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How did it all go wrong? Malcolm
McLaren and THAT record cover
It all happened slowly. There were disagreements and tensions like in any group.
Put four selfish people together and try and make them agree. I think I had a
change of heart and I remember feeling dissatisfied. At first I thought this is
great; We’re having a blast and I don’t care about the things that don’t feel
right. After a while that changed though. Look at the first songs and then
'Adventures'
to see the change. I remember coming out of a gig and it was so loud that I had
used wax ear plugs and I just felt so detached from it all and I remember after
the gig looking at everybody. They were wasted and hanging out over each other
and they all looked tired and drugged out of their minds. I remember thinking I
am doing this to them. This is not liberating people with the freedom I had
always dreamt about. There’s something else going on here and lights started
going on in my head.
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Adventures Close to Home
Don't take it
personal I choose my own fate
I follow love I follow hate.
Passion that shouts
and red with anger
I lost myself
Through alleys of mysteries
I went up and down
like a demented train
Searching for something
that makes makes hearts move
I found myself.
But my best possession
walked in to the shade
and threaten to drift away.
(Searching for something
that makes makes hearts move
left you behind as if I could
possess by Quixote's dream
went to fight dragons in the land of concrete.)
Rolling in pain discovered what hurts
and tasted hell infatuated by madness
I danced in flames and drunk in the depth of love |
Number One Enemy
You
sit up there deciding my future
What
the fuck do you think you are
If
you like white
I'll be black
If
you like black
I'll be yellow
If
you like rational
I'll be impossible
If
you like reasonable
I'll be insane
If
you like peace and flowers
I'm
going to carry knives and chains
I'm
going to be your Number one enemy
All
for the hell of it
"Number One
Enemy is about all the people who tell you
what to do all the time and you're just saying "fuck off" we're not
having it !" Palmolive |
Something had started to bother me. In
a selfish way I had come to realise this is not what I wanted or turning out the
way I expected. It wasn’t just altruism. As it went on I kept thinking I don’t
know what its all about or the purpose of my life or that the people around me
know either. I didn’t know where I was going with my life but I felt that I
didn’t want to be part of it (i.e. the music business). That created clashes.
For instance the cover for the first
record. We were about to sign with Island. Actually before that there were
issues with Malcolm McLaren. He wanted to be our manager at one point. His
approach to us was he hated music and he hated girls and nobody seemed to hear
it. I’m going to the other 3 wait a minute? why didn’t they see it? I had
to convince them not to go with him. I remember he took us to a private
homosexual club like to break us you know. He came up to me and said you wrote
Shoplifting, that’s the best song. He was
creeping to me and I felt so uneasy. Something smelt fishy to me. I managed to
sway the girls. It was pull and push and it created tensions.
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In fact this may have been a wise move. For all
McLaren's skills as a publicist and event maker he was still pursuing his own
agenda following the Pistols chaotic collapse and the filming of the Great
Rock'n'Roll Swindle. McLaren had a film idea for the Slits too as
recounted in Craig Blomberg's book The
Wicked ways Of Malcolm McLaren "He wanted
them to play a rock band with the hideously mistaken idea of jump starting their
career in Mexico, where they would eventually wind up co-opted into disco
purgatory, 'getting fucked from one end of Mexico to the other.'" Nice! He
also wanted them to sign to the German Disco label Hansa which would have
fitted in nicely with the disco purgatory. |
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Back to that record cover. They (the
record company) had the idea of us on the front covered in mud. I used to dress
up in fishnets and miniskirts so it was not like I was a saint. But to me what
was the difference between that cover and a pin up girl on a poster? It was like
selling out. We were there to give a different statement. I was very naive
and I had said that I’m not doing that. It was soon after that that I got kicked
out of the band. We hadn’t done any recording yet but we were about to because
they thought I was a problem child and so that was that. |
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TESSA: I told her. It was in the
kitchen, She was in a real funny mood because she felt something was
wrong...she knew it was coming....
(on signing to record labels) She's
really against big companies. Even against Island."
ARI: Well at least she didn't show it, whatever she felt, just having two
years cut off.
Zigzag April 1979 |
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Tessa & Palmolive |
It was a relief to be out but it was
still nobody likes to be kicked out of something that you helped make. It’s
natural. In my mind I don’t get on with those particular girls but I was more
friends with Tessa at that time and they had Tessa tell me, but that’s not
important. In my mind it was a conflict of personalities. If I could change the
people I work with it would be fine. So I joined the Raincoats because I liked
the people. But I was only 6 months with the Raincoats because I realized it
wasn’t the personalities, it was a problem with the music scene that I thought
was very corrupt and the message we were sending. We were destroying something
rather than building something. I was just sick of the whole music scene. |
Were
you always looking for something since childhood?
As a child you always hope to have a
good life, have friends and healthy relationships. I had complained about
problems at home and politically in the Spanish Govt. In the end I’m responsible
for me and I can’t blame parents or society.
I stopped doing drugs and drinking and
then there was a vacuum. So then what? Tymon Dogg had helped Joe Strummer to
learn the guitar and he was with him at the end before Joe died and had started
working together. He was a very strong influence in the whole squat scene. I
stayed friends with him and his girlfriend. They were into Hinduism and very
spiritual. I was getting royalties and I went to India with my husband and met
the group he was into and he seemed like a phoney to me. We came back without
having seen the light and we just kept thinking and reading. We then decide we
wanted to have a family but were still very restless but I was hopeful. In the
midst of all this searching someone witnessed to me about Jesus. First I didn’t’
want to pay attention but then after a time I really felt that heaven opened. A
very real presence of God. I started reading the bible and it was like god was
guiding me through it and helping me bring up my children.
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And so we have one very happy and fulfilled
Paloma with a belief in a more radical Christianity and a desire to use her
story to help reach what she sees as the lost generation and that is why she did
the the
web page.
"I love my church. It is called Victory
Chapel and is part of a group of around a thousand churches that has spread all
over the world, we have missionaries from our own congregation that have gone to
China, Africa, Europe and in this country. I am very involved in it, doing video
and outreaches.
I talked to Tessa on the phone
and met with her on my way to Spain not that long ago. I invited Ari to come to
my house and we had a great visit. She spent a couple of days and brought her
son Wilton. I hear from Gina through my brother in law Richard, who visits
London at times." From 3AM Paloma Interview
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