Why Viv Albertine is The Reason I Bought A Guitar At 24

Viv Albertine only picked up a guitar for the first time at the age of 22. Over 50 years later, The Slits guitarist is now recognised as one of the pioneers of the wild London punk scene.

In 1976, Viv Albertine was 22 years old. She was in-and-out of art school, squatting in abandoned flats with her mates and was doing everything in her power to join a band in a very male-dominated punk scene.

Viv Albertine playing for The Slits at Alexandra Palace, London (1980)

In her best-selling memoir, Clothes Clothes Clothes, Boys Boys Boys, Music Music Music, Albertine is blunt about the challenges she faced to even get on stage and join a band that took her seriously in 1970s London. She grew up living in a council flat with her mother and sister in Muswell Hill, North London and didn’t have much proof to comfort her that someone from her background could become an artist of any kind. She didn’t have any inspiration from female guitarists, specifically in Britain, and writes about a time when she went to a gig and was questioning if the guitarist was male or female. She left, telling herself they were female, because then that would mean that her dream might be possible.

After her grandmother died, she was left approximately £200 (£1,360 today), which she immedietly spent on an electric guitar. She had never picked up a guitar before, had never had a music lesson before and was not that keen to learn chords.

A couple of weeks ago, I woke up to see a massive black case leaning against the wall. It didn’t take me long before I was repeating the same thought that had been going through my mind just over 12 hours earlier: “holy shit, I just bought a fucking guitar”.

I had been thinking about buying a guitar for the last couple of months. I had created a cell in my monthly budget to save up money for the instrument, but the cell had been forced to cohabitate in the same cell for European travels. I worried I wouldn’t be up to save up enough for both before the summer, and the idea of buying a guitar felt like a careless purchase when comparing the two.

What would I do with a guitar? Would I be able to learn enough from Youtube or would I have to pay for lessons to make my money worthwhile? And then what? What will I do with the knowledge? Play at pubs? Play for friends and girls I have crushes on? Get your priorities straight, Kearin.

But where did this thought come from? Viv, of course.

Not only was I surprised by Viv’s age when she started learning guitar, just two years younger than me, but the ability she has to sprinkle a little bit of her passion over to her readers

I’ve always been an avid air guitar player. Now, after a series of multiple Guitar Hero rounds with my housemates in my last year of university, the curiosity did grow. It just took Viv’s passion and provocation to realise there’s nothing stopping me.

After working in Brighton for the day, I said goodbye to my colleague at the train station as I headed towards the Laines to have a browse before I headed home.

Soon enough, I was in a guitar shop. Thinking I was just going to have a look around, I spotted an acoustic guitar for £99. Next thing I knew, I was sitting on a stool holding the guitar and gently strumming, making up my own chords on a guitar that felt like the equivalent of a 5ft mother with her grown-up, 6ft 7 son embracing.

The shopkeeper, who had unlocked the holder that kept the guitar secure, watched me as I fiddled. I couldn’t help but grin.

“Fine, I’ll take it”.

I walked out of the Brighton Laines thinking I might find a new vintage jumper. Instead, I walked away with a guitar strapped to my back. I passed through the street with imposter syndrome and realised in that moment that people may walk past me and assume I’m a musician, when I’m just a woman in her early 20s who has bought a fucking guitar.

What had I done?

Pictured: Viv Albertine (Date Unknown)

Because she had bought her electric guitar, Viv Albertine was officially equipped to join a band. After she was kicked out of the short and barely lived Flowers of Romance by her former flat and bandmate, Sid Vicious, for not being a good enough player, the band’s Spanish drummer, Palmolive, was the one who asked Viv to consider becoming the guitarist for the upcoming all-girl punk band, The Slits.

Led by iconic, wild German teenager, Ari Up, and bass guitarist, Tessa Pollitt, The Slits started off playing live venues where even they knew they couldn’t play. Ari Up was the only one of them who had any formal music training and allowed her grade 7 piano knowledge to become an excuse to make her band mates feel lesser.

By the time the band broke up in 1982, Albertine was no longer the 22-year-old who couldn’t play a note. Regardless, the band’s break-up was too painful for her to bear, and she didn’t make music again for nearly 30 years.

After filing for divorce from her husband, Albertine was nearing her mid 50s and had a daughter. Years had passed since she had made any form of art, which made her solo debut as a singer-songwriter a surprise even to her.

Viv released an EP and eventually an 11-track album in 2012, did some touring around the US and eventually sat down to write her memoir. In one of her more recent interviews in the last few years, Viv, now 71, was still figuring out what kind of artist she was in that moment. She admitted she had no more desire to make music and that she didn’t believe she was the best guitarist. (In more blunt terms, to quote her, she actually believed she had been quite a rubbish guitarist).

Viv Albertine, post-Slits era, performing her solo work (circa 2012)

What I love about Viv Albertine is not that she’s a badass who paved her own journey as a woman in an industry where she had no one to look up to and survived the brunt of abuse to normalise an individual like herself.

She didn’t choose to be in that position, and very likely has had many moments where she wished she had been born later. Instead of wallowing about it, she joined the punk scene, suffered abuse from passersby daily for how she dressed (Albertine admitted that Ari Up was once stabbed whilst they were walking the streets together).

Her writing demonstrates her wittiness and open-minded perspective on life and the situations she’s found herself in over the years. As someone who looks up to Viv, it doesn’t matter to me whether she plays or doesn’t play anymore. Because she is someone who has had a go at things. Regardless of whether they worked out or not, Viv Albertine can now say she was in a legendary, age-defining feminist punk band, that she was a professional filmmaker and a bestselling author of two books. If she believes she was a rubbish guitar player, she’s earned enough to dust off a penultimate acknowledgement.

To pick up a guitar and try to learn the craft as an adult is no easy feat, but to lick off the frosting behind such a decision is even more human.

I mean, don’t we all wish there were more idols out there to admit that they didn’t pick up an instrument and automatically become Joni Mitchell? Or that the impossible goal of becoming a prodigy never took its course?

As I pull my hair out trying to perfect Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley, I think to myself, “yes, yes I do”.

And thank god. I now have to Viv to remind me that, in fact, I now do.

Viv Albertine performing with The Slits in Berlin, Germany in 1978.

*Originally published on Punky Daydream's Substack 15 April 2026.