Supporting Shakin Stevens

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Audio exists - Jordi Valls - Punk Tapes

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During 1976 and 1977 Jordi Valls recorded live on nine audio cassettes some of the early punk gigs in London. These tapes, featuring The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, Subway Sect, Billy Idol & Generation X, The Slits and Buzzcocks, capture the true sound of punk - raw, countercultural and subversive - as a phenomenon that had a radical impact on popular music and fashion, first in Britain and America, and then worldwide.

Arguably the most interesting aspect of punk is its vital, visceral energy, and the demonstration that the only thing that really matters is the intention, the power of the imagination, and nothing more.

This book is a witness of this movement. With substantial graphic material such as photographs, newspapers, cuttings, gig tickets, make up this big and valuable archive on a movement so intense as self-destructive.

The Clash. 20.9.1976 100 Club Oxford Street, London (punk festival).
The Clash. 16.10.1976, University of London.
The Clash. 29.10.1976, Fulham Old Town Hall, London.
The Clash. 5.11.1976, Royal College of Art, London.
The Clash 11.3.77 The Coliseum, Harlesden, London.
The Clash. 1.5-1977. Civic Hall, Guildford.

THE CLASH OFFICIAL:
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON (UCL)

Page 87

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PAUL: We did a show with Shakin' Stevens at the University of London and there were Teds everywhere and they didn't like us one bit. After our set we were in the dressing room and a bunch of them tried to get in and have a punch-up and Joe and I tore coke cans in half so we had a jagged half in each hand. We said, 'Alright come on then,' and opened the door for them but when they came in and saw the cans they figured that we were going to do them so they backed out of the room again.

MICK: I don't know if we were aware of Punk being an outlet for our anger. There were a lot of things that needed saying and they hadn't been said in that way before. We were just picking things out of the paper to write about. Even the name came out of a newspaper. Paul came up with the name The Clash because it was in the papers all the time. It was representative of how we felt and sounded.

PAUL: I met Sid (Vicious) at one of the Pistols' shows and we got on really well and started to hang out. One day Viv Albertine gave me and Sid a fiver to get some shopping for the Davis Road squat where we lived, so we went into the supermarket and filled two baskets each, getting carried away. We got everything Viv wanted and some extras, then legged it out of the shop. We were chased for a while and hid in a garden nibbling biscuits 'til it died down. Then we went back to the squat and on the way deliberated over whether to keep the money and split it, but we gave all the shopping plus the fiver back to Viv. It was kind of honour among thieves.

JOE: To begin with, things were really friendly between the Pistols and The Clash and it only got unfriendly when Malcolm realized that by preventing them playing they'd become more famous and they didn't like it, especially when we were out there doing it. They probably thought we were stealing their thunder and animosity built up. But at this time punk rock was the best time, when you had to be in league with each other because there were so many enemies out there. We'd play art schools and the audience would throw wine bottles at us, trying to fracture our skulls. I can't over-emphasize how people were against Punk. Not just Teddy Boys, it was incredibly vicious and dangerous. It was circle the wagons time.

University College, London

RETURN OF THE LAST GANG IN TOWN:
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON (UCL)

Page 156

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The same cannot be said of the following night's show, at the University of London Union (ULU), on Malet Street in central London. Here, the Clash were third on a bill of four, following Please Y'Self, and preceding Brett Marvin and the Thunderbolts and headliners Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets. Although the bulk of the audience consisted of mainstream student types, the Sunsets' substantial teddy boy following was well- represented, as indeed was that of the Clash. ‘To the Social guy at the Union, it must have looked OK on paper,' reflected fictitious band valet ‘Albert Transom' in 1988. ‘A good rock'n'roll band from Wales and to warm up, this new London group. Well, he wasn't up on his street culture.' Punks and teds were yet to reprise the mod-rocker battles of the mid Sixties, but such conflicts were inevitable; and if ever an event was liable to provide the spark, it was the ULU gig.

There was no friction between the groups themselves while setting up — ‘We even lifted Shakin' Stevens's piano onto the stage,' laughs Terry — but the Clash had only played five numbers of their set when, according to ‘Albert Transom', a ted approached the front of the stage, held up a five pence piece and said, ‘Here's your bus fare home.' Further insults were exchanged and, upon leaving the stage, the band and their followers were forced to barricade themselves in the changing room to keep at bay a small but rabid mob. Grabbing a chair apiece, the Clash camp threw open the doors and prepared to meet their assailants. Only two rushed in, one of whom promptly tried to. throttle Sebastian with his own tie. Faced with the prospect of having half a dozen chairs broken over his head, however, he quickly decided discretion was the better part of valour, put Sebastian down and retreated.

‘I remember Bernie Rhodes came over to me, and he made a great statement,' says Polydor A&R man Chris Parry, who was there that night. ‘There were these student girls in normal clothes, and he said, "In a very short period of time, they're going to have to decide which way to dress." And he was absolutely right.' Bernie was evidently still intent on finding a market for his 1974 ‘What side of the bed' T-shirt.

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PASSION IS A FASHION:
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON (UCL)

Pat Gilbert, Page 114

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But while The Clash were making friends, they were also creating enemies. Punk was seen, correctly, as threatening. Two gigs in particular signified the subcultural unease that The Clash and Pistols stirred. The first was at the University of London Union (ULU) in Malet Street on 16 October. The group were booked to perform with Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets, one of Joe's old rock 'n' roll favourites from Newport. Shakin' Stevens's audience was mostly Teddy Boys. In the mid-1970s, Teddy Boy culture was tribal, beery, violent, resolutely working-class and highly conservative. Many Teds were middle-aged men who'd grown up with rock 'n' roll in the 1950s. Often, their sons would follow them into Teddom, as if it were a family trade. They thrived in unfashionable London suburbs like Harrow and Croydon.

New Society photographer Chris Steele-Perkins was sent to chronicle the scene in 1969, and ended up joining it. Interviewed by journalist Ian Harrison to promote his book The Teds (with writer Richard Smith), he describes the culture as 'edgy. There was a lot of "What are you looking at?"' The adrenalised atmosphere seduced him. 'It got in my bloodstream: he says.

In 1976, the tensions between Rockers (favouring leathers and Gene Vincent) and Teds (drape jackets and Elvis) erupted at an aborted Bill Haley gig in London. There was a huge thump-up and scores of casualties. Into this world walked The Clash. Though no record of the ULU set-list survives, it's almost certain they played '1977' — 'No Elvis, Beatles or The Rolling Stones!' It's doubtful any of the audience deciphered the 'Elvis' lyric but it made no odds anyway: with their painted shirts, dyed, spiky hair and cacophonous punk, The Clash were clearly from a different tribe.

Mark Perry was in the audience. 'It was extraordinary: he recalls. 'There were no other flickers there from the punk scene at all. This was before the big punk-Teddies war. It was still a bit tense with all these roughs about. I was in the dressing room and Mick had been head-butted by a Teddy Boy and had a cut across his nose. Suddenly all these Teddy Boys were trying to get to The Clash. It was like, "Who do you think you lot are? Weird-looking lot. You poofs or something?" They tried it on.'

`There was a lot of aggression, remembers Sebastian Conran. 'I was back-stage at the time and there were people trying to fight and rip out the plugs on the performance. I remember I had a tie made out of zips: In the sleeve-note for The Story of The Clash, 'band valet Albert Transom' reports that Sebastian was throttled and that the group armed themselves with chairs and rushed the Teds. In Joe's cartoonist's imagination, this may have happened. The reality, however, was grimmer.

Mark Perry: 'What was the band's reaction? They were scared. The Clash were never really hard men, were they? They were like musos in a way. But who wouldn't have been scared? These Teds were fucking hard-nuts.'

Even so, Terry Chimes — the band member arguably least interested in romanticising The Clash's physical confrontations during this period — is adamant that The Clash stood their ground. 'None of us ever flinched in the face of aggression from outside, he states emphatically.

No audio circulating
If you know where there is a copy of this recording, please email blackmarketclash