Welcome

The Clash
Caroline Coon, '1988:
The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion', 1977

Joe Strummer
26th March 1977

Back in the garage with my bullshit detector
Carbon monoxide makes sure it's effective
There's people ringing up making offers for my life
I just want to stay in the garage all night.

Meanwhile things are hotting up in the West End alright
Contracts in the offices and groups in the night
My bumming slumming friends have got new boots
And someone just asked me if the group would wear suits.

I don't want to know about what the rich are doing
I don't want to go to where the rich are going
They think they're so clever, they think they're so right
But the truth is only known by gutter snipes...
We're a garage band and we come from garageland.

‘Garageland' by
Joe Strummer and Mick Jones

Those lyrics, written five weeks ago, are among the many indications that the Clash, even though they have signed-up to a record company only a few tones less 'establishment' than E.M.I., are still reacting.

In the past Joe Strummer would return to his squat from the dead-end gloom of the Lisson Grove dole queue and come up with a sneeringly cynical ‘Career Opportunities'. When he and Paul Simonon got caught in the racial no-mans' land between charging police and angry black youths at the Notting Hill Carnival riots in 1976, the experience was poured into another rock'n'roll song - ‘White Riot'. More recently, ‘Hate And War' and ‘Remote Control' (written at the time of the banned Sex Pistols' tour) were reactions to the general condemnation of punk music.

But considering their formidably exciting stage presence and ever improving technique, it was only a matter of time before a record contract lured them away from their squat/starve/steal life style. A pox on the irony! With C.B.S.'s hefty six figure advance and perhaps two years guaranteed security, what price songs inspired by street level survival games now? Would they vanish as fast as the ink dries on the dotted line?

'No,' counters Joe Strummer, offering Garageland in evidence. 'I never want that to happen. After our second gig a critic in New Musical Express wrote that we should be returned to the garage and locked in with a motor running so that we died. ‘Garageland' is about that. I was trying to say that this is where we come from and we know it, and we're not going to get out of our depth. Even though we've signed with C.B.S. we aren't going to float off into the atmosphere like the Pink Floyd or anything.'

Admirable sentiments which cynics, no doubt, will find hard to believe. But in truth, the band have changed little over the last six months. When I first met them life was tough. Their bright eyes started out of spotty, unwashed, pallid skins. And no wonder. One night after sticking up posters to advertise an I.C.A. gig they returned to their rehearsal studio so hungry and broke that, over the one bar of their electric fire, they cooked and eat what remained at the bottom of the bucket of the flour and water paste.

Today Joe Strummer, on a basic £25.00 a week, looks a picture of health, but if anything an adequate diet has sharpened his reactive wit.

'The only person who played ‘White Riot' on the radio was John Peel - and he's gone on holiday,' says Joe, his voice a mixture of amused incredulity and frustration. 'You play our record against any of the other stuff and it just knocks spots off them left, right and centre. They must be cunts for not playing it.'

He is holding a can of spray paint (colour: War Dance Orange) and that night he sprayed 'White Riot' in huge letters over the tinted glass façade of Capital Radio's offices.

'I want to slag off all the people in charge of radio stations,' he continues. 'Firstly, Radio One. They outlawed the pirates and then didn't, as they promised, cater for the market the pirates created. Radio One and Two, most afternoons, run concurrently and the whole thing has slid right back to where it was before the pirates happened. They've totally fucked it. There's no radio station for young people any more. It's all down to housewives and trendies in Islington. They're killing the country by having that play list monopoly.

'No 2: Capital. They're even worse because they had the chance, coming right into the heart of London and sitting in that tower right on top of everything. But they've completely blown it. I'd like to throttle Aiden Day. He thinks he's the self appointed Minister of Public Enlightenment.

'We've just written a new song called Capital Radio and a line in it goes "listen to the tunes of the Dr Goebbels Show."

'They say "Capital Radio in tune with London". Yeah, yeah, yeah! They're in tune with Hampstead. They're not in tune with us at all. I hate them. What they could have done compared to what they have done is abhorrent. They could have made it so good that everywhere you went you took your transistor radio - you know, how it used to be when I was at school. I'd have one in my pocket all the time or by my ear'ole flicking it between stations. If you didn't like one record you'd flick to another station and then back again. It was amazing. They could have made the whole capital buzz. Instead Capital Radio has just turned their back on the whole youth of the city.'

Strummer may be irked by the radio stations' lack of interest in his music - and there's a rumour current among record companies who have picked up on New Wave bands that certain august programme controllers only have to look at pictures of a band to pronounce their music 'punk' and ban it - but punk itself is having a day of reckoning. What does Strummer think about the punk-scene at the moment?

'I don't think there is one really. The only thing that could count as a "scene" is the Roxy. And the Roxy is a dormitory. The last time I went I was feeling really uppity. I stood in the middle and looked around and all these people were slumped around dozing! I threw tomato sauce on the mirror and stormed out. And I haven't been back there. I don't think I will go back there. The sooner it closes the better.'

From the first night, the Roxy has struggled to stay open. But paying the ever-increasing rent was never as damaging to its survival as the backbiting which resulted in the club's recent atmosphere.

However, bad vibes or not, surely it is better to have somewhere to play than nowhere at all?

'No, I think it's better to have nothing than have that,' says Joe, acknowledging that his "selfish" attitude might have something to do with the fact that the Clash are temporarily out of action since drummer Terry Chimes decided to start his own band.

The social scene aside then, what does he think about the way the music has developed?

'All I care about are the groups. If there's good groups then it's got to be good. There's bound to be a lot of rubbish, but I've changed my opinion of the Damned. I've seen them a lot, and I think they're fun to watch. They play good. The only thing I have against them is that they can't play as well as us.

'Number One for me at the moment are the Subway Sect. They've got some good ideas. The Slits are good, too. Palmolive on drums! She's the female Jerry Nolan. But like everyone, they need to do thirty gigs in thirty days and they would be a different group. Then they'd be great. The same with us.'

How has Joe been affected by the ban on punk music which has effectively kept the Clash off the road since Christmas?

'I feel really bitter. We've tried our hardest and we've had drummers quitting which was just what we didn't need. We wanted to get going and move forward.

'All that business on the Pistols' tour! I hated it. I hated it. It was the Pistols' time. We were in the shadows in the background. The first few nights were terrible. We were just locked up in the hotel room with the Pistols, doin' nothing.

'And yet for me it was great, too. We had the coach and we had hotels and we had something to do - even though they didn't let us do it that often - we did it about eight times. It was good fun.

'But when I got back to London on Christmas Eve I felt awful. I was really destroyed, because after a few days you get used to eating. We were eating Holiday Inn rubbish, but it was two meals a day. And when I got off the coach we had no money and it was just awful. I felt twice as hungry as I'd ever felt before.

'I had nowhere to live, and I remember walking away from the coach deliberately not putting on my wooly jumper. I walked all the way up Tottenham Road and it was really cold, but I wanted to get as cold and as miserable as I could. Christmas was here and me and Micky Foote, our sound man, had our little bags in our hands and I just felt like the worst thing in the world that the tour had ended. I wanted to go on and on. The coach had been like home in a way and I didn't want to get off it.'

On-stage Strummer wires himself up into an inhuman dynamo of sweaty, trembling flesh, fearful enough to have one wondering when the ambulance brigade will rush to his rescue with a straight-jacket. While he tilts his bullet head at acute angles, his agonising face screwed into an open wound, he wields his Telecaster like a chain saw. His magnetism is totally original - more like an Olympic strong man imploding all his energy into a final record-breaking lift than anything seen on a rock'n'roll stage before.

Off-stage, he's the Clash member with the lowest profile. Guitarist Mick Jones is the most verbal of the trio. He lives with his grandmother on the eighteenth floor of a high-rise overlooking the Westway. He is dark, even more gaunt than Keith Richard, and his pop-rock knowledge is encyclopaedic. At the Kinks' London gig the other week the remarked (usefully) to me: 'Andy Pyle, yes. Blodwyn Pig - and any other Mick Abrahams band after that.'

Bassist Paul Simonon, who was 'educated at schools in Brixton and Notting Hill where 90% of the kids were black, communicates more with animal physicality than with words. Like Joe and Mick, he 'retreated' for a time to art school. He is shy. Except on stage, but with a growing reputation as a Sex Symbol. When Patti Smith was here last September she went to the Clash's ICA gig, took one look at him, leapt up on stage and spirited him away with her on the road for two days.

Up until now, Strummer has been mysteriously reticent about his background. Sitting on a park bench in Red Lion Square - in the shadow of an old haunt, Central School of Art - he is more forthcoming than ever before. The interview venue, as I was pointedly reminded, was the site of the International Socialist v National Front demo where student Kevin Brodie was killed. Joe feels comfortable. Trusty Rat Rodent, the band's chef de la route, has supplied some cans of beer.

Much has been made of punk music's tough roots in modern urban dereliction. But Joe is not working class, is he?

'No, I'm not working class at all. My father was born in India. His father died when he was eight, and so he was an orphan. He went to an orphan school. Then, because he was so smart, they gave him a scholarship to University and he was really proud that he'd come from nothing, with no chance, to having a degree - even though it was from the poxy University of Lucknow.

'He came to London and Joined the Civil Service as a junior bum. Then he became a not-so-junior bum, and then he reached his high point and became a diplomat going overseas.

'That was my lucky break. He was dead proud of it, and he really wanted me to be like him. But at the age of nine I had to say good-bye to them because they went abroad to Africa or something. I went to boarding school and only saw them once a year after that - the Government paid for me to see my parents once a year.

'I was left on my own, and went to this school where thick rich people sent their thick rich kids. Another perk of my father's job - it was a job with a lot of perks - all the fees were paid by the Government.

'When I was eight he made me sit all these exams for these flash public schools. But I failed the lot. Finally I got into this other crummy school where they have this thing going, that if your brother passed the entrance exam, me, his brother, was let in too.'

So Joe has a brother?

'No. I did have but he's dead. He committed suicide in 1971. He was a year older than me. Funnily enough, you know, he was a Nazi. He was a member of the National Front. He was into the occult and he used to have these deaths-heads and cross-bones all over everything. He didn't like to talk to anybody, and I think suicide was the only way out for him. What else could he have done.

'Imagine! You're in the world and you're just too shy to even talk to anybody or even go into a cafe to have a cup of tea. I suppose he could have gone to the Hebrides but he was too shy to buy a train ticket. He took a hundred aspirins and some other tablets under a bush in Regents Park. He was the complete opposite to me really.'

It is difficult when talking to Joe not to notice his somewhat decayed excuses for teeth. What happened to them?

'Well, it ain't speed,' he laughs. 'I just never brushed them. I'm a walking advert for brushing your teeth. I've been brushing them for the last month, though. And also, I got punched in the mouth once and all the ends broke off. That's why they're so jagged. They put a false tooth on the front one once, but it fell off.'

The Clash are being accused, you might say, for their 'intellectual' approach to music. They are certainly the most politically aware of the New Wave bands. But I'm suspicious. Until recently Paul thought David Steel was Tommy Steele's brother. Does Joe read at all? Does he know who the Prime Minister is?

'Yeah, I do!' he replies patiently. 'I'm on page 984 of The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, and I've read everything that T.E. Lawrence wrote. He was my hero. But I wasn't too impressed by The Mint and I thought the Lawrence of Arabia film was better than the book.

'And Jim Callaghan, right! You know I got a T.V. recently and the other day I was punching between him on one channel and Jimmy Carter on the other. Well, it struck me that Jimmy Carter had more going for him than Jim Callaghan. With Callaghan you get the feeling that if you ripped his bit of paper away from him he'd be stuck there going der der der without a thought in his head. Whereas, when I punched over to Jimmy Carter he seemed to have a lot to say and he never looked at his paper. But I know they're both robots. Anybody who makes speeches written by someone else is just a robot.

'I don't know whether this is true, but I heard that Fidel Castro, when the mood takes him, just goes to the market place and starts babbling. All the people gather around him and listen to him and he talks for five hours and walks off again. And that to me sounds as if he's got something to say. Whereas these cunts like Carter and Callaghan have probably got fifty people around them telling them what to say. They're just robots.'

Would Joe defend the band's position of political awareness then?

'Well, the trouble is the word "political". I just leave it as awareness. You get all these smart-alec young groups coming out - and more power to their elbow - sneering "the Clash, they're too political - who wants to care about that bollocks!" That's, like, the flash thing to say now. But I sit back and think about it, and it strikes me as rubbish. I don't think about Jim Callaghan any more than the newspaper vendor does. Politics, as the word describes itself, means Grey Boredom Talk Long Words Impossible Sentences - Rubbish. I don't think about that stuff. I just think about who's doing what to me and what I'm going to do about it. That's what I call politics.'

Joe would like the lyrics of the Clash's songs to develop a political awareness in his audience. But how potent does he think rock'n'roll band is when it comes to changing anything?

'Completely useless,' he replies without hesitation. 'A rock'n'roll group! None of us is going to change anything. Everyone goes "Punk! Hurrah!" But in three years what do you think I'm going to be doing? I'll still be walking around muttering to myself. They are still going to be shovelling shit down some old chute and maybe with their wages they'll buy the Clash's fourth album. Rock doesn't change anything.

'But after saying that - and I'm just saying that because I want you to know that I haven't got any illusions about anything, right - having said that I still want to try to change things.'

To a certain extent the changes in society over the last fifteen years have been social rather than political. But reacting against highly personal issues like parental authority, Victorian morality and a Puritan work ethic was easy compared with the kind of protest needed to deal with the impersonal, increasingly complex, computer politics facing today's youth. What does Joe think are the important issues now? What does he feel he is fighting against?

'Well, the only thing I'm interested in is personal freedom. I just want the right to choose. Obviously it ain't no use me having the right to choose unless everybody else has too. Everyone's got to have it, right?

'All I know is that it gets tighter. Every year everything gets screwed down a bit more. You can feel it. It's like being in a room with the walls and ceilings coming in. Every year it inches in a bit. And I don't fancy it. I don't fancy being No 528B...'

When I first met Joe his 101'ers' ‘Key To Your Heart' (Chiswick) had just been released. It is now a classic rock-collector's item. But then Joe, like many others, accidentally strayed into a Sex Pistols gig and came away mind-blown. The experience totally altered his approach to music, and the 101'ers broke up. Why?

'When you asked me about that before I couldn't explain it. Now I realise what happened. You see, I'd always had a basic style but I felt dead lonely. I felt I must be the only guy in London who wanted to play rock'n'roll but thought he couldn't. I still can't play. Well, I can jam out some chords but I can't do no lead guitar fiddley bits.

'I just couldn't quite believe I could get up on a stage and play in a group. There'd be a hundred guitarists in the room better than me. I really had to fight myself to do it.

'In the group I eventually went out with (the 101'ers), all the rest could play. I mean, you say play "Happy Birthday" to me and it would take me days to work it out. The other guys could do it straight away. But because I couldn't I felt dead inferior. Really incredibly inferior. I never realised I was the leader of the 101'ers until after I'd left them. That's how inferior I felt.

'Well, then I saw the Pistols. And it just knocked my head right off. Because there were these four guys and I felt just like them. I mean, they couldn't play so great either. But they were just going so what! And that hadn't ever occurred to me at all. Because I felt so lonely I didn't have what it takes to say that. I do now 'cause I've seen them do it.

'My band had been blackmailing me in a very subtle way because I couldn't play. But after I saw Rotten I turned to them and said "so what" too. I thought the Pistols were incredible. They were just going: "This is what we want to do and we're doing it and you're sitting there and you paid your 50p to get in here so stuff it". I'd never thought of that attitude. It came to me like a shock from the blue. Before, if a guitarist came around, I thought I had to hide in the back room.'

Does Joe think of himself as a guitarist more than a lead singer?

'Well, I did then. When I got the 101'ers going I got in another singer because I thought I was chronic. I thought he was better than me. But when someone told me he sounded just like me I thought, "well, fuck it" And I became the lead singer again.'

Before Joe stumbled into music, what had he planned to be?

'I went to art school like everybody else. I wanted to be an artist. But when I got there, phew! What a lousy set-up. It just fucked me up completely.

'I'd walked straight out of this dead strict school environment right into a seething orgy. At the time there was loads of drugs at Central and one day I took about fifty trips in a row. I remember finding my way into the studio and it suddenly struck me that the teachers were conning us. They were not teaching us how to draw but how to make a drawing look as if you knew how to draw - which is an enormous distinction. They were just teaching us how to make all the right arty little marks. You'd stand in front of a nude, do all these little marks, waggle your head a bit, smudge a bit and make it look arty. It struck me then this wasn't drawing, in any way, and I never went back.'

Two years of dissipated youth, of casual jobs and unemployment passed before Joe fell in with a busker.

'I was earning some money holding his hat fro him. We were down the Underground and I was watching his fingers, and it suddenly occurred to me that if he could do it then so could I. But I was really nervous about actually playing.

'Now everybody knows it's dead easy. It takes three weeks and you can play every tune in the book. But in them days I thought it was something you had to slog at for years. There was this big mystique. I'm really angry about people who spread that shit about.

'Anyway, I bought a ukelele. No kidding. I saved some money, £1.99 I think, and bought it down Shaftesbury Avenue. Then the guy I was busking with taught me to play Johnny Be Good.

'Well, there came the day when he said, "Right, you do this pitch and I'll head off down Green Park and do the pitch there". And he just walked off down the passage. And it was rush hour. And the passage was jammed with people. And I was on my own for the first time with this ukelele and Johnny Be Good. And that's how I started.'

With the 101'ers, Joe slogged around the pub circuit, recorded ‘Key To Your Heart', and was on the verge of establishing the band when he had his post-Pistols brainstorm and quit.

'I know the 101'ers were good,' continues Joe, giving himself a rare retrospective compliment. 'In fact, as far as sound and excitement went we were much better than Eddie and the Hot Rods. The other guys in the group were twenty-five and twenty-six and they played good because they'd spent a few years getting that far. But they were just too old. What I really wanted was to get in with some young yobbo's who I was more in tune with.'

It was March 1976. The Pistols were causing the first real swell of grass roots rock energy for nearly a decade. All over London young musicians were going through amoeboid contortions to establish groups of the right personality combinations. Mark P was still a bank clerk with long hair. The Damned were rehearsing. Night life was being spiced up with patent leather and stilleto heels.

One afternoon, Mick and Paul, out for a stroll down Ladbroke Grove with Glen Matlock, spotted Joe crossing the road.

'As soon as I saw Mick and Paul I wanted to join the Clash, just because I wanted to look like they looked,' says Joe candidly. 'I didn't hear them play until days later. I remember thinking after I'd agreed to join "Jesus, I've never heard these guys play!" Paul was just admitting that he had no idea what his instrument was - that Mick had just taught him the songs and, because he's got a good memory, he knew them parrot fashion. For a moment I thought "Oh God" and then I didn't give it another thought.'

Joe willingly admits how much he has been influenced by Mick and Paul's style. Off-stage, what they wear today is tomorrow's acme of punk sartorial snazz. On-stage, to complete with their spotlight-grabbing antics, Joe has to fight hard. Would he prefer it if the other two hung back more often?

'Oh no. One of the conditions I made when I joined the group was that everybody had to move. I was the only person who moved in the 101'ers - which is one of the things I hated about that band.

'The first time I saw Mick put on a guitar he moved like a cunt. We were in a tiny room rehearsing. It was so small we had to crouch around each other. Even so, Paul was slinging his bass around and I thought "fuckin' hell! This guy's got confidence". He's got more style than Brigitte Bardot. He moves, and Mick moves, and I just always wanted to be in a group like that.

'It means you can't ease up. We're competing with each other. We've all got to outdo each other. Otherwise, if Mick stopped everybody would forget about him. He knows it, and Paul knows it, so we've all got to keep going otherwise we'd fade away into the background.'

The Clash have just finished their debut album. With typical independence, they produced it themselves, recording sixteen tracks in seven days. Thirteen of their songs - scorching street poems bolted into split second rock rhythms - screech after each other on an album which will prove of what metal the New Wave is made. Since the album sound is essentially 'live' what, for Joe, were the differences between playing on stage and in the studio?

'On stage I fuck up a lot because I get so carried away I forget to put my hands in the right places. Often I'm playing a fret below what it's supposed to be. And then Paul will be playing a fret above, and it can sound like dogshit. And there's poor Mick. He's the only one who plays everything perfect every time.

'But when we went into the studio as far as we're concerned it was technically perfect. There may have been a few bum notes but if the whole track sounded good we let them go.

'I enjoy singing in the studio because you fell big. You're the singer and you put on the headphones and sometimes it comes out and you can't believe how good it sounds.

'But as far as a general sound difference goes, I can't really say what I'm after because if I knew I'd probably not go after it. Mick's the one who's really into the sound. He's really into the music. He hears arrangements in his head. I can't.

'For Paul the Clash is a chance for him to strut his stuff. For me the music is a vehicle for my lyrics. It's a chance to get some really good words across.'

Does he find it easy to write?

'No - but I'm not telling you why. I learned something once: "you can show someone what you've done but you can't show them how you do it". And I stick to that. If I tell you how I write, when I next do it my words will haunt me and destroy me completely. For me writing is a big thing. The biggest excitement going is sitting down and writing until you get exactly what you intended to get.'

On-stage the Clash only play their own songs. On the album they've made an exception and recorded a version of Junior Mervin's reggae hit Police and Thieves. It's a salutation, in a way, to the music they most respect after their own.

'It was just a wild idea I had one night. I wanted to play reggae when the band first started but I was talked out of it. Rightly so. There's people like Rotten who say, "I'd never play reggae". And he says that because he's got too much sense. I mean, who wants to sound like G.T. Moore and the Reggae Guitars!

'And we can't really play reggae. Who the hell could play them reggae drums apart from a black man. But I wanted to do a Hawkwind version of a song that was familiar to us, and we just did it within our limitations. If it had sounded shitty we'd have dropped it. But it sounded great. There's hardly and reggae in it at all - just a few offbeat guitars thrown in for a laugh - it's all rock'n'roll. I think it's an incredible track.

'But don't lets talk about the album because I can't stand reading interviews where fat cunts sit around swigging Tuborg Cold saying, "well, this time we brought in Rick on violin..." Who wants to read about them? It makes me want to screw the paper up.'

The afternoon sun sets, and to avoid the chilly air we finish the interview in the warmth of George's Cafe in Camden Town. Conveniently close to the band's rehearsal studio, it is still one of their favourite haunts.

Did Joe think it was going to be difficult to maintain his grass toots credibility now the band was on the verge of becoming wealthy?

'I still come to this cafe for my beans on toast. I don't want anything else. But signing that contract did bother me a lot. I've been turning it over in my mind, but now I've come to terms with it. I've realised that all it boils down to is perhaps two year's security. We might have an argument which C.B.S. and get thrown off! For me it has been a gift from heaven. Before, all I could think about was my stomach. A lot of the time me and Paul did nothing else but wonder where our next meals was coming from. We were hungry all the time. And the dole was threatening to send me to Birmingham on some Government retraining scheme. We couldn't think about the reasons behind anything.

'Now I feel free to think - and free to write down what I'm thinking about. I haven't changed my ways at all. And look - I've been fucked about for so long I'm not going to suddenly turn into Rod Stewart just because I get £25.00 a week. I'm much too far gone for that, I tell you.'

The Clash are often rumoured to be nothing more than the manipulated product of their manager's, Bernard Rhodes, svengalian imagination. Bernie met Malcolm McLaren, a close associate of his, at the May 1968 Paris Uprising. How much had he influenced the band?

'He's had a load of influence - especially at the start. He put the group together. And he also put us on the right track - mainly about song content.

"All songs on the radio - every single one as far as I can judge from my last six day's marathon trying to hear our record played - every single one is about love. And obviously me and Mick were writing songs like that. I mean ‘Key To Your Heart', in the middle it goes into some kind of squat rock type of mad beatnik poetry, but mostly it's a love song. Bernard told us that was a load of bollocks, and we agreed with him. So we started writing about things that hadn't been written about. He pushed us into it.'

Last year Joe told me 'love doesn't exist'. He had been going for a year with Palmolive, the drummer with the Slits. How much is his Don't-Believe-In-Love line his own rather than his manager's belief?

'Well, I'm not in love, so how can I believe in it? I was in love when I was sixteen but since then I can't say I have been. There's been girls that when they're not there in the room I've been thinking about them like uuummmmmm. But as soon as they're in the room with me it gets kind of sour. I can love them providing they don't come near me.

'Obviously we can talk and philosophise, but we're all just dirty dogs aren't we really. So I just decided to forget love. It's madness, right. Really I only believe in myself. I'm not interested in other people much. I prefer to be on my own. I'm a lone ranger - my idea if a jolly fun time is to sit on my own in a room for eight hours.'

Considering how blaggingly aggressive the Clash's music is, it's interesting to note how little violence there has been at their gigs. It may be a lucky coincidence, it may be because the breakneck music keeps everyone glued to the action on stage, but it must also be the consequence of Joe's attitude. 'Anyone who thinks violence is tough should go home and collect stamps,' he yelled at the I.C.A. audience.

'Yes, those were the exact words I said, but what I was really trying to say could have been said much better. What I meant was - the toughest thing is facing yourself. Being honest with yourself, that's much tougher than beating someone up. That's what I call tough.

'On stage we're not inciting the crowd to violence - the music just sounds violent. Then if people want to go around punching themselves while it's going on - well let 'em. I don't care. I ain't telling them to go around punching each other up. The music is how I feel, and people can do what they like to it. Obviously if everyone in the audience started stabbing each other I'd freak out a bit and tell them to simmer down.'

Does he enjoy violence?

'If someone treads on me for no reason and I get back at him and knock him over - then I enjoy that. I don't think we're tough enough. We've got to get a lot tougher. I mean, no one's going to give you anything in this day and age. Nothing. So, if you want it you've got to take it and be tough about it. But I don't enjoy punching people up for no reason.'

It's time for rehearsal and, with luck, the recruitment of a new drummer. Joe's mood is ambivalent. In one year the Clash, in the vanguard of the New Wave, have seen their music, their attitudes and clothes influence and inspire a new generation of musicians. But because of the ban on punk music, their reputation has been built, somewhat precariously, on fewer than thirty gigs.

After Terry Chimes left the Clash, they auditioned around two hundred drummers to replace him. Then Mick bumped into Nicky Headon, a twenty-one year old ex-office clerk who had played drums since he left school.

'I've never performed live - but it's getting closer all the time!' said Nicky the day after he joined the band. 'I knew Mick a year and half ago. For a week I played with the London SS. I really wanted to join the Clash. I want to give them even more energy than they've got - if that's possible.'

Their debut album The Clash entered the charts at No. 12. In May they headlined their first national tour culminating in a sell-out, landmark gig at the Rainbow (who subsequently banned them from appearing there again).