Ari Up: the story of a punk pioneer
In 1975, the Sex Pistols emerged, becoming the face of punk music, with their snarling indictments of the monarchy, torn clothing and wild hair shocking some and enticing others. As more bands cropped up, it quickly became apparent that British punk was, despite its rebellious ethos, still very much a boy’s club.
However, when Palmolive (real name Pamela McLardy), who had previously been in a band with the Pistols’ future bassist, Sid Vicious, teamed up with Kate Korris to plan out their own punk band, The Slits were born. The pair were inspired by Patti Smith’s feminine take on punk, and while watching her perform, they spotted a young girl arguing with her mother in the crowd. Palmolive and Korris (who would later form the Mo-dettes) approached her and asked if she would like to join the band they were forming, despite having no knowledge of her musical ability.
This wasn’t important, though. The girl’s wild energy, confidence and boisterousness – paired with the fact she was a Patti Smith fan – was enough to convince them to ask. The girl was called Ariane Daniele Forster, a German 14-year-old who had moved to England when she was a child. As the daughter of Nora Forster, a music promoter known for working with acts like Jimi Hendrix, the young girl was exposed to various bands at an early age, inadvertently preparing herself for a career in the music industry.
Viv Albertine soon joined the band as a guitarist, becoming somewhat of a maternal figure to Forster. In her book, Clothes, Clothes Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys, Albertine revealed how the Slits’ singer ended up with her iconic nickname: Ari Up. As she was German and quite new to the English language, Ari thought adding ‘Up’ to her name made it ‘Hurry Up’ because we all dropped our aitches. And when the Sham 69 song ‘Hurry Up Harry’ came out, she thought they were singing about her: “‘Urry up Ari, come on!”
Forster was a unique character, too young to truly understand the themes the Slits wanted to sing about and rally against, according to Albertine. “She doesn’t know enough about life yet to be a mouthpiece, and she doesn’t know that she doesn’t know – that’s the worst thing,” she explained. However, with the support of the other band members, Forster was able to thrive as a bold and rambunctious lead singer, captivating listeners with the German twang present in the English words she sang and her accompanying dance moves, often thrashing about the stage and dancing wildly.
Forster had no regard for societal expectations – if she needed a piss while she was performing, she’d piss right there in front of everyone, covering the stage in urine. “Being involved in music is a great outlet for Ari – I can’t imagine her finding a place in society otherwise,” Albertine wrote. Yet, despite her chaotic on-stage behaviour, which was just as intense and difficult off-stage, she knew a lot about music, becoming obsessed with dub and reggae, subsequently bringing these influences to the Slits. As a result, the band honed a sound that was different to typical British punk, helping them to assert their place as musical pioneers.
Forster’s mother married John Lydon, also known as Johnny Rotten from the Sex Pistols, in 1979, and eventually, the pair became legal guardians of Forster’s children during the 2000s when the musician struggled to look after them. She was a wild woman who, according to Albertine, was “wonderful and terrible in equal measure.” Her personal issues amplified the Slits’ reputation, but without Forster’s mesmerising and unforgettable presence, the band might not have made such a dent in the punk scene. Everyone knew about Ari Up, the teenager who could scream like a banshee and dance without an ounce of self-consciousness.
She became a symbol of female freedom and rebellion. Forster didn’t care what she looked like if she was presenting herself in a proper or ‘lady-like’ way, or if she was making people angry. The singer simply let herself run wild, her existence acting as a huge middle finger to the male-dominated industry in which she found herself, as well as patriarchy as a whole, which instructed women to be everything that Forster wasn’t.
After the disintegration of The Slits, she made several solo works, collaborated with other artists and even reformed the band (with a predominantly new lineup) for a final album, Trapped Animal, in 2009. Unfortunately, Forster died from cancer in 2010 when she was 48, leaving behind three children. Despite her complicated nature, Ari Up’s impact on punk cannot be understated. The Slits would’ve been nothing without her, and without the Slits, we would have considerably fewer female punk bands today.
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