In her third memoir, No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene, Adele Bertei plunges us back into late-1970s and early-80s New York, among the rats and rubble of a bankrupt city. It was a world underscored by out-of-tune, dissonant chords and rhythmic strums that ripped song structures apart at the seams, merging dance electronics with the raw snarl of rock ‘n’ roll that spewed from the city’s cracks, conjured by the youths who pounded its streets and Greyhounded their way to the epicentre of where it all began. Together, they created the underground sounds and images that defined an era, and that continue to soundtrack and shape new generations’ own nights of chaos. Later dubbed No Wave, it was characterised by a surge of unfiltered creativity that many have put pen to paper to capture. But none have written at length about the scene’s most vital component: its women — until now.

Bertei writes about the movement not only as someone who strummed and hollered in its bands – sharing a stage with James Chance in The Contortions, then fronting the all-queer girl band the Bloods, who opened for the likes of Richard Hell, the Heartbreakers and the Clash – and who sneered and seduced in its groundbreaking films (Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames, Vivienne Dick’s Beauty Becomes the Beast and Guerillère Talks, and Beth B and Scott B’s The Offenders), but also as someone paying tribute to the women she bounced off and bonded with.

Many sections are composed as odes to these stalwarts of the scene; some are still with us (Lydia Lunch, Nan Goldin, Kiki Smith), while others have long since departed (Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Anya Phillips, Kathy Acker). Yet each has left an indelible mark not only on Bertei, but on culture at large. This book, Bertei says, “honours ghosts,” and it becomes clear that No Wave didn’t just emerge from a wasteland, but was also bookended by one. When AIDS and heroin took hold, and the powers that be allowed it, many of those who were lost left behind the debris of so much promise. Once again, Bertei gathers those remnants and hammers together her memories of the friends and lovers she knew intimately, who once joined her in chorus to scream “No” at the corrupt systems that tried to destroy them.

Shana Chandra: Adele, how are you? It’s so great to see how much traction No New York is getting.
Adele Bertei: Oh, thank you. Beacon Press, who published it in the US, have sold out of the first printing. So that’s good news, right?

SC: Such good news. I’ve read Peter and the Wolves and Twist, and now No New York, which is the third in your series of memoirs. You write in these beautiful, detailed descriptions, and I’m wondering: how did you draw on memories of New York from over 40 years ago? Did you have diaries to go back to, or did you just mine what you remembered?
AB: I was never a diarist, but I do have a very strong memory. And I think part of it is because I’ve had such an unusual life. These pieces of stories have made me who I am – some of them are extremely rich. I mean, Twist, for instance, I won the trauma sweepstakes with that book [laughs]. But it was very important for me to talk through how I was able to survive it all. And who knows – if some other person has gone through something similar and needs some kind of inspiration about how to heal trauma, hopefully that book will help in some way. But as a writer, when you’re writing a memoir, you do have to be literary, in the sense that you want to paint a picture and tell a story that’s going to compel readers. It can’t just be therapising, it has to really be a story. So it’s not that you embellish facts, but you embellish with language to make the story rich enough to pull people into the page. 

SC: With No New York, you were part of the scene and knew the other women of the scene, which is why it feels so important for you to write this book. You write so tenderly about the women you come across, but also don’t shy away from talking about the frictions that, of course, happen when you’re bandmates, collaborators, or friends. However, what’s so interesting is that you had so much freedom in the No Wave scene, but when you get into your solo career, you encounter the misogyny that exists within the music industry. You were pitted against other women – it must have been hard to go from the No Wave moment of freedom to being more and more controlled. What was the turning point that made you think, “I can’t do this anymore”?
AB: There was quite a schism between being totally free and authentic, especially as a gay woman at a time when, commercially, no one was out of the closet, not even Elton John. So the control that men in the industry tried to foist onto me meant they wanted me to get rid of my female collaborators; I had to let go of my manager [Jane Friedman, Patti Smith’s manager] and fire people because they were women. And – I will always regret this – I did it, because I thought if I do this, and I’m given a major record platform that’s wide, I can say the provocative things that I really want to say. Of course, I was kidding myself. But I think the turning point was a couple of things. There was a #MeToo moment during my last record deal with Chrysalis Records, where someone physically assaulted me, and I said no. And they dropped me within weeks after the refusal. Then I was touring with an artist who Columbia Records really wanted to stay in the closet, and because I was singing background vocals for this person, and we were playing with lesbian imagery on stage – which was really cute, it wasn’t anything too salacious – but to them, it was taboo. So they attacked me about it – they thought I was provoking her to be out. I just said I can’t stomach this treatment anymore. I decided I was going to leave the music business, and that’s when I moved to Los Angeles and started writing full-time.

“Playing outside of the commercial systems is very freeing.”

SC: For people who didn’t live during 1970s and 80s New York, we look back on No Wave and romanticise it. Do you think your perception of the period changed in any way as you wrote the book through a 2020s lens?
AB: A lot of the women who were involved in the scene were exceptionally brave, because it was a dangerous time in New York City. I mean, the place looked like Naples or Dresden after WWII – it was just bombed-out buildings, and it was dangerous. I was raped a couple of times in New York. But there was also a kind of fearlessness women had that I didn’t really think about until I started writing the book. How incredibly free and fearless we were about not wanting to play to any rules of genre or gender. We were going to be wherever the impetus led us to create, and whatever the ideas were, we were going to do it, without any straitjackets on our imaginations. So my perception of that changed over the years.

SC: A lot of the women, like you, and Lydia Lunch, Nan Goldin, were also leaving these childhoods and teenage life where you experienced abuse. Do you think that fueled you for making a life for yourself in New York and with the music?
AB: This is just my personal theory. But trauma can do one of two things to you – or, actually, it can do many things to you. But in this aspect, when you talk about people like myself, Nan, or Lydia, who all had very difficult childhoods, sometimes you come out of it by thinking, well, nothing can ever hurt me as much as that. And that, in turn, creates bravery as well. But it can also destroy you. It can lead you into drug addiction or early death. I talk about this in the book.

“Patti Smith is the person who turned us all onto Arthur Rimbaud. You’ve got kids coming from all over the Midwest, from Europe, from Japan, on the heels of Patti Smith. She was fundamental to the No Wave scene.”

SC: You do. And you’ve got that beautiful spiral where you mention all the people who have passed. You also name so many female artists of the scene that people don’t necessarily know about. You’re talked about as being a survivor, and you are, but with the AIDS and the heroin epidemic, when so many were unfairly slaughtered, how did you not let that bitterness or unfairness consume you?
AB: Well, when it comes to AIDS, it was terrifying. It was terrifying to not know what this disease was at first. You had to wait a month after you got tested to see if you had it. So people would basically be sweating it out to see if they were going to die or not, because we learned early on that it was fatal. The way I was able to deal with it, and so many others in the gay community, was to go to the clubs and dance. And we were dancing not just for ourselves, out of pride and love for each other in our community, but also for the people who were dying and had passed. Because that’s what they would have wanted. They would have wanted us to celebrate life for them. I think a big part of my oeuvre as a writer is to do with honouring the ghosts. I’ve never been afraid to talk to ghosts, you know? The ghosts I know are not malevolent. I’m sorry, I’m tearing up a little bit.

SC: So am I. Do you feel a responsibility to those ghosts?
AB: I do.

SC: I know it’s obviously so hard to compare now and then. But if you could carry one ethos of that time into today and hold it tight, what would it be?
AB: Anti-capitalism. Anti-commodification. We were very anti-capitalist, and labels were anathema to us. I mean, there’s a great Au Pairs song called Stepping Out of Line. It’s about having labels slapped on your ass, and how that helps capitalism commodify you so that they can sell to you, and it’s where we are now. There’s a line in a song I wrote: “Art without comfort is comfort enough.” And it’s the way we felt – we weren’t striving to be pop stars or sell the art; it was really about making work from an authentic place. There were people in the scene who obviously have become huge art stars, like Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger, but I don’t think that was their impetus in the beginning. We were all just making work. And it was very exciting. Playing outside of the commercial systems is very freeing.

I think what’s happening now for young people is that you can’t make a living. It’s almost like, if you’re going to do art, you have to figure out a way of working it into the corporate structures that are devouring us. And I think that’s just so sad; we need to get back to a sense of ritual when it comes to art. Music, dance, and theatre are the types of rituals that really keep us in community with each other, in a beautiful way that has a spiritual component too. It’s the creative spirit.

“If you’re going to do art [today], you have to figure out a way of working it into the corporate structures that are devouring us. And I think that’s just so sad.”

SC: This reminds me – you’re going to be performing Kathy Acker’s Pussy King of the Pirates with Alice Bag and Kathleen Hanna in LA early next year, right?
AB: Yes, Kathy and I were close. Her last novel before she died was Pussy King of the Pirates. She wrote the musical with the Mekons in England, and they only performed it once. It was six weeks before she died. I’ve been listening to the CD over the years, and finally I just thought this would make a really great theatre production. I spoke to Cap UCLA to put it on at the Nimoy Theatre. Kathleen Hanna was interested because Kathy was her writing teacher. Kathy is the person who told Kathleen, after reading her writing, that she should start a band. So, of course, Kathleen was over the moon when I talked to her about doing this. We’re going to have an incredible band, and the singers will be Kathleen, Alice Bag, and I. It’ll be a theatrical production – stage set, costumes, and great music – honouring Kathy. We’re also going to be projecting images of Kathy narrating in between each song. So talk about ghosts: Kathy will be in the house with us.

“We were going to be wherever the impetus led us to create, and whatever the ideas were…”

SC: I read somewhere before – and I’m not sure how true this is – that the No Wave scene was made up of only about 100 people. And in a way, you really get a sense of that in the book, because everyone’s lives intersect and interconnect; you’re bouncing off each other and co-collaborating. You can see just how fertile a period it was. So many are still creating, and so many have become iconic – what do you think contributed to this long-lasting creativity?
AB: As artists, these are all people who were really focused on their work throughout the years and who really had an authentic sensibility. Like in Nan’s case, there’s no one like her. She always had an activist bent, even in her early photographs, when she was travelling around. I met her in 1975, and she was taking pictures of drag queens in gay bars throughout the Midwest. I write about this in the book – the poignancy of the portraits, and what she captured: the authenticity, the vulnerability, the courage, and the pathos that you see in those people. As a gay kid growing up without images to relate to, it was very important for me to see the bravery in the faces of her subjects. That’s activism to me – presenting something that people don’t ordinarily think about, that provokes them to think about something in a different way. She’s continued her activism by fighting against the Sackler family and OxyContin, in big activist moments. I really appreciate that marriage of art and activism when it happens.

SC: Part of this co-collaboration that was happening at the time with No Wave was that you were all listening to the same music and reading the same books, like [Antonin] Artaud and [Arthur] Rimbaud. And yet you’ve spoken before about how No Wave music had a lot to do with being in the body, as opposed to taking an intellectual approach. I was wondering, what was it about being in the body and taking on that rhythmic approach that felt so right at the time?
AB: We were listening to a lot of reggae, African music, and funk. And it’s really hard to listen to that music and not move your body [laughs]. You know, we were working during the days and dancing in the nights, and dance was such an important part of that culture. We went out dancing every night, and the DJs were fantastic – they just kept us moving. Patti Smith is the person who turned us all onto Arthur Rimbaud. You’ve got kids coming from all over the Midwest, from Europe, from Japan, on the heels of Patti Smith. She was fundamental to the No Wave scene, and to women coming to New York. But it’s interesting too – I’m remembering that in one of Rimbaud’s letters to another poet [Paul Demeny], he prophesied that when women shake off the shackles men have kept them in, she will discover the most magical, brilliant things she’s never been able to express before. And I think that inspired a lot of women, because his poetry was also very physical. And Patti Smith was incredibly physical. So much of it had to do with the music and that core feeling of wanting to move – the fire in the blood, the duende. That was a huge part of it.

SC: Your writing is also so rhythmic. It’s almost like the music you were playing feeds into your writing, because it packs a punch – you fit so many good descriptions into one sentence. Do you think your music has affected the way you write?
AB: I think music really informs writing. I mean, I can’t listen to any music with lyrics when I’m writing – it’s too distracting. Language is just so rich. I feel like as a writer, I’m just discovering it. I’m always discovering new aspects of the musicality of it, the magic of it, the juxtaposition of words. Films also really influence the way I write, because I love cinema and its extraordinary language of visuals. I love to watch movies and just turn the sound down; there’s such a musicality in visual language as well.

SC: Hearing about No Wave from your perspective and with your language is such a joy – I can’t believe how many amazing people you knew.
AB: It’s so funny because we didn’t think about that at all back then, you know what I mean? It didn’t feel like there would be a legacy. We weren’t aware. But I feel like this is a scene that people are endlessly fascinated with. I think because the book is framed in terms of the women on the scene, which is the first time it’s been presented that way, there might be a renewed interest from that specific lens. I’m also doing something at the Getty Museum on October 4th. I’m the artistic director of a day of events called A Movable Feast of No, which is a line from my book. It’s to highlight the women of No Wave, or who were No Wave–adjacent. Bush Tetras are going to headline. There’ll be spoken word as well. Ikue Mori of DNA is going to play with Julianna Barwick. I’m doing a women’s guitar army called the Maria Schneider Guitar Army. Twelve women in nuns’ habits, playing electric guitars outside on the grounds.

SC: Why Maria Schneider?
AB: I’ve always really loved her. Her story is so tragic. She was raped on camera, and it basically destroyed her life; she became a heroin addict. But I also know that when Patti Smith first came out with Horses, Maria was hanging out with her, and Patti wrote a song about her. But for me, it was also about all of the women who have been cannibalised – women artists who were ruined and eclipsed by men: Maria Schneider, Ana Mendieta, Camille Claudel, Dora Maar. So we’re paying homage to all of these women, where the men were canonised and the women eclipsed. I’m aiming for it to be magical and very ritualistic.

SC: If you could soundtrack the book with five songs, what would they be?
AB: Gloria: In Excelsis Deo by Patti Smith, I Can’t Stand Myself by the Contortions from the LP No New York, Beads of Sweat by Laura Nyro, Steppin’ Out of Line by the Au Pairs, and The Long Goodbye by Lizzy Mercier Descloux.

Adele Bertei’s new memoir, ‘No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene’, is out now, published by Faber & Faber