Clothes, clothes, clothes, music, music, music, boys, boys, boys - Viv Albertine

SUNDAY TIMES MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEARROUGH TRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR MOJO BOOK OF THE YEAR
Let others who were there tell their versions if they want to. This is mine. In 1970, Viv Albertine knew she wanted to be in a band, but had never seen a woman play electric guitar. Seven years later, she was the guitarist in the hugely influential all-female punk band, the Slits. This is the story of how, through sheer will, talent and fearlessness, she forced herself on to a male-dominated music scene and became part of a movement that changed music.Everything is here, unvarnished and unwashed: art school, squatting, hanging out in Sex with Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, spending a day chained to Sid Vicious, on tour with The Clash, and being part of a brilliant, pioneering group of women making musical history.The result is a raw, thrilling story of life on the frontiers, and a candid account of what happened post-punk, taking in a career in film, IVF, illness, divorce - and making music again, twenty-five years later. This is a truly remarkable memoir, told in Viv's frank, irreverent and distinctive voice. Utterly shocking, very funny and ruthlessly honest, it is the story of a life lived unscripted, told from the heart.

Songwriter and musician Viv Albertine was the guitarist in the hugely influential female punk band The Slits. A confidante of the Sex Pistols and the Clash, Viv was a key player in British punk culture. Alongside The Slits, she collaborated with numerous musicians, including Adrian Sherwood, before marking out a career in television and film production. After a hiatus of twenty-five years, Viv's first solo album,The Vermillion Border, was released in 2012 to great critical acclaim.

[Albertine's] book is both a bold chronicle of her personal ups and downs and a historical document that blows holes in the established punk narrative in which men are the major players and women merely window dressing.
Independent

Rarely can a book be so personal yet still resonate with a whole movement - and beyond.
Stylist - Alexandra Fullerton

A brutally honest book about the blood, guts, sweat and tears that went into becoming a woman in the Seventies. You don't need to be a fan of the Slits or even punk to be gripped from the off.
The Telegraph

With a title that is an incantation and a picture of the gorgeous author on its cover, Viv Albertine's autobiography is quite something...maddening and magnificent all at the same time - rather like her band, the Slits.
The Guardian - Suzanne Moore

Love or hate the punk movement, this memoir of those turbulent times by The Slits' guitarist is infused with humanity and vulnerability that gives it far broader appeal.
Sunday Express - Holiday Reads Recommendations

The Slits were perhaps the most subversive punk group of all . . . Their adventures, musical and otherwise, are a the heart of this searingly honest memoir.
Observer - Sean O'Hagan

Her voice is important in the back story of women in British rock, but she is now as original and interesting an entertainer in words as in music.
The Times

Albertine's music has never offered easy answers or comfortable conclusions. This brave, funny, honest autobiography doesn't either, and is all the more admirable for it.
Mail on Sunday

A fresh, insider's take on punk.
Evening Standard

A frank and fearless account of sex, drugs and life on the cultural frontline.
Esquire

Pithy, hilarious and smart, this is a wonderfully observant account of the life of a woman who made her dreams come true.
Independent on Sunday

Driven along by her eye for detail, willingness to reveal all and, let's be honest, fondness for melodrama, there is much that's vividly thrilling here. But it is also a desperate, yearning howl of a book, written by an unlikely romantic who longs above all for love.'
New Statesman - Tracey Thorn

If Clothes, Clothes, Clothes ...was simply a rock memoir, it would come recommended for the fearless was Albertine challenges the orthodox male histories of punk. But in the context of her own personal tragedies, her subsequent recovery and the rebirth of her music career, it has a much wider resonance.
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