The Slits’ Punk Icon Dethrones Madonna, Lady Gaga, & the Queen

“I’m in da toilet! Call me back in five?” A clicking sound signals the end of my call to Ari Up of the Slits. Three decades after forming the all-female punk- and reggae-infused band at the age of 14, she hasn’t smoothed any of her charming rough edges. When the Slits released their debut album Cut in 1976, they plotted the downfall of the Queen with the Sex Pistols and their rowdy cohorts. They inspired everyone from Boy George to Cher. When they first started getting radio play, hosts refused to utter the band’s name. Still, the Slits’ recognition and legacy has been minimal at best. After disbanding in the 1980s, Ari moved to Borneo where she lived with a local tribe. She later relocated to Kingston, Jamaica, where she has become a dreadlocked dancehall legend known as Medusa. Here, the outsider’s outsider discusses her decision to re-form the Slits and release this month’s Trapped Animal, while considering her deadly Jamaican routine, and why Madonna and Lady Gaga owe her big.

How are you, Ari?
Oh, I’m okay. My family life is down the drain but, musically, it’s apparently going well. The Slits are good to live. They exist. The Slits exist.

What do you think is the biggest obstacle for the band right now?
The biggest obstacle is that we’re back in 1976. It seems like not much has changed in the industry. There hasn’t been much progress for women—boys, too, for that matter. If boys want to be heard or acknowledged, they have to follow the latest trends: “Who’s in the magazine this week? What’s the latest haircut for this season?” If boys have to do that, imagine what girls are going through.

But it seems that different types of outspoken performers have broken through. I don’t know if this is a good example, but M.I.A…
You took the words right out of my mouth! Maybe I’m still talking about five years ago. Maybe now the Slits will sit perfectly in time.

There’s a lot of dark stuff on this album.
Oh, that’s a shame. I mean, I didn’t mean for it to be dark—the Slits have always been humorous.

The humor is still there, obscured a little by themes of abuse and drug use. 
Everybody has a gloomy life, to a degree. But we always try to stay really happy. You have to stay passionate about life or else you’ll become dark and sinister and bitter. Most people have been abused in their childhood.

Where does that passion come from?
There are two options: Either you live for nothing and die miserable, or you survive, no matter what comes at you—even if it’s a life or death situation, which I go through a lot living in Jamaica.

That doesn’t sound like much of a choice.
There is no choice, that’s it. I have to keep going. I’ve met a lot of musicians who have given up completely, and they’re miserable. They become chefs.

You’ve never entertained the idea of quitting music?
I’m not allowed to go there. I’d become instantly suicidal.