So long, Marianne

On being young in London

In April 2005, living in a falling down house with no downstairs windows in Dalston, me and my housemate Anna spotted an ad, either in Time Out or the Guardian, saying Tori Amos was playing a gig.

Having spent our teenage years emoting over Silent All These Years, we were determined to go.

At this time in my life, I was perma-broke. A few weeks before, with my overdraft maxed out due to it being the end of term, I had spent four days unable to leave the window-less house, subsisting off a loaf of bread watching The Yellow Submarine, Mulholland Drive and The Office on VHS video in bed. I had spent the last of my overdraft on a packet of Sesame Snaps, but thankfully my housemate Dave had money for beer. You could always tell when it was end of term, because I’d start boiling up mung beans which would be turned into unappetising, protein-rich stews and bakes, supplemented with a bowl of veg for a £1 from Ridley Road market. Occasionally, I’d fashion the mung bean mush into a burger.

So I just googled how much the tickets for this apparent Tori Amos gig cost – cheapest seats were £22.50. By April, we both had money in our bank accounts again and while £22.50 seemed like a lot of money at the time, it was worth it. Tori Amos!

We got the bus down from Dalston to Waterloo – the 76 winding through Old Street and Shoreditch, the narrow streets of the cobbled together city and emerging alongside St Pauls, taking in the courts and crossing the big old bridge with the stunning Westminster view to the west, the blinking lights of the City to the East. Emerging through the tunnels to the Royal Festival Hall, disaster struck. Our tickets said the event started at 8pm, but in fact the gig kicked off an hour earlier!

We could hear Tori’s piano through the door as we begged the usher to take pity on us. Look, this was not our fault! See, it says 8pm! The usher finally relented and let us in, with the promise we would be quiet and discreet, giving us the chance to see Tori’s final two songs. £22.50 down the drain.

Or so we thought, because what happened next was incredible.

We had not gone to a Tori Amos gig. We had walked into Patti Smith’s Meltdown festival, for the night Patti had dedicated to William Blake.

Icon after icon walked on to the stage, as we sat in the black room enthralled, shrieking with excitement, turning to one another wide-eyed with astonishment, as each guest was announced. Sinead O’Connor. Yoko Ono. Patti Smith and her daughter, Beth Orton, Miranda Richardson reading William Blake, and Marianne Faithfull who took to the stage to belt out Working Class Hero (is something to be).

Her blonde helmet hair, her broad stance, and this overwhelming presence. The strength and power of Marianne on that empty black stage means even now, 20 years on, I can picture her outfit exactly, and how she stood, and how she sang, and how we listened. It might be 41 years since she recorded her first song aged just 17, but this woman was a star. The strength of class rage and war in the driving bass of the song, the truth of the lyrics. A song of violence and oppression and hypocrisy. A working class hero is something to be.

Watch Marianne Faithfull sing Working Class Hero

I don’t think about this evening very much, but yesterday the news of Faithfull’s death brought it all rushing back. How we turned up, broke with our £22.50 tickets, to see a line-up of some of the most influential women in rock music (and the guy from James) pay tribute to William Blake. I can picture mine and Anna’s faces as we repeatedly mouthed “what”; “who?” “oh my god” ; “oh it’s the guy from James.”

The latter excepted, this was a night that while not feminist in intent, was feminist just by being. I was 20, and living in the so-called “post feminist” era, when we were supposed to find the sexist jokes funny, where my English lit reading lists were almost all-male (men got individual lectures, women got “women in modernism”, alongside the permitted “exceptional” woman who was worthy of her own session), where pop culture was men in clothes with guitars, and women in bikinis dancing.

In contrast, watching these powerful, iconic women who had forged these vital performance careers. These were women who had endured sexual violence, sexism and outright misogynistic attacks before transforming that hatred and cruelty into something beautiful and remarkable. Women who had come of age in a different era but had something to say to my generation about what it is to be a female artist. We talk a lot about representation and on that stage of creative, artistic, innovative and exciting women, there was a promise of what we could be. How art can save lives. How women can be artists – they can own the stage, standing and singing and speaking and reading and existing in creative strength. How women survive.

It’s 20 years since I went to that gig. And I know this is nostalgia and middle age talking. But when I think about that night, it reminds me of a London that has gone, because people are increasingly priced out of culture.

I saw on Bluesky the other day that the starting price for a play at the Barbican starring Cate Blanchett are more than £200. It’s hard to imagine how much it would cost to go and see such a stunning line-up now, as I did in April 2005, but I think it would be a price I’d look twice at.

Back when I was a student in London, with my jar of mung beans for emergency food but with always enough money to go out, I used to get £5 tickets to watch classical concerts at the Royal Festival Hall, once even getting a £5 ticket for Carmen at the Royal Albert Hall. Life was expensive but culture was so much more accessible, which made life much more spontaneous. You could see an ad in a listings magazines and get on the bus to watch your favourite singer, only for it to turn into one of the most remarkable nights of live music in your life.

Aged 20 in London

It’s a time I view through rose-coloured spectacles, for sure: running around going to drum n bass clubs that no longer exist (Herbal!) and gay bars that no longer exist (the Ghetto!), drinking cheap pints in student pubs that no longer exist, getting high and snogging girls and boys on dancefloors, feeling like the city was all mine, and that within it I shone brightly, full of ambition and determination to be a writer, to live, to have adventures. Endless picnics in parks under blue skies and fading sunsets, wearing vintage dresses with a can of red stripe in hand, spotting an ad in the listings and going, why not? Let’s go see Tori Amos and end up watching Marianne Faithfull.

Gloria.

Obligatory book plug

I told you I was a sad Cassandra, but I never wanted my book to come true. Well, we are where we are. If you want book that makes sense of why Trump is in power, you can read mine.

Buy my book

What I loved

This report on the drone safaris in Kherson is a must-read. By Antony Loyd.

What I wrote

Trump’s new anti-trans executive order is a ‘human rights violation’

From Ukraine to Uganda, Trump’s aid freeze endangers millions (with Angelina de los Santos and Soita Khatondhi Wepukhulu)

What I’m reading

One good turn, by Kate Atkinson

Blood and Sugar by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

Yellowface by R F Kuang (re-read)

Babel by R F Kuang (in process)

What I’m watching

I realised I missed out some of the many films I watched over Christmas! Which included David Lean’s Great Expectation (how had I never seen this before) and The Magnificent Ambersons, Paris 13 (so French), 39 Steps (rewatch).

Just one more episode of My Brilliant Friend to go, and started Lockerbie with Colin Firth and got irrationally irritated that they kept referring to the Dept of Transport.

That’s it! Catch you later, I’m going to get my haircut. Ciao ciao!