Benjamin Clementine: The artist that reminds Viv Albertine of Sid Vicious
From a young age, Viv Albertine was enthralled by rock music, yet the idea of becoming a musician – being taken seriously as a woman in a band – seemed like an alien concept. She had no idea how to enter the world of guitars and gigging, given that female rock musicians were few and far between.
In her memoir Clothes Clothes Clothes, Music Music Music, Boys Boys Boys, Albertine writes: “Every cell in my body was steeped in music, but it never occurred to me that I could be in a band, not in a million years – why would it? Who’d done it before me? There was no one I could identify with. No girls played electric guitar. Especially not ordinary girls like me.”
However, something shifted when Albertine saw the Sex Pistols. While Albertine took inspiration from women like Patti Smith, Yoko Ono and Suzi Quatro, she claimed that witnessing the Pistols opened up a “bridge” to this mysterious, hard-to-grasp universe. “As I watch the Sex Pistols I realise that this is the first time I’ve seen a band and felt there are no barriers between me and them.”
Albertine became closely entwined with the band, co-founding The Flowers of Romance with The Clash’s Keith Lavene and Sid Vicious, who would join the Sex Pistols the following year, while Albertine would join The Slits. Although Vicious and Albertine’s friendship wasn’t always plain sailing, she admired how he stood out and pushed boundaries, becoming the first person to offer to be in a band with her. Albertine told the Express, “I couldn’t play guitar and had never written a song so they could easily have laughed but Sid said he’d start a band with me.”
For Albertine, possessing an innate desire to push against the grain, subvert expectations and do something entirely different is essential to being a worthy musician. Talking to BBC, she identified how British musician Benjamin Clementine, who won the Mercury Prize in 2015 for his album At Least For Now, harnesses these outstanding qualities.
She explained, “He was brought up in South London, again self-taught; he did not learn music at a music school and he’s not learned bad habits and tropes. He’s like nothing else, which to me is what I was always striving for.”
Subsequently, Albertine compared Clementine to Vicious and the Sex Pistols, whose confronting punk rock shifted British music on its axis. As boundary-pushing artists, the Pistols inspired Albertine to do the same. “I remember Sid Vicious and I watching The Sex Pistols and saying, ‘If we can’t be different and better, it’s not worth us being in a band,’ and I wish so many people in bands would think that before they went out there. Strive to be different and better than what is already out there if you are creating – Benjamin Clementine does that.”
Albertine also called his album “extraordinary,” citing the song ‘London’ as her favourite. “I always love a song about London or about places. I think Britain could do with more of them; America is so good at that.”
Listen below.
