"We were very deliberately not playing 12-bar structures, blues structures, which rock musicians turned into such a clich," Albertine says. But when the looks between us signaled that death was getting close, I didn't want to appear too interested in the actual process and treat her like a specimen to be analyzed. It was an insiders account of what it was like to be caught up in the white heat of the punk moment and, more revealingly, how difficult it was to live a so-called normal life in the wake of such a briefly liberating cultural upheaval. Kath brought up her two daughters, Viv and Pascale, in Muswell Hill with her Corsican husband, Lucien, until he walked away from the family in 1967. Her debut solo album, The Vermilion Border, was released on 5 November 2012 through the Cadiz Music label. It is driven by a relentless honesty about herself and the dysfunctional family dynamic she was born into, which she lays bare with an almost forensic eye. I feel sorry for girls getting caught up in it and still thinking they have to define themselves and their success by being in a relationship, straight women, straight girls, by being in a heterosexual relationship or being in any relationship as if that's in any way a mark of what kind of successful human being you are. We could not have lived the wild lives we lived., Was it too much, I ask, being a Slit? GROSS: It has been great to talk with you. So I was, you know, very aware of breaking down the sort of tropes of being a musician and wanting to go against them, not wanting to fall into old male habits. You know, young women who wore clothes to emphasize our figures and attract male attention, the male gaze - we absolutely, you know, weren't going to do that. Looking back, I think my mother and father set us against each other from when we were very young youre on my side and youre on my side. I just stared at her open-mouthed. She wont get in touch with me, she wont read it, she probably wont even know its out. Did writing about their toxic relationship help shed light on her sisters actions or, indeed, her own? She was a little girl when The Slits started. It's beautiful and doomed.', 'Language is important: it shapes minds, it can include, exclude, incite, hurt and destroy.