Day: December 14, 2020

Vivian Goldman’s new book, Revenge of the She-Punks, which boasts dozens of tales from Goldman’s experiences as a journalist in the early punk scene, offers a refreshing female-centered take on the evolution on punk.

Punk music presents a history of white, working-class males rebelling against authority through brash music and controversial messages. This genre exploded in the late 1960s in London and New York City, and while it is easy to reduce it to a homogenous, angry genre that disappeared in 1978 when U.K. punk band Crass declared punk to be dead, punk still thrives today in spaces where youth rally for change in their communities. New punk scholarship offers a more globalized view of the genre, one that often deals with identity within the scene. In Vivien Goldman’s new book, Revenge of the She-punks: A Feminist Music History from Poly Styrene to Pussy Riot, Goldman further refashions the narrative of punk identity and bridges the gap between academic scholarship and rock journalism through tracing the triumphs and struggles of female-fronted punk bands.

Goldman subverts gender stereotypes from the beginning and discusses in the introduction, aptly named “Womanifesto,” the impact of punk on her own life. After an opening quote from an article that she had written forty years prior in Sounds, a U.K. pop/rock publication, Goldman opens the book stating, “It all began with glitter.” A first read of this quote captures the audience’s attention, but seems odd in a feminist-angled book, as likening women to glitter seems stereotypical at best. That initial reaction makes the quote all the more effective, as Goldman immediately subverts that gender stereotype with the subject of this opening paragraph: David Bowie. Bowie, the international superstar most known for his contributions to glam rock, inspired Goldman’s music tastes from a very young age. She followed this love for music and went on to cover the initial exposure of punk rock in the U.K. as a journalist before becoming an adjunct professor at New York University.

Within the first page, she presents her impressive resume of engagement with the punk music scene. She states that “music has been [her] dance partner throughout life… waltz[ing]” through roles such as “press officer, journalist, author, songwriter, singer, producer, club-runner, documentarian, blogger, editor, video/TV/radio writer, director, host and producer, and publisher.” Through a life-long history engaged not only with punk scholarship, but also directly working in the industry, she holds more than enough credibility to write this book. While it is evident that placing the book’s narrative within the context of her own life makes sense as she engages with storytelling throughout the book, the list of her various roles seems like an attempt to establish credibility. This aspect of her book reads as ironic (although probably necessary within a male-dominated scene): a female music historian needing to list her career highlights so scholars will take her work seriously.

Goldman presents a brief history of women in punk music and the issues they face before she dives into more specific themes, each of which is complete with a playlist of songs that she discusses. To motivate the reasons for the book’s title and why she chose the word ‘revenge,’ she weaves facts about the oppression and silencing of gender minorities with her own experiences as a woman involved in the early punk scene. While some punk musicians felt that they did not “do” revenge, Goldman asserts that “in the case of punky females, revenge means getting the same access as your male peers, to make your own music, look and sound how you want, and be able to draw enough people to ensure the continuation of the process.” A major strength of Goldman’s book is its intersectionality: rather than focus on the prominent punk scenes in the U.K and U.S., she deliberately “assembl[es] at least some voices of various waves of women’s punk from disparate communities and consider[s] their differences and connections.” Intersectionality became important in fourth-wave feminism but was only introduced in the late 1980s, after punk music had already been established. Goldman recognizes the histories of those who were not traditionally represented in these spaces and discussing how they contributed to punk music both globally and locally.

Self-image is an important theme in many musicological narratives but is essential to the re-centering of punk history around females. Goldman tackles the question of who the she-punks are, what they stand for, and how the different movements of female punk gave rise to each other. She first discusses Poly Styrene, the lead singer of early British punk band X-Ray Spex. When Styrene entered the music industry, identity formation was a novel concept, especially for a young mixed-race girl in a white male-dominated scene. Goldman stresses that Styrene was a leader in this field, not only for female punk music but also for defining British punk music in a broader sense. Before the term was even popularized, Styrene was an intersectional role model. Later musicians in the 1990s riot grrrl movement further affirmed the importance of authenticity in music, with Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl” creating a safe space for lesbians and those who experienced the negative side effects of simply existing as a woman in a patriarchal society. Goldman draws out this metaphor of Bikini Kill acting as a doctor or therapist for these girls, saying that Kathleen Hanna, Bikini Kill’s lead singer, “realized that her musical clinic was America, and her client list of girls damaged by rape, incest, school bullying, and violence of unimaginable kinds inflicted almost entirely by males seemed to be infinite.” Through stories of she-punks creating communities for themselves and others like them, Goldman holds that bonding together as females lends strength and willpower among generations.

As with most punk musicians, money and consumption were major factors in both the daily lives and music of the she-punks. Goldman recounts a time where she went thrift shopping with Patti Smith, the godmother of punk, in 1976. Smith grew up poor, but thanks to her successful music career in New York City’s Lower East Side, she had more money than her parents ever did. An outsider to wealth but also then an outsider to poverty, she wrote the song “Free Money,” which Goldman notes is about “an expansive rejection of the frugality that she had grown up with in her hardscrabble New Jersey working-class family.” Some blocks north of Smith’s home, funk-rock-dance-punk band ESG made their home in the Bronx. As young artists, they never officially signed a record contract, yet 99 Records, the label that distributed their records, financially exploited them when the business collapsed. ESG’s lead singer, Renee Scroggins, stresses that music is a business, one that is notoriously hard to navigate for yourself. While Goldman does not connect this particular fiscal abuse with the little financial independence or knowledge that women had at the time, in the 1970s, women were hardly financially responsible for themselves. For example, a British woman could not open a bank account in her own name until 1975. The personal stories of Goldman’s interactions with struggling musicians during these times create a fascinating personal connection, and though she later broadens the context of the stories by discussing the gender pay gap in depth, it would have served this theme well to better connect and develop each story with such discourse.

The best — and most nuanced — theme that Goldman traces is that relating to love, sexuality, and abuse. Whether in media or music, women are stereotyped for being overly emotional in romance and are often subject to sexual violence, a topic that has only been widely discussed in recent years. Through these themes, which she discusses as love and unlove, Goldman relays poignant stories of both today and yesterday. While Cherry Vanilla, a New York-based punk singer, wrote one of “punk’s most innocent love song[s],” and the riot grrls pushed for safe spaces for girls at concerts, punk was also ridden with sexual violence against both women and minors. Goldman acknowledges that while the very core of the punk movement was to question structure and boundaries, “some taboos never should have been broken,” and the punk scene’s atmosphere made it at times impossible to speak out against injustice, especially within bands. Many female punk bands did take strong stances against these injustices, especially riot grrrl bands like 7 Year Bitch who wrote songs like “Dead Men Don’t Rape.” However, Goldman stresses that not all bands responded like this — some took very conservative approaches. The Mo-Dettes, an all-female post-punk band, “loved to subvert leftist orthodoxies,” especially with opinions that “fighting for ‘equality’ actually defines you as seeing yourself as ‘less than.’” Similarly, Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders blamed herself for her own rape and subsequently “was vilified by some feminist factions for her views on date rape.” There is never one side to a story, and although Goldman may not agree with these musicians, their experiences are their own and serve as important moments in both personal histories and the larger narrative of punk. Goldman adopts a feminist viewpoint in this book, but including the diversity in opinions on sensitive subjects allows her to create a more complete history of female punk.

Goldman completes her narrative by highlighting the role that female punk musicians played in protesting both gender inequality and other injustices. Throughout the book, she presents ample evidence for the seminal role that the she-punks have played in advocacy, but the concluding chapters underscore her argument that these musicians have fought for equity that reaches far beyond the music scene. Bands like Colombia’s Fertil Miseria wrote songs with wide-reaching messages of equality and solidarity, but that is only the tip of their advocacy.

Their concerts often serve as sites of mutual aid, with concert-goers donating food, clothing, and toiletries for those in underprivileged living situations. Goldman asserts that music is not the sole avenue for the she-punks’ leadership; rather, “these women all have their own front line — national, global, or domestic — and use punk as their weapon.” This punk barrier-busting proves to be equally, if not more, essential in non-Western countries where freedom of expression remains limited. Spanish punk band Las Vulpes caused major controversy in Spain after releasing “Me gusta ser una zorra” (“I love to be a slut”): not only did their career prospects vanish, one of the members was murdered. For some male punks, the punk lifestyle means nothing more than the old trope, Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll. But for women in punk, it meant the constant need to reaffirm the legitimacy of their very existence.

Goldman’s perspective is unique for academic scholarship in that form fits function: her own experiences in the punk scene serve as proof that other women’s experiences and livelihoods should be taken as legitimate knowledge, especially regarding cultural history. Armed with an accessible yet eloquent writing style, she combines familiarity with scholarship. Though she covers a long list of artists, many of whom won’t be easily remembered after reading a few pages on each, the artists’ stories serve a larger purpose in tracing the evolution of pioneers of female punk to modern-day feminist musicians. The stories Goldman tells demonstrate wide breadth, yet her overall narrative is cohesive down to the last sentence in which she brings back the glitter imagery from the book’s first phrase. “Amid the grime and grit, there will be glitter,” she writes. The grime and grit of both the punk scene and society more broadly do not threaten the glitter that is female punk; rather, the glitter is all the brighter when it stands out. The glitter shines globally in environments where people wish to quell its sparkle, yet as anyone who has ever crafted with dots of childhod magic knows, it is impossible to fully extirpate. As Goldman describes through both personal anecdotes and scholarly research in Revenge of the She-Punks, glitter is here to stay.

Philip Norman’s Slowhand is a must-read biography for all Eric Clapton fans itching to understand the man behind the guitar.

To write a biography about a world-renowned star is a tremendous feat in itself, but to take on a project about a figure whose life was in constant turmoil, with some people thinking he is the devil and others worshiping him as God, is a task for only the elite. Philip Norman establishes himself as a cream of the crop storyteller with his work Slowhand: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton (2018), a biography of Eric Clapton, a cream of the crop guitarist of his own right. Norman has written biographies of several all-star musicians such as John Lennon, Mick Jagger, and Elton John, and Slowhand is a worthy addition to this impressive lineup. What makes Slowhand stand out is its simultaneous breadth and depth about Clapton’s life without conforming to a rigid writing structure; each detail of his life story flows seamlessly from one to the other, giving interested readers and die-hard fans alike the opportunity to learn about this unique and special figure in music history.

Norman begins his book as any other biographical writer would, with a detailed account of Clapton’s childhood. But because of Clapton’s highly irregular and unfortunate childhood, Norman takes on the role of a psychologist by elaborately describing each facet of Clapton’s youth in order to connect exact childhood events to later instances of personal struggle. When reading the first few chapters of Slowhand, it feels as though not a single aspect of Clapton’s childhood is kept hidden from the reader, from familial struggles to friendships to school life. Norman’s abundance of intricate details in the beginning of the book is an early signal that he writes with extreme care, only further drawing in the reader to learn about Clapton’s childhood.

The extensive research Norman conducted for this biography manifests in every sentence that he narrates about Clapton’s life journey, but it becomes even more apparent upon looking back at how he chose to write uniquely about each “era” of Clapton’s life. There are about five distinct phases: early childhood, teenage years and early musical career from The Roosters to the John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, successful years from Cream to Derek and the Dominos with augmented personal stress, extreme drug-abuse to attempts at recovery during his stagnant early solo career, and full recovery to later solo career.

During Clapton’s early childhood, music served as an escape, but it was by no means at the forefront of his attention; his main goal was to make it through the day by calling the least possible attention to himself. Norman resultantly focuses on Clapton’s social life during these years by including quotes from his childhood friends and peers. Clapton then began to develop a knack – which turned into an obsession – for the guitar in his teenage years. Norman recognizes this gradual shift and blends Clapton’s increasing involvement into the primary focus of the narration. Similarly, when Clapton joined his first band The Roosters, Norman conveys Clapton’s overwhelming consumption of Blues music at this time in his life with flurries of American Blues influences that flood the page. But less than five years later, as the stresses of tour life with Cream began to take over and Clapton was forced to mediate the wild drama between fiery bandmates Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, Norman strategically amplifies the pertinent aspects of Cream’s dynamic that led to its stint at fame and rapid crumbling.

Like many Rock and Roll stars, Clapton was worshiped by his fans as more than human. His deification was confirmed with the famous “CLAPTON IS GOD,” spray painted on a wall in London, as he made his mark on early 1960s Britain with his guitar work in The Yardbirds. While this graffiti art did not personally impact Clapton, it paints a picture of his home country’s adoration for his music that he promoted by no means other than his unworldly playing. Clapton grappled with his desire for anonymity while continuously being thrust into the spotlight, along with his chase of unrelenting love desires, one so great it inspired his hit “Layla” (1970). As the psychedelic 60s faded away, Clapton’s pursuit of Pattie Boyd took over; and as music began to fall by the wayside to drugs, Norman makes the narrational transition to delve into Clapton’s diary to uncover the darkest truths about his three years of consuming death-defying amounts of heroin.

While many biographies spend most of their attention on the prominent moments of an individual’s career, Norman takes the most time to narrate this fourth phase of Clapton’s life, which, while spanned the least amount of time and contained the least amount of music, proved to be the greatest feat to overcome for his journey to self-discovery. Norman does not hold back in his description of Clapton during this stage in his life. Clapton undoubtedly ruined the life of his then-fiancé, Alice Ormsby-Gore, by roping her into his all-consuming addiction, while simultaneously withdrawing from society as a whole and cutting off all relationships that did not feed his worsening habit.

It is in these chapters of Slowhand that Norman brings color to Clapton’s colorless, heroin-induced life by giving voice to the members of his inner circle most affected by his diminishing mental and physical state. During Clapton’s later drinking years, Pattie Boyd’s sister Jenny expressed that he “liked to find your weakness and then play on it. Then, when he’d got you in tears, he’d put his arm around you. And you never knew what was going to upset him.” A familiar image from his upbringing, the entire universe still revolved around Clapton.

Over the course of the biography Norman refers to the motific term “Clapton Luck.” In his youth and later years, Clapton engaged in many dangerous and often illegal activities that put his life at risk an unnerving number of times. With the idea of Clapton Luck, Norman is able to call attention to the perpetual support net Clapton developed around him over the course of his life that saved him from the worst of consequences of his actions. Since Clapton’s biological mother abandoned him to be raised by her parents (his grandparents), Rose and Jack, they felt obligated to ensure that they provided him with the most carefree childhood possible, from gifting him with more toys a child could imagine to no repremandments when he behaved out of line.

Norman pinpoints one of the first instances of Clapton Luck when the teenager got off scot free after waking up in the middle of the woods after his first wild night of substance use. It was just the beginning of Clapton’s several close-calls, but with later events being at the detriment to those who cared (or seemed to care) for him most, from his overwhelmingly admiring grandparents, to his managerial staff, to the women he spent decades bringing into his circle to only later betray.

The Clapton Luck did not fail in granting the lucky man two attempts at recovery during the fourth stage of his life, the first time for heroin and the second time for alcohol, despite being pulled in countless directions by staff members and so-called friends trying to personally benefit from his addictions. In fact, the foundation of many of Clapton’s relationships in the 70s and early 80s were based on how individuals could help him get the substances he needed to “function” while touring from country to country. As much as he was dependent on others for substances, they were also dependent on him for the sake of their own reputations. But despite the deterrents to Clapton’s recovery, the general consensus was that he was in need of help.

Norman describes in frank terms one horrific concert experience in March 1981: “Nigel Carroll [Clapton’s personal assistant] carried what was intended to be the tour’s supply, along with the usual five bottles of Courvoisier and 3,000 Rothmans cigarettes. By the end of the first week, Eric had run through almost all of it and the effect was rapidly diminishing. In Madison, Wisconsin, a doctor had to be called to give him an injection to get him through that night’s performance. When he came offstage, he collapsed in agony and was taken to the hospital in the nearest large city, Minneapolis” (330). This experience ultimately led Clapton to an important realization that he had fallen off the wagon, but without adding any extra color to his narration beyond the facts, Norman indicates to the reader how devastatingly frequent physical and emotional pain had become for Clapton.

Norman hits the bullseye in his approach to many aspects of Clapton’s life, but he lacks proper sensitivity on the topic of the tragic death of Clapton’s son, Connor. In a previous affair, Clapton and Yvonne Kelly, now Robinson, had a daughter named Ruth. While Clapton had not been particularly involved in Ruth’s early childhood, after Connor’s death Robinson opened the door for Clapton to spend more time with Ruth to bring him joy in a time of extreme sadness. However, Norman writes that Robinson “[offered] as much access to his daughter as might bring him comfort.” Since there was no formal agreement on how much time Clapton could spend with Ruth, the word “access” seems a bit out of place and portrays Ruth as a mere prop. From later descriptions Clapton’s intentions for spending time with Ruth were much more than that, since he did “[try] to be a ‘real’ dad.”

Norman transitions into the fifth stage of Clapton’s life on the subject of Connor’s death, portraying Clapton as an increasingly responsible individual who began to use his success to help others. Clapton kicked his debilitating habits for good, and he founded the Crossroads Centre in Antigua, a 12 Step Treatment Center for recovering substance abusers. Norman offers a positive end to a biography filled with dark and tragic events, and it portrays Clapton in the light of a truly changed man. The book concludes with a scene of Clapton taking on the role of design director at a clothing shop. As Clapton was and still is a fashion fanatic, this scene shows Clapton very much in his element and with his charm on full display. Even after years of suffering, the admirable qualities Clapton had as a kid are still part of him, and after the pandemic settles and musicians can begin touring again, Clapton will be sure to do what he does best: tear his audience apart with just one note.