Q&A: Ari Up

Times Free Press music reporter Casey Phillips spoke with Ari Up, the lead singer of the all-girl British punk rock band, The Slits, about why audiences have such a love/hate relationship with the band, their plans and what it means to write revolutionary music.

CP: Was there ever any concern when the band started again that there would be less interest than you would need or that you had been forgotten during The Slits’ long-term sabbatical?

AU: No, no, we never even considered that. We just went on from where we left off as if no time has passed. We don’t even think about that. As a group, I don’t think you can really. If you’re going to be a really good group, you can’t sit there and calculate whose going to like you or not or if it’s still going to work or not. Anyway, we’re pretty much hated by the masses. We’ve grown from the get-go into a revolution where you’re an outcast to begin with, to say the least. That’s putting it lightly.

We were so outcast that we were mostly hated. So I wrote a song that The Slits play called “Hated By Many, Loved By A Few.” We’re going to do that one on the tour. I made that recently, but that’s been the story of our lives.

CP: What is your goal now that the band is back together? What do you want to see happen?

AU: It’s the same goal as ever: getting our music the way we want it without compromise. We want artistic control completely, which we had back then as well. That’s something to consider, because a lot of people didn’t have artistic control, but we stuck with it when we moved to Island Records. We decided to stick that in our contract so we wouldn’t go through what Jimi Hendrix went through. He had to change his album cover and everything, and that wasn’t going to happen to us.

It didn’t, which is why we have that “Cut” album cover, I guess (laughs). We wanted to do what we wanted to do in that way, and there was a high price to pay because we couldn’t get played on the radio.

CP: Because of the cover?

AU: And because of the name “Slits” even. We were banned immediately because of that name.

CP: Well, I guess that’s a steep toll to pay for artistic integrity.

AU: Integrity as an artist … yeah, that’s a good word for it. We still want that - we want the integrity and freedom to continue the mission of the Slits and to continue our revolution.

Our existing at all is a revolution. Somebody suggested I should be called “Throw Up” instead of “Ari Up” the other day. So we have extreme reactions to our music, which is good. It’s all part of the revolution. Some people’s lives have changed, and in a way, we’ve touched their lives positively. Other people have an extreme, chemical hate reaction like we’re a concentration camp or something.

We can either be some kind of church for people where they have a spiritual reaction, and we can be like the Holocaust. Some people react to us like they’ve just been to a Jewish concentration camp or something. They have such hate — such deep hatred. It’s really severe hate that we get.

CP: Why is that? Why do you get such extreme reactions without much middle ground?

AU: I think it’s great. I like it, actually because it shows that it’s making people think, and it has to make people think. It separates the evil from the good — almost like a cartoon. It’s almost like a cartoon extreme reaction: the total evil and the total good and the superpowers. It’s almost like that. I don’t know why? It’s part of a revolution that that kind of thing happens.

CP: You keep using the word revolution. When you’re writing, do you write songs with the intent being to incite that kind of revolutionary thought?

AU: No, no. I think we write based on how our lives are. We write music about what we see, what we’ve felt and experienced. It’s all real. And being that our lives are revolutions, automatically, the lyrics coincide with that.