WEBVTT - Ep 67: Viv Albertine 0:00:00.800 --> 0:00:20.720 Loud and Quiet presents Midnight Chats. 0:00:22.760 --> 0:00:25.279 Hey folks, welcome to Midnight Chats and thank you for 0:00:25.320 --> 0:00:29.360 downloading episode sixty seven of the podcast. My guest tonight 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:32.320 is a truly incredible one and someone that I was 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:35.879 very excited to meet and record this episode with. Viv 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:39.319 Albertine doesn't like to call herself an artist, but when 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:42.000 you look at everything that she's done in her life, 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:44.760 no other term seems to be able to sum it up. 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:49.000 She's been a pioneer of punk, a film director, an actor, 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:52.320 and in more recent years, an acclaimed writer and author. 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:56.360 Since nineteen seventy six, she's been a feminist icon, and 0:00:56.720 --> 0:01:00.639 even when she was an aerobics instructor in the mid eighties, 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:02.360 she did it from the point of view of a 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:06.720 woman challenging what was expected of her from the patriarchal society. 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:10.640 Her band, The Slits, remain underrated and are still pretty 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:13.440 much overlooked when people talk about punk music in the 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:16.600 mid to late seventies in the UK, everyone still likes 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:19.520 to talk about the sex Pistols and the Clash and 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:22.520 the Buzzcocks. But the thing about the Slits is they 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:25.240 were a group of women in a punk band at 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:28.840 time when women weren't in punk bands. They were the 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:31.200 first to do it. They had no one to follow, 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:35.920 there was no roadmap, and that's quite an incredible thing 0:01:36.120 --> 0:01:40.040 to have done, and it just doesn't seem to be mentioned. 0:01:40.120 --> 0:01:43.759 People are still obsessed with the cartoon character of Johnny 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:47.000 Rotten and Sid Vicious. But more than that, I guess 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:50.000 when you go back and listen to those Slits records, 0:01:50.360 --> 0:01:53.600 what stands out now is they were clearly the more 0:01:53.680 --> 0:01:57.960 interesting and experimental records to come out of punk music. 0:01:58.320 --> 0:02:01.800 The Slits were also putting on reggae and dub and 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:04.640 lots of other things as well as rock and roll 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:07.840 within their music. I mean, I could go on here 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:11.200 now and talk about all of the things that Viv 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:14.080 Albertin has done. I won't do that, but what I 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:18.680 would suggest you do is read Viv's first book, her 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:22.799 memoir called Close Clothes Clothes Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys Boys. 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:27.919 It's an incredible memoir and it will tell you in 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:31.799 much more detail and in a much funnier and more 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:35.280 heartfelt way than I can about the life of Viv Albertine. 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:37.800 It really is quite incredible of the things that she's 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:41.520 done and We're very excited and happy to have her 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:45.480 on this episode of the podcast. Please do subscribe if 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:48.640 you like it. Check back our older episodes. There are 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:51.920 sixty six before this one. Maybe avoid the first ten, 0:02:52.280 --> 0:02:55.320 but the most recent ones. I think we've kind of 0:02:55.760 --> 0:02:58.320 nailed it a little bit now. So thank you for listening. 0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:00.959 This is Midnight Chats from Loud and Quiet and this 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:19.600 is Viva Albertine. Your first book, Closed Music, Music, Music, Boys, 0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:22.560 Boys Boys. I read when it first came out a 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:25.120 few years ago, and because I knew we were meeting, 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:29.480 I listened to it this weekend. It's so good, is it. 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:31.760 It's got this young North London actress to read it 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:33.800 because I wanted a young voice reading it. 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:37.080 So does she read your second book? She does as well. 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:39.840 She did a really good job for the first one. Yeah, 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:41.760 but I did have to keep reminding myself that this 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:46.560 isn't you because she was very yeah, just really a motive. 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:48.640 You could tell she was a pro because I've listened 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:52.720 to some audio books where the person's read it, who's 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:55.240 written it, but they're not very just not very good 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:55.480 at it. 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:55.760 Yeah. 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:57.040 I won't know names. 0:03:57.160 --> 0:03:59.600 Because I was worried I've sound a bit Joyce Grenfell, 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:05.440 I tend to I might overstress it, and I didn't know. 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:07.200 I just felt that. And also then lots of sort 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:09.840 of older men have written to me saying, why didn't 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:11.920 you read your book, you know? And I thought, no, 0:04:12.040 --> 0:04:14.960 they want another piece of me, as if I haven't 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:18.159 given enough, you know, and there's some very raw stuff 0:04:18.160 --> 0:04:20.919 in the book, and some sexual stuff whatever, and I thought, no, 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:24.640 they'd love to hear me actually say it. I'm glad 0:04:24.680 --> 0:04:27.599 I didn't. It just gives me that little level distance. 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:31.200 Would you have found it hard to read? Do you think? 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:34.919 Because as you say, some of it is very raw 0:04:35.520 --> 0:04:38.719 stuff and the stuff you went through and your cancer 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:41.200 all of that stuff. I imagine it was really hard to 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:42.720 write it, but then to have to then read it 0:04:42.760 --> 0:04:45.320 out in a sound booth somewhere and read it. 0:04:45.240 --> 0:04:48.320 Yeah, exactly. I mean it's intense. It's not easy to do. 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:51.799 So I thought someone who's used to using their voice 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:57.560 like that would be better A bit for lazy get anyway, 0:04:57.960 --> 0:05:00.760 So that's another reason. But no, I just really glad. 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:02.560 But you know what, you don't realize when you write 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:05.560 a book. Some authors do realize it because I've read 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:08.080 it since is be careful what you write about because 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:10.320 you're going to be talking about it for the next 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:12.680 couple of years. And it keeps it very present. And 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:15.320 I find I dream a lot about things in the book, 0:05:15.360 --> 0:05:17.120 and you know, when I'm when I'm doing a sort 0:05:17.120 --> 0:05:21.200 of a talking tour or whatever, it keeps it very present. 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:23.200 And you know, I always think as that, you know, 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:27.479 the Hillsborough football disaster, and apparently the people who went 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:32.280 to therapy remained much more damaged in the end because 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:32.919 they kept. 0:05:32.720 --> 0:05:35.520 It so present, because they just keep to it, keep. 0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:37.520 Talking about it, kept it very present. I'm not saying 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:40.320 that therapy doesn't work, but I do find writing You 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:43.200 know that if I'd just written the book, that might 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:46.520 have exorcised some of the demons I write about. But 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:48.320 to have written the book and then go talking about 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:50.520 it for two years, you know on tour. 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:52.960 Did you when you wrote your second book, which came 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:56.000 out last year, did you take that into account? Then no, 0:05:56.960 --> 0:05:57.520 you forgot. 0:05:58.160 --> 0:06:00.599 It's just that the trouble is you start to write 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:03.120 and the book starts to take on a momentum of 0:06:03.160 --> 0:06:06.000 its own right, and as Stephen King says, you know, 0:06:06.040 --> 0:06:09.120 the book is the boss. It actually sort of starts 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:11.600 to dictate to you what should be in, what should 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:13.960 be out, what direction it goes in. It's not some 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:16.800 magical process, but if you're sort of in tune and 0:06:16.960 --> 0:06:19.600 very honest about the process and not being sort of 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:23.000 you know, not editing yourself too much, et cetera, et cetera, 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:26.479 if you go where the book has to go, it 0:06:26.560 --> 0:06:28.800 has to go there flipping annoying. You know. I set 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:31.919 out to write a sort of a novel about a 0:06:31.920 --> 0:06:34.359 middle aged woman who is so full of rage that 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:37.159 she ends up committing murder, only to find about three 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:39.719 months in I've put the sort of proverbial pen down 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:41.400 and thought, hang on a minute, I am that woman. 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:44.480 This is me myself exactly, and I have to face 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:46.600 whatever you know, that rage. I have to go into 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:49.760 what that rage is and explore it. You know. Three 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:52.880 years later emerged with this book, which is nothing like 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:54.880 what I intended when I started. 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:58.360 Out, That is to throw away unopen, which I'm going 0:06:58.400 --> 0:07:01.240 to ask you about with your first book though, did 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:04.440 you because the first book is kind of it is 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:10.080 autobiography from life to about twenty thirteen, is that something 0:07:10.160 --> 0:07:12.480 like that? How did you find writing it? Did you 0:07:12.480 --> 0:07:15.800 find it hard because you did put everything's in there 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:17.760 like Watson, or it's all there. 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:20.720 Well, it wasn't. That wasn't intentional either, because I hadn't 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:22.440 written a book before, didn't know if I could write, 0:07:22.520 --> 0:07:27.240 so it was quite scared, and I've probably written quite 0:07:28.560 --> 0:07:30.840 quite a lot before. I sort of stumbled upon that 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:33.880 thing they say, where you find your voice. I started 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:38.000 accidentally writing in the present tense, and suddenly the voice came, 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:42.280 the book came alive, scratched everything I'd written before, and 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:46.160 I started writing again in the present tense, as if 0:07:46.240 --> 0:07:48.280 I was there in the moment, which I really liked 0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:51.480 because you know when you watch horror films and you 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:53.440 know the person in the horror film doesn't know that 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:56.360 the Baddi's looking around the corner. I wanted to have 0:07:56.400 --> 0:07:59.040 that feeling that I was making all these stupid decisions 0:07:59.040 --> 0:08:00.960 and the reader would think, no, you idiot. You know, 0:08:01.680 --> 0:08:04.040 don't hide in the underground car park, or don't take 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:07.560 those drugs with Johnny Thunders. But in the moment, those 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:10.600 were the decisions I made, however bad they were. And 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:13.160 I didn't want a clever voice, you know, my narrator's 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:15.280 voice sing, you know, little did I know in two 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:17.800 years time I would meet so and so, or I 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:20.320 would be on stage with guitar. You know, that's sort 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:22.280 of smart ass voice, yeah, top. 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:24.880 And that voice kind of is a spoiler all the 0:08:24.880 --> 0:08:27.120 time as well, isn't it. Whereas if you don't know 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:31.720 your story, and I didn't know post the Slits stuff, 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:36.200 and actually found that half of the book really really 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:38.800 interesting because I was like, oh, I don't know. I'm 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:40.920 now in completely uncharted territory. 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:41.280 You know. 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:43.560 At the beginning of the book, I knew you would 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:45.960 meet the rest of the band and things like that, 0:08:46.600 --> 0:08:48.200 and then the band ends, and I was like, oh, well, 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:51.079 where's this going? And you know these Whereas if you'd 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:53.920 been as you say, kept saying, oh did I know 0:08:54.000 --> 0:08:55.240 that person would pop up in my. 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:57.040 Life or I'd pick up a guitar again when I 0:08:57.080 --> 0:08:59.560 was fifteen. You know, it was sort of so knowing. 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:02.600 And the whole point about one's own life, let alone 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:06.360 a life in the seventies is how we crashed through 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:09.680 it all without any role models, you know, no Internet, 0:09:10.160 --> 0:09:13.000 no sort of awareness of anything. Really, you know, so 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:15.320 much time on our hands. That's about all we had. 0:09:15.600 --> 0:09:20.240 And there was a sort of compared today a certain innocence. Strangely, Yeah, 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:23.400 so that's when i'd sort of discovered my voice. 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:24.160 Sure, sort of. 0:09:25.400 --> 0:09:28.120 But second book just to say that I wrote in 0:09:28.160 --> 0:09:31.360 a past tense because it had to have a more 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:36.240 thoughtful approach. And there's something about writing in present tense 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:40.440 that is quite not childlike, but it's sort of it's 0:09:40.800 --> 0:09:44.520 less mature, which suited the first book. But yeah, I 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:46.120 didn't think it's right for second book. But it's very 0:09:46.160 --> 0:09:49.240 hard to make something feel so immediate using the past tense. 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:50.079 That was a challenge. 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:53.160 My two overall thoughts on it, my impressions on it, 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:56.520 I guess, well, one was how fearless you've been? 0:09:57.000 --> 0:09:59.720 I'm the most terrified person, and I sort of wanted 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:02.520 to get that across that. You know, there's some self 0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:04.920 help book that's called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:07.319 and that sort of sums me up in many ways, 0:10:07.320 --> 0:10:10.360 and I sort of wanted to sort of find out 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:12.280 where that came from. In the second book. It's a 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:14.280 bit of a detective story the second book. You know, 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:16.360 why was I this person who picked up a guitar 0:10:16.400 --> 0:10:19.280 in the seventies, what was from a working class broken home, 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:25.040 terrible education, bad comprehensive school, no particular talents. What made 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:27.080 me when no other girls were doing it, pick up 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:29.360 an electric guitar on top of that couldn't sing and 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:31.800 couldn't play, had no music lessons, you know, and nobility 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:34.199 in that area. And I thought that was an interesting 0:10:34.240 --> 0:10:37.040 thread to explore, one of the threads I explored, and 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:39.080 I sort of traced it back and back and back 0:10:39.080 --> 0:10:41.360 to more or less to my mother. She made me 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:45.360 that person who took those risks against my nature actually, 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:48.160 and whether that's a good or bad thing, I don't 0:10:48.200 --> 0:10:51.319 really know. But there's this Gloria Steinem quote. This is 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:56.120 the American feminist. I lived my mother's unlived life, and 0:10:56.200 --> 0:10:57.760 I think that sort of sums up me and a 0:10:57.800 --> 0:11:01.000 lot of women of my generation who whose mothers were 0:11:01.000 --> 0:11:04.079 so stifled, you know, after the Second World War and 0:11:04.600 --> 0:11:07.640 with the patriarchy so strong back in those days, that 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:10.320 they sort of pumped up their daughters to have the 0:11:10.320 --> 0:11:13.920 opportunities they didn't have. Now, if we'd been a middle 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:16.920 class and if I'd been clever, she would have, you know, 0:11:17.000 --> 0:11:19.720 pushed me off to university. She had not much to 0:11:19.800 --> 0:11:23.960 work with, so I think she thought and it's probably subconsciously, 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:26.360 I'm just going to make her so angry, so full 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:29.520 of rage, that that motivates her. It probably was an 0:11:29.600 --> 0:11:32.200 unconscious thing. So from very young, my mother made me 0:11:32.240 --> 0:11:35.040 aware of all the injustices of girls and women and 0:11:36.000 --> 0:11:39.160 the class I was born into and everything, until by 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:42.240 the time I was sixteen, I was just a fury, 0:11:42.559 --> 0:11:45.360 a sort of whirling dervisher fury. So when I started 0:11:45.360 --> 0:11:48.320 to meet other people who were angry and what became 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:51.120 known as punk, you know, we jeweled I think, that 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:53.960 sort of group of people in London, and then gradually 0:11:54.040 --> 0:11:57.679 we met with people from Manchester and whatever, because we 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:00.920 had the same sort of outlook on life. Most of 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:03.520 us were misfits in one way or another. Quite a 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:05.760 lot of us were working class and angry with nowhere 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:10.680 to go, not particularly talented, and you know, it's Charles 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:14.000 Brukowski who said, you know, be anything else you can be. 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:18.080 You know, it was an absolute last resort in a way, 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:19.800 to be in a punk band, even though it's quite 0:12:19.840 --> 0:12:23.440 revered nowadays. You know, if I was born now, I'd 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:25.559 hope I could be something like a human rights lawyer 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:28.000 or an architect. But I didn't have the equipment. It 0:12:28.080 --> 0:12:30.440 wasn't the time. I didn't know a girl could even 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:33.320 be those things back then. So I took the one 0:12:34.080 --> 0:12:37.320 area when I saw it start to emerge that I 0:12:37.360 --> 0:12:38.800 took in a sort of leap. 0:12:39.000 --> 0:12:42.160 And would you back then, would your mum would she 0:12:42.240 --> 0:12:46.160 like encourage you in a simple way of saying, why 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:48.800 don't you go and learn the guitar? It wasn't that, 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:51.400 it was just this idea of her kind of she 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:53.400 made you so angry that you just worked. 0:12:54.160 --> 0:12:56.600 She had no idea about the arts or anything. You know, 0:12:56.640 --> 0:13:00.760 it was outside her ken completely. But you know, because 0:13:00.840 --> 0:13:03.400 you know, Goden, when I get interviewed, especially by guys, 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:05.480 they'll say, oh, tell me about Sidvisius, tell us about 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:08.000 Keith Levine. Did he teach your guitar mac Jones or whatever? 0:13:08.240 --> 0:13:10.400 And I started thinking, well, I knew those guys eighteen 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:13.400 months or something. You know, can't say that they are 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:16.600 responsible for who I was, What made me that person 0:13:16.679 --> 0:13:18.880 who was quite different for a girl, you know. And 0:13:18.920 --> 0:13:20.480 as I said, I traced it back to my mother, 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:22.960 but you know, from very young and i'd come home, 0:13:23.000 --> 0:13:25.320 you know, she let me hitch hikof to Amsterdam, not 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:27.480 knowing what country it was in when I was seventeen 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:30.080 or sixteen, and you know, stay out all night. She 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:33.480 was very hands off. She wanted more than anything for 0:13:33.559 --> 0:13:36.680 me to have experienced travel. She never said that, but 0:13:36.720 --> 0:13:38.920 if I said, oh, Mom, I'm hitching hiking to Ansidam, 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:41.400 what country is in? She'd say, oh, oh, good, good, 0:13:41.440 --> 0:13:42.959 you know, here's two pounds. 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:44.520 Good for it. 0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:46.560 And if I came home and said, oh, Mom, I 0:13:46.559 --> 0:13:49.120 I think I've been spiked, you know, with some dragon. 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:50.800 Had to go home for three go to bed for 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:54.320 three days, you know, hallucinating, she'd bring me cups of teas. 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:58.840 But she was supportive and almost sort of metaphorically clapping 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:01.520 me as I told all these stories that would be 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.680 terrifying any other mother, including me. Now I'm a mom, 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:08.120 Do you see what I mean? She was my audience, 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:09.319 and she. 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:10.440 Was letting you figure it out. 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:12.240 Yeah, she's letting me figure out, which is a hard 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:16.520 thing to do, and clapping every ridiculous failure or attempt 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:18.959 along the way. And the funny thing is just to 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:21.800 say that years later, when my daughter was born, who 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:24.040 she was quite shy and passive when she was young, 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:25.720 and my mother used to give her a pound every 0:14:25.760 --> 0:14:29.360 time she tried something, and didn't matter if she failed, 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:32.680 and she never got a pound. If she won something 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:34.680 or did well at something, she got a pound every 0:14:34.680 --> 0:14:36.920 time she tried something. So every time she went background 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:39.560 to grandmother's house, she would say, oh, I put my 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:42.120 hand up and volunteered for this, or I asked someone 0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:44.040 if I could do that, and she's got a pound. 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:48.160 The other thing that I couldn't ignore in the book 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:53.880 is how rude men have been to you. I don't 0:14:53.920 --> 0:14:57.720 just mean that in the sense of physical abuse. I 0:14:57.800 --> 0:15:02.760 just mean there are the recurring theme of people kind 0:15:02.760 --> 0:15:05.160 of being so blunt with you and kind of so 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:08.320 bizarrely straight in a way that no one I know 0:15:08.400 --> 0:15:11.240 has ever spoken to in those ways, even to the 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:13.320 extent where towards the end of the book where you 0:15:13.320 --> 0:15:16.080 talk about writing that book and your manager at the 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:19.120 time got upset that you wanted to write it yourself 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:21.360 and kind of said, well do that if you want 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:23.400 it to be shit, then yeah, that was my manager, 0:15:23.520 --> 0:15:26.480 and that's your manager. But that's kind of throughout the book. 0:15:26.480 --> 0:15:29.040 There are people that and it's always guys that kind 0:15:29.040 --> 0:15:31.080 of say that thing to you. I was quite shocked 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:35.400 by it because it just seems what is it that 0:15:35.440 --> 0:15:37.320 people think they could talk to you that way? 0:15:37.480 --> 0:15:40.560 Well, partly, you know, and he wasn't back in those times. 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:43.080 But it started from my father who spoke to me 0:15:43.200 --> 0:15:45.360 like that. You know. It started that I was a 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:50.080 working class girl who had ideas above her station, and 0:15:50.160 --> 0:15:53.680 my father put me down for that. And every man 0:15:53.800 --> 0:15:57.200 I came across, most boyfriends, you know, the boys boys 0:15:57.240 --> 0:16:01.240 boys in the title are the hurdles to be celebrated. Yeah, 0:16:01.240 --> 0:16:03.880 you know, they every step of the way tried to 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:08.400 hobble me emotionally, you know, right all the way up 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:10.520 to my husband. I'm afraid to say, you know, you're rubbish, 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:13.800 ash shit, you're too old, you can't do that. And 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:17.360 I just think to be a woman sort of on 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:19.960 your own battling, you know. To me, the thread of 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:22.440 the first book is here's a young woman who just 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:26.440 wanted to be a creative person, and my god, did 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:29.680 they do everything they could could to stop me. And 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:33.040 this wasn't, you know, just the uncool guys. This was 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:36.720 the cool guys as well. There was that little cohort 0:16:36.720 --> 0:16:39.440 in punk time who didn't do that, and that was 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:43.920 very much the emanating from Vivian Westwood and malcol McLaren, 0:16:43.960 --> 0:16:46.680 who were very open minded people, and it would have 0:16:46.720 --> 0:16:49.600 been very uncall to put down a woman, you know, 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:51.680 especially as Vivian was kind of at the pinnacle of 0:16:51.720 --> 0:16:53.960 it all and very strong and sort of it was 0:16:54.040 --> 0:16:57.600 very unusual. She's very unsmiling, very strong, first creative woman 0:16:57.600 --> 0:17:00.960 I ever met in my life. Really, that was the 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:03.880 first time I came across men who didn't put me 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:08.199 down or try and stop me being creative. But as 0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:11.480 soon as that was over, it all started again. Yeah, 0:17:11.520 --> 0:17:15.000 and even within that, I mean, although my mates in 0:17:15.080 --> 0:17:17.560 other bands and a few people who hung out together 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:22.120 in London at the time were supportive, not saying anything particularly, 0:17:22.119 --> 0:17:24.040 but just not putting me down. And you know, the 0:17:24.119 --> 0:17:27.320 rest of the lips everyone else we came across was 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:30.720 spitting at us, trying to stab us, attack us, rapists, 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:34.200 stop us getting gigs. We weren't allowed to be played 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:36.119 on the radio. I mean, in every you know, not 0:17:36.280 --> 0:17:40.960 didn't want to sign us. We got stopped in every 0:17:41.000 --> 0:17:44.440 way we could buy men the whole time, I mean. 0:17:44.520 --> 0:17:48.280 And all I can say is, first of all, I 0:17:48.320 --> 0:17:52.200 suppose I was going against what men were used to do, 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:55.000 and what the power, you know, I was somehow threatening 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:58.280 the power that they I mean, they felt so threatened, 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:01.080 especially in the seventies. And I guess men, now that 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:05.080 manager who said to me, now, you shouldn't write the 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:07.520 book yourself. You should get some young journalists to write 0:18:07.520 --> 0:18:09.320 it for you. And I said, I really want to 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:10.639 give it a go, and he said, oh, well, if 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:12.920 you know, Gorde known, if you want it to be shit. 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:16.440 I mean, I realized later that he felt he wouldn't 0:18:16.480 --> 0:18:17.360 have a hand in it. 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:18.320 Yeah. 0:18:18.600 --> 0:18:21.800 Yeah, that's what's underneath it all all the time. I'm 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:24.119 losing my power if I if I you know, instead 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:26.040 of saying, oh, Viv, but if you write it yourself, 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:27.960 I feel like I won't have any hand in it, 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:29.920 and I won't What role will I have? He said 0:18:29.920 --> 0:18:32.080 that to me at one point, What role will I have? 0:18:32.320 --> 0:18:34.919 And that's when I put two and two together. If 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:37.120 people will only honest about it, you could say, well, 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:39.480 you know, I'll bounce the ideas off you. You know, 0:18:39.600 --> 0:18:42.840 be great if you could be beside me whilst I 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:46.119 write it. Let's you know, let's embark on it, you know, 0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:48.520 help me tell me where I'm being twat in the book. 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:51.040 And where I don't you know, doesn't read honestly or whatever. 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:53.280 But no, you know, just tell you it will be shit, 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:56.240 put you down, and honestly, don't think for one minute 0:18:56.400 --> 0:18:58.200 I didn't think I would be shit if I wrote 0:18:58.200 --> 0:19:00.560 it myself. It's not like people say that, you think, no, 0:19:00.760 --> 0:19:03.639 I won't. I'm going to do it anyway. Everyone who 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:07.960 writes or plays or paints or whatever thinks they'll be shit. 0:19:09.000 --> 0:19:11.320 So to have someone say that to you, you know, 0:19:11.359 --> 0:19:13.240 it probably took me months and months to get the 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:15.280 courage to start writing after he said that. 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:18.119 Yeah, I found I've every time someone said that to 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:20.240 you in the book, I always found it really quite shocking, 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:23.359 just because I suppose I've never no one said has 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:25.080 said that to me. But I've also any of my 0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:27.840 female friends and my wife, I've never heard of them 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:29.119 being spoken to. 0:19:29.240 --> 0:19:34.040 Are the artists, because that is a whole You see 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:38.280 women who work within organizations, women who organize you know, women. 0:19:38.640 --> 0:19:41.399 There's something about a woman being an artist which is 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:45.359 utterly threatening because to be an artist and it's a word, 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:47.960 you know, I haven't been comfortable using about myself, not 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:50.199 least because my husband said, you're not an artist, you're 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:54.040 a wenka. When I was trying to make music. It's 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:56.600 a pretentious word. But the thing is to be an artist, 0:19:56.680 --> 0:20:00.000 you know, you have to absolutely immerse yourself in the world. 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:04.639 You have to be a selfish bastard. I mean, you 0:20:04.800 --> 0:20:07.679 have to put the work above the people around you 0:20:07.840 --> 0:20:09.679 in terms of what goes into it, how honest you 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:12.040 are about it. And that's any discipline, you know, any 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:17.040 genre or whatever. And society still now isn't set up 0:20:17.040 --> 0:20:20.040 for women to behave like that. I know young women 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:22.960 in bands who tour and everything, they're so lonely, they're 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:25.919 so isolated because a guy doesn't want to go on 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:28.960 tour with a woman. A guy can't very easily stand 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:31.439 and watch a woman be on stage and you know, 0:20:31.600 --> 0:20:34.040 sit do all the signing afterwards, you know, or her 0:20:34.119 --> 0:20:37.399 beat writing songs, what she's really thinking inside. I mean 0:20:37.440 --> 0:20:40.280 in a relationship, you keep that quiet, you don't say 0:20:40.320 --> 0:20:42.720 all that stuff. So the world doesn't set up for 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:44.639 women to be artists. It's a hard thing to be. 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:48.040 Nearly every female artist I know who really goes there 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:55.080 is solitary, isolated in some way. You know, from any age, 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:58.320 you know, from twenty five to sixty five seventy all 0:20:58.359 --> 0:21:00.399 the women I know who really go for it and 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:04.359 more or less on their own and is to do 0:21:04.520 --> 0:21:07.680 with we still live in a patriarchy. And even though 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:09.159 people say, you know, men are always saying to me 0:21:09.280 --> 0:21:11.200 like you, oh, I wouldn't do that to my wife, 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:13.600 or I'd love a girlfriend like that, they don't have 0:21:13.640 --> 0:21:18.120 girlfriends like that. They don't have difficult you know. And 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:20.880 whereas that you're allowed as a man in society from 0:21:20.920 --> 0:21:23.679 as far back as I can, you know, think to 0:21:23.760 --> 0:21:26.560 be a bit wild, a bit difficult, you know, the 0:21:26.760 --> 0:21:30.720 tortured artist, the tortured genius, and you'll always find he'll 0:21:30.720 --> 0:21:33.760 always find a nice young woman to travel with him 0:21:33.760 --> 0:21:36.040 and you know, cook for him and support him and 0:21:36.119 --> 0:21:38.520 protect him from the outside world or too many people 0:21:38.520 --> 0:21:40.720 trying to get to him and let him make his work. 0:21:40.880 --> 0:21:44.639 You know, women are still trained to be okay with 0:21:44.720 --> 0:21:48.359 that role, and men are still seen as sort of 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:52.520 enigmatic and mysterious in that role, whereas a woman in 0:21:52.560 --> 0:21:55.280 that role, no, there's no place for you. And I 0:21:55.440 --> 0:21:58.159 know that, you know, I know that from my life, 0:21:58.240 --> 0:22:00.320 and I know that from now younger women in I 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:03.679 know trying to do it and so I kind of 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:06.840 wanted to make it clear in both books that choosing 0:22:08.200 --> 0:22:10.159 and I don't mean a creative life in terms of 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:12.840 being an entertainer, but creative life in terms of going 0:22:12.840 --> 0:22:17.400 into all the dark spaces and making a piece out 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:22.600 of them. Choosing that life is not glamorous and it's 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:26.040 not comfortable and it's lonely. So I wanted to be 0:22:26.040 --> 0:22:27.800 honest about that as well in the book. There are 0:22:27.840 --> 0:22:32.439 consequences to being this rebel or being this outsider. You know, 0:22:32.520 --> 0:22:35.080 that sort of language is used on T shirts in 0:22:35.200 --> 0:22:38.119 Prime Mark and this and that. You know, choose difference, 0:22:38.240 --> 0:22:40.720 be this, be that live the dream, No, to really 0:22:40.880 --> 0:22:44.280 do that, and to go against the norms of society, 0:22:44.600 --> 0:22:47.280 you know, whether it's within relationships, how you have relationships 0:22:47.320 --> 0:22:49.960 or don't have them, what you do with your work, 0:22:50.000 --> 0:22:53.480 how honest you are, you will be you will be 0:22:53.560 --> 0:22:55.800 left out. And it's not an easy thing for a 0:22:55.880 --> 0:22:58.280 human and so and it's. 0:22:58.119 --> 0:23:01.080 Not fair, but sure, And I've heard you say before 0:23:01.119 --> 0:23:04.199 that it's exhausting. Well, it's tiring, Like you've got to 0:23:04.200 --> 0:23:07.199 this stage and aarking You're like, they're just exhausted by this. 0:23:07.440 --> 0:23:10.000 Yeah, I am. I'm exhausted by the fight, you know, 0:23:10.080 --> 0:23:14.280 and as are the other slits, and as are other females. 0:23:14.320 --> 0:23:17.159 I know, you know, we find ways to sort of 0:23:17.160 --> 0:23:21.000 protect ourselves. But there hasn't there isn't really a model yet, 0:23:21.040 --> 0:23:23.639 a model of behavior. You know. I often talk to 0:23:23.680 --> 0:23:25.760 women after, you know, after they've done a talk and 0:23:25.760 --> 0:23:28.280 they come to get their books signed or whatever, and 0:23:28.840 --> 0:23:31.359 you know, they've maybe left their husbands, or they're trying 0:23:31.400 --> 0:23:33.720 something new at fifty, or they're young girls who're not 0:23:33.760 --> 0:23:37.040 quite sure, you know, left art school or school, and 0:23:37.080 --> 0:23:39.440 they don't know quite which way to go. And there 0:23:39.480 --> 0:23:42.680 aren't still that many models of behavior for us to follow, 0:23:42.720 --> 0:23:46.159 whereas there are so many for men to follow. You know, 0:23:46.200 --> 0:23:48.159 the Slits we had no role models. We made up 0:23:48.200 --> 0:23:49.920 as we went along. We made up the music, we 0:23:50.040 --> 0:23:53.040 made out how we stood, what we wore. We'd never 0:23:53.119 --> 0:23:56.040 seen anyone and everyone who came to see us play 0:23:56.040 --> 0:23:58.080 in the seventies, which is hard to get your head 0:23:58.119 --> 0:24:00.760 around now, everyone in the audience would look at us 0:24:00.800 --> 0:24:03.600 and had never seen a girl on stage before with 0:24:03.680 --> 0:24:08.120 an electric guitar playing drums. Audiences of hundreds of people 0:24:08.160 --> 0:24:10.240 had never seen it before. They'd just stand there with 0:24:10.280 --> 0:24:12.840 their mouths open, you know, and in Nemy that the 0:24:13.040 --> 0:24:16.200 journalists would write things like girls look shit with guitars 0:24:16.240 --> 0:24:18.680 because they hadn't even seen our proportions with a guitar, 0:24:18.840 --> 0:24:22.359 you know. And we'd spend ages in our rehearsal rooms, 0:24:22.400 --> 0:24:24.920 you know, thinking can I wear a mini skirt or 0:24:24.920 --> 0:24:26.520 can I wear a two two with a guitar? You know, 0:24:26.960 --> 0:24:29.240 And how shocking I felt the first time I went 0:24:29.280 --> 0:24:32.320 on stage in a mini skirt holding a guitar, because 0:24:32.359 --> 0:24:34.760 you'd never seen little skinny girl's legs hanging out of 0:24:34.760 --> 0:24:36.639 a guitar like that, or you'd never seen a too too. 0:24:36.920 --> 0:24:40.240 It's all okay now, but it had never been seen before. 0:24:40.480 --> 0:24:42.080 That's before they even heard what we did. 0:24:42.280 --> 0:24:43.760 Yeah, which they didn't like either. 0:24:43.920 --> 0:24:46.879 Some of them, well, I don't know. I think they 0:24:46.960 --> 0:24:49.080 got the spirit of it. And you know, we were 0:24:49.320 --> 0:24:54.840 very exciting live, but it was very different times. I mean, 0:24:54.880 --> 0:24:57.240 there would be gangs of skinheads who would come, who 0:24:57.320 --> 0:25:00.240 would try and pull us off stage and you know, 0:25:00.320 --> 0:25:03.000 beat us up and beat up other people in the audience. 0:25:03.080 --> 0:25:07.240 And you know, quite often a gig would descend into violence, 0:25:07.400 --> 0:25:11.000 and we would always be showered in gob and spit 0:25:11.680 --> 0:25:17.480 every gig, and it's hard to realize what filthy, violent, 0:25:18.320 --> 0:25:20.520 kind of desperate times the seventies were. 0:25:20.840 --> 0:25:24.080 Yeah, it's look back on in kind of with a 0:25:24.160 --> 0:25:27.000 rose tinted view from anyone that wasn't there My age, 0:25:27.000 --> 0:25:29.600 for example, you know, the golden age of punk, and 0:25:29.760 --> 0:25:30.560 I wish I was there. 0:25:31.720 --> 0:25:34.160 Most people wouldn't have cut it, wouldn't have chosen. It 0:25:34.520 --> 0:25:37.359 would have been too scared. It was not an easy choice. 0:25:37.560 --> 0:25:39.760 You know. Our people put up their hands when I 0:25:39.800 --> 0:25:41.439 do talks at art schools and things and say it's, oh, 0:25:41.440 --> 0:25:43.520 it's not fair. You know, you lot have done everything. 0:25:43.520 --> 0:25:46.439 There's nothing like yet left for us young people to 0:25:46.520 --> 0:25:50.000 do or rebel against. And I'd just say, with that attitude, 0:25:50.160 --> 0:25:53.159 you wouldn't have done it anyway, because you had to 0:25:53.200 --> 0:25:55.719 be You had to put take your life in your 0:25:55.760 --> 0:25:57.880 hands every time we walk down the street, to dress 0:25:57.960 --> 0:26:00.679 like a punk in the seventies, to go against everything 0:26:00.720 --> 0:26:03.080 that you know, your parents or teachers, you know, not 0:26:03.160 --> 0:26:05.760 earn any money, and live in Scots till I was thirty. 0:26:05.920 --> 0:26:08.560 You know, it's not romantic living in a scot squat. 0:26:08.600 --> 0:26:10.199 Most people say I was lucky you didn't have to 0:26:10.440 --> 0:26:13.320 you lived in squats. Hardly anyone lived in a squat. 0:26:13.359 --> 0:26:16.679 It was a terrifying thing to do. Break into a house, 0:26:17.080 --> 0:26:20.360 you know, go against the law, risk being arrested, you know, 0:26:20.720 --> 0:26:25.320 no heating that people like you said, they completely romanticize it. 0:26:25.600 --> 0:26:28.280 Most people wouldn't have had the guts to do what 0:26:28.320 --> 0:26:30.840 we did, and most people didn't even back then, because. 0:26:30.640 --> 0:26:33.280 I think a lot of people think also that everyone 0:26:33.440 --> 0:26:37.119 was a punk, like they think that in seventy seven, 0:26:37.160 --> 0:26:39.840 every single person the whole of London, yeah, was a 0:26:39.840 --> 0:26:42.479 punk and go into these punk shows. But it was 0:26:42.600 --> 0:26:46.400 you know, obviously a very small minority of people who 0:26:46.440 --> 0:26:47.560 were in that world. 0:26:47.840 --> 0:26:50.280 We stood out a mile. We looked like literally looked 0:26:50.320 --> 0:26:53.040 like aliens on the street. You know, it was starting 0:26:53.080 --> 0:26:55.400 to be talked about in parliament. Who are these strange 0:26:55.400 --> 0:26:58.360 people walking around? They've got to be stopped, spat at, 0:26:58.480 --> 0:27:00.840 stabbed as you walk past someone because how you looked. 0:27:00.880 --> 0:27:04.200 I mean, and you know, and men would their attitude 0:27:04.200 --> 0:27:06.560 would be to us girls, you know, the slits. You know, 0:27:06.600 --> 0:27:08.159 if you're not going to dress like a woman and 0:27:08.200 --> 0:27:10.159 act like a woman, because we were noisy, and we 0:27:10.160 --> 0:27:12.600 wore these weird clothes, all mixed up you know, taking 0:27:12.600 --> 0:27:15.320 the mickey out of what women should wear, you know, 0:27:15.359 --> 0:27:16.840 so I'd have a two to two an S and 0:27:16.960 --> 0:27:20.160 M gear and men's DMS on which you know, girls 0:27:20.200 --> 0:27:24.920 didn't wear about then, and they'd think, right, all the 0:27:24.920 --> 0:27:26.960 bets are off. We can attack you, we can beat 0:27:27.000 --> 0:27:29.040 you up, we can you know, try and rape you, 0:27:29.200 --> 0:27:30.960 because you're not like proper women. 0:27:31.280 --> 0:27:34.600 In the moment of being in the Slits, which you 0:27:34.680 --> 0:27:37.040 joined in seventy six and the band strew up in 0:27:37.080 --> 0:27:41.000 eighty two, in that time, did you know that you 0:27:41.040 --> 0:27:43.879 were changing things? Did you have a sense of that 0:27:44.840 --> 0:27:48.840 this was going to affect everything going forward like all music. 0:27:49.480 --> 0:27:51.240 It didn't, though, did it. It felt like it was 0:27:51.240 --> 0:27:53.360 a big void afterwards. At the time, we knew we 0:27:53.359 --> 0:27:55.840 were doing something incredibly important. We knew we were different, 0:27:55.880 --> 0:27:59.199 We knew we were first felt very responsible about everything 0:27:59.240 --> 0:28:01.720 we wrote and how we sang it, and what voice 0:28:01.800 --> 0:28:04.560 we sang in, and how we stood every little thing. 0:28:04.720 --> 0:28:07.879 You know. I'd done sociology comprehensive school, I'd been to 0:28:08.000 --> 0:28:10.200 art school. I had an awareness, you know, which I 0:28:10.240 --> 0:28:12.920 think I very much brought to the band to look 0:28:12.920 --> 0:28:15.000 at everything we did, and they were very all, very 0:28:15.000 --> 0:28:16.840 extraordinary women in the band. I don't know how we 0:28:16.880 --> 0:28:21.000 came together, but we were an odd bunch. But you know, 0:28:21.680 --> 0:28:24.600 then the eighties came and Thatcher came and wham, and 0:28:25.520 --> 0:28:28.400 it just disappeared. Yeah. No, it didn't feel like at 0:28:28.400 --> 0:28:32.560 all until almost now ish that we're being rediscovered talked 0:28:32.560 --> 0:28:35.480 about again. It didn't feel like it did have an effect. 0:28:35.800 --> 0:28:38.600 Once the band split up in eighty two, the world 0:28:38.640 --> 0:28:40.640 as you knew it was over. Your band was kind 0:28:40.640 --> 0:28:43.080 of everything to you. Punk was dead, Punk was dead. 0:28:43.120 --> 0:28:47.360 One was interested and you sold your guitars. Was there 0:28:47.400 --> 0:28:49.200 any part of you that thought, oh, well I need 0:28:49.240 --> 0:28:50.880 to get a new band now I need to. 0:28:51.280 --> 0:28:52.800 No, no, I did. I did for about a your 0:28:52.880 --> 0:28:54.600 or so. I went to Goldsmith's to try and learn 0:28:54.640 --> 0:28:56.440 a bit more about music because I couldn't even jam. 0:28:56.480 --> 0:28:58.520 I was so self taught. I didn't know how to 0:28:58.600 --> 0:29:01.160 jam or play with other musicians. But you know, as 0:29:01.240 --> 0:29:03.640 the world that during that year, the world was changing, 0:29:03.680 --> 0:29:06.160 it was getting more fach right, you know, more consumers, 0:29:06.240 --> 0:29:11.520 more capitalist. You know, no radio station would play that 0:29:11.680 --> 0:29:15.040 kind of music. That the whole sort of the window closed, 0:29:15.440 --> 0:29:19.160 and I think, you know, Britain, Small Island, Small Island, 0:29:19.200 --> 0:29:22.520 mentality just two radio stations. We didn't have loads of 0:29:22.520 --> 0:29:26.280 TV channels like now, loads of radio stations. Two radio stations, 0:29:26.360 --> 0:29:29.800 you know, one program once a week that played music 0:29:29.840 --> 0:29:32.680 on TV. It was like, no, there's no room few 0:29:32.720 --> 0:29:35.880 on the island anymore. Fuck off, we're getting you know, 0:29:36.040 --> 0:29:39.480 the new thing new Romantics or the new thing wham 0:29:39.640 --> 0:29:43.320 and you know eighties pop or and whereas in America 0:29:43.360 --> 0:29:46.000 things can sort of keep festering and but you can 0:29:46.080 --> 0:29:47.959 be something and stay in your genre for the rest 0:29:48.000 --> 0:29:50.080 of your life and find fans. It's a big country, 0:29:50.520 --> 0:29:53.520 loads of TV, loads of radio, but back then just 0:29:53.640 --> 0:29:55.720 wasn't room on the island, which I think is why 0:29:55.720 --> 0:29:59.280 we're so good at sort of subcultures and pop culture 0:29:59.320 --> 0:30:02.880 because actually turn around so quickly in Britain. Not anymore 0:30:02.920 --> 0:30:05.320 now we've got the internetwork more global. But that's why 0:30:05.400 --> 0:30:07.160 we were good at it and why we're not anymore, 0:30:07.200 --> 0:30:11.120 because we're not small anymore. But yes, so we were 0:30:11.240 --> 0:30:15.239 very aware that what we were doing was extraordinary, and 0:30:15.280 --> 0:30:17.920 we were very responsible and felt very passionate about it, 0:30:18.000 --> 0:30:21.920 I mean, but at the same time shocked that as 0:30:21.960 --> 0:30:25.959 the eighties came, no one took up the cudgels and 0:30:26.200 --> 0:30:27.960 you know and sort of you know, an even right 0:30:28.040 --> 0:30:29.920 girl when I you know, I went to hear some 0:30:30.040 --> 0:30:32.640 bands and everything, and it was great, there were female bands. 0:30:32.680 --> 0:30:35.800 But what and I don't think has ever been bettered 0:30:37.040 --> 0:30:41.400 that slitsted that's never been betted, is how experimental we 0:30:41.400 --> 0:30:44.600 were with our music, you know, in our rhythms, in 0:30:44.640 --> 0:30:45.360 our words. 0:30:46.480 --> 0:30:49.880 That's something that people don't give you enough credit for it. 0:30:49.920 --> 0:30:52.240 And I think I think it's almost as if because 0:30:52.240 --> 0:30:55.360 you were women, the music is kind of like, oh 0:30:55.360 --> 0:30:57.240 and it was women doing it, yeah, but they don't 0:30:57.240 --> 0:30:58.960 actually think about the music. 0:30:59.040 --> 0:31:02.000 The music is extraord ordinary that we made because we 0:31:02.040 --> 0:31:05.840 would determine not to play old cliches, you know, twelve bar, 0:31:06.280 --> 0:31:11.240 twelve bar, blue card structures, first chorus verse. You know, 0:31:11.280 --> 0:31:15.760 we thought, well, consciously, if we're breaking everything down, let's 0:31:15.760 --> 0:31:18.959 break everything down. That means, you know that the actual 0:31:19.120 --> 0:31:23.240 form of what we make has to be revolutionary as well. 0:31:23.560 --> 0:31:25.480 But you know, all the other bands, much as I 0:31:25.520 --> 0:31:28.000 love them, Clash the Pistols or whatever, they were just 0:31:28.080 --> 0:31:31.920 rock and roll bands with different haircuts, you know, and 0:31:32.040 --> 0:31:35.040 no one still seems to get that. And still now 0:31:35.400 --> 0:31:37.600 you know, the bands that are making money out of punk? 0:31:37.680 --> 0:31:39.400 Are those old rock and roll bands you know who 0:31:39.400 --> 0:31:41.800 are being played on adverts, who you know, get used 0:31:41.840 --> 0:31:45.000 on BBC or Channel four programs, you know, they never 0:31:45.080 --> 0:31:47.680 use the Slits never. We don't make a penny still 0:31:47.720 --> 0:31:50.120 now we've never made a penny from our album even 0:31:51.040 --> 0:31:51.520 But did you. 0:31:51.520 --> 0:31:55.960 Have a moment where you realized that in the underground 0:31:56.040 --> 0:31:59.680 world that people still talk about the Slits and love 0:31:59.720 --> 0:32:01.600 this references Slits and younger. 0:32:01.320 --> 0:32:03.560 Bands, Well, it never happened. It didn't start to happen 0:32:03.640 --> 0:32:07.320 till the Internet, and I think young people started to, 0:32:07.680 --> 0:32:11.200 you know, look at a band they liked and then 0:32:11.240 --> 0:32:14.640 hear a reference, and bit by bit they traced back 0:32:14.680 --> 0:32:17.320 to the Slits and thought, oh, this is where it 0:32:17.360 --> 0:32:20.800 started more or less, you know whatever, for those bands. 0:32:20.840 --> 0:32:23.680 Few bands kind enough to mention us and admit we 0:32:23.680 --> 0:32:28.120 were an influence. So I think young people rediscovered us 0:32:28.240 --> 0:32:33.400 around honestly around two thousand and six, seven eight. 0:32:34.040 --> 0:32:36.800 In that late as that sure, so in that interim 0:32:36.880 --> 0:32:41.320 between eighty two and then because in twenty five years, 0:32:41.400 --> 0:32:45.160 in twenty five years that in that period you started 0:32:45.200 --> 0:32:51.280 directing films instead and music videos and did keep fit. 0:32:51.480 --> 0:32:52.840 It got very good at keep Fit. 0:32:53.000 --> 0:32:54.040 Well, it wasn't cool Keeper. 0:32:54.240 --> 0:32:55.000 It wasn't cool keep. 0:32:55.080 --> 0:32:58.440 It was a new thing, aerobics that come out from America. 0:32:58.520 --> 0:33:02.840 Now people always laugh at that. But the thing is, again, 0:33:02.920 --> 0:33:05.280 it's so hard. I have to keep explaining what it 0:33:05.320 --> 0:33:07.680 was like back then. But women didn't use their bodies. 0:33:07.760 --> 0:33:09.440 Girls didn't use their bodies. You never saw a girl 0:33:09.560 --> 0:33:11.600 jog in the street. You never saw a girl in 0:33:12.040 --> 0:33:15.320 a tracksuit. Girls weren't in gyms. They were just for bodybuilders. 0:33:16.960 --> 0:33:22.160 Girls were passive. So to when I started to train, 0:33:22.600 --> 0:33:25.200 and I also did, you know, kung fu and things 0:33:25.240 --> 0:33:27.080 like that. But when I started to train my body, 0:33:27.680 --> 0:33:31.320 it was not what girls did. And then this movement 0:33:31.360 --> 0:33:35.360 started that came from California via Jane Fonder. Yeah, and 0:33:35.440 --> 0:33:37.440 I remember reading her book on it and her saying, 0:33:37.440 --> 0:33:40.600 you know that instead of letting the guys always, you know, 0:33:40.680 --> 0:33:42.640 do the climb up the mountain or take the kids 0:33:42.680 --> 0:33:44.720 on the lake or whatever. You know, she had built 0:33:44.760 --> 0:33:48.440 her body so she could now do that. But until then, 0:33:48.840 --> 0:33:51.360 people don't realize the seventies, it was like the forties, 0:33:51.640 --> 0:33:54.239 you know, the mentality at the time. Women didn't do 0:33:54.280 --> 0:33:56.600 the physical stuff. They didn't go up the mountain. You 0:33:56.640 --> 0:33:58.840 know what, they didn't even know a woman could run 0:33:58.880 --> 0:34:02.120 a marathon in the seventies. They weren't allowed to, didn't 0:34:02.120 --> 0:34:05.960 think the body could do it. You know, so young people, 0:34:06.200 --> 0:34:09.120 because we more or less dressed the same and listen 0:34:09.160 --> 0:34:10.840 to the same music. Now, you know, I'm in my 0:34:10.920 --> 0:34:13.200 sixties and I might wear the same clothes as my 0:34:13.280 --> 0:34:16.960 kid who's in her twenties, but we had a very 0:34:17.160 --> 0:34:20.120 very different life. And because just because I can talk, 0:34:20.640 --> 0:34:22.440 or I was in a band and the band has 0:34:22.520 --> 0:34:24.760 kind of been rediscovered and I wear the same clothes, 0:34:25.000 --> 0:34:28.640 doesn't mean I had a practically Victorian environment that I 0:34:28.680 --> 0:34:31.120 grew up in. So for me to start using my 0:34:31.400 --> 0:34:34.400 body and train it and not to do dance just 0:34:34.680 --> 0:34:37.359 to get muscles and get fit, I mean, and then 0:34:37.440 --> 0:34:40.359 really it's quite rare. Even now people are beginning to say, 0:34:40.400 --> 0:34:42.560 you know, fit is better than thin, et cetera, et cetera. 0:34:42.800 --> 0:34:45.479 It's still not really got there. But for a woman 0:34:45.520 --> 0:34:47.400 to be doing that instead of and not just to 0:34:47.480 --> 0:34:50.440 dance and twirl about, but just to have muscles and 0:34:50.480 --> 0:34:53.759 be able to run and you know, hike and do 0:34:53.840 --> 0:34:58.680 all those things row whatever was unusual. 0:34:58.520 --> 0:35:01.640 During that time. Then had you backed away music. 0:35:01.920 --> 0:35:04.440 Yeah, I am someone who I can't do something unless 0:35:04.440 --> 0:35:07.040 I am absolutely passionate about it. And I was became 0:35:07.120 --> 0:35:09.480 passionate about film. I thought, No, I always look at 0:35:09.520 --> 0:35:11.960 life and think, now, what's the most radical, exciting thing 0:35:12.000 --> 0:35:13.440 going on at the moment, And I'm going to try 0:35:13.440 --> 0:35:15.480 and put myself in the middle of that. I kind 0:35:15.480 --> 0:35:16.680 of don't care about the means. 0:35:16.960 --> 0:35:18.320 That's a really rare thing to do. 0:35:18.600 --> 0:35:20.719 I'm not going to fetishize guitars, you know, that's what 0:35:20.800 --> 0:35:23.560 guys do. A fetishize guitars, and it has to be 0:35:23.640 --> 0:35:27.680 guitar and churn out and another album and another album. No, 0:35:28.239 --> 0:35:32.000 I'd turn my attention to something else which is buzzy 0:35:32.120 --> 0:35:34.319 and interesting. And I looked around and I think, you know, 0:35:34.360 --> 0:35:37.000 I think films. Film in the seventies were so exciting 0:35:37.040 --> 0:35:39.000 what it was beginning to do, you know, the realism, 0:35:39.040 --> 0:35:41.120 et cetera, et cetera. You know, on the back of 0:35:41.120 --> 0:35:44.880 the sixties film, but American especially and French film, and so, 0:35:45.360 --> 0:35:47.080 you know, took a couple of years to get a 0:35:47.080 --> 0:35:49.960 portfolio together and made some short films, went to film school. 0:35:49.960 --> 0:35:54.160 You know, it's not easy to shift disciplines. But and 0:35:54.200 --> 0:35:56.200 I've always thought myself as a complete jack of all 0:35:56.239 --> 0:35:59.680 trades until I wrote the book and put the whole 0:35:59.719 --> 0:36:02.960 thing and all the shifts in between two cardboard covers. 0:36:03.520 --> 0:36:06.800 And suddenly, because I've done that, it's made it valid, 0:36:07.000 --> 0:36:09.600 and it's also made it valid to myself. So whereas 0:36:09.640 --> 0:36:11.879 I thought I'm a complete failure, I just shift from 0:36:11.880 --> 0:36:13.640 one thing to the other. I wrote it in the 0:36:13.680 --> 0:36:16.279 book and didn't get a bad reaction from the book, 0:36:16.280 --> 0:36:19.480 and it's made it sort of okay, and people saying, oh, 0:36:19.480 --> 0:36:21.960 that's really good the way you shift, Whereas it's always 0:36:21.960 --> 0:36:24.480 been thought of as a complete failure within my lifetime, 0:36:24.560 --> 0:36:27.520 especially in Britain America, they don't mind you shifting disciplines. 0:36:27.800 --> 0:36:30.160 Britain they find it hard to accept your serious if 0:36:30.200 --> 0:36:30.640 you shift. 0:36:31.120 --> 0:36:34.080 It's really rare, isn't it. Because people who are in 0:36:34.120 --> 0:36:36.080 a band and you have some success and you make 0:36:36.120 --> 0:36:39.000 a record and that band splits up, the most natural 0:36:39.040 --> 0:36:41.480 thing that people do is go, well, I need to 0:36:41.480 --> 0:36:43.200 start a new band now because I need to hold 0:36:43.239 --> 0:36:45.719 on to It's my identity, it's everything about me, it's 0:36:45.800 --> 0:36:50.240 this band. Do you consider yourself a filmmaker over a musician. 0:36:50.560 --> 0:36:53.680 No, the filmmaker was the hardest of all because the 0:36:53.680 --> 0:36:55.960 money it takes to make a film or you know, 0:36:56.040 --> 0:36:59.600 and the amount of collaboration and producers, et cetera, et cetera. 0:37:00.080 --> 0:37:03.279 It's the hardest medium to be back then. So we 0:37:03.320 --> 0:37:06.000 didn't have little film camera you know, cameras on our phones. 0:37:06.080 --> 0:37:09.239 You couldn't shoot even a little DVD digital camera, I mean, 0:37:09.360 --> 0:37:13.160 great big, whopping things when I was at film school, 0:37:13.400 --> 0:37:17.120 So I couldn't do anything really personal in that medium. 0:37:17.600 --> 0:37:19.879 I could now, but I didn't then, So I don't 0:37:19.920 --> 0:37:22.960 really even count that bit particularly. But what it really 0:37:22.960 --> 0:37:24.640 did do for me, though, is I did quite a 0:37:24.640 --> 0:37:28.560 lot of script writing. It made me even more visually aware. 0:37:28.560 --> 0:37:30.319 I mean, I'd already been to art school, but you know, 0:37:30.440 --> 0:37:32.680 in my ducking and diving, i'd managed to get myself 0:37:32.840 --> 0:37:37.480 to another one. And it all went towards when I 0:37:37.480 --> 0:37:39.840 came to write a book and I thought, I can't write. 0:37:39.920 --> 0:37:43.160 I haven't got even you know, English a level, and 0:37:43.239 --> 0:37:46.080 let alone all these other writers got degrees in creative 0:37:46.080 --> 0:37:48.799 writing and everything. And I sat down, I think this 0:37:48.840 --> 0:37:51.879 is a really good exercise for anyone. I think, what 0:37:51.960 --> 0:37:56.600 can I bring? What have I got I really understand rhythm, 0:37:57.040 --> 0:37:59.960 and what's talking and writing if words if it's not 0:38:00.080 --> 0:38:02.759 about rhythm, And what's the structure of a book if 0:38:02.760 --> 0:38:05.239 it's not a rhythm. And I kind of wrote it 0:38:05.280 --> 0:38:08.600 like an album, with each chapter almost just a track, 0:38:09.000 --> 0:38:12.520 you know. And I brought to bear all the rules 0:38:12.640 --> 0:38:16.400 I had, which were, you know, no long winded guitar solo, 0:38:16.520 --> 0:38:19.080 so there'll be no great, big windy passages. You know, 0:38:19.200 --> 0:38:21.160 when you finish saying what you're saying, like with the 0:38:21.200 --> 0:38:23.319 end of a song, you finish the song. You don't 0:38:23.320 --> 0:38:25.799 go waffling off with a big sort of fade out 0:38:25.800 --> 0:38:28.000 at the end, et cetera, et cetera. So I brought 0:38:28.080 --> 0:38:30.359 what I did know, you know, and I brought the 0:38:30.400 --> 0:38:33.680 life I had lived to the book. I brought my 0:38:33.800 --> 0:38:37.400 visual awareness. So when I had to write something that 0:38:37.400 --> 0:38:39.840 had happened, like you know, when me and Mick Jones 0:38:39.840 --> 0:38:43.120 fled in love on Forte Bella Road or whatever, I thought, 0:38:43.440 --> 0:38:45.080 how do I didn't even know where to start? And 0:38:45.120 --> 0:38:47.399 I thought, well, I'll just see it like I see 0:38:47.440 --> 0:38:50.440 a film when I'm storyboarding, and I'll just write what 0:38:50.520 --> 0:38:53.480 I see. So it made it. Both books are quite visual. 0:38:53.480 --> 0:38:57.520 I think because of that. I know about editing because 0:38:57.520 --> 0:39:01.759 I've edited so much film work, you know, over the years, 0:39:01.760 --> 0:39:03.839 because I did work in TV and film for quite 0:39:03.840 --> 0:39:06.400 a long time. So and I just think anyone is 0:39:06.480 --> 0:39:09.520 daunted by a project should think what can I bring? 0:39:09.680 --> 0:39:11.680 Never mind, you haven't got the you know. And that's 0:39:11.719 --> 0:39:14.640 the one great legacy of punk for me personally, and 0:39:14.680 --> 0:39:17.520 I hope it's resonated for other people, is you don't 0:39:17.560 --> 0:39:19.880 have to be a virtuo, so to have something to 0:39:19.920 --> 0:39:24.360 say and to have the right to say it, and actually, 0:39:24.400 --> 0:39:26.120 on top of that, probably make quite a big splash 0:39:26.120 --> 0:39:28.520 with it. In fact, I think if you can draw 0:39:28.600 --> 0:39:31.640 on what you do have and put that in, you know, 0:39:31.680 --> 0:39:34.319 into what bring that to bed in whatever you do, 0:39:34.600 --> 0:39:36.960 you'll make a better work than someone who's been trained. 0:39:37.120 --> 0:39:40.799 You did go back to music briefly released a solo 0:39:40.840 --> 0:39:43.479 album and a couple of EPs. But are you done 0:39:43.480 --> 0:39:45.040 with that now? Do you feel you feel like? 0:39:45.200 --> 0:39:46.799 I feel like I'm done with it? But of course 0:39:46.840 --> 0:39:49.000 when I did those, my god, I was so passionate 0:39:49.040 --> 0:39:51.600 about it, you know, to the point where I blew 0:39:51.640 --> 0:39:53.600 everything out of the water, my marriage and everything to 0:39:53.640 --> 0:39:57.200 make that album. You know, that's That's why being a 0:39:57.200 --> 0:40:01.040 female artist doesn't go down too well in the normal 0:40:01.120 --> 0:40:04.359 run of things, you know, because you know, if you're 0:40:04.360 --> 0:40:06.719 in a relationship and they're threatened by you doing that, 0:40:07.120 --> 0:40:09.520 you know, what do you and give you an ultimatum 0:40:09.600 --> 0:40:11.600 saying either you make that music or it's you know, 0:40:12.320 --> 0:40:14.000 you either do that or you do the marriage. You 0:40:14.040 --> 0:40:17.080 don't do both. You know. I don't know how many 0:40:17.080 --> 0:40:18.800 people say, well, see you. 0:40:18.840 --> 0:40:21.960 Then you wanted to. You were so committed to making 0:40:21.960 --> 0:40:25.319 that record that you and it's one of the kind 0:40:25.360 --> 0:40:28.360 of the loveliest sections of the book, the stories of 0:40:28.400 --> 0:40:33.680 you learning the guitar again and go into open mic 0:40:33.840 --> 0:40:39.480 nights and driving three hours with a squire crap little 0:40:39.640 --> 0:40:43.560 yeah thing, crap little guitar, new guitar because you'd sold 0:40:43.560 --> 0:40:46.080 all your guitars because that was packed away, that that 0:40:46.480 --> 0:40:49.239 was all done. And you drive three hours to an 0:40:49.239 --> 0:40:54.239 open mic and you'd you'd be agonizing, you wouldn't want 0:40:54.280 --> 0:40:56.239 to necessarily do it, which comes back to this thing. 0:40:56.280 --> 0:40:58.719 If you kind of what fears you, what are you 0:40:58.840 --> 0:41:01.359 most scared off, then go and do it. And you'd 0:41:01.360 --> 0:41:03.560 sing in these pubs and then you drive three hours 0:41:03.600 --> 0:41:06.600 home and but that whole section of the book. I 0:41:06.640 --> 0:41:09.239 just think is I guess kind of almost sums you up, 0:41:09.360 --> 0:41:12.200 like it feels like it sums up you know, that 0:41:12.320 --> 0:41:15.240 kind of dedication to feeling you have to do it 0:41:15.760 --> 0:41:17.280 almost have ack came from. 0:41:18.160 --> 0:41:22.400 I almost didn't recognize myself. I was so driven, I 0:41:22.560 --> 0:41:24.920 have to write these songs. I have to get them 0:41:24.920 --> 0:41:27.960 out there. You know, nothing else, you know, apart from 0:41:27.960 --> 0:41:29.879 my daughter matters. You know, I'd put her to bed, 0:41:29.920 --> 0:41:32.560 and then if I'd go with this, guitar, couldn't sing, 0:41:32.640 --> 0:41:34.840 come play, hadn't touched the guitar for twenty five years. 0:41:35.000 --> 0:41:37.439 Even when I did play before, I was completely self taught, 0:41:37.440 --> 0:41:39.640 So it's not like I had anything to fall back on. 0:41:41.560 --> 0:41:45.680 And yeah, I was absolutely driven to do it. And 0:41:45.719 --> 0:41:47.520 there was no I'm going to have a career in this, 0:41:47.880 --> 0:41:49.799 you know, I was fifty five. It's not like there 0:41:49.840 --> 0:41:54.240 was any reward in it financially or any quos. 0:41:54.480 --> 0:41:56.840 Was it then that made you do it? 0:41:55.840 --> 0:41:58.319 I don't do. You know what it was almost like 0:41:59.480 --> 0:42:03.120 in height situations where you know, we don't use that 0:42:03.200 --> 0:42:05.320 much of our brains as humans, you know, we probably 0:42:05.320 --> 0:42:08.160 couldn't even cope with what we could possibly see and 0:42:08.239 --> 0:42:10.560 hear if we And I really feel like I was 0:42:10.560 --> 0:42:14.080 in a situation where this higher self kicked in and 0:42:14.200 --> 0:42:16.919 completely took over and just ran me. And it was like, Viv, 0:42:18.200 --> 0:42:21.880 you have still got something in you and you know 0:42:22.200 --> 0:42:24.360 the marriage is over and you've got to make a 0:42:24.360 --> 0:42:27.680 life for yourself and your daughter. But more than anything, 0:42:27.920 --> 0:42:30.680 maybe it's because you know, the brush with cancer, and 0:42:30.760 --> 0:42:32.800 it actually was more than a brush. It was pretty 0:42:32.840 --> 0:42:36.239 touch and go. You know, it had been like ten 0:42:36.320 --> 0:42:40.360 years since that had happed. Maybe suddenly that had kicked in, like, 0:42:40.480 --> 0:42:43.200 you know, grab life, Grab life, because people always say, 0:42:43.239 --> 0:42:45.000 you know, after cancer, you feel like every day is 0:42:45.040 --> 0:42:47.160 you know, to be lived, like you'll last. I didn't 0:42:47.160 --> 0:42:48.960 get that at all. I was terrified. For ten years. 0:42:49.040 --> 0:42:52.560 I was scared. I was sort of traumatized. But this 0:42:52.760 --> 0:42:55.360 madness did kick in and I would go and do 0:42:55.400 --> 0:42:57.760 those open mics, put my daughter to bed, drive miles, 0:42:57.760 --> 0:43:01.560 you know, down windy c side roads, depths of hell 0:43:02.160 --> 0:43:04.799 and going to a pub of four blokes of Ponytails 0:43:05.239 --> 0:43:09.120 play really badly, seeing out of tune, shaking so much, 0:43:09.840 --> 0:43:12.839 even strum the guitar. You know, it's so embarrassing. It 0:43:12.880 --> 0:43:13.719 was so embarrassing. 0:43:13.880 --> 0:43:16.120 After the show, After the show, would you have this 0:43:16.520 --> 0:43:19.560 sense of euphoria of having done it? 0:43:19.840 --> 0:43:24.520 Cringe because I was so bad. I had one friend 0:43:24.560 --> 0:43:26.600 who came with me if she hadn't been there. She 0:43:26.680 --> 0:43:28.279 used to come all the way down from London to 0:43:28.360 --> 0:43:31.520 sit with me, and she would be bright red in 0:43:31.560 --> 0:43:34.120 the audience. And then I'd walk out past the men, 0:43:34.280 --> 0:43:36.200 you know, the sort of men with ponytails, only four 0:43:36.280 --> 0:43:38.720 or five people in the pub looking down at the carpet, 0:43:38.800 --> 0:43:40.520 and they would be looking down at the carpet so 0:43:40.560 --> 0:43:42.759 as not to catch my eye. The embarrassment. No, there was. 0:43:42.880 --> 0:43:45.360 There was no euphoria, because it would have been euphoria 0:43:45.400 --> 0:43:47.880 if I'd been good and I'd killed it. But I 0:43:48.000 --> 0:43:52.600 was hopeless, hopeless. It is, you know, squawking middle aged woman. 0:43:53.200 --> 0:43:54.600 But you'd go back the next week. 0:43:54.760 --> 0:43:58.400 Yeah, i'ld go back because I was driven it completely 0:43:58.440 --> 0:44:00.680 and I don't know where that volcano and me came 0:44:00.719 --> 0:44:01.200 from it. 0:44:02.080 --> 0:44:05.160 Yeah, you were saying that you kind of look at 0:44:05.200 --> 0:44:07.160 the arts and the world and think, what is the 0:44:07.280 --> 0:44:09.360 what is the most exciting thing happening right now? And 0:44:09.400 --> 0:44:12.640 can I get can I get in on that? Is 0:44:12.680 --> 0:44:15.440 it writing for you now? Because you have written two books. 0:44:15.440 --> 0:44:17.520 For me personally, it would be writing. But if I 0:44:17.560 --> 0:44:20.520 were young, it would be, you know, a form of activism. 0:44:21.120 --> 0:44:26.640 I would be, you know, I would get myself well educated, articulate, 0:44:27.280 --> 0:44:31.160 and I would make use of myself for you know, 0:44:31.360 --> 0:44:35.280 the natural world, for you know, just better the world 0:44:35.320 --> 0:44:37.439 in some way, I think it would be it would 0:44:37.480 --> 0:44:39.360 be that, you know, I look at young people like 0:44:39.400 --> 0:44:41.320 you know, Jack Harris and Alice ed I don't know 0:44:41.320 --> 0:44:45.440 if you know them, and you know, just going about 0:44:45.440 --> 0:44:47.880 the world trying to do a bit of good, you know, 0:44:48.000 --> 0:44:52.920 raise awareness, amount might stuther young people or yeah, So 0:44:54.480 --> 0:44:56.440 I don't know, I feel it would be something like that. 0:44:56.680 --> 0:44:58.880 I don't know, you know, I think i'd have the 0:44:58.920 --> 0:45:01.200 guts to do it. I certainly didn't have the education 0:45:01.320 --> 0:45:04.120 to do it when when I was young. And yeah, 0:45:04.200 --> 0:45:06.399 but now for me, it would be writing. I really 0:45:06.480 --> 0:45:10.080 enjoy the long form of it. You know, it is daunting. 0:45:10.120 --> 0:45:11.879 You know, it just takes three years to get through 0:45:12.120 --> 0:45:13.919 to write a book, right, and through all that three 0:45:13.960 --> 0:45:18.480 years you more or less think it's shit. So it 0:45:18.520 --> 0:45:21.239 takes some weird kind of the same thing that drove 0:45:21.320 --> 0:45:23.920 me to do those terrible gigs. Knowing that if I 0:45:23.960 --> 0:45:26.080 didn't keep doing them, I would never get better. And 0:45:26.120 --> 0:45:28.759 I had to stand there and be terrible for five 0:45:28.800 --> 0:45:32.919 minutes for two years until I got to the point 0:45:32.920 --> 0:45:36.720 where I could do that five minutes in tune. Not good, 0:45:36.960 --> 0:45:39.719 just in tune. And I knew that. And I think 0:45:39.840 --> 0:45:41.520 that's taught me now with the book, that I have 0:45:41.600 --> 0:45:44.919 to stick with it for three years. With that, And again, 0:45:45.000 --> 0:45:48.360 I think every creative artist person, not entertainer type person, 0:45:48.400 --> 0:45:52.480 but has that feeling of you're standing like on a 0:45:52.600 --> 0:45:57.239 raft and uneven, see for three years you have to 0:45:57.239 --> 0:46:00.520 be able to bear that feeling. I can't bear it 0:46:00.560 --> 0:46:02.719 in any other walk of life, but I can bear 0:46:02.760 --> 0:46:05.440 it when I create. Funnily enough, I can't bear it 0:46:05.440 --> 0:46:09.120 in a relationship. I can't. You know, I can't bear uncertainty. 0:46:10.040 --> 0:46:12.680 But and yet your whole kind of whole life is. 0:46:12.640 --> 0:46:13.120 Based on it. 0:46:13.200 --> 0:46:14.680 Life is that? 0:46:14.920 --> 0:46:15.160 Yeah? 0:46:15.239 --> 0:46:18.120 Yeah, yeah, tell me a bit about your second book then, 0:46:18.160 --> 0:46:19.719 because I still need to read that one. 0:46:19.840 --> 0:46:23.560 Yeah. It's well, because I didn't get sort of vilified 0:46:23.600 --> 0:46:25.200 with the first book, because I. 0:46:24.920 --> 0:46:25.879 Once I think you would. 0:46:26.080 --> 0:46:28.960 Oh yeah, I had no idea. I wrote that, and 0:46:29.040 --> 0:46:31.160 I wrote it mostly at my kitchen table, and I 0:46:31.760 --> 0:46:34.640 because I got quite a low attention span and everything. 0:46:34.680 --> 0:46:36.000 I thought, oh my god, I can't bet. I'm not 0:46:36.000 --> 0:46:38.400 going to make this like homework. You know, every chapter 0:46:38.520 --> 0:46:40.440 I write, every word I write, has got to in 0:46:40.480 --> 0:46:43.440 some way turn me on, otherwise I'm not going to 0:46:43.480 --> 0:46:45.279 do it. And so I would think of the most 0:46:45.280 --> 0:46:47.680 embarrassing things that ever happened to me, or you know, 0:46:48.280 --> 0:46:50.719 humiliating things and failures and all those kind of things, 0:46:51.080 --> 0:46:53.799 and for a laugh, to get myself going, i'd write 0:46:53.840 --> 0:46:56.759 about that, and I would be cringing as I wrote, 0:46:56.840 --> 0:46:59.239 and I would be laughing at myself, saying, thinking to myself, 0:46:59.239 --> 0:47:01.200 I've never seen that in a That's hilarious. But I'm 0:47:01.239 --> 0:47:03.239 not going to put it in the book obviously. But 0:47:03.280 --> 0:47:07.040 of course, once I'd finished those parts, they were so dynamic, 0:47:07.719 --> 0:47:10.359 and they were so truthful and so necessary. I thought 0:47:10.400 --> 0:47:14.080 for young people especially to read and see all the failures, 0:47:14.320 --> 0:47:16.839 all the humiliations I've been through, because when they hear 0:47:16.880 --> 0:47:18.560 about me, they just hear she was in a band, 0:47:18.600 --> 0:47:21.440 and she's made some simo records, and she's written some books. 0:47:21.520 --> 0:47:23.959 They haven't heard the real CV. It's all the years 0:47:23.960 --> 0:47:26.560 in between, all the failures in between so yeah. So 0:47:27.760 --> 0:47:30.640 when I handed it over to the publishers, I had 0:47:30.640 --> 0:47:32.960 a little bit of a breakdown because I thought, well, 0:47:33.040 --> 0:47:34.759 I'm going to be hated because it's a bit like 0:47:34.800 --> 0:47:36.760 you know in life. You think, if I tell people 0:47:36.760 --> 0:47:38.640 what I really think and feel, they're not going to 0:47:38.760 --> 0:47:40.040 like me. They're going to hate me. They're going to 0:47:40.080 --> 0:47:42.120 think I'm stupid. But I put it all in the 0:47:42.120 --> 0:47:46.400 book for everyone to see, right, and what was extraordinary, 0:47:46.600 --> 0:47:48.319 and I think this is a lesson for life is 0:47:48.360 --> 0:47:50.759 people don't hate you when you say I have these 0:47:50.800 --> 0:47:54.520 evil thoughts. I've been you know, I'm insecure, I've been disloyal, 0:47:54.680 --> 0:47:57.200 I've been selfish, you know. And I wrote all those instances, 0:47:57.719 --> 0:48:00.759 and I thought I would be hated. Instead came back saying, oh, 0:48:00.800 --> 0:48:04.879 it's inspiring the last word. And that's really the main 0:48:05.600 --> 0:48:08.120 response I've had the books inspiring. 0:48:07.680 --> 0:48:11.400 Because essentially you're saying things that everyone's kind of feeling 0:48:11.440 --> 0:48:15.320 and thinking, and they're like, oh, thank god, somebody somebody 0:48:15.440 --> 0:48:18.400 said I like that, and I just wouldn't tell me. 0:48:18.560 --> 0:48:22.080 My favorite sort of comedy, you know, which is people 0:48:22.160 --> 0:48:23.960 being honest about what they really feel. But you know, 0:48:24.000 --> 0:48:25.480 you had a laugh to it as I did in 0:48:25.520 --> 0:48:28.160 the books as well. So when I didn't get hated 0:48:28.280 --> 0:48:30.759 after a few years with the first book, I thought, 0:48:30.800 --> 0:48:32.920 all right, they don't hate me, yet push it even. 0:48:34.000 --> 0:48:36.680 I can't help it. It's just it's a terrible sort 0:48:36.719 --> 0:48:39.120 of destructive thing in me. And so I thought, if 0:48:39.120 --> 0:48:41.080 they didn't hate me with the first book and I 0:48:41.120 --> 0:48:45.759 didn't shock them, did shock a bit, but I'm I'm 0:48:45.760 --> 0:48:47.759 going to push it even further. I'm going to push 0:48:47.760 --> 0:48:50.640 myself even further. I'm going to admit to even more 0:48:50.719 --> 0:48:53.200 in the second book, which I didn't intend to actually 0:48:53.200 --> 0:48:55.279 make so personal, but intent, you know, as I said, 0:48:55.320 --> 0:48:57.960 I found out I was that woman with murderous thoughts, 0:48:58.200 --> 0:49:01.800 as I said at the beginning. So yes, I pushed 0:49:01.800 --> 0:49:02.480 it even further. 0:49:02.880 --> 0:49:05.520 And it's it's cool to throw away unopen. And that 0:49:05.600 --> 0:49:08.560 title comes from you found after your mom passed away. 0:49:08.640 --> 0:49:11.680 You found her diaries, Yeah, and they said on them 0:49:11.760 --> 0:49:15.000 to throw away unopen. Do you think your mum, knowing 0:49:15.080 --> 0:49:16.960 you and type of person you are, do you think 0:49:17.000 --> 0:49:19.160 she ever thought for a second you would find that 0:49:19.239 --> 0:49:20.280 and throw it away unopen? 0:49:20.440 --> 0:49:23.239 No way. My father had known me all my life, 0:49:23.400 --> 0:49:27.799 knows you know what an annoying rebellious alfhole I am 0:49:27.920 --> 0:49:31.319 would knew puverly well in a way. I'm presumed she 0:49:31.400 --> 0:49:33.279 did that to absolve herself when I told you to 0:49:33.320 --> 0:49:35.640 throw them away if you open it the Pandora's box, 0:49:35.719 --> 0:49:38.000 you know, and it wasn't really nice what was inside, 0:49:38.000 --> 0:49:40.440 you know, it was all the horrible accounts of her 0:49:40.480 --> 0:49:43.080 marriage and my father and our family life is very 0:49:43.120 --> 0:49:47.440 sad and violent and horrible. And the funny thing is though, 0:49:48.239 --> 0:49:50.960 it just covered mainly nineteen sixty five to sixty seven, 0:49:51.000 --> 0:49:53.840 because you couldn't get a divorce in those days without 0:49:53.920 --> 0:49:57.560 proving male treatment, et cetera, et cetera. So all divorces, 0:49:57.760 --> 0:50:00.960 you know, people want to divorce, had to keep a 0:50:01.000 --> 0:50:03.799 diary of their home life to show the maltreatment. And 0:50:03.840 --> 0:50:05.959 my father kept a diary of the same two years 0:50:06.080 --> 0:50:09.280 nineteen sixty five to sixty seven. So there's me questing 0:50:09.280 --> 0:50:11.360 where my rage came from and what's the truth, and 0:50:11.360 --> 0:50:14.839 why is our family so you know, screwed up? Et cetera, 0:50:14.880 --> 0:50:17.440 et cetera. You know, in my little detective book, I 0:50:17.520 --> 0:50:19.440 come across these two pieces of evidence. 0:50:19.640 --> 0:50:22.440 Would they have done that completely independently? 0:50:23.239 --> 0:50:24.200 Different solicitors? 0:50:24.520 --> 0:50:25.800 Yeah right, yeah. 0:50:25.600 --> 0:50:28.919 Different solicitors unaware, you know, but you know, rushing off 0:50:28.960 --> 0:50:31.440 to they had separate bedrooms. By then scribbling down, you know, 0:50:32.080 --> 0:50:35.480 Kathleen just did blah blah blah, and her you know, saying, 0:50:35.600 --> 0:50:39.000 you know, he just threatened to hit me, right, And 0:50:39.040 --> 0:50:40.960 of course I had my own memory of those two years, 0:50:41.200 --> 0:50:43.680 which I thought was a truthful memory, But then I 0:50:43.800 --> 0:50:47.120 had these three completely different accounts of the same situations. 0:50:47.160 --> 0:50:49.920 I recognized all the situations, all the incidents that happened, 0:50:50.360 --> 0:50:52.759 and it was a lesson to me that, you know, VIVI, 0:50:52.800 --> 0:50:55.120 you can go on plowing away looking for the truth 0:50:55.160 --> 0:50:58.760 as long as you like, but everyone has a different truth, 0:50:58.880 --> 0:51:02.000 a different memory. So it was very hard for me 0:51:02.040 --> 0:51:04.440 to accept in a way that there was no absolute 0:51:04.520 --> 0:51:07.040 truth that I could get to to find out why 0:51:07.239 --> 0:51:10.840 things have gone so wrong within my family. But I 0:51:10.880 --> 0:51:13.719 did come to an understanding of why we were all 0:51:13.880 --> 0:51:17.239 like we were. And you know, I suppose I grew 0:51:17.280 --> 0:51:19.399 a bit because I couldn't be so black and white 0:51:19.400 --> 0:51:20.760 am I thinking he was wrong? 0:51:20.840 --> 0:51:21.520 She was right. 0:51:21.920 --> 0:51:25.680 I remembered best all that had to go in, you know, 0:51:25.719 --> 0:51:29.400 in the evidence before me. Yes, I did try and 0:51:29.400 --> 0:51:31.200 write the book like a detective story. You know, it's 0:51:31.239 --> 0:51:33.799 a bit of a page turner. There are bodies and 0:51:33.840 --> 0:51:37.239 clues and things, but they're psychological crimes, which I do 0:51:37.280 --> 0:51:39.920 think happened in families a lot, you know, emotional and 0:51:39.960 --> 0:51:44.520 psychological crimes, and I just wanted to find out who'd 0:51:44.560 --> 0:51:47.560 done the murders, who was guilty, and it just wasn't 0:51:47.560 --> 0:51:48.359 that straightforward. 0:51:48.560 --> 0:51:51.799 Sure have people been shocked to the extent that you 0:51:52.280 --> 0:51:53.080 thought they might be? 0:51:53.280 --> 0:51:56.840 Yeah? Well, basically there's the night my mother died is 0:51:57.480 --> 0:51:59.960 woven through the book. It was a very traumatic night, 0:52:01.200 --> 0:52:04.600 lasted about ten hours, nine or ten hours, and it 0:52:04.680 --> 0:52:07.200 was so traumatic that I found I couldn't write about 0:52:07.239 --> 0:52:10.399 it as one scene, and I couldn't think about it. 0:52:10.840 --> 0:52:12.600 I could only let it into my head as I 0:52:12.640 --> 0:52:17.160 ever thought about it, in little bursts. And I realized, God, 0:52:17.200 --> 0:52:19.480 that's exactly how one would remember a trauma, you know, 0:52:19.560 --> 0:52:23.040 traumatic event. Your memory and your mind protects you by 0:52:23.080 --> 0:52:25.720 only letting you think of, you know, having little flashes 0:52:25.760 --> 0:52:29.920 of it come back to you. So I couldn't write 0:52:29.960 --> 0:52:32.759 it in one long scene in the book. It punctuates 0:52:32.800 --> 0:52:36.120 the book, this terrible one night, and the writing around 0:52:36.160 --> 0:52:41.879 it gradually brings you towards understanding why that one night 0:52:41.920 --> 0:52:45.680 happened like it did. So yeah, so you have I 0:52:45.719 --> 0:52:49.000 have these little bursts of remembering of these this terrible night, 0:52:49.040 --> 0:52:52.840 but I also have, you know, a proper chapter in between, 0:52:53.200 --> 0:52:57.440 which starts to set you up, because I didn't want 0:52:58.320 --> 0:53:01.759 my awfulness to be reached too early in the book 0:53:01.760 --> 0:53:04.600 by the reader. The reader had to be led to 0:53:04.680 --> 0:53:09.239 an understanding of the environment and the circumstances that led 0:53:09.280 --> 0:53:13.319 me to behave like I did that night, and that 0:53:13.400 --> 0:53:15.400 took a lot of setting up and a lot of 0:53:15.440 --> 0:53:18.920 research into why what made me the person that was 0:53:19.520 --> 0:53:20.560 that person that night? 0:53:20.719 --> 0:53:24.279 You know, as it's so personal once again, even more 0:53:24.440 --> 0:53:27.439 kind of almost more more than the first book, because 0:53:27.440 --> 0:53:31.440 it zeros in on something that is so important in 0:53:31.440 --> 0:53:34.560 your world. You mentioned that you release a book and 0:53:34.600 --> 0:53:36.120 then you have to carry on talking about it and 0:53:36.160 --> 0:53:38.319 then therefore it stays with you. And that book came 0:53:38.360 --> 0:53:41.800 out in May of last year. How have you found 0:53:42.160 --> 0:53:44.400 these kind of things where where people are asking you 0:53:44.400 --> 0:53:44.879 about it? 0:53:44.880 --> 0:53:47.640 It's traumatic. It is traumatic. It keeps it present in 0:53:47.680 --> 0:53:50.640 my mind. It means, you know, I'm dreaming, dream about it. 0:53:50.719 --> 0:53:53.960 I haven't let it go as one would normally heal. 0:53:54.680 --> 0:53:57.920 But the good side of it is I have gained 0:53:57.960 --> 0:54:01.000 a much wider understanding of the situation, so when I 0:54:01.040 --> 0:54:04.960 do stop talking about it, I will be actually quite 0:54:05.000 --> 0:54:08.440 far on. But yeah, you know, I've been The paperbacks 0:54:08.480 --> 0:54:10.600 come out now, so I've started talking about it again. 0:54:10.640 --> 0:54:13.480 But also when people come up to me afterwards, they 0:54:13.520 --> 0:54:16.319 say something like that happened, just like that happened to me, 0:54:16.560 --> 0:54:18.839 and I can't help but think, well, why the hell 0:54:18.840 --> 0:54:21.759 has no one spoken about this before? You know, the 0:54:21.800 --> 0:54:26.000 taboos I'm tackling in it really are around death, siblings, family. 0:54:26.440 --> 0:54:30.760 You know, it's a universal story, and people are beginning 0:54:30.760 --> 0:54:33.320 to confess the same sort of things have happened at deathbeds, 0:54:34.120 --> 0:54:37.240 in their lives and their families. But when I stood 0:54:37.280 --> 0:54:40.040 there thinking what the hell do I do? As my 0:54:40.120 --> 0:54:43.800 mum was dying and this situation was unfolding, which I 0:54:43.800 --> 0:54:45.920 won't go into too much because it's kind of it's 0:54:45.960 --> 0:54:49.239 a spoiler. But I couldn't think, because I, you know, 0:54:49.960 --> 0:54:53.320 trawled my mind of any help, any book, I'd read, 0:54:53.520 --> 0:54:56.000 any article, any conversation with a friend, any bit of 0:54:56.080 --> 0:54:58.920 gossip that would help me in that situation. It's so 0:54:59.239 --> 0:55:04.760 unspoken you know, the sibling rivalry, how to behave at deathbed. 0:55:05.160 --> 0:55:08.960 All that kind of thing is not spoken about, but 0:55:09.440 --> 0:55:12.560 it's huge and common and it's necessary for us to 0:55:12.600 --> 0:55:17.680 be honest about it. But you know, I it's cost 0:55:17.800 --> 0:55:19.960 me to write that sort of thing. It's cost me 0:55:20.040 --> 0:55:24.360 in my peace of mind, and it's cost me probably 0:55:24.400 --> 0:55:28.239 within my family relationships. And as I say again, to 0:55:28.280 --> 0:55:34.520 go deeply into any work, whatever the discipline, costs the 0:55:34.800 --> 0:55:37.200 creative person. You know, if you're going to go there. 0:55:37.520 --> 0:55:40.280 I love the first line of your first book, which 0:55:40.360 --> 0:55:43.920 is anyone who writes an autobiography is either a twap 0:55:44.200 --> 0:55:46.160 or broke. I'm a bit of book and I'm a 0:55:46.200 --> 0:55:49.600 bit of both. Yeah, which is an incredible opening line. 0:55:50.080 --> 0:55:53.040 I wanted a Jane Austiness first line. 0:55:53.080 --> 0:55:55.040 You know, it's so good? 0:55:55.080 --> 0:55:55.399 Do you? 0:55:56.080 --> 0:55:59.080 But having done that, having done that, had that experience 0:55:59.120 --> 0:56:01.480 of writing autobur and not just writing on but if 0:56:01.560 --> 0:56:04.400 we are right and one that, as I say it, 0:56:04.960 --> 0:56:06.640 the reason I think it's so good is because it's 0:56:07.040 --> 0:56:11.360 got a bit of everything, and it's really exciting. It's funny, 0:56:11.920 --> 0:56:15.959 it's tragic and heartbreaking. It's kind of got everything you need. 0:56:16.800 --> 0:56:19.720 And do you do you kind of at this stage 0:56:19.719 --> 0:56:23.560 in life, think kind of please that you have lived 0:56:23.560 --> 0:56:26.319 a life where you've got a memoir in you that 0:56:26.520 --> 0:56:28.480 is worth writing. 0:56:28.680 --> 0:56:31.279 Honestly, you know, if my daughter said to me, I 0:56:31.320 --> 0:56:33.560 want to live a life like you lived, Mommy, I'd say, 0:56:33.719 --> 0:56:40.040 please don't. It's you know, getting like two thirds through now, 0:56:40.280 --> 0:56:45.160 it's so uncomfortable. It's it's so exhausting, the fighting and 0:56:45.200 --> 0:56:47.640 the fighting, the mental fighting, you know, and keep picking 0:56:47.640 --> 0:56:51.680 yourself up and trying to you know, I would think 0:56:52.120 --> 0:56:57.280 it's just a valid to live a quiet, kind, happy, 0:56:57.760 --> 0:57:02.640 contented life. And I think that's just as valid a life. 0:57:02.680 --> 0:57:05.319 And if I'd have had the tools to live that life, 0:57:05.760 --> 0:57:08.040 I think there would have been, you know, a better 0:57:08.080 --> 0:57:11.720 life because I don't think like we in the West, 0:57:11.800 --> 0:57:14.239 you know, sort of famous people or people who have 0:57:14.239 --> 0:57:18.240 made records or are to be deified. You know, I 0:57:18.240 --> 0:57:20.360 don't agree with that. I don't agree with worshiping on 0:57:20.400 --> 0:57:22.600 I don't think anyone's better than anyone else. So I 0:57:22.600 --> 0:57:26.680 don't agree with fetishizing guitars or paintings, you know. So 0:57:26.880 --> 0:57:29.640 I going along that line, I don't think to have 0:57:29.760 --> 0:57:32.880 lived a noisy life or have made his stamps at 0:57:32.960 --> 0:57:35.800 some other people have heard it is a better life, 0:57:35.920 --> 0:57:47.760 and it's certainly for a woman very very uncomfortable life. 0:57:49.040 --> 0:57:52.280 Midnight Chats is a loud and quiet podcast production by 0:57:52.320 --> 0:57:56.720 Emma Snook Music courtesy of gold Panda. Search Midnight Chats 0:57:56.720 --> 0:58:00.640 on iTunes. For more episodes and to subscribe. More information, 0:58:00.840 --> 0:58:05.400 visit loudanquiet dot com