Viv Albertine is best known as the guitarist for all women punky-reggae ensemble The Slits. She played guitar and wrote some of their songs like Typical Girls and Instant Hit. Viv was a trendsetter and pioneer for young women musicians in the late 70s and early 80s and still is today.
Her first band before The Slits were called The Flowers of Romance. She dated The Clash’s Mick Jones for many years and was best pals with PIL’s Keith Levine, who taught her to play guitar with great effect and freely, so she was able to adapt her own unique style that helped give the Slits their edgy sound on their debut album Cut.
After The Slits split up, she went on to work at MTV Directing music videos and then moved into advertising and moved from London to Hastings with her then husband.
Viv has re-established herself as a solo artist and moved back to London too. Her first solo album, The Vermillion Border, featured different known bass players on each track including, Jenny Lee Lindberg (Warpaint), Tina Weymouth (Talking Heads) and Glen Matlock (Sex Pistols).
She also wrote her memoir entitled Clothes, Music , Boys which Vivizine cannot recommend enough!
She is inspiring the next generation of women musicians. She has a now teenage daughter who is also in band now.
Her punk roots and attitude are still very much in existence. When The British Library hosted a Punk London 40th Anniversary exhibition, Viv graffitied one of the exhibits asking “What About The Women!!!” The image was heavily tweeted too – see below.
