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Daily Mirror - Clashing in on a wave

– 15 Dec 1977

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Review of the 13th - gigs, so that's enough of this hagiography. That's not nearly as important as why the Clash are the CLASH.

Scene One:

Bernie Rhodes holds Clash preview for the press in the studio, subtly paralleling Paris schmutter previews. Giovanni Dadomo of Sounds is suitably impressed and reports that the Clash are the first band to come along that look like they could really scare the Pistols.

Scene Two:

The reaction sets in. When the Clash support the Pistols at a London cinema gig, Charles Shaar Murray says that they're a garage band who ought to get back in the garage and leave the car motor running. (This prompts them to write 'Garageland').

Scene Three:

The sides settled, every Clash gig becomes an event. When Patti Smith comes over, she sees the Clash at the Institute of

Contemporary Arts and is so knocked out with them that she jumps up and "jams". And some kid in the audience does a mock up of biting off someone's ear (with the aid of a tomato ketchup capsule) and the picture gets in the weekly music press. By the time they play the Royal College of Art (Arty lot, aren't they? Still, what do you expect? They all went to art college and wear some of the flashest clothes imaginable), emotions are running way too high. They play a set under the rubric "A Night Of Treason". (It was November 5th, the night that honours the burning of Guy Fawkes, the bloke who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament). Some of the audience, when not lobbing fireworks around, take an extreme dislike to the Clash and start bunging bottles at the stage. The rest of the audience is split between Clash fans who already think their band can do no wrong and the uncommitted whose prevailing attitude is "Well, they are playing violent music and if you play violent, well you know what they say about what you sow..."

The band are certain how they feel about playing in a rain of bottles. Strummer lurches off stage and tries to sort out those responsible... personally.

The Clash style has been set. It's a straight case of being ruthlessly certain about how you feel and what you want to do and making sure that no one gets in your way. Like the man said, "We ain't looking for trouble but if someone starts it, it ain't gonna be us that's gonna be on the losing side."

Remember this is back in '76 when punk was still seen overwhelmingly as being POLITICAL. More than anyone else it was the Clash that everyone held responsible for putting down a party line. Now they're all pretty much retreated from that position (except the Clash, they just smile Highway 61 smiles) and say aw, we're really only into having fun, maaan. But then, you've no idea what a relief it was to have songs about something else than falling in love with some acne-infested adolescent or what a drag it is to be slogging our guts out "on the road" and staying in all these faceless hotels (when most kids in England have never even stayed in a hotel) or pathetic dirges about let's have a little more rock 'n' roll.

I know rock 'n' roll is supposed to be about the banalities of the pubescent dream but it had pretty much got to the stage where the average rock 'n' roll song was indistinguishable from moon/June bilge. If the Clash have done nothing else, they've given a big help to kicking out all that garbage (of course, many others have been working to the same end).

Strummer certainly didn't come from any poverty-stricken background (on the other hand, he never really pretended to) but his songs were like a well-aimed boot plonked straight into the guts of an overfed and complacent music business.

And Mick Jones was no slouch either.
'Career Opportunities' for example:
They offered me the office
They offered me the shop
They said I'd better take anything they'd got
Do you wanna make tea at the BBC
Do you, do you really wanna be a cop
Career opportunities
The ones that never knock
Every job they offer you's to keep you out the dock
Career opportunities
The ones that never knock.

Okay, so it ain't gonna cop him a poetry prize (who wants 'em?) but it displays both a savage understanding of the demands for immediacy in a rock 'n' roll song and a large helping of witty comment on what it's like to be given the choice of one shitty job or another shitty job. Of course, the Clash never thought they could really change things. They're only (only!) a rock 'n' roll band, not a political party. But, if you're gonna sing about something, you might as well sing about something that doesn't usually make it onto pop singles. Unfortunately, while they handled it, lesser talents came along and decided that they'd have to write 'political' songs and, as a matter of course, mostly came up with insulting simplicities like Chelsea's 'Right To Work.'

And then, even more important, there was the music. Even early on (and especially after Small Faces addict Glen Matlock got the boot) the Pistols were very fond of heavy metal drones. I don't think The Clash even listened to HM. Joe only cared for ‘50s rockers (especially bluesman Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, believe it or not) and reggae. Jones was deeply into Mott, which shows in the Clash's attitude toward their fans both in their songs and their stage demeanour. And Paul Simonon was into football (listen to the chant on 'Janie Jones') and painting (look at the clothes, stage backdrops and all their visual presentation.)

By the time they'd done the Anarchy Tour with the Pistols, the Clash were in an unrivalled second position. They began to get the kind of press eulogies and fan worship that'd turn anybody's head. How could anybody fail to react to them?

Onstage, Strummer is so obviously a natural star, forcing his body and Telecaster to ever greater heights of pain/pleasure, grabbing the mike and screaming lines like he really does care.

Mick Jones bopping around like a younger Keef (yeah, that comparison again) doing a military two-step and sending out shards of steely guitar licks.

And Paul lumbering around looking looser and more relaxed but thumping his bass while indulging in perverse, arcane calisthenics.

And the clothes. Obviously paramilitary in origin — zips and slogans featured very heavily — but whoever heard of an army splashing paint all over their tunics?

All this combines to make sure the Clash, even at their worst, are never mere music. I am absolutely convinced that it's not only me that feels that they're the ‘70s answer to the Stones. If asked, Clash fans will say they love 'em so much because "They're good to dance to" or "I fancy Mick Jones" or "I just like 'em, that's all". If that is all, why do they shout out for 'White Riot' all the time at gigs? It's not one of the Clash's best songs, but it is the one that most represents where they're coming from, what they stand for and, by extension, what particular fantasy they're enacting for their audience. If the kids just wanted to dance or screw, they could go to a disco/home to bed. They want and get more but their lack of articulacy prevents them explaining what. Where success and even the music are subordinate to the stance — they're saying not we play rock 'n' roll but we are rock 'n' roll. If Chuck Berry represents for me an idealised adolescence I never had, and the Stones were an adolescence that I lived through once removed because, like so many kids, I was too busy studying, the Clash are as good an excuse as any for me to live out a perfect adolescence ten years late. Hell, why else be a rock 'n' roll writer — there's more to it than freebie albums, you know.

Which is also why — just like the Stones — while the Clash will fire imaginations, they'll never become a grandiosely success-ful band. Some reckon they won't make it in the States at all. I don't agree with that. Judging by the recent Rainbow shows, they've got enough classic big stage rock 'n' roll choreography worked out to handle any auditorium. And their newer songs, like 'City of the Dead' and the as yet unissued 'White Man In Hammersmith Palais' are played at a pace that even ears used to the Eagles can handle. Also, by slowing matters down a trifle, they seem to have upped the energy level — too much speed becomes nothing but a fast train blur. They learned their lesson on the first English tour. The set started out at 45 minutes. By the end of the tour it was down to 29 minutes and that included all the album plus '1977', 'Capital Radio' (only avail-able on a limited edition giveaway — which is a pity because it's one of their best songs), their truly awful version of Toots and the Maytals' sublime 'Pressure Drop' and 'London's Burning' twice. It gave their roadies something to boast about but if you wanted to keep up with it, you had to snort at least 2 grams of amphetamine.

This drop in speed/rise in intensity is obviously partly a result of their smoking a lot more dope and listening to a lot of very spliffed-out rasta roots reggae. They realised you ain't gotta run at full throttle to give out the necessary power.

Nonetheless, the Clash have come in for a lot of criticism. Ignoring the early jeers about unmusicality, the most hurtful has been that they're a kind of punk Bay City Rollers, programmed to do just what their manager tells them to do. Quite simply, that's like saying that the Stones were only Oldham's puppets. Of course, Bernie being some kind of weird conceptual artist lams in a fair share of the ideas but, at the last resort, it's Mick, Paul, Joe and Topper that cut the cake on stage and record.

Anyway, I reckon that carping like that is just more proof of the Clash's importance. Nobody gets into the same kind of polarisations about say Slaughter and the Dogs or 999. People only get into heavy-duty arguments about bands that really matter.

Look. If you already like the Clash, you'll like 'em even more live (if they play a good show — which admittedly, they don't do as often as they should). If you hate the Clash, you'll either learn the error of your ways when you realize what great little pop songs they write or continue to hate 'em. The choice is yours.

All I can say is that any band that can bring a relatively cynical scribbler like myself to gush like a besotted fan, has got to be one of the most special things to have ever happened.

© Peter Silverton, 1978