Ticket 2 Ride

Clothes Clothes Clothes Music Music Music Boys Boys Boys (Thomas Dunne Books, 2014)

I had heard of Viv Albertine’s punk rock band, the Slits, but I don’t recall ever hearing one of their songs. Of the bands of that genre, I’m more familiar with post-punk groups like The Clash, Blondie, Gang of Four, Television, Talking Heads, The Jam, Adam and the Ants, Ramones, The B-52’s among others. I was never attracted to the music or image of the Sex Pistols, Germs, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag and the such. The Slits weren’t on my playlist, although I recall seeing their first album in the record store. The album art is memorable.

Why did I decide to read Viv Albertine’s book? I saw it at the public library and curiously opened the cover to glance at a synopsis of what’s inside. Not judging a book by its cover, or in this case, genre.

There is a lot of revelation in Albertine’s story, and I found her a very expressive writer, with quite a background. From punker to film director to artist to writer back to musician. Albertine’s journey is told up to 2014, when this book was published. She evolves from rebellious young Brit, to leader of a band, to BBC filmmaker, to wife and mother, to single mom and cancer survivor.

One would expect the book to primarily focus on the music and the punk years, of Sid Vicious and the Sex Pistols, of boyfriend Mick Jones of the Clash, drugs, and rejection of establishment values. Well, it does and it doesn’t. Albertine captures a great deal of the rebelliousness of the late 1970s, but more in the lifestyle and personal expression, than the rejection of societal expectations and social class struggles. If you are looking for a close examination of why punk rock erupted as a reaction to life as a youth in Britain, this ain’t it. And that’s okay.

Albertine’s focus is her own evolution. Her life has a lot of highs, and just as many lows. Interestingly, I found the highs very muted, yet the pain of the lows is told quite effectively. Here’s an example:

“He’s muttering to himself. Rumpelstiltskin springs to mind. My heart explodes. I just know this peculiar little hobgoblin of a man is my father. You know when your mates at school used to point at a homeless man shuffling across the road and say, ‘Hey, Viv, there’s your dad!’ for a laugh? Well, that is my dad. I rush back into the apartment before he sees me. I don’t understand; when I look back at photos of him, he’s really good-looking. Maybe it’s like Oscar Wilde said, a man’s face is his autobiography. I suppose if I had seen him age, day by day.”

Her father had left the family many years before, and wasn’t a part of her life until at the end of his life. It’s difficult to rationalize the reality of how parents fail to hold up their part of the bargain, they end up even less than we are prepared to accept.

A lot of men let Albertine down in life. Independent, and a survivor, men still had a way of battering her like gigantic ocean swells. It took her a long time to understand her relationship with men.

“I’m not against him, it’s just that at last I’ve realised: This man can’t give me back my self. No man can. They can only reflect my anxiety, my confusion and my insecurity, straight back at me. I’ve got to rebuild myself on my own.”

Such is the revelation, though it comes after many disappointing relations, pain, and certainly a lot of self-doubt.

Around every corner, there were men, and women, squashing her dreams. “No girl was supposed to pick up a guitar in 1976 – certainly not a working class girl who couldn’t sing, couldn’t play and had never had a music lesson,” Albertine said in an interview with themouthmagazine.com in 2018. “So what made me do that and then become part of the punk movement?”

Self expression. And being accepted into a world of other ill fitting pegs. Albertine stepped onto the stage of a musical and cultural tectonic plate shift called punk rock. Her timing couldn’t have been more fortuitous; but music is just one more, sly, seductive lover. Albertine published a 2018 follow up, so I’ll take a look and let you know.

4/5