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The Clash

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The Clash
File:The Clash photo.jpg
Background information
Years active1976 – 1986
MembersJoe Strummer
Mick Jones
Paul Simonon
Topper Headon

The Clash was a successful British punk rock group that existed from 1976 to 1986. They incorporated reggae, rockabilly, and eventually many other music styles into their repertoire, and displayed a political and lyrical sophistication that distinguished them from most of their colleagues in the punk genre. They were also legendary for uncommonly intense stage performances. The Clash are considered to be one of the best and most influential punk bands of all time.

From their earliest days as a band, The Clash stood apart from their peers with their musicianship, as well as their lyrics; the passionate, righteous political idealism in frontman Joe Strummer's lyrics was a definite contrast to the nihilism of the Sex Pistols and the simplicity of The Ramones.

Besides contemporary American pop-punk outfits like Green Day, blink-182, and The Offspring, and Canadian pop-punk band Sum 41, seminal alternative rock bands like U2, The Cure, and R.E.M. have cited The Clash as a major influence. The Britpop movement of the 1990s has also been influenced by The Clash – via revolutionary looks and the big, catchy hooks.

History

Line up and early days (1976-1978)

File:Strummer-0510.jpg
The Clash, c. 1977

Originally composed of Strummer (b. John Graham Mellor August 21, 1952, d. December 22, 2002) (vocals, rhythm guitar), Mick Jones (b. 1955) (vocals, lead guitar), Paul Simonon (b. 1955) (bass and vocals), Keith Levene (lead guitar) Terry Chimes (credited on the first LP as "Tory Crimes") (drums), the Clash formed in London in 1976 during the first wave of British punk. Levene (later of Public Image Limited) was an early guitarist and songwriter with The Clash, but he never recorded with the band and left in ambiguous circumstances after 5 gigs. Strummer had previously been in the pub rock act The 101ers (his stage name at this point was Woody Mellor; soon he would brand himself "Joe Strummer"), and Jones and Simonon were (briefly) in legendary proto-punk band London SS. At the behest of manager Bernie Rhodes, Jones, Levene and Simonon recruited Strummer from the 101ers ("You're all right," they told him, "but your band's crap.") Rhodes then allegedly gave Strummer 48 hours to sign on, but called him wanting an answer in 24. And so the Clash – name supplied by Simonon after seeing the word repeatedly in the newspapers – came to be.

Their had their first gig in 1976, supporting The Sex Pistols, and that autumn the band were signed to CBS Records. They released their first single ("White Riot") and first album (The Clash) in 1977 to considerable success in the UK, though CBS initially declined to release either in the United States, only releasing a modified version of the first album in the US in 1979, after the UK original had become the best-selling import album of all time in the United States.

Following the release of their first album, Chimes was replaced with longtime drummer Nick "Topper" Headon. The musically gifted Headon was planning to stay only briefly, in order to gain some measure of renown so that he might find a better punk group. In the process, the band's potential became apparent to Headon, and realizing that he wouldn't find a better band, he changed his plans and remained with The Clash until late 1982 – present for the most successful and fruitful part of the band's career.

Initially, The Clash were notable for their strident leftist political outlook and distinctive clothes, painted with revolutionary slogans ("Sten Guns in Knightsbridge," "Under Heavy Manners"). Throughout 1977, Strummer and Jones were in and out of jail for a range of minor crimes, ranging from vandalism to stealing a pillowcase, while Simonon and Headon were arrested for shooting racing pigeons with an air gun.

Their next album, the Sandy Pearlman-produced Give 'Em Enough Rope, was the first to feature Headon on all cuts. Pearlman was amazed by Headon's impressive timing and musical skills and thus christened him "The Human Drum Machine." 'Rope' was released in 1978 and debuted at number two on the British charts, but failed to crack the top 100 in the world's largest music market, the United States.

Politics

Like many early punk bands, The Clash protested against the monarchy and the aristocracy in the U.K. and around the world. However, unlike many early punk bands, The Clash rejected the overall sentiment of nihilism. Instead, they found solidarity with a number of liberation movements going on at the time. Their politics were expressed explicitly in their lyrics, in early recordings such as "White Riot," which encouraged disaffected white youths to become politically active like their black counterparts, "Career Opportunities," which expressed discontent over the lack of jobs in the U.K., while "London's Burning," vented at political complacency.

In one instance in 1978, at a Rock Against Racism show, organized by the Anti-Nazi League, Strummer wore a controversial t-shirt bearing the words "Brigate-Rosse" with the Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof) insignia in the middle. He later said in an interview that he wore the shirt not to support the left-wing terrorists factions in Germany and Italy, but to bring attention to their existence. Still, he felt bad after the show, prompting him to write the song "Tommy Gun," renouncing violence as a means of protest.

The band, c. 1981

The Clash offered some support to the Sandinista and other Marxist movements in Latin America (hence the title of their 1981 album, Sandinista!). They were involved directly with the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism.

By the time of the December 1979 album London Calling, the Clash (like the Dead Kennedys in the U.S.) were trying to square the circle of maintaining punk energy while developing increasingly musicianly chops. They were especially wary of their own emerging stardom: they always welcomed fans backstage after shows and showed genuine interest and compassion in their relationships with them.

The title of London Calling evokes American radio newsman Edward R. Murrow's catchphrase during World War II, and the title song announces that "...war is declared and battle come down..." It warns against expecting them to be saviours — "... now don't look to us / Phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust..." — draws a bleak picture of the times — "The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in / Engines stop running, the wheat is growing thin" — but calls on their listeners to come out of their drugged stupor and take up the fight without constantly looking to London, or to The Clash themselves, for cues — "Forget it, brother, we can go it alone... Quit holding out and draw another breath... I don't wanna shout / But while we were talking I saw you nodding out..." — finally asking, "After all this, won't you give me a smile?"

The Clash are generally credited with founding the roots of punk rock in liberal protest, and were known as the "Thinking Man's Yobs" by many for their politically astute take on the world. It should be noted that they were never driven entirely by money. Even at their peak, tickets to shows and the prices of souvenirs were kept reasonable. Similarly, the group insisted that CBS retail their double and triple album sets London Calling and Sandinista! for the price of a single album each (then £5), succeeding with the former and compromising with the latter by agreeing to sell it for £5.99 and forfeit all their royalties on its first 200,000 sales. These "VFM" (Value For Money) principles meant that they were constantly in debt to CBS, and didn't start to break even until around 1982.

US success (1979-1982)

Give 'em Enough Rope was the first Clash album to be released by a US label (though the UK release of the first album was a bestselling import in the US), and to support it the Clash went on their first tour of the US in early 1979. Their first album did not see an official release in the US until July 1979, then in a drastically revised form from the version that was released elsewhere. This included a roaring version of Bobby Fuller's "I Fought The Law" (originally from their Cost Of Living EP).

File:Lglp0920.jpg
London Calling

London Calling, a double album, was the height of their critical and commercial success. Besides straightforward punk, it featured a much wider array of styles than the earlier albums, including American-style rockabilly and reggae works that resonated with the ska movement in Britain. The album is considered one of the best rock albums ever produced, appearing at #8 on Rolling Stone's recent "Top 500 albums of all time." It was also named #1 on Entertainment Weekly 's "Top 25 Albums of the last 25 Years". Tracks such as "Train in Vain", "Clampdown" and "London Calling" show up with regularity on rock stations to this day. The album cover is a homage to Elvis Presley's self-titled first RCA LP.

The Clash followed London Calling with a triple album in late 1980, entitled Sandinista! (with the catalog number FSLN1, from the Spanish initials of the Sandinista political movement, Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional). The results were mixed, as the band continued their experimentation into reggae and dub ("Let's Go Crazy") and expanded into other musical styles and production techniques that included jazz ("Look Here"), hip hop ("The Magnificent Seven"), chamber music ("Rebel Waltz"), vocals by keyboard player Micky Gallagher's young son, and "Mensforth Hill," a tape loop collage similar to The Beatles Revolution No 9.

Fans were confused and sales were down, although they were better in the US than previously. Following the release of Sandinista!, The Clash went on their first world tour, including venues in eastern Asia and Australia.

In 1982, The Clash returned with the best-selling of all their albums, Combat Rock. Featuring the singles "Rock the Casbah" and "Should I Stay or Should I Go?", it broke into the American Top Ten, and did the same in the UK. "Ghetto Defendant" featured Allen Ginsberg, and "Red Angel Dragnet" referenced the film Taxi Driver.

Tensions and disintegration (1983-1985)

After Combat Rock, the Clash began to slowly disintegrate. Headon was fired on account of his on-going heroin addiction, which was covered as a "political difference." The original drummer, Terry Chimes, was brought back into the fold for the next few tours. Jones and Strummer began to feud, although it is often said that much of the friction between the two arose because the band's manager, Bernie Rhodes, disliked Jones. Chimes left the band after the 1982-1983 Combat Rock tour, convinced that the band could not continue with in-fighting and turmoil. In 1983, after an extensive search for a new drummer, Pete Howard was recruited and performed with the trio at several low-key US dates and before The Clash's largest audience at the US Festival in San Bernardino, California – Jones's last appearance with The Clash.

File:Clash1348.jpg
The Clash, c. 1982

In September 1983, Strummer and Simonon ousted Jones from the band, citing his problematic behaviour and divergent musical aspirations (Jones went on to found Big Audio Dynamite (BAD) with Don Letts). The loss of two key-members played a crucial role in the band's downfall. Headon — "The Human Drum Machine" — was an outstanding drummer, and Jones was the second part of the songwriting and vocal wheel of the band.

After a series of auditions, the band announced Nick Sheppard (23), formerly of the Bristol-based Cortinas, and Vince White (23) would be the band's new guitarists. The band played its first shows in January 1984 with a batch of new material and launched into a self-financed tour, dubbed the Out of Control tour.

Musically, the band was capable of re-creating the fire and intensity of the original line-up, but chemistry and trust between the old guard and the new were sometimes strained due to circumstance and unfamiliarity. Regardless, the band toured heavily over the winter and into early summer, with Strummer taking a hiatus until the fall to tend to personal matters. At a Miner's benefit show in December, he announced the band had a new record and was releasing it early in the new year.

The album's recording sessions were a shambles with manager Bernie Rhodes scrubbing Howard's considerable talent in favour of a drum machine, drastically re-engineering the songs' live arrangements, and relying on synthesizers and mob choruses. Other songs aired on the tour remain unreleased: "Ammunition", "Glue Zombie", "In the Pouring Rain". There is debate as to how much of the material on the album was actually recorded by the band itself. Considerable amounts of material appear to have been changed by Rhodes (hence his credit as a songwriter on the album), and much of the bass is reported to have been played by Norman Watt Roy, who had previously recorded "The Magnificent Seven" on Sandanista.

Disillusioned with Rhodes' album, Strummer took the band busking across Northern England and Scotland, playing for free on street corners and in bars. The Clash played their final shows at European festivals in 1985, with Strummer eventually calling the band together and putting The Clash out of their misery.

Meanwhile, Cut the Crap was released to a generally poor reception, though it charted higher than Big Audio Dynamite's release in the USA. Cut The Crap has basically been erased from Clash history, with all parties involved wanting to disown the album. Strummer favored the song "This Is England," and to date it has been the only song from the album to appear on any Clash retrospective.

Post-Clash careers (1986-2005)

Strummer acted in a few movies, notably Alex Cox's Walker, and Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train. He became known in this period for his work on movie soundtracks (notably "Love Kills" for the film Sid and Nancy) and experimented with different backing bands with limited success. In 1990, he resurfaced in the music scene, releasing the first of his solo albums. Earthquake Weather was neither a commercial nor critical success. He did however tour with a new backing band, The Latino Rockabilly War, and released the single, "Trash City." In 1991/92 Strummer joined The Pogues after their split-up with former frontman Shane MacGowan for a series of concerts across Europe. Finally, in the mid- to late-1990s, Strummer gathered top-flight musicians into a backing band he called The Mescaleros. Strummer signed with the California punk label Hellcat Records, owned by Rancid frontman Tim Armstrong, and issued an album co-written with Anthony Genn, called Rock Art and the X-Ray Style. A tour of England and North America soon followed; sets included several Clash-fan favourites. Genn left The Mescaleros in the middle of recording sessions for the second album, Global A Go-Go, which included violinist, guitarist, and longtime friend of Strummer's Tymon Dogg, who contributed the song "Lose This Skin" to Sandinista! Following the release of Global A Go-Go, Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros mounted a 21-date tour of North America, Britain, and Ireland. Once again, these concerts featured Clash material ("London Calling", "Rudie Can't Fail"), as well as classic covers of reggae hits ("The Harder They Come", "A Message To You, Rudie") and regularly closed the show with a nod to the late Joey Ramone by playing The Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop". In December of 2002, Strummer died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 50. The Mescaleros album he was working on at the time, Streetcore, was released posthumously to critical acclaim in 2003.

Following the break up of The Clash, Simonon formed a group called Havana 3AM, which recorded only one album in Japan and quickly folded. Then Simonon returned to his roots as a visual artist, mounting several art-gallery shows and contributing the cover for Jones' third BAD album, which was, coincidentally, co-produced by Strummer.

Simonon's reluctance to play music again has largely been cited as the reason why The Clash were one of the few 1970s British punk bands that did not reform to cash in on the punk-nostalgia craze of the late 1990s. However, Jones commented in the press that at the time of Strummer's death, the foursome was seriously considering reuniting for a tour, and that it looked likely to happen. Bruce Springsteen reportedly offered to stand in for Strummer for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but the performance never materialized.

Shortly before Strummer's death, Jones performed an encore onstage with Strummer and the Mescaleros in late 2002. Jones is currently touring and recording with his new band, Carbon Silicon (http://www.carbonsiliconinc.com).

It should be noted that Headon's contribution to The Clash was by no means limited to his drumming for the band; he composed and performed the music for "Ivan Meets G.I. Joe" and "Rock The Casbah" almost entirely by himself, the latter becoming the band's biggest hit in the U.S. reaching number #8 in 1982. By this time, however, Headon had been dismissed by the rest of the band due to the drug addiction which has dogged him for most of his adult life. Heroin stood in the way of any musical alliances he tried to form, and eventually landed him in jail for supplying a user who later overdosed and died. Except for forming a short-lived R&B band, Headon disappeared from the music business until the filming of Letts' retrospective documentary about The Clash, Westway to The World, also attending a subsequent presentation to Strummer, Jones, Simonon, and Headon of a Lifetime Achievement British Music Award. After many years of unsuccessfully trying different forms of rehabilitation, he has now apparently kicked his habit and is performing live again.

Rumoured reunion (2005-present)

In autumn 2005, a source (PUNK & OI IN THE UK) rumoured that The Clash would reunite later in the year. The band was said to include Operation Ivy/Rancid/The Transplants singer/guitarist Tim Armstrong as the replacement for Strummer. Their first tour was rumoured to be in December 2005. There have been no announcements for a new studio album as the follow-up to Cut the Crap. The rumours have been found to have little merit, as the original source was a Pearl Jam message board. Jones himself has made no mention of a reunion, and the alleged reformation has not been announced in any major music magazine, online or otherwise. Coupled with Armstrong's hasty cancellation of his tour with The Transplants citing health reasons, and the fact that Simonon has steadfastly refused any reunion, make the rumours unfounded. Further, as of October 2005, no tour dates have been announced, refuting once more the rumours of a reunited Clash.

Sound Sample

Sample of "London Calling", from London Calling. 30 seconds, 616 KB

Bandmembers

The Classic Line-up

Other members

  • Terry Chimes - drums (1976-1977)(1982-1983)
  • Keith Levene - lead guitar (1976)
  • Nick Sheppard - guitar (1984-1985)
  • Vince White - guitar (1984-1985)
  • Pete Howard - drums (1984-1985)
  • Rob Harper - drums (1977)
  • Pablo LaBritain - drums (1976)

Discography

Studio Albums

see also The Clash discography

Compilations

  1. Black Market Clash, 1980 (compilation of b-sides), CBS Records CD release: Epic Records
  2. The Story of the Clash, Volume 1, 1988 (compilation, greatest hits collection), CBS Records CD release: Epic Records #7 UK, #142 US
  3. Clash on Broadway, 1991 (3 disc box set containing several unreleased tracks and alternate versions), CBS Records CD release: Epic Records
  4. The Singles, 1991 (singles compilation), CBS Records CD release: Epic Records
  5. From Here to Eternity: Live, 1999 (live recordings from 1978 - 1982), Epic Records #13 UK, #193 US
  6. The Essential Clash, 2003 (compilation, "essential" recordings), Epic/Legacy #18 UK, #99 US
  7. London Calling: 25th Anniversary Legacy Edition, 2004 (expanded with rehearsal tapes and making of the album DVD), Epic/Legacy #26 UK

UK Singles

US Singles

Template:Fnb The 1979 USA release of the debut album was significantly different from the original 1977 UK release. See The Clash for a discussion of those differences.

Template:Fnb All of The Clash's albums and singles were originally issued on CBS Records; subsequent re-issues and CD releases have been through Epic.

Bibliography

  • Gray, Marcus (1995). Last Gang In Town: The Story and Myth of The Clash Fourth Estate Limited. ISBN 1857021460.
  • Green, Johnny; Barker, Garry; & Lowry, Ray (Ill.). A Riot of Our Own: Night and Day with The Clash Indigo. ISBN 0575400803.

See also

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