Words: Oli Spleen. Gig photos: Jeff Pitcher.
“I’ve killed so many men, but I saved one” – Lydia Lunch says as she puts an arm around me to pose for a photograph at The Piper, Norman Road. She’s just torn through an incredible set with her band Big Sexy Noise. Any attempts to define the energy they manifest might easily fall into idioms that commonly evoke the masculine, but Lydia’s energy is powerfully, seductively feminine, and she’s out to break your balls.
The trio, consisting of Lydia on vocals, James Johnston on guitar and Ian White on drums, cranked out a tremendous primitive cacophony, echoing the brutal simplicity of earlier projects such as her first band, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Knocking back shots from a bottle of Jameson Whisky, Lunch devours and torments the crowd. In “Ballin’ the Jack” she intones, “It’s not what you got, it’s what you’re gonna get. Careful what you ask for, cause I’m just mad enough to give it” – and she absolutely does give it her all.
“Your Love Don’t Pay My Rent” is a lacerating takedown of all the fuckboys who don’t pay their way. “Trust the Witch” is an empowering anthem to the feminine mystique. “Gospel Singer” is pure Southern Gothic set to a raw sludgy riff. A cover of Lou Reed’s “Kill Your Sons” fits seamlessly into the set, after which there is a mention of Charles Manson which made me wonder if the band were about to perform a rendition of her and Sonic Youth’s “Death Valley 69”, which was the first time I heard Lydia’s otherworldly banshee howl. Instead we get the rocking “Forever on the Run” and with the repeated refrain – “There’s something witchy in the air tonight” – the blistering set crashes towards its finale.
As a long time fan of Lunch I never expected to see her in my hometown, the place of my birth. Especially now, twenty seven years on from our first encounter. In fact I never even expected to live this long. Perhaps then I should return to the start of this story…
On Tuesday May 25 1999, aged 21, I had a ticket to see my first Lydia Lunch gig. I also had an appointment at the sexual health clinic that day, a follow up for a scare I had when two condoms had “gone missing” inside me during sex three months prior. The man I had sex with was HIV Positive, so I’d gone for a test immediately after in fear I had contacted something. He had apparently lubricated the inside of the condoms to make them come off. They reappeared the next day when I was on the toilet.
This was before the availability of PEP (post-exposure prophylaxis) which minimises the potential of infection after contact. My first blood test was negative but I was told to return three months later as that was the time needed for any potential infection to show in my blood. There in the clinic, three months on, I was stunned to learn that I had contracted HIV. This was a death sentence as far as I knew. I was in such a daze that at first I wondered if I should go to see the show that night or not.
Lydia’s poetry had been a great comfort in the run up to my diagnosis, in particular a tape a friend had given me of a 1988 spoken word performance titled “Oral Fixation” which ends with her screaming the words, “WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE A FUCKING BLOOD DISEASE?! WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE IN MY BLOOD?! IT’S IN MY BLOOD! IT’S IN MY FUCKING BLOOD! IT’S A NIGHTMARE AND THIS IS IT!”
Returning from the clinic to my East London Uni bedroom I blasted the tape at full volume and howled my eyes out rocking back and forth. I could either stay there that night feeling sorry for myself, or get out and experience the gig. What I needed was catharsis and that was absolutely what I got.
Much of that night at The Garage in Highbury is a blur so writing this, almost twenty-seven years on, I hope I can evoke its events accurately. I remember that I made it to the front of the stage where I clung to the barrier, weeping. Her band were bluesy and raucous, like some demented No Wave lounge act with bongo drums and a strangled screeching jazz saxophone. Lydia at the helm taunted the audience. Launching into the track “Solo Mystico”, a distinctly Spanish vibe set to bolero trumpet, she intoned “In the beginning before they had invented god there was simply woman. Some say the devil is a woman. If there’s a devil no doubt she’s a woman.”
As the song progressed her devilishness manifested itself as she honed in on my vulnerability. There I was, standing at the front, overwhelmed with emotion, black eyeliner and mascara streaking my cheeks with the constant flow of tears. “You see him there?” she declared pointing right at me, “after the show, us women should drag him backstage and…” – she then described a sexual act involving me and a broken off chair leg. I was stunned and weirdly flattered that Lydia had targeted me out of all the people there, but I guess I was an easy target as it was impossible to hide the emotions that coursed through me.
Lydia’s subject matter often comes from a place of personal trauma, a nihilistic rage manifesting in female empowerment and catharsis, with men as the frequent object of her disdain. This was very relatable to me, having long been a target of toxic masculinity. A certain amount of misandry was always a comfort as it reminded me of my mother and her friends whose catchphrase “all men are bastards” resonated throughout my childhood. “But mummy, won’t I be a man when I grow up?” was my response, met with “You won’t be like them Oliver, you’ll be different.”
After the show I wrote a little note on a piece of paper. “Dear Lydia, I’m the one at the front who was crying throughout your gig. I just wanted to say I was diagnosed HIV positive today. Thank you for a powerful and memorable night.” I handed the note to a bouncer who was guarding the backstage door and he took the note and passed it to her. Within moments she came out, took me by the wrist and pulled me backstage.
Half anticipating an encounter with a broken chair leg, instead I was sat down and remained, shy and overwhelmed as she talked quite intensely for some indeterminate amount of time. When her monologue had exhausted itself she said, “So fuck off kid, I’ve got to go” then she paused and added, “how d’ya get it then, was it drugs?”
“No it was sex” I replied, “the guy I had sex with lubricated the inside of condoms and they came off inside me”. Realising at this moment that I was gay, her demeanour started to soften. “It’s okay”, I said “you can’t be expected to be everyone’s saviour.”
All of a sudden her stern exterior fell away and she grabbed me by the shoulders, looked straight into my eyes, shook me and said “Save yourself! … SAVE YOURSELF!!!” At that we melted into a deep and comforting embrace and after planting several lipstick marks on my cheeks (which I kept for as long as possible) she sent me on my way, feeling empowered and elevated.
Much as Lydia’s songs embody the alchemical process that transforms trauma into gold, she had left me feeling that my life could have meaning and purpose if I were to do the same.
The following summer I was hospitalised with AIDS-defining complications that were later found to include tuberculosis and pneumonia. At this time, a doctor visited to let me know that I was very close to death and was within my rights to turn down the medication I was being offered and effectively end my life. Whilst I was unaware that it was possible to make a full recovery from the state I was in, bedridden and skeletal, unable to walk or breathe properly, I remembered Lydia’s words and decided to do all I could to save myself. I looked back at my life, so brief and insignificant and wished I had done so much more with it. I decided that if I were to live another few years I would write a book and maybe even form a band.
In time the nurses and doctors landed on effective tuberculosis and antiretroviral medication and I went through what’s known as the Lazarus effect, where I transformed from a living skeleton to someone who was healthy, alive and walking again. I wrote that book and I formed my first band at the book launch, three years to the month after my discharge from hospital.
In an interview I discovered on YouTube from that very month we met, Lydia tells the TV presenter that her song is about “having to embrace the negativity that exists [in the world] and create something positive from that […] within this global chaos you have to create your own universe.” In times such as these, that advice is more valuable than ever. Save yourself, then who knows what life might bring. …Thank you Lydia.
