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THE CLASH DUBLIN, 1977

Aidan O'Rourke - I am very privileged to have my contribution in the book on page 33. I wrote about the Clash concert in 1977. My very short contribution. It took about 10 minutes to write! Trinity College Dublin | Facebook

AIDAN O'ROURKE, (THE SINNERS),

The gig 1 remember most from my time in Dublin in the late 70s was the concert by The Clash in the magnificent and ornate Examinations Hall of Trinity College Dublin. Previously it had only been used for exams and other ceremonial functions but if I remember correctly ENTS TCD's student-led entertainments organisation had pushed for it to be used for music concerts. I wondered if the stucco would fall off the ceiling with the noise or if the condensation would damage the walls.

On the day I saw the articulated lorries parking outside as they set up the stage and the amplification equipment. That evening. The Clash exploded into action. This was a far cry from a basement club. The cacophony echoed around the huge hall, it was just a mass of noise. Joe Strummer struck poses, hollering into the microphone like someone filled with anger. There were lots of people there but the hall was by no means full. Despite the bad acoustics, it was a great gig and very memorable I remember it now! I spent some time up at the front then wandered down to the back end of the hall.

Finally the concert was over and we all filed out through the door and out onto Front Square. After that it might have been the Buttery or if it was too late, somewhere else - the Bailey perhaps - I can't remember! Later I did my finals in this hall, and in 2002 1 received my MA degree certificate from Mary Robinson there, but I will never forget the deafening, echoing, explosive entity that was the Clash playing in TCD Exam Hall in 1977.

The Day Punk Came to Trinity: Blistering, terrifying and totally punk: in 1977, Trinity was treated to a performance by The Clash

University Times
OCT 18, 2017

Ciannait Khan
SENIOR EDITOR

Link or Archived PDF

October 21st, 1977: probably the first and last time Trinity could ever be suitably described as "punk". It's the day The Clash played the Exam Hall, giving what one reviewer described as a "blistering, almost terrifying performance" and marking the official initiation of Irish audiences to the world of punk.

THE CLASH TRINITY COLLEGE,
OCTOBER 21ST, 1977

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A great collection of cuttings and comments

The day The Clash and punk turned Trinity into a war zone

Sat, Oct 21, 2017 - Ian Maleney

Link or Archived PDF

Excellent article...

The Clash played Trinity College 40 years ago today. The student organisers recall the British punks' explosive 1977 visit to Ireland.

‘This was a baptism of fire."

Paul Tipping is remembering his time as the entertainments officer of the students union in Trinity College Dublin in 1977. His team of 20-year-olds had organised their first concert of the year, and their first ever event, in the college's ornate 18th-century Exam Hall: two sets by The Clash, a band at the vanguard of the UK's exploding punk scene, fresh from the success of their debut album. Tickets were £1.50. ... read the full text

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U2 > News > Stories Of Innocence

3. Complete Surrender - The Edge - 'I can vividly remember when I first saw the Clash,' recalls Edge. 'It was in Dublin in October 1977 at a 1200 capacity venue at Trinity College. It had a massive impact around here. This wasn't just entertainment. It was a life-and-death thing. They made it possible for us to take our band seriously. They showed us what you needed. And it was all about heart.' As 'This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now' puts it, 'We signed our lives away/Complete surrender...'

Somewhere in this room on that same night, half of U2 found their inspiration and musical ambition

Scott Ellinwood - Somewhere in this room on that same night, half of U2 found their inspiration and musical ambition.

Ray Stevenson - Yes. Remarkable gig. Total culture shock for the guys in rugger shirts standing at the back with their arms folders muttering 'this isn't music - they can't even play!'

Got in as 14 yr olds, friends brother was on the door.

Josh Joyce - Yes my buddy and i got in as 14 yr olds. His brother was on the door. Still my fave band

Paul Tipping, Trinity College Students 'Union

The Clash, Exam Hall, Trinity College 

"This was a baptism of fire. It was a really difficult time in Ireland and in Dublin. Bombs went off in May 1974, there was a war 50 miles up the road, economic recession. Music was in the doldrums. Then in UCD in June 1977, a lad was murdered at a punk gig. All these things came together."

Ian Wilson, President of the Students 'Union

"After the Miami Showband murder and bombs all over Dublin, very few international acts or British acts would tour, except through the colleges,.

Very few commercial promoters existed or could handle it: the colleges were deemed to be kind of neutral territory." Fabio Runner | Facebook

The Clash came on and played at 100mph

rogermcnally - I saw them play the exam hall in Trinity College, Dublin, October 1977.

The gig was significant in that it was the first gig in Ireland by an established overseas Punk act. Irish venues had banned Punk groups for fear of violence whilst overseas acts were reluctant to come to Ireland because of the Northern Ireland situation.

The Clash’s gig in Belfast the night before was cancelled when the insurers of The Ulster hall, feared crowd trouble and pulled the plug at the last minute. The roadies had already set up the gear on stage.

They played an afternoon and a later show. A mate and I were at the latter.

The Clash came on after the Count Bishop's and played at 100mph. It was amazing. But, my friend had drunk a little too much and he needed air so out we went and sat on the steps. I went to go back in, but was told that once you leave - that's it!

So, I found myself sitting with my friend and flatmate while Dublin's Burning blazed from the hall. We are still friends.
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The Clash - share your stories | Steve Hoffman Music Forums

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Hot Press Fanzine

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The Clash for Dublin

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Hot press Fanzine Dublin 1977

ValueYourMusic - Poster sold : The Clash Poster Rare Irish Issue

RTÉ Archives | Media | Hot Press Magazine

The first issue of a new Irish magazine 'Hot Press' was published in May 1977 with the aim of providing a voice for Irish youth with a focus on music. Niall Stokes explains the background to Hot Press and how there was a need for a serious music magazine. Hot Press is not just about music and the focus is firmly on catering to the broad spectrum of interests relevant to the 18-30 age group.

Genuine Original Poster, not a re production. Produced by Hotpress Music Magazine

This was a special poster of a cover of the Hotpress Irish magazine which was produced for an Exhibition that HotPress held in Dublin as part of a covers Exhibition in the Rock n Roll museum . It is a glossy finish , approx A3 in size . The image is from their edition after the Trinity College gig in Dublin 1977 .

It is completely original, very rare

The day The Clash and punk turned Trinity into a war zone

Sat, Oct 21, 2017 - Ian Maleney

Archived PDF or text version

The Clash played Trinity College 40 years ago today. The student organisers recall the British punks' explosive 1977 visit to Ireland

This was a baptism of fire."

Paul Tipping is remembering his time as the entertainments officer of the students union in Trinity College Dublin in 1977. His team of 20-year-olds had organised their first concert of the year, and their first ever event, in the college's ornate 18th-century Exam Hall: two sets by The Clash, a band at the vanguard of the UK's exploding punk scene, fresh from the success of their debut album. Tickets were £1.50.

"It was a really difficult time in Ireland and in Dublin," says Tipping, now a retired schoolteacher living on the Isle of Man. "Bombs went off in May 1974, there was a war 50 miles up the road, economic recession. Music was in the doldrums. Then in UCD in June 1977, a lad was murdered at a punk gig. All these things came together.

"After the Miami [Showband] murder and bombs all over Dublin, very few international acts or British acts would tour, except through the colleges," says Ian Wilson, who was then president of the students union. "Very few commercial promoters existed or could handle it: the colleges were deemed to be kind of neutral territory."

Wilson had connected with Paul Charles, a London booking agent who was trying to get punk bands, many of whom were essentially banned from playing in England, over to Ireland. Through a network of college-based promoters - including Denis Desmond, later of MCD - bands would be able to safely tour here.

Members of The Clash, momentarily at their ease: from left, Mick Jones, Joe Strummer, Topper Headon and Paul Simonon, at John F Kennedy International Airport after arriving in New York in May 1981. File photograph: David Handschuh/AP Photo

The Clash, momentarily at their ease: from left, Mick Jones, Joe Strummer, Topper Headon and Paul Simonon, at JFK airport in May 1981. Photograph: David Handschuh/AP Photo

"The scale of what we did in that year was unprecedented," says Wilson. "We were running through bands that were on Top of the Pops and had number one albums in the UK and Ireland. No college had ever done that before."

Wilson put Charles in touch with Tipping and soon The Clash had two dates booked in Ireland: the Ulster Hall in Belfast on October 20th, 1977, and Trinity the following night. The band arrived in Belfast to find their show had been cancelled, after the insurance company got cold feet. There was a small riot.

There was then intense pressure from the administration in Trinity to stop the show. "We were organised and very determined, we didn't give in," says Wilson, regarding the students union's stance. "They threatened hell and high water on us, because they didn't know what was going to happen. We kind of had a rough idea what was going to happen; they didn't have a clue."

Trinity, at the time, saw what was happening as "a full-frontal assault

Wilson stresses the political aspect of the show. The union had just wrested control of the college bar, and was at the beginning of a boycott of on-campus dining facilities, in protest over price increases. It was selling condoms from the union shop at a time when contraception was illegal, while Wilson remembers some friends running a pirate radio station out of his rooms. These political interventions dovetailed with the raucous anti-authoritarianism of The Clash.

"We came at them [Trinity] from all angles," says Wilson. "We were going to take the college on to provide better gigs, better services, get better deals for students, improve facilities, everything."

London Calling 40 years on: How The Clash rewrote the rule book

Alternative Ulster: how punk took on the Troubles

Trinity, at the time, saw what was happening as "a full-frontal assault . . . We were the centre of this whole punk thing in Dublin; we became the focus because of this, which was a horrific, horrific outburst of the nastiest of youth culture as far as they were concerned."

Snotty punks

The culture-shock was obvious in Trinity's front square on the evening of the gig. On one side, snotty punks clambered to get into the Exam Hall. On the other, a more refined gathering of luminaries - people such as Conor Cruise O'Brien, Noel Browne and Bernadette McAliskey - queued up in dinner jackets and evening dress for the Historical Society's annual dinner. As Wilson says, it was into this genteel environment that "1,000 people with safety pins and bin liners on them" came rampaging.

"It was so confusing, and fraught, and adrenaline-driven, that I just remember forming the human wall across the front, a gang of us trying to stop the stage being mobbed, and just being showered in gob," says Wilson with a less-than-nostalgic sigh. "We were covered in it, and Strummer screaming at them, ‘Stop f**king gobbing! You're so f**king cool!' He was ranting at them about it, but it didn't matter, they continued spitting everywhere."

"I was a little bit on edge, thinking ‘God, this could go very awry'," says Tipping. "But then, in the interval between the two shows, I had one of my brainwaves. I played cricket at Trinity and it slowly came into my mind that, down on the cricket pitch, to protect the crease and so on, there were barriers . . . We brought them back and we formed a two-tier barrier, which turned the whole Exam Hall into a kind of war zone."

Gruesome artefacts

After the second set concluded and the crowd emptied out, Wilson and Tipping stayed behind to clean up, and discovered some gruesome artefacts in the process. "Somebody had brought in a load of sheep's eyeballs and thrown them around the place, so we swept up a dozen sheep's eyeballs, which was a bit odd," says Wilson. "Somebody must have thought this was very punk, to bring along animals eyeballs and throw them around."

Silly with ambition after the gig, Tipping and Wilson set about booking more punk bands. The Stranglers arrived in November, and The Buzzcocks appeared in January. The Sex Pistols were booked, but they fell apart before the gig could take place. Wilson can only laugh at the thoughts of what would have happened if Johnny Rotten and company had shown up.

The college authorities began demanding that gigs be kept below a certain volume in order to protect the Exam Hall's plasterwork. They tried shutting down The Buzzcocks in mid-flight; Wilson refused to stop the show.

"Next day, we get a phone call and it goes, ‘You know the score, you've been warned, you've breached the regulations, permission for your next event has been withdrawn'," says Wilson. "We said ‘fair enough'. This is over the weekend, so we wait until the Monday, and Paul went off to his mates in the papers, the evening papers in Dublin at the time - and remember no internet, no other means of communication at this stage.

"Evening papers in Dublin, front page, and all the national dailies the next day, the Irish Press, The Irish Times, the Examiner, all ran, front page, with pictures: ‘Chieftains concert banned for being too noisy.' Paddy Malone going ‘I didn't know I made so much noise'."

'Punk was very, very fast... Bang bang, and it was gone. It splintered and became the New Wave'

The following year, The Clash returned to play the Top Hat in Dún Laoghaire, but by then something had already shifted in punk. It wasn't quite the blistering force it had been 12 months previously.

"Punk was very, very fast," says Wilson. "Bang bang, and it was gone. It splintered and became the New Wave, and elements of it were very quickly absorbed into the music mainstream. It was a very spontaneous movement."

For Tipping and Wilson, that first flash of punk in the Exam Hall would never be beaten - Bono would later call it the greatest gig of his life.

Tipping is happy to recall the events from the far side of a teaching career. He's not nostalgic, and he's no punk now, but he can't help but get excited as he trawls through his memories.

"Ah, it's not something you could do forever, but a wee smell of it was amazing."

If you know of any recording, email blackmarketclash