Institute of Contemporary Arts London

The Seventies: Adventures in the Counter-Culture

Barry Miles - 2011 - ‎Music

... and the Clash, invited me to see his bands perform at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) at a gig billed as 'A Night of Pure Energy' on 23 October 1976.

Extract ...

Bernie Rhodes, the manager of Subway Sect, Snatch Sounds and the Clash, invited me to see his bands perform at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) at a gig billed as ‘A Night of Pure Energy' on 23 October 1976. NME had not yet mentioned the Clash, though from what I'd heard, they were more politically committed than the Sex Pistols and their lyrics were more interesting, so 1 went along. I found Subway Sect virtually impossible to listen to and I was talking with Bernie Rhodes when Snatch Sounds were on and returned only for the Clash.

As soon as the Clash took the stage, the punks erupted in a frenzy of activity. Pogo dancing was supposedly invented by Sid Vicious, slam-dancing at the 100 Club, and had not yet completely taken over as the only correct punk mode of rhythmic expression; there was also prizefight sparring, the rocking-horse ride, several examples of West Side Story-style knife-fight choreography and even some old hippy high-steppin' and boogying-on-down, though a hard core in the centre pogoed furiously, slamming into each other and twisting and turning with the music, rather like seals leaping up to be fed in a crowded aquarium.

I had seen the Patti Smith Group play the previous night, but they had been too distant, too New York cool and arrogant to really connect with the audience, and I had not liked them as much as at their gig five months before, which had been less studied. I preferred Patti as a poet. Now Patti was in the Clash audience to check out the competition and clearly fell that her own dance moves were being overshadowed hy the crowd, so she climbed on stage alongside the band to dance where everyone could see her.

The Clash was everything that Sniffin' Glue magazine had promised. Fast, high energy, with intelligent lyrics, though it was hard to actually decipher them: songs such as ‘I'm So Bored With The USA', ‘Career Opportunities' and ‘White Riot'. It was this last title which made my editor at NME, Neil Spencer, wonder whether the paper should he publicising them because to him it sounded racist. I was worried too as there were a number of swastika armbands and patches on display and the audience was brimming with aggression.

At this time the Clash line-up consisted of Joe Strummer, lead singer, Mick Jones on guitar, Paid Simonon on bass and Terry Chimes (known as Tory Crimes) on drums. Terry left soon after, unable to deal with the violence of the fans. A wine bottle had shattered on his high-hat, showering him with shards of glass. The other members of a group can dodge if they see a missile, but the drummer is seated, an obvious target. He was replaced by Topper Headon.

Joe Strummer was born in Ankara, a public schoolboy whose father was in the diplomatic corps, but he hid his undeniable middle- class origins with a slurred working-class London accent even less culture had always been my territory. Bernie Rhodes, the manager of Subway Sect, Snatch Sounds and the Clash, invited me to see his bands perform at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) at a gig billed as ‘A Night of Pure Energy' on 23 October 1976. NME had not yet mentioned the Clash, though from what I'd heard, they were more politically committed than the Sex Pistols and their lyrics were more interesting, so 1 went along. I found Subway Sect virtually impossible to listen to and I was talking with Bernie Rhodes when Snatch Sounds were on and returned only for the Clash.

As soon as the Clash took the stage, the punks erupted in a frenzy of activity. Pogo dancing was supposedly invented by Sid Vicious, slam-dancing at the 100 Club, and had not yet completely taken over other amid broken beer bottles when she suddenly lunged forward and appeared to bite off his earlobe. As the blood spurted she reached out to paw it with a hand tastefully clad in a rubber glove, and after smashing a Guinness bottle on the front of the stage she was about to add to the gore by slashing her wrists when the security men finally reached her, pushing through the crowd, who, apparently in a trance, watched hut did not attempt to get involved. ‘Anyone's into violence, go home and collect stamps!' Strummer yelled at them. ‘Collecting stamps is much tougher.' It turned out that not all the

earlobe was lost and its owner, Shane MacGowan, later went on to front the multimillion-selling hand the Pogues and his girlfriend Mad Jane became Jane Modette of the Modettes. MacGowan later told Zigzag magazine: ‘I was up the front at this Clash gig in the IGA, and me and this girl were having a laugh, which involved biting each other's arms 'til they were completely covered in blood and then smashing up a couple of bottles and cutting each other up a hit. Anyway, in the end she went a bit over the top and bottled me in the side of the head. Gallons of blood came out and someone took a photograph. I never got it bitten off - although we had bitten each other to hits — it was just a heavy cut.'

I brought up the issue of violence when I interviewed the hand for NME two weeks later at Rehearsal Rehearsals, their studio space next to the Roundhouse in Camden Town. Mick Jones was vehement: ‘We ain't advocating it. We're trying to understand it... It ain't hip. We definitely think it ain't hip. We think it's disgusting to be violent.' When I mentioned the earlobe incident he turned to Joe: ‘On that gig, it put me an' you off, didn't it? I mean, when I came offstage I didn't feel particularly good.'

I got the sense that Joe didn't agree, but he cleverly redirected the conversation: ‘But it's energy, right? And we wanna channel it in the right directions.' Paul Simonon had the words ‘Creative Violence' stencilled on his painted boiler suit. Since I wanted to know about violence Joe explained further: ‘Suppose I smash your face in and slit your nostrils with this, right?'

Joe had been opening and closing his flick-knife in a vaguely threatening way throughout the interview. Now he held it close to my face. ‘...Well, if you don't learn anything from it, then it's not worth it, right? But suppose some guy comes up to me and tries to put one over on me, right? And I smash his face up and he learns something from it. Well, that's in a sense creative violence.

‘And this sort of paintwork is creative violence too, right?' he said, pointing to Paul's white stencils and clashing colours. It seemed to me that Joe had a fascination with violence that was at odds with his generally left-wing sympathies. I felt the same ambivalence in their lyrics and their political slogans, and I thought their audience would like a clear, unambiguous statement of their position. Joe spelled it out for me: ‘I think people ought to know that we're antifascist, we're anti-violence, we're anti-Racist and we're pro-creative. We're against ignorance.'