Typical Girls? The Story of the Slits

Book excerpt: Wild, defiant and startlingly inventive, The Slits were ahead of their time, embodying the creative fire of punk music and rebellion like few others. Although they created unique hybrids - dub reggae and pop-punk, funk and free jazz - they were dismissed as being unable to play. Their lyrics were witty and perceptive, their debut album challenged perceptions of punk music and female bands, and their infamous album cover, with the group appearing topless and mud-daubed, provided as bold a statement as the Sex Pistols’ Queen. Yet the first ladies of punk were destined to be marginalised and disregarded. Now, forty years on, author Zoë Street Howe speaks to The Slits themselves, to former manager Don Letts, mentor and PIL guitarist Phil Levene, and many others who swirled within their cosmos to discover exactly how the Slits phenomenon erupted and to celebrate the legacy of a seminal band long overdue its rightful acclaim. Too long seen as a note in the margin of the history of rock, The Slits at last get a fair hearing.