Vivien Goldman, the “punk professor” from London who teaches at New York University, has been involved in music from the 1970s onwards – whether writing about it, publicising it, directing pop videos, making it herself (the 1981 single Launderette) or commemorating its heroes in screenplays and musicals.
She’s best known for her punk and reggae connections: she hung out with the Sex Pistols and was Bob Marley’s PR and preferred journalist. At one point in this wide-ranging collection of her music writing, she plays Marley the Clash’s cover of Police & Thieves and, a week later, writes that she’s in a listening room at Basing Street Studios “and Bob’s voice is rolling in magical command out of the huge speakers: ‘It’s a punky reggae party…’” A movement is started, though Marley comments to Goldman that he likes “them safety pins and t’ing”, just not enough to wear them himself.
Rebel Musix is packed full of interesting encounters and memorable details, and begins in the late 1970s, when the London music scene was small enough for friendship and work to completely overlap. Goldman moved between hanging out with musicians and going home and writing about them. “No velvet VIP rope dividing writers and musicians in those days,” she says, as she chats to Brian Eno, Robert Wyatt, John Lydon, Chrissie Hynde. There’s a section on punk women, another that collects her New York pieces together (Richard Hell, George Clinton, Talking Heads), a little bit on ska and 2 Tone, a chunky part on Jamaican artists, plus pieces on Fela and Femi Kuti, Ian Dury, Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman.
Some of the articles are very short, such as a brief phone chat with Patti Smith to discuss Smith’s diving off stage and breaking a vertebra in her neck (“Twenty-two stitches in my head,” says Smith. “But I got a hard head”). As with all the best music journalism, Goldman’s pieces are a snapshot of a time as well as a person. It’s shocking to be reminded of some of what went on: the prevalence, in the punk movement, of the swastika as a token of rebellion; the rampant sexism and racial stereotyping that led even someone as strong as Grace Jones to be found in a corridor crying, saying that she was sick of being portrayed as “an animal”; how often Ari Up, lead singer of the Slits, was shouted at in the street for being white and having dreadlocks.
The articles I like best are when Goldman gets involved. She relishes an argument, about music and the state of the world. Especially enjoyable is her going toe-to-toe with Peter Tosh on equality. Tosh is outraged by her questions, insisting that men should be in charge and that “some women, if you don’t clap [hit] them twice a month they’re not all right”. Goldman gives as good as she gets, though she’s left feeling bleak by the encounter, particularly because she likes Tosh.
Goldman tussles with questions of sex and race because of who she is, but also because her main musical interest is reggae, and it’s an honest love. As a London-born Jewish woman, these days she might be seen as stepping where she shouldn’t, but musicians have always respected anyone who’s obsessed with music and who knows their stuff. And Goldman herself is not so inflexible as to ignore modern mores. The book’s title, which changes Music to the inclusive Musix, indicates her interest in making sure that outsiders always feel welcome.
There is so much to enjoy in this book. Eno getting irritated by his phone always ringing and chucking it against a wall; Johnny Rotten starting an argument with Goldman at a press conference because she had not allowed Sid Vicious into a party; marching into CBGB and reporting that the punters “look like they’re in a time warp from a Middlesbrough Poly gig circa 1969”. Her writing is spirited and punchy, idealistic and true. I found this collection inspiring from start to finish.
• Rebel Musix, Scribe on a Vibe: Frontline Adventures Linking Punk, Reggae, Afrobeat and Jazz by Vivien Goldman is published by White Rabbit Books (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
