“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.

Tell me about life in Jamaica. My safety is threatened in Jamaica, but it’s an extreme place and I’ve been living in Kingston longer than Brooklyn, even. I could turn my back on and forget about Jamaica, and I’m trying to work on that right now, but it’s difficult because I’ve got my house here, my car here and my people here. It’s like an extreme spaghetti western here. Like a Clint Eastwood movie, it’s extremely beautiful and exotic, but the other extreme is so horrible and detrimentally evil. Have you experienced that kind of violence? I’m a widow. My baby’s father was shot. There are shootings here all the time, all around me. Police corruption is outrageous -- the cops are doing drive-bys! The cops are the gangsters. I can’t drive in peace because, even though I’m a fairly good driver and a legal driver, I get stopped and harassed by cops. Is that a regular occurrence? Yes -- watch those old cowboy movies. That’s Jamaica, without the horses. But the good must outweigh the bad since you’ve chosen to raise your child there. No, the good doesn’t. It used to, but not anymore and that’s the problem.

Does the punk that thrived when the Slits first banded still exist? I think the ideology still exists, because it’s now in the individual. But the times have totally switched and, of course, people have misunderstood that time quite a bit. Recently, Jamaica has been a lot more punk than the rest of the world. So many Japanese people have moved to Jamaica, because they know about the revolution.

I had no idea. But maybe people need to take it to a different level now, make it less pseudo-intellectual. If it becomes pretentious, then you cannot have a punk feeling and a punk revolution. It’s always about going against the system, going against the monarchy, going against poverty, going against democracy and going against society. At the beginning of punk, we were reacting to a fucked-up government and the bloody Queen. Don’t forget, the Queen has since lost her power. She was never the same after punk.

I love thinking about that time. I once talked to Malcolm McLaren about the time he and the Sex Pistols tried to sabotage the Queen’s Silver Jubilee by performing on the Thames. I was there on that boat, man! It was just a little boat -- totally packed -- and the Pistols were playing. All of a sudden, we were in the middle of the river, bothering nobody, and cops made a huge scene. Everybody scattered. Everybody ran off the boat, and tons of people were caught and arrested.

Have you been arrested? Yeah, I think so. I think I was arrested once in England and twice in America, but just for stupid stuff. We used to spray “The Slits” everywhere, all over walls.

What about drugs? For me, it was really easy to avoid drugs.

Even when you were young and impressionable? My father was an alcoholic and a smoker. I could have gone with that bloodline, but I followed my mother who never took anything. I grew up with Jimi Hendrix walking through the living room. I grew up surrounded by all of these drug-addict musicians, but that didn’t stay with me. What stayed with me was seeing musicians coming in with their instruments and playing and practicing.

That must have been surreal. It was normal to me. Some of them were my stepfathers. One of them, Jon Anderson of Yes, was my godfather for a time. My mother was Barry Gibb’s go-to groupie when the Bee Gees came to Germany. She was his girl in Munich. My father was a musician and a singer so he had all the swing people, all the Frank Sinatra type people coming through. And my mother had all the rock people coming through. So that’s not surreal. That’s normal, everyday life. I wasn’t even drinking alcohol at the time, either. The punk philosophy on a whole was against drugs, by the way. We were not into drugs, sex and rock and roll philosophy.

Your stepfather, John Lydon, became such an icon as Johnny Rotten -- Well, he was just one of my stepfathers. I had a ton of them.

How many stepfathers did you have? Tons -- I can’t count them. There was Steve Jones for a while, who was the guitarist of the Pistols. And then there was [jazz guitarist] Chris Spedding before that. There were tons of lovers in between. John was very protective in the punk days. At parties, where there were lots of drugs, he always told his friends: “Don’t give it to Ari. Don’t let Ari see, she’s underage.” One of his best friends was a whore.

I’ve seen you perform twice: at Webster Hall for the launch of Chloë Sevigny’s Opening Ceremony line and in the basement at Lit Lounge with Hollie Cook. Is that when I had my UFO outfit on? I want to wear that again. I came before Lady Gaga, okay?

How do New York crowds compare with your audience in Jamaica? Once you’ve partied in Jamaica, nothing will feel the same. Who wants to be in a sticky, hot club? Who wants to be in a tight, dark little place? Not me.

Tell me about your personal style. The Slits were the first girls to dress the way we did. People should give credit to the Slits, not just for originating sound and music, but also clothes. We went from Vivienne Westwood and the whole punk thing into the Jamaican crazy-time. Of course, people like Cher were always out-there.

I suppose Madonna was, too. But Madonna was always imitating people. Always.

Oh, that’s right. In an interview you called Madonna a thief. I’ve heard many stories of Madonna sending her entourage to clubs in search of the latest looks and sounds. But that’s not so bad because she has to be isolated -- how else is she going to go? Some people cash in on a look and some people are just die-hard originals. Madonna is definitely not a die-hard original. It’s frustrating when you see people wearing your entire outfit and trying to sound like you, without getting credit for it.

Are you speaking from experience? When I used to walk down the street, people called me Boy George. Well, thanks, but Boy George came to our gigs and looked like us -- we don’t look like Boy George. Even later on, Busta Rhymes was the same. But I got persecuted for it. My look became life threatening.

In Jamaica, specifically? Jamaica’s a totally different story. It’s actually one of the places that I’m able to express myself while still being accepted, because I’ve got a famous name over there. They call me “Medusa.” They chase me for autographs. I’m accepted over there in that way. But back in the early days of the Slits, it was dangerous to have my hair out, to wear clothes like that. I was stabbed while walking on the street. The guy who stabbed me was a disco freak. There I was, a little English girl getting hell from white people, black people -- everyone. If people weren’t harassing us, then the cops fucked us up.

Looking back on that time, would you have done anything differently? You can’t decide who to be when you’re born into a revolution; it’s like a big explosive instinct. There’s no hindsight about it.