and Johnny Rotten would get together in 1977 and marry till Norah died in 2023.

Suzi is kicked out of the band because she was just really out of it all the time and wasn’t making it to practice. Suzy would re-appear in another punk band called Flicks mid 1977 whose drummer was Denise Dufort later of Girlschool.

So a new bassist was needed and it came in the form of Tessa Pollitt from an article in the News Of The World, not by some shock horror journalist but Vivienne Goldman on her one tabloid outing trying to promote women in music. Tessa was actually a guitarist but switched to bass 2 weeks before the first gig.

The name that was chosen for the band was The Slits; perfect, but would be a millstone around their necks later on.

Palmolive We were like any group trying to pick a name. It was Kate’s idea and it sounded provocative and we thought it sounded great. We hated your normal working person, had contempt for the authorities and status quo and contempt for the hippies. We were like the generation afterward. We weren’t into love and peace. As one of my songs says ‘If you want peace and flowers, I’m gonna give you knife and chains.’ 

Their debut gig was in March 1977 supporting friends The Clash. The gig very nearly didn’t happen. Jon Moss, The Clash’s new drummer, had walked out on the band so Terry Chimes temporarily returned.

Tessa Politt The first Slits gig we played, we played with The Clash. It was in Harlesden. I had only picked up the bass two weeks before. I wasn’t a musician. I was terrified, but you know I was just 17, and at that age you have so much energy and excitement in you, it carries you. I remember at one point onstage, me and Palmolive looked at each other in amazement as if to say “What the fuck are you doing?” We were all playing a different song from each other! But we got away with so much, and the audience didn’t care. The energy was what mattered. We were playing from our heart. Literally. With spirit. Our spirit was there.

How would the new all girl band, the Slits, shape up at the Roxy? If the Sounds review by Martha Zenfell is to be believed, then not that good for the Slits and the type of review below would be typical for a long while.

…we are waiting for that girl group with the name that launched a thousand leers – the Slits… “We’re not the Runaways,” one of them bawls before launching into a wall of noise so unendurable as to be almost sick. Harsh incomprehensible lyrics spat to ugly screeches. Not a hint of tempo, even less of an attempt. Sounds, 9.4.77

While the journalists may have not have understood the Slits, others in the crowd were influenced by the Slits and their attitude.

Gina Birch (the Raincoats) I was so hugely inspired by seeing the Slits at that first gig of theirs in Harlesden and then many, many more times.  Palmolive’s sister and I sang backing vocals at their second gig at the Roxy on Kate Korus’ song ‘Selling It.’ We were very inspired by punk particularly, The Slits, Subway Sect, ATV and Patti Smith The punk that Ari and Tessa talk about –  the pursuing of new ideas and being true to yourself –  we took as far as we could.

 

The band are seen by Viv Albertine at the Coliseum gig with The Clash and Subway Sect on April 9^th, 1977. Viv had been approached for the vacant bass position but turned it down. Watching the band has a similar effect on her as when she saw the Sex Pistols and she wanted in.

Viv makes the call the next day and turns up thinking she would be second guitar and the girls all immediately click. Kate Koriss isn’t there. Suspicion had been that she had been ousted by the band on the influence of Joe Strummer who thought she didn’t look the part. Two weeks later The Slits embark as support to The Clash on the White Riot tour.

Palmolive We played live with Kate at the beginning. We kicked her out and that was wrong. We just said the image wasn’t right but it was the whole look and who’s right and not right. So we got Vivien and Tessa to make the final lineup. That was something I didn’t feel good about.

The Clash were very important to the band. In fact it could be argued that without The Clash and their support they wouldn’t have been able to continue or develop like they did. Unlike other bands who formed, The Slits were given full tours that enabled them to improve their craft.

Palmolive  The Clash were very important. We were friends. We were a great support group for them because we were very different. It worked both ways even if they were more organized, had a manager and were musically better. We were a good support for them on account of how controversial we were. Just from being girls and the type of girls we were.

It was a strange relationship, almost a punk Fleetwood Mac situation. Paloma had split with Strummer and Viv had split with Mick Jones and there they were on tour. With all these young hormones in the air you’d think it was a sex and drugs rock’n’roll shagfest but no.

Ari: Well they were important in practical terms, helping us to learn our instruments but also in just supporting us and not messing with us. We did survive I think because we did have such a strong support circle around us, specifically boys because it was mainly boys around us at that time. I remember being fourteen and not one of them even tried anything.

What I loved about our support system of guys is there was a window open for women, we were able to do what we wanted and guys didn’t take offense, but they also didn’t take advantage. None of the guys were trying to come onto me. None of The Clash, Pistols, none of the other punk groups, that’s what’s so great about that time. We were able to be all hanging out platonically.

The Slits did have substantial support behind them. The Clash were the biggest, giving them at least 2 major tours as support and one-offs when they could barely play on their own, let alone as a band, that other bands would have killed for. When there was real trouble Ari’s mum Nora would bail them out. Julie Burchill & Tony Parson were quick to see this and skewered The Slits (like every punk band) in their acerbic reflection on Punk.

..not so much music as aural designed to elevate them above the posing punkette ordinaire….Any other band who couldn’t carry a tune and couldn’t get a recording contract would be tossing and turning all night. But The Slits sleep as snug as smug bugs in a rug. Because co-incidentally their whole dalliance with show business has been courtesy of Arianas’s mother. Burchill/Parsons, Boy Looked At Johnny

So The Slits are literally learned by playing in front of people and that often meant chaos onstage.

Palmolive We sounded very bad! We didn’t know how to play. We were no good but in our mind we were very good. We despised people like the Rolling Stones or disco music or people who played an instrument. We despised them because it was very self centred or egotistical. We were making a statement. You did not have to be good performers. People should like us for who we were. It wasn’t just the musical thing so we considered ourselves a group in our own right and we were making something totally new that people hadn’t seen before. So were not ashamed of our lack of instrument knowledge.

We did practice; we wanted to get better at that but we wanted to create a new sound, our own sound. We felt that a lot of bands all sounded the same. A lot of the punk groups sounded the same. I have to say that the Raincoats and Slits sounded different. They didn’t sound like regular groups like The Jam or someone like that. We were trying to be experimental with it. Almost like a little kid’s painting. It’s naïve but it has a charm and we did have that.  We were trying to play together. I had never played the drums before. So I experimented. I played around with them and I loved the toms so I didn’t play the high hat like most groups so that gave us a different sound.

The band divided into camps; Tessa and Palmolive and Viv and Ari. Ari is an untamed 14 year old from public school. She is both one of the band’s key assets and main problems. She is the front person but has no real-life experience to draw on. She is also wild and completely original and nowadays no doubt would be diagnosed with some disorder. So the focus is on her behavior which isn’t always to the band’s benefit.

Viv Albertine She’s loud, boisterous, rude, unstable and desperate for attention every second of the day… She makes enemies wherever we go, pissing off soundmen, promoters, potential managers and other bands with her attitude. Clothes, Music, Boys

She also, according to Viv, makes no concessions to attract boys whether in looks or character. She just does what she does and dresses how she wants for herself.

That said a Slits performance is an event. Different members of the band start different songs off creating a cacophony. Drums unsecured topple over. Arguments between band members erupt, songs suddenly stop and different members backcomb their hair. Ari stomps around the stage like a petulant child and often forgets to sing into the microphone. However she is the musical one of the band and she brings melodies and rhythms to the band who have no stagecraft or live experience.

Chris Sullivan The Slits – fantastic. They all started at the wrong time doing different songs – superb. The Punk Book.

Marco Pirroni  I liked the Slits. They played so badly, you couldn’t make out what the fuck they were going. The Punk Book

Hard to know whether to take these comments as compliments. 

It became them and us on all fronts

Straight away there was a gang mentality and trouble. Being a punk was bad enough, but being a female punk and the mode of dress was both sexually and violently provocative.

Palmolive We went out in the street and everybody would turn around and would look intimidated and we would love that. 80% was visual provocation to begin with and 20% attitude. Some people thought it was put on, but we actually had fights on the stage. We didn’t care. We had real fights. So we didn’t do it on purpose but the media loved that and it was almost like what the crowd wanted.

There was real violence though. Hard to comprehend now.

We were kids, but the irony is we were attacked like in a witch hunt. It was like witches. We were walking in the middle ages. Because it was so threatening to them. Young girls dressed like that, and not caring what they thought. It was fear, definitely fear.

Tessa Politt I remember one time, the Pistols were playing at The Screen on The Green, Islington. In the foyer, this guy came up to us, came up behind Ari Up and said, “So you’re The Slits? Well, Here’s a slit for you” and he just shoved a knife into her backside. Sliced her butt, quite literally, right there. Luckily for Ari, she was wearing so many layers of clothes, the damage was limited.

It just seemed to others that we were asking for it. The vibe towards us was, “Know your place woman”! It seemed that we couldn’t go anywhere without getting a reaction from people. The attitude was that we were asking for it, but we certainly weren’t asking anyone to come up behind us with a knife.

As if this wasn’t enough, more horrifically Ari up went to a party on her own with 2 guys and ended up being raped at just 15; something she kept hidden until years later.

Ari Up The irony was, even back in The Slits days I don’t know we survived, so many people working against us, we were already up against the whole fucking entire world, never mind that even within our inside circle we had enemies, like that working against us. But what it did was make us survive. And what made us survive was that we had such a support system around us.

Palmolive Every article helped whether it was for or against it gave us publicity and it did something to us too. If someone said we were bad it would urge us to keep going more. We got a lot for the little that we were doing for how disorganized we were. We didn’t have a real manager like the Pistols or Clash had. They also had places to practice and better equipment. We didn’t.

I was really looking forward to seeing them but for me they were a big letdown… as a band they were totally untogther…they were going to put the Runaways to shame, but how can they when they’re using nearly the same tactics playing on their femininity. I know it was their first gig but the Slits must sort themselves out if they want to be taken seriously. Sharon Spike, Coliseum gig, 1977

I love those visual come ons that draw me to the stage, lusting for The Slits and loving being manipulated so easily. Musically they go for the white noise technique rather than a tune trip, probably because they can’t play normally, but I don’t care because it sounds good the way it is. Tony D, Ripped & Torn Vortex 1977 gig

They develop a set of songs which are initially driven by Palmolive. The subject matter of the songs clearly shows how the band had embraced punk and how far from traditional female lyrics and themes they were. Bar the Sex Pistols, The Slit’s lyrics show an extreme of invective commentary about their lives and what they thought they believed in.

Palmolive To begin with I can say I was one of the main writers. We had 8 songs that we did for a long time and about 4 of them at least were mine. No 1 Enemy (a typical punk rock attitude coming from the heart. I was part of it and it was how I felt), New Town (people who are working all the time to the clock and watching TV, materialistic…I hate that system and I’m not part of it), Shop Lifting and FM. Tess wrote Vaseline. Ari had written two, one of which was Slime and the other Lets Do The Split, and Vivienne had written So Tough, Typical Girls and Love & Romance.

They expounded more in a Zigzag interview in October 1977.

Viv – So Tough is about Sid (Vicious) and John (Rotten). They went throuigh a period of really not getting on, not understanding each other. Drug Town is about getting hung up on punctuality and football, or television. It’s just as much a drug as any drug is.

Ari – Shopifing is about shoplifting, that you usually do. “Slime” is about someone you want to have it off with. “Let’s Do The Split ” [also known as Vindictive] …It’s like a typical guy who wants to have the woman under his thumb like his housewife and all that. We’re not having it. Social Servant [one of Kate Koriss’s songs] is about a real boring old fart like almost everyone is, working from seven o’clock you know.

Palmolive – Number one Enemy is about all the people who tell you what to do all the time and you’re just saying ‘fuck-off’, we’re not having it! Then Love & Romance is a piss take about lovey dovey, kiss, kiss, kiss

Tessa “Vasolene’s about coming on people. It’s got a double meaning – “come to me, come on me”.

The first few songs I wrote you can tell like No 1 Enemy and the same with the others. Then Adventures Close to Home a later song is like looking at my own life and saying I’m searching for something like Don Quixote’s dream of fighting dragons. These are very different attitudes now. Now I’m looking at myself and asking what am I looking for. 

In addition they neither ally themselves with women’s lib nor punk

Viv Albertine ‘We’re just not interested in questions about Women’s Liberation’ she says with disdain. There’s loads of people who think rock is basically a male idiom, but bollocks! … All that chauvinism stuff doesn’t matter a fuck to us… You either think chauvinism is shit, or you don’t. We think it’s shit. Caroline Coon, 1988 – The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion

And being labelled ‘punk’.

Palmolive We are not punks. We’re are The Slits…
Ari And we play Slits music!
Palmolive… We don’t belong to anything. Zigzag #75 August 1977

The band is captured on the Punk In London film by Wolfgang Büld playing at the Vortex London.

They are also, given their inexperience and gigs played, equal page space/publicity (11 full A4 pages) as the Sex Pistols, Clash, Damned & Stranglers in music journalists Caroline Coon’s seminal 1988: The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion that was one of the first books issued about Punk in 1977.

But The Slits improved and they landed a John Peel session which assumes the stuff of legend. Unused to a studio or what you are supposed to do the girls encounter unsympathetic soundmen but still produce a session that captures their power and originality and which sways a number of their critics.

Interestingly they had declined some offers to appear on record. Firstly the Live at The Roxy WC2 when they were recorded back in March. Secondly Derek Jarman’s Jubilee. They appear smashing up a car but not the soundtrack. That said it’s uncertain whether there were offers or, like with Adam & The Ants & Siouxsie, companies were scared.

Different interviews at different times have the girls saying contradicting things. It’s either that record labels were gagging for them or frustrated that they weren’t.

Viv Albertine We were banned from mainstream media because of our name.. No PR guy would touch us because we were too much trouble or too in your face.

We had a hard time getting a deal admits Ari.  Recalling that Strummer was saying respect The Slits for not signing but they desperately wanted to. Typical Girls? The Story Of The Slits, Zoe Street Howe

Even when record labels called they would get straight through to the band who either not liking the labels’ propositions or would just ignore, Palmolive was defiantly anti major labels.

At the end of 1977 the band got an offer from Island Records to record, mix, and press an album to get it into shops within 24 hours. The band declined and Warsaw Pakt picked up the offer and released Needle Time. The Slits don’t want a gimmick and want to wait until the songs are developed and they are ready.

Drugs had entered the band and Tess had developed a dabbling in heroin – not enough to become a full blown addict but enough to give her something down the line to fill the void when the band eventually split up. January also saw them play the Gibus Club in France and Malcolm McLaren entered as a possible manager for the band. All except Palmolive wanted to sign with him which caused friction.

Palmolive He wanted to be our manager at one point. His approach to us was he hated music and he hated girls and nobody seemed to hear it.  I’m going to the other three wait a minute. Why didn’t they see it? I had to convince them not to go with him. I remember he took us to a private homosexual club like to break us you know. He came up to me and said “You wrote Shoplifting; that’s the best song.” He was creeping to me and I felt so uneasy. Something smelt fishy to me. I managed to sway the girls. It was pull and push and it created tensions.

It was a narrow escape. For all McLaren’s skills as a publicist and event maker, he was still pursuing his own agenda following the Sex Pistols’ chaotic collapse and the filming of the Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle.  McLaren had a film idea for the Slits too as recounted in Craig Blomberg’s book The Wicked Ways Of Malcolm McLaren. “He wanted them to play a rock band with the hideously mistaken idea of jump starting their career in Mexico, where they would eventually wind up co-opted into disco purgatory, ‘getting fucked from one end of Mexico to the other.'” Nice! He also wanted them to sign to the German Disco label Hansa which would have fitted in nicely with the disco purgatory.

He did however have discussions with Chris Blackwell of Island Records about taking The Slits and the film for an advance of £100k according to Paul Gormann’s Malcolm McLaren autobiography.

While a good session, the band hadn’t moved forward that much in the nine months since the last. If anything the band was veering towards more heavy metal bar chord territory a la Runaways.

Mid year a mooted deal with Real Records to release So Tough as a single fell through when the fine print of the deal was examined by their then-manager from Deaf School & The Yachts Frank Silver. Silver followed a long line of managers that included Boogie (Sex Pistols Roadie) Don Letts and Magenta De Vine. Real Records, owned by Dave Hill, would go on to release perennial punk bridesmaid guitarist Chrissie Hynde’s (a one time outside, but never likely, possibility for The Slits) band The Pretenders to great success and ex beau of Viv’s, Johnny Thunders solo album So Alone.

The band then got their first major feature in the NME. It’s a front page and double middle pages spread by old guard but foot in the new writer Nick Kent. The photography is done by Pennie Smith, who the girls get on well with, and which will matter when they finally come to do their record. Their image has softened from the more antagonistic punk clothing to a still provocative more feminine assured Slits style.

The feature is very balanced and supportive but contains a very personal question to Ari that seems at odds with the rest of the interview.

The only time she [Ari] becomes enamored with the interview is when I ask her- if at sixteen- she’s still a virgin. “Ah that’s a good question,” she retorts, seemingly relishing the reply. “No, I’m no longer a virgin. The first time was enjoyable but the second time was … oh it was hideous – really really bad.”

You can only infer that the second time was the rape.

The publication date of the interview was October 10th and there’s nothing in there with the four girls to suggest anything amiss. There’s an irony in the feature where he mentions Palmolive and the Flowers of Romance saying she “… was unceremoniously booted out by Albertine and Vicious…”

But behind the scenes, fractures had appeared. The band had always divided up between Palmolive and Tess and Ari and Viv. Palmolive though had become distracted; the band and music no longer seemed the primary driver and she was drifting rather than pulling her weight.

Palmolive Something had started to bother me. In a selfish way, I had come to realise this was not what I wanted or turning out the way I expected. It wasn’t just altruism. As it went on I kept thinking I don’t know what it was all about. I didn’t know where I was going with my life but I felt that I didn’t want to be part of the music business and that created clashes.

Viv One of the things was – like, the way a person plays an intsrument is their whole personality and Palomive started getting into Indian philosophy and stuff, which is great – you can incorporate anything into the group. But you can’t dogmatically expect the whole group to turn into Indian gurus cos you’re into it. It was just a parting of the ways. It just had to happen. Everyone’s taking it seriously but it’s not serious. Mental Children, #1, 1980

It would be Viv who had taken over being the main driver of the band, following a stint in hospital at the end of September 1978 who realised how much the band meant to her and who would instigate Palmolive’s sacking from the band. She wouldn’t do it herself though, she would leave it to Palmolive’s best friend in the band Tessa.

Tessa I told her. It was in the kitchen, She was in a real funny mood because she felt something was wrong…she knew it was coming…. (on signing to record labels) She’s really against big companies. Even against Island.”

Palmolive and The Raincoats would get onto vinyl first with Fairy Tale In The Supermarket produced by Red Crayola’s Mayo Thompson. which would be NME’s single of the week on April 28th reviewed by Paul Morley. An interview on the 9th June 1979 with the band in the NME has Palmolive revealing her thoughts on her sacking.

They decided they wanted to get professional and they thought I couldn’t play drums so they chucked me out. It came from the manager [Frank Silver] …But I was very pissed off that you had to be a stylish musician to be in a group. I just didn’t really fit in with the things they wanted to do.

Finishing off the year the girls were support on The Clash’s ‘Sort It Out’ Tour of 30 dates from mid December onwards (The Clash now being managed by Caroline Coon) with another 3/4 girl driven band The Innocents, one of whom was Sarah Hall on bass way back from the Flowers Of Romance days.

He joins the band over the wekeend for some demo sessions they are doing and theyb hit off straight away. He signs on as a boy Slit for an album and tour and the all-girl Slits have a male in their midst and there is calm. He is in place, replacing Palmolive, and on tour within 6 weeks which seems incredibly fast.

Do they sound any different as they leave 1979? Not according to the footage below from Don Letts, which though saying 1980, is unlikely to be as Budgie had left post the album release.

But they do want to change and in particular, Viv as she mentions in her book.

Viv Albertine I’m moving away from the buzzsaw, industrial whine I was developing with Keith… I hate the note bending flashy solos, posturing and lip pursing of a lot of male rock guitarists but I’ve found some I like. I’m influenced by Steve Cropper (of Booker T and the MG’s) at the moment, also the guitarist on the Dionne Warwick record and reggae guitar playing, and I love Carlos Alomar on David Bowie’s album Low. Clothes, Music, Boys

It would be this along with Ari Up’s distinctive vocals, the girl’s harmonies and Tessa’s improving fluid bass lines, backpinned by Budgie that would develop The Slits sound but it would take an experienced mentor/teacher to bring it all out.

And so in February Island came through with an offer that according to Viv is after Nora phones Island and sets up a meeting with Chris Blackwell.

The second was though Island was a smaller player, they specialised in the more off the wall quirky bands and musicians and the ethos set down by Blackwell was to give the artists space and freedom. The downside was that Blackwell hadn’t a clue how to market or progress his acts and they often stagnated or left.

For the girls, it seemed the perfect label, with its extensive back catalogue of dub and reggae and its policy of taking chances on more obscure or difficult to promote artists.

The deal was just for one single and album, which is strange in itself, and doesn’t scream longevity or confidence in the band. Island also had a history of finding successful niche artists but not understanding or promoting right their bands. Regardless the girls signed but stipulated that they retained artistic control over artwork etc. Given their naivety so far, this was their wisest move in the music business up to this point. The advance was £45k a lot less than McLaren asked for.

The photographer was Dennis Morris who had risen to A&R man for Island and had signed Linton Kwesi Johnson. Previously he had photographed the Sex Pistols, accompanied Letts and Lydon to Jamaica and in conjunction with Bloomfield & Spears as sleeve designers did the photography for such iconic acts as Burning Spears’s Marcus Garvey album. To this day he claims he signed the Slits to Island which may or may not be true.

Chronologically now, established versions in both Viv’s and Zoe Street Howe’s books go awry. The first recording for Island is I Heard It Through The Grapevine which is done at Island’s Basing Street studios in Notting Hill but the band don’t have a drummer. Now the only time the band don’t have a drummer is a short period when they sack Palmolive at the end of September. If this was a demo as a potential single release before signing with Island then it would make sense. It woulkd also make sense

Island suggests Maxie Edwards, a reggae drummer from Jamaica who’d played with some major acts. In only their third time in a proper studio, the band rip through the song. Mixing it is more problematic. Island have appointed Dennis Brown who doesn’t do anything and the band use a tape op named Rima and she does the job we know today. She mixes what is arguably one of the finest cover songs that zips and skanks with a light heartedness and has a bassline the equal of Jah Wobble’s Public Image!

Island want the song as the A side to the band’s first single but the Slits are firm that it should be one of their own songs. But there’s a long gap to their next songs being recorded and no single comes out.

The girls get their second cover and interview in April Zigzag #93 magazine whose editor Kris Needs was a strong supporter of the band from the first gig. Again the photos are done by Dennis Morris. Now you would expect Island to get the girls in quickly into the studios but getting to a finished product actually takes a long time. Considering they were ‘signed’ in February, the album and single don’t come out till September. The interview has the girls saying a probable June/summer for the album release.

Island don’t get it all right but what happens next is not their fault.  Dennis Morris had designed the punning PIL logo, did the photos and cover art for the first PIL album and while Cut was being worked on had suggested the innovative packaging for Metal Box that was due to be released at roughly the same time.

In short, surely the perfect person to work with the band. An undoubtedly talented man, but for The Slits the wrong man. His idea for the record cover is to glamourise the band which doesn’t go down well. On his part, he tries to get Viv (according to her autobiography) removed from the band and Ari confirms in our early 2006 interview that the relationship wasn’t good. Whatever he does, it does not go down well, with the girls and he is removed from the band.

Ari Up … this guy always would cut our throats behind our backs, always trying to sneakily brainwash us once we were signed, what kind of picture sessions we should have, what album cover, what kind of sound even, what music, and it was all really cheesy, really corny, and he thought the LP cover should be us in zippers, in plastic with these neon, bright colours, with a Charlie’s Angels type picture of us with our hair all backcombed in this foggy picture. Ms Dayglo Interview, April 2006

Dennis would end up in Basement 5 as the singer and also be signed to Island.

How Island come to suggest Dennis Bovell of the band Matumbi probably came as a combination of things. The Slits’ latest manager was Dick O’Dell who also managed Bristol’s The Pop Group. A band with a punk sensibility, but with underlying funk and post-punk tunes allied to some serious political lyrics. Their album Y was produced by Dennis Bovell and the following from Wikipedia describes the result, though not quotes from the time of its release.

To record their debut, the group teamed with British dub reggae producer Dennis Bovell. Critic Simon Reynolds wrote that “Bovell’s mix of acid-rock wildness and dub wisdom made him […] the ideal candidate for the not hugely enviable task of giving The Pop Group’s unruly sound some semblance of cohesion,” noting that he grounded the band’s sound in its rhythm section while utilizing a variety of production effects. Writing for Fact, Mark Fisher characterized the album’s sound as a “delirial montage of funk, free jazz, Jamaican audio-mancy and the avant-garde,” describing it as “both carvernous and propulsive, ultra-abstract yet driven by dance music’s physical imperatives.” He noted the “sonic alchemy” of Bovell’s production work. PopMatters wrote that the group “sharpened the straightforward guitar lines of punk, the bounding throb of funk rhythms, and the sonic manipulation of dub and let them penetrate each other in ridiculously slapdash fashion.”

Just substitute ‘Slits’ for ‘The Pop Group’ and ‘Reggae’ for ‘Funk’ in the above quote and you’ve got Cut. You also can’t help to notice the mud-related loincloth ‘tribal’ themes of both band’s covers. Dennis had also produced black dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson on Island Records. The pairing is again inspired.

The Slits album featured the majority of songs coming from two years earlier. Rather than sound outdated the songs had been updated as the band’s proficiency increased, exposed to new sounds and the ability to express themselves.

Recording with Bovell is everything that it should be. He brings out the best in the band but doesn’t impose, occasionally adding or suggesting touches. Songs are reworked and added to like New Town. Mistakes or spur of the moment accidents and snippets of conversations captured on mike are kept in. It’s a productive symbiotic relationship.

The band just don’t go in like the John Peel sessions and whack the songs out. The deluxe Cut edition gives 8 track demos, rough mix and then the LP mix and shows the work in progress.

It’s easy to forget but Ari was just 16 when they recorded this album which makes the whole package delivered even more amazing. Arguably the biggest change is Viv’s guitar playing which moves from standard bar chord distortion and masculine guitar between-legs stance to something more comfortably feminine.

As we leave 1979 and The Slits finally getting onto record you can’t help but mention the cover. A whole thesis could be done on it if you had the time. According to Viv in her autobiography, it was going to be holiday snaps of the girls, including some topless ones, on the cover but her mum deliberately spilt coffee on them to ruin them as she didn’t want to see her daughter like that. Overnight the girls discuss doing a woodland shoot. Before long they’re smearing mud over themselves, wearing loin cloths and as a result of going a bit stir-crazy from weeks of recording strip off.

Viv Albertine We know we have to have a warrior stance, not try and be all seductive. We’re aware what we’re doing could be misconstrued, we want the photo to have the right attitude, not be prurient. Clothes, Music, Boys

To get the best image of all three of the band Viv is cut out from another photo and superimposed. The designer is Neville Brody and the photographer is Pennie Smith meaning more Clash synchronicity. It’s she who will capture the shot of Paul Simenon that is used on their seminal London Calling cover released in December 1979 and whose video is done by Don Letts.

Misconstrued is the word and everyone has an opinion. Proud defiance and pride in one’s natural body or no better than page 3 girls using their breasts to titillate to sell records.

While Viv may have claimed the above, Palmolive thought differently and the account differs significantly in that she says it was Island who wanted the shot and her rejection of it caused her to be ousted from the band. The timings don’t fit for this but it doesn’t change Palmolive’s sentiment.

Palmolive They (the record company) had the idea of us on the front covered in mud. I used to dress up in fishnets and miniskirts so it was not like I was a saint. But to me what was the difference between that cover and a pin up girl on a poster? It was like selling out. We were there to give a different statement.  I was very naive and I had said that I’m not doing that. It was soon after that that I got kicked out of the band. We hadn’t done any recording yet but we were about to because they thought I was a problem child and so that was that. 

Punk77 It all gets a little self-righteous here and one can’t help but think people are creating their own agenda. The claim that they were one of the first all female bands to avoid being ‘marketed as sex objects’ seems a little strange with the ‘Cut’ cover. Precisely how do you market a cover like that?

To suggest they are ‘modern primitive feminist rebels’ is also misleading. Maybe they were but with no context, they just had their breasts out.  For instance I was 15 when this album came out and primarily my eyes were drawn to the cover. Who has this been marketed to appeal to?  I and many others didn’t see it as anything but three nudes on a cover! What’s the difference between ‘Cut ‘and the picture of Wendy Williams of The Plasmatics or Cosi Fanni Tutti from Throbbing Gristle? Maybe there isn’t! Discuss!

Looking back on it now, and considerably older, I see three proud women who had produced the album they wanted to do on their own terms, divested of anything that tied them to punk and categorisation including clothes making arguably the most punk visual statement in ‘We’ve laid everything bare – come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough!’

Twenty years later Ari would bump into Dennis Morris again in a Jamaica hotel and hear him proclaim the Spice Girls were the new Slits. He also lets rip to her on the cover.

“Do you know what? That Cut album cover, you should never have had that cover, that was shit, that ruined it for you, that ruined your career! You should never have been in mud naked there on the cover. It was really trashy, you should never have done it.”

The album made it into the top 30 in the charts but their single got nowhere despite a video being made by Don Letts and as their contract stipulated, the girls were done with Island. The girls may have had foresight over the cover but moneywise they were not so prurient and a strong manager should have helped here. Tours (including the one post album where they flew over a variety of artists from America and put them up on tour), videos, living and recording expenses plus Dennis Bovell’s fee all came from the advance they’d been given and more. Years later Viv would complain at never having received a penny royalty as they were still paying off the debt. Ironic then that the one Slit to actually make money was Palmolive as around half of the songs were hers.

Their next port of call was ironically the independent Rough Trade. They lost Budgie to the Banshees and with with no Clash or tight-knit punk community to offer support or coherence they were just another band. As Viv says in Jon Savage’s ‘England’s Dreaming “It all fell apart when everyone became a working band.” It also didn’t help that member (s) of the band were starting to be affected by drugs.

This is Viv talking about not choosing Grapevine but it’s also a perfect summary of The Slits. They could have released a record earlier but chose to wait and got rid of their founder member/drummer. The album and single could have made their music more accessible but the Slits attitude in them delivered an album virtually impossible to market with its cover and a single with the obvious ‘hit’ relegated to the b side.

…but we were so stubborn. I think every choice we made we steered ourselves further and further away from any sort of commercial success without knowing. Zoe Street Howe – Typical Girls? The Story Of The Slits

The Slits carried until 1982, releasing another album, doing another John Peel session with a certain Neneh Cherry helping out on vocals and even moving to the major label CBS. But when Ari got pregnant it all just stopped and they never came back together. Years later they would regroup but without Viv as a full time member. Ari’s death in October 2010 brought an end to the band.

Amazingly The Slits had no recorded output till late 1979. The only studio recorded document of their earlier period as an all girl group in the midst of punk is the John Peel radio sessions of which the first is where it all just comes together disproving any doubters who thought they couldn’t do it. ‘Vindictive’ is the pick for achieving greatness in the maelstrom.

Ken Garner It was everyone hitting  anything as loudly as possible; vaguely in time, there was a sort of rhythm there, and this maniac shrieking on top…it just sounded painful…The tuning of the guitars was all over the place…so myself and the other engineer…had to go out and tune them ourselves…they didn’t have a clue how to.” Nick Gomm (Engineer) In Session Tonight

Palmolive I think that was the best …that was the Slits. What came afterwards was variations but that was the time that we managed our differences to work together and that’s what we produced. So musically I think we were part of the punk initiative and we were definitely a valid part of it like pioneers in it. 

Viv Albertine That was the first time we’d ever been in a studio. Lots of people thought the result better than the album. It was absolutely raw, more raw than any boys’ band . I almost can’t believe we had that much energy. Clothes, Music, Boys

Ari Up It’s not more real, it’s different real. We were just as real doing our stuff there, actually. We got bored with that style, and no-one at the time wanted a proper record deal with us, so tough shit, they missed it!…a lot of bands stayed doing the same thing –…but to me that wasn’t punk, punk to me was the freedom of doing whatever the fuck you wanted, and not following a pattern. We needed to change.

Two other pre Cut recordings exist that came out after Cut. Live at the Gibus Club in Paris from January 1978 when McLaren was briefly involved with the band. The second was a release on the Pop Group’s Y records that included early songs from bootlegs and rehearsal tapes from 1977 and also had Nina Hagen and Vic Goddard on a couple of songs.

Like Palmolive, a lot of people thought these recordings the real Slits and the real subversion. This is from the Die of DIY blogspot.

Like The Prats and Eater, The Slits had an underage member, one Ari Up, some posh German aristocrat who hung out at blues parties. They made a major label album, “Cut” for Island, with drafted in session men,and top reggae producers, which,although sounded good at the time, I now know to be a complete and utter ‘SELL OUT’. That coupled with a German princess talking Jamaican patois, and you have a truly sickening cocktail.

But, before selling out, they were a feral super nova of previously unseen proportions. Witnessing them live was like watching a pack of hyena’s stripping bare a corpse; the corpse in this case being Rock’n’Roll, and there ain’t nuffin’ more Rock’n’Roll than that!

This was only captured on audio in their 1977 peel sessions,and this cassette recorded racket from squatland, London. (Is that anywhere near Squatney, where the young Spinal Tap came from? Ed.)
We have the non-selling out Pop Group to thank for this archive release, on their Y Records imprint; mirroring their own official bootleg release, “We Are Time”, from the same year.

These primal paint-stripping rain dances are like having your brains scraped out with broken finger nail extensions, then shit on, grilled, and force fed back to you; and you WILL enjoy it.

Greil Marcus is equally impressed and unimpressed

Shouting and shrieking, out of the guitar noise the band finds a beat, makes a rhythm, begins to shape it: unmediated female noises never before heard as pop music. The Slits march hand in hand through a storm they themselves have created. It’s a performance of joy and revenge. Every musical chance is taken—and for these teenagers, playing the simplest chord was taking a chance: their amateurism was not enlightened. The formal progressions of present-day hardcore have no more extended this music than the world has caught up with it, and the world has no more caught up with it than it has caught up with El Lissitzky.

By 1979, when the Slits made their first official recordings, Palmolive had been replaced by a professional drummer, and the band featured itself as a born-again reggae combo. When they began a number you could hear them try to begin it; when they tried to state a theme you could hear a statement. All they brought from the playground was the giggle, and it had a sour edge. Applied to a received style, amateurism communicated as smugness; these people hadn’t bothered to learn how to play the music they supposedly loved. The result was a curio of après punk, and bought, one suspects, mainly because on the sleeve the remaining Slits appeared nude, albeit covered in mud. The music was boring because it made ordinary sense.

Personally, I think there’s room for both versions of The Slits but it’s fun to fantasise with a ‘what if they had been signed after that first Peel session and the havoc and influence they could have wreaked!’

Cut
(Island Records September 1979)

When you look at it the album is a bit of a conundrum. At least 50% of the album is two years old and one song ‘So Tough’ is about a fallout between Vicious & Rotten and the former already dead. By the time of this album the Sex Pistols had released Never Mind The Bollocks, the first PIL album and the soon to be post punk classic Metal Box. The Clash were onto their third album and again soon to be classic double London Calling. In short the girls were never going to be accused of being prolific in terms of songwriting!

Prior to Cut the band had been in stasis with Palmolive and even those gigs at the end of 1978 with Budgie sounded like a band stuck in a rut as a competent punk band. The signing with Island (at last after 2 previous attempts over the years) and working with Dennis Bovell was both transformative and symbiotic and continued the sound of what the girls had discovered doing the Grapevine track. It gave the girls the tools to let loose their creative expression and genuinely find their own musical way to express themself. Gone was the screams and anger as an energy to be replaced like the best reggae and dub, with acres of space and rhythm and sounding like nothing else before.

This wasn’t quick. You have to look at how long the record took. Even if we take the February signing date it’s some six months to come out and that involved demos and rough mixes while they worked with Dennis Bovell.

It also wasn’t universally popular. Some fans really resented what the band had done to Palmoliove and turned their backs on the band and others were expecting the punky Slits of yore (bit like Adam & The Ants fans). Polarising is the word for the album and one post the event many people retrospectively read into what they like. It’s all valid because it’s all subjective. The reviews below are all modern ones but give a flavour.

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And so at last the album and single.

ISLAND, 1979
The legendary debut from the London group, with Bovell helping them combine reggae and dub with punk

The Slits – feminist icons of the punk era., 17 November, 2000 – Reviewer: from somewhere in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. USA

The Slits, contemporaries of The Clash and Public Image, fused reggae, dub, and punk into their own highly original sound. “Cut”, their long out-of-print debut album, paved the way for the Afro-Pop of Talking Heads, the reggae/new wave hybrids of Grace Jones and Adrian Sherwood’s On-U Sound System, and the trip hop of the nineties (imagine Bjork fronting Massive Attack). Along with their pals, The Raincoats, The Slits were one of the few all-female bands to garner critical acclaim, a cult following, and avoid being marketed as sex objects by their record company.

No punk era CD collection is complete without “Cut”, one of rock’s lost classics. Buy it while you can!

And this commentary

Roni Sarig The group transcended punk and shaped an adventurous post-punk sound that celebrated femininity in more abstract and complicated ways. Cut…By then, the group had fully come into its own as a strong -and distinctly female- post-punk voice. The provocative album featured the young women posed against the backdrop of a pleasant English garden, but topless and covered in mud. The photo confounded notions of sexuality and civility and positioned the group as modern primitive feminist rebels – girls not afraid to be natural, sexual and formidable. Even more powerful…was the music, which re-invented punk rock as a forum for young women. In opposition to the driving aggression of male orientated punk rock…Cut.. celebrated the liberation of girl delinquency and confronted consumer Cultures manipulation of female self esteem. The Secret History Of Rock

And a more balanced view maybe

3.0 out of 5 stars The cover may be titillating but the content is hardcore … 21.4.19 Mandrek Larl

… no it isn’t, it’s unclassifiable, that just made a catchy title line.

Released in 1979 The Slits’ first album Cut is a screechy, jarring, jagged, rhythmic thing that was much lauded in its day for being different (yes it was and still is) and has been said to set the direction for girl power (well maybe but it wasn’t a direction that girl power followed). Heard now (for the first time in full) from a distance of 40 years it isn’t really that good, but it is different, and in that difference lies both its strength and weakness. Held together by a percussive tour de force from Budgie, the rhythms are reinforced by Ari Up’s occasionally screechy but always metronomic vocals, Viv Albertine’s bursts of screechy guitar, and Tessa Pollitt’s bass. The girls (and boy)’s in your face up-yours DIY attitude of Cut would have been a shocker even in post-punk 1979 but perhaps less so today. But does it work, and has it stood the test of time? I’ll leave that to you, not because I’m sitting firmly on the fence but because I just haven’t made my mind up yet and honestly doubt I ever really will. I will play Cut again but dont expect it’s going to get worn out.

So how then do you rate this oddity? It’s a bit like the team that lost 5 nil that kept trying and whose goalkeeper was the man of the match [in this case it actually was the man], so five stars for its attitude and Budgie, but really on balance it lost the match as it doesn’t actually have enough variety to make it truly interesting, so three stars overall .

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Typical Girls / I Heard It Through The Grapevine

(Island October 1979)

And here’s the single. A reworking of Typical Girls but coupled with one of the greatest cover versions I have ever heard. The Slits version of I Heard It Though The Grapevine was always a dance floor filler at clubs and will always be one of my favourites. It’s a classic and it should be in everyone’s record collection. For some reason when I look at the cover (from the Pennie Smith ‘mud’ sessions), I’m always expecting Tessa to pull a rabbit out of Viv like some weird magician!

The question you have to ask though is what were Island’s marketing and PR department doing. Dennis Bovell thought the single was a hit. To be fair to them they had wanted Grapevine from the start but the girls put their foot down and chose Typical Girls. Predictably most of the music papers and clubs picked up on the b side. To help the single Don Letts was given some budget from Island and did a couple of videos that they called Slits Pictures. The single reached around #60 in the single charts.

What is unfathomable is that traditionally a single, especially a first single, is a band’s calling card and sets the reference point for an album. In this instance, it comes out a month later than the album. The last person to that punk-wise was Patti Smith. Horses the LP came out first; the single afterward.