Page 8 SOUNDS February 17, 1979

Jaws

The Clash in America

Euphoric scenes of wild abandon, the belated explosion of punk consciousness etc etc

"So you think we've lost the battle - then go home and weep about it. Sometimes you've got to wake up in the morning and think, 'Fuck it you're going to win the battle.'" - Joe Strummer.

There were no riots, no outraged citizens, no glaring headlines when Pearl Harbour '79 came to an old elegant building in downtown Vancouver last week. The only report in the music section of the newspapers was that the local symphony orchestra had gone on strike. The Clash's first American tour is being felt by the press as the stimulating aftershock of the Pistols' US invasion a year ago or not at all.

Berkeley Community Theatre in San Francisco

The Pearl Harbour '79 tour posters depict the Statue of Liberty bundled up in rope. A more telling picture could have been taken outside the Berkeley Community Theatre in San Francisco a few days and a long bus ride later. An hour before the doors were due to open a line of people stretched quietly from the front steps in a perfect shape of a walking stick, where two young security guards shone torches on the few rebels who wanted to hang out rather than wait in the queue for their numbered seats. There was something numbing about that picture. US rock.

Maybe these were the Bo Diddley fans. The middle aged usher who showed me to my seat felt the need to tell me who he was. He stood up there with his square guitar and growled like it was 1965 all over again and almost everyone cheered and gave him standing ovations. The difference between a living legend and a living band I thought to myself when Diddley left the stage, and the hired DJ they brought over for the tour played Buzzcocks, and Sid's 'My Way'. You stood up because you simply had to. There's simply nowhere else for all that passion to go. The best rock music someone once said is like a good whore, it's both aggressive and relieving. I didn't get any of that from Bo Diddley's macho strutting. The Clash supplied an overdose.

The audience was divided into factions: the delirious converts who made the most of The Clash's rule that the bouncers weren't to force people into their seats, flooded the front section and pogoed madly.

Towards the back the typical US rock fans observed the action at a distance through binoculars (imagine the only place you'd ever seen your favourite band play is half a mile from the stage in a place like Earls Court - out here it's as inevitable in rock as death and taxes are in life) and an even more staid bunch sat in the balcony, I suspect they were the ones queueing quietly outside to guarantee a safe spot for their voyeurism.

There were a fair number of old style bondage and safety pin punks - remember nothing has happened on this scene since the Pistols gig in Winterland at the end of '77. Now the Pistols are dead, Sid's dead, Winterland's dead and San Francisco is still the Grateful Dead. The Clash have got a lot of reviving to do.

There were a lot more Ramones lookalikes, stormtroopers in sneakers with elaborate punk badges, a couple of miniature Sun front page headlines "I want justice for my Sid" and a large crowd of US music press analysing the action like it was the interval of a Bernard Shaw play complaining that they couldn't make out the words when Joe Strummer called from the stage "If you can't understand the words, don't worry, you're not alone."

We were thanked for bothering to come tonight. Bothering? It was magnificent. Though I could see little more than the flag used as backdrop and Jones' and Simenon's elevated leaps above head level, all rock and roll senses were gratified. Contact with hot pogoing bodies, smell of overheated energy (something you forget is sanitised for your protection in sports arena rock gigs) and the sound; a brain battering 'Tommy Gun', an exhilarating 'Stay Free', a scorching 'Guns On The Roof', 'I Fought The Law', 'Cell Block No. 9' and the hardest, fastest, most powerful encore in rock with 'White Riot'.

As for the audience reaction, some seemed to feel uncomfortable but more felt salvation. I can't remember having seen a performance so shot with adrenalin, outdone though it would be by the next night's show.

BACKSTAGE there wasn't much talking. In the five days the band spent in San Francisco they must have talked to just about everyone who wanted to listen. A press conference on Monday with a barrage of dumb questions led the band to turn it into their own personal comedy show: record store appearances, radio interviews and private viewing with anything from "Time" magazine to Cashbox.

Filllmore

In the dressing room someone asked Mick if he liked the Jam (to a suitably non-committal answer) and someone else warily suggested that Clash had some sort of pact going with Elvis Costello (whose tour bus was parked in Japan town near the next night's gig) who was going to have old rocker Carl Perkins on his tour (Perkins in fact backed out a while ago), only to be told politely that if anyone was copying it was Elvis, who doesn't seem that popular with Clash. Mick and I swapped notes on what a strange place this is. Tomorrow night's gig hasn't exactly left their record company brimming with philanthropic joy. It's a benefit concert for 'New Youth', a fledgling organisation aiming to keep ticket prices down, get larger percentages for the bands and a place for new wave acts to play.

Besides not being part of the official tour and bound to upset the promoters (they got around any legal hassles by advertising 'White Riot in the Fillmore' with the band's name never mentioned), the tickets are half the price of the Berkeley gig, the venue seatless and flooded with atmosphere. Of the eight dates on this mini-tour (the band intends to return in June and fill in the gaps) only one failed to sell out - the Berkeley one. A good sign considering the size of the venue (the only time the Pistols played to anything in the few thousand seat mark over here was at Winterland).

The following afternoon I head for the Villa Roma bar to find Ace, the tour manager locked in a verbal battle with the red-faced vein-popping Motel manager. A misunderstanding over a phone bill that would have evoked polite discussion at the most with the average guest. "The man's an arsehole" Mick told me by way of explanation. The manager had parked his station wagon (one of the smallest American cars) in front of the tour bus to stop it leaving, and was threatening to call the police.

Ace was trying valiantly to keep his temper - not easy when a middle aged man screams "You bums, you freaks" to your face. The band left and the manager swaggered over to the bar, loosened his collar and had the barmaid get him a double, boasting how he "wasn't going to be taken for a ride by the likes of those freaks" and how "I blocked the bus with my little Pinto wagon - it couldn't move". A hero for a day.

The benefit concert was in a moth-eaten synagogue in San Francisco next door to Jim Jones' People's Temple, tacky but majestic, and a great venue. The punters were generally shit-stoned, dribbling in, falling over, dancing with strangers and having fun. There was a strong wired sexual sort of atmosphere here, an intangible kind of craziness, The thing that attracted you to rock and roll in the first place.

There was some trouble in the line, a few bottles broken, but that's all, mostly brought on by the slowness with which they were let in. This was 'New Youth's first gig and they hadn't quite got it together. They only opened one cash register until Clash's manager threatened to open the doors and let everyone in free and tills appeared like magic.

Clash were electrifying. Like a bloody great headline, commanding attention and belief. They opened with 'I'm So Bored with the USA' and the punters went as wild as I've ever seen them go. No time to take notes there were more important things to do. For the first time in the USA I could see the relevance of pogoing - when there's no space and powder down the front and you want to dance, there's nowhere to go but up. It's also a pretty efficient way of meeting people when you fall on top of them. One girl danced from someone's head onto the stage and dived off head first into the solid mass of people. That must be just about the ultimate rock fan experience.

America was getting off on the Clash and New Youth was getting a good down payment for their organisation. Some hope yet. But the battle's not won. Johnny Walker the DJ was there. He's just been fired by a San Francisco radio station for playing punk records.

ON THE BUS after the show, Jones, Strummer and Simenon are conducting a private post mortem on the tour in the back. Verdict: pretty good, Berkeley OK, the benefit in Frisco, the best so far. Topper and a friend and the rest of us are down the front watching 'Heaven Can Wait' while fans mill around outside.

February 17, 1979 SOUNDS Page 9

Santa Monica Civic

Just before the gig started, Topper was sitting on the bus watching 'Star Wars' when a guy came inside and struck up a conversation and took a lot of persuading to leave. He came back a few minutes later with a bottle of champagne, shook the drummer's hand and left. The champagne was consumed on the 400 mile trip to LA. Everyone is half dead by the time the bus reaches Santa Monica. While Ace is sorting out a beach front hotel, an old man wanders up and asks if he thinks we're wandering Bohemians until the driver tells him it's a rock band that's playing the Civic tonight. Undeterred the 70 year-old announces that he and his wife go disco dancing every fourth night. The bus breaks out in smiles. "All you've got to do is get in there and do your own thing, feel the beat" he tells us knackered looking bunch of youngsters. No-one offers him tickets for tonight's gig.

Los Angeles is less Bohemian than San Francisco. LA is big streets, big cars, big billboards and big money. In LA anything that doesn't make a big profit is considered neither art nor desirable. Little bands are pretty much banging heads against the brick wall. The so-called 'new wave' scene is barely holding its own. That Clash sold out the 3,000 capacity Santa Monica Civic is a good sign, even if the numbers were padded out by press and posers and probably members of every quasi-punk band in town.

It was a good show, but not a great one. Though that's not to say that this wasn't one of the best evenings I've spent in this venue. As always here the sound was flat, but the spirit and strength of the music and the wildly vibrating floor from the frantic pogoing as good as compensated. The crowd was pretty manic tonight.

Kamikaze punks made exultant swallow dives into the audience from the stage and the editor of 'Slash' fanzine leapt up to join Strummer in an unofficial duet before being dragged off and according to him, roughed up by the bouncers who seemed for the most part very easy going for the States.

As Mick said: "We do as much as we can, we try to say to the guys, let them stand up, don't bash them, and if we're the headliners they've got to take some notice of us." So they've bought quite a big crew with them but they don't know all the security guards, Joe said, and was pretty pissed off when the guy from Slash kept on whining about his battle scars.

"We never said it was a utopia. Rock and roll is played on enemy ground. We never promised you when you were a baby that it was going to be roses all the way. But we stopped more than you can imagine. You can go on about getting the shit kicked out of you and you can go on about that guy being murdered by bouncers in London, you can go on as much as you like and I'll just sit here and listen and I'll be thinking of the times I've stopped the blood when I had the chance to."

There was a press conference at midnight after the show, rather a depressed concert as Mick described it. The band were in a lousy mood. No explanation. Mick told me it has just been a 'strange day'. They seemed pissed off with the way the record company was handling them, especially with the Statue of Liberty posters.

"If they're going to have ads and buy big space and show how flashy we are" said Joe "We're going to pack information into it such as the lyrics". As in the epic 'Don't know what to do with us, they're fucking us up". So what should they do? "Leave us alone for a start".

Cleveland Ohio

And they're understandably worn out after the 10 hour bus ride from San Francisco. In seven hours time they'll be back on the bus again heading for Cleveland Ohio. Some people at the record company were privately expressing anxiety about letting the band drive halfway cross country. They might decide not to arrive at the right place and the right time.

But they spent 20 minutes slouched over a table backstage (except when Topper got up to let in the members of the Germs, an LA girl band who were pummelling on the windows outside). Opposite 10 rows of assorted scribes giving half hearted answers to questions; will they fill in the gap left by the Sex Pistols?

Joe: "I don't know. I haven't seen the gap yet." Will they ever release their first album here? (the record company thought the material and presentation too crude for US radio's present AM or FM programmes, and with no hope of a hit on their hands, didn't bother to put it out)

Joe: "We might release it sometime as a historical document, a greatest hits album":

Do they have problems being famous? Paul: "We can walk down the street in London, people recognise us and come up to us. It's like having loads of friends. That's the way we live, we don't even think about it."

We learn they came here as soon as they could, touring the odd places at home was getting tedious. that they found what they consider a healthy new wave scene everywhere they've been so far, that they intend to come back and finish off the job here in the Summer of however much flogging it takes them to make it, and that their ambitions are to do away with Boston, Kansas, Foreigner and Kiss as quickly as possible and become 'the best rock and roll band in the world'.

If Pearl Harbour '79 continues its electrifying attack, they're going to succeed on both fronts. When it comes down to it, the battle is not tying the Statue of Liberty with rope, nor about the right to wear your safety pins, Fiorucci jeans and prawn silk shirts without protest from your Mum.

It's about defeating apathy in rock, changing its direction and taking over its future. And if that's too much to hope for, all who have seen this tour must agree that they're halting senility for a while.

SYLVIE SIMMONS

(2)

London Evening News - 6 January 1979

The Clash still cut that honest dash

IN its eternal search for the idiosyncratic, the neurotic rock press is often prone to idolatrous behaviour even when confronted by the reddest of red herrings.

Hence punk exploded after a rapturous reception, power pop pooped and new musick has thrown up little more than the hideous, off-key warblings of Siouxsie and the emaciated Banshees.

But The Clash just keep right on coming.

Seldom has one band monopolised the music papers like The Clash.

They treat the Press with disdain, yet are never ostracised. All the more surprising considering their meagre vinyl output.

In fact, frustrated Clash aficionados have had to wait 18 months for the release of their second album Give 'Em Enough Rope, which predictably shot straight to No. 2 after one week.

The pageantry with which the band were initially greeted by the Press was equalled only by that given to the Sex Pistols.

But now that overboard attitude has turned into a grudging acknowledgement of their undoubted musical abilities.

Heroes

It seems their success has generated disillusionment among those who originally imagined them to be working class heroes.

Okay, so it has transpired that singer Joe Strummer was the son of a Foreign Office official, went to public school and has probably cultivated a certain tongue-incheek accent.

Maybe bassist Paul Simenon does live with ritzy ex-deb Caroline Coon.

So what?

That early iconoclastic, street guerilla stance that spawned such demagogic ditties as White Riot, London's Burning and Career Opportunities is still there.

"Yeah, I used to live in a White mansion at Regents Park with the heir to the Habitat empire," Joe Strummer tells me in an Edgware Road cafe (appropriate for the ol' street credibility bit) "but I only had one room and it was a real dump." He now lives in a squat.

"We ain't changed," says Simenon, seated opposite. "We still walk around the streets at midnight in the rain. All right, we get slagged off. But we've kept our integrity. Listen to your own heart."

"If anything," interrupts Joe who, for the fashionconscious among you, is wearing knee-length leather boots with silver buckles, leather trousers and a leather Gestapo coat he picked up for £16 in Amsterdam, "we encounter more problems than before."

Like cleaning all that leather, perhaps?

"No. Times have changed. Standards are all different. The public know that, but record companies don't. They just employ people who get drunk every lunchtime on somebody else's money. I got more respect for my liver."

BARRY CAIN

Daiy Mirror 21 May 1981

Spit, and now polish

THE CLASH represent the mature and acceptable face of punk. If anything good and positive could have come from a movement based around nihilism, The Clash have harnessed it.

Page 44

CLASH: David Lawrenson meets Topper and Mick, alias Headon and Jones

"We're musicians"

I'm so surprised to be asked to do this sort of thing, because only "I lately have I realised that people think we properly play and stuff." So speaks Mick Jones, lead guitarist with the Clash.

He was genuinely surprised that a publication like International Musician and its readers would be interested in the way he plays his instrument. The fact is that he is a member of one of the most potent and exciting bands in the country.

To some people in the rock business, the term "musician" is reserved for players who have been around a long time, amassed a huge collection of instruments or who take endless long solos. Because all these criteria are largely absent from the New Wave, the implication is that it's scene devoid of musicians.

Luckily this narrow outlook is not universal. If it was we would have had no Beatles, Stones or the Who. Rock music is primarily concerned with expressing feelings, emotions and excitement qualities which the New Wave has in abundance.

Along with the Sex Pistols and the Damned, the Clash were one of the original punk bands formed in 1976. Now the sole surviving outfit from that trio, their music still contains much of the anger and aggression of those early days, although they possess a style and an awareness that sets them apart from many imitators.

With a minimum of TV and radio expsoure, their singles have consistently made the lower reaches of the charts, while their first CBS album "The Clash", released in early 1977, went straight in at number 12 and has sold consistently ever since. It has taken them almost 18 months to come up with a follow-up, "Give 'Em Enough Rope", which saw them working with American producer Sandy Pearlman.

Mick Jones is 23. He started playing guitar at 16, having tried his hand at drums and bass. He blew a week's wages on a big blond F-hole Hofner acoustic which he used to mike up. "Then I got a Telecaster, a great old map neck Tele, but I always wanted a Les Paul Junior.

"I thought they were the greatest guitars going because I'd heard both Steve Hunter and the other guitarist on the Lou Reed live album used them and I thought, 'This is what it's all about'. So I saved up for about six months and got one. It was really difficult to find, because there were none in the shops. Eventually I found one in the Vox shop in Shaftesbury Avenue. It was on a top shelf and really dusty. It was a cherry one and I paid about £190 for it. It has been broken about four times, so it has

more or less died but I've got a couple of others now.

"The guitar I'm using now is a 1952 Les Paul Standard, which got broken in Arnheim by the stage manager. It was on a guitar stand and he walked straight into it and the neck was off. I had a bit of respect for that guitar it was older than I was! I got it fixed but it's not the same, it doesn't tune up and sustain goes. As a spare I use a Les Paul Junior: I've got a blue sparkly one and a red one. I think there are some guitars that do talk to you, you feel OK with them. If you feel good with them then they are great guitars."

Mick has very definite ideas on guitars and the way they should be treated and played. He is a firm believer in the quality instruments made by top manufacturers such as Gibson, dismissing many of the newer makes as merely "copies", "I didn't buy them when I had no money, so I'm not going to buy them now," he proclaims.

For amplification he uses a Boogie set-up. "I was using Ampeg for ages because the Stones used them, but now I've got a Boogie and it's really great, the best. I use one of those big ones with a graphic on it. If we are playing a really big hall I use a slave of a Marshall and a couple of 4 x 12s, otherwise it's just the Boogie and 4 x 12s. They're good amps except the speakers blow, but that's only because I turn it up to

10. I've got no self-control whatsoever. "The only effect I use is an MXR phaser, it's American one, the biggest they have. You can get about five different. phases on it. We have Space Echo and that kind of stuff through the PA, and I used a wah-wah on one of the album tracks."

To many, the music of the Clash would seem crude and regressive, with guitarists. such as Mick Jones definitely not qualifying as "musicians". Yet those same people would undoubtedly extol the expertise of the Stones the Who bands who definitely were not considered top quality musicians in their early days. It is impossible not to draw comparisons between the early

Sixties and today's New Wave scene. "It's probably just the same," says

Mick, "but it is a pity that all those people forgot about it, and forgot it was said about them. The point about our music is the spirit of the thing. You have got to communicate the spirit of what you do. When you do that, you can't really spend a lot of time respecting traditional values of what music is all about.

"I think it's nothing to do with what guitar you use, it's how you do it. I think you can do it on a Woolworth's guitar, quite truthfully. The important thing hing is how. Guitars are there to be used, it's a tool, you shouldn't let it play you or be your boss. Some groups you see and you say, 'Oh, the guitarist needs a good sound, he's got a tinny sound and it doesn't quite fit the music. But really, it's only a matter of once you've got the thing that fits the music, doing it with a bit of style.

"There's lots of guitarists I really like. I think Mick Ronson's great, Keith Richard don't do much and I think he's pretty good, Jeff Beck does a lot and does nothing at the same time. There's loads of them I I really like and I've got nothing against these people. I've only got something against those who .. well, the only spirit they communicate is just taking the audience's money and giving them nothing for it the groups with their heads in the sand."

Mick admits that he is still learning and that the group are still practising and learning their craft. The biggest problem seems to be one of dynamics, in particular learning to turn down on stage so the vocals can be

heard. Mick writes most of the band's material along with fellow guitarist Joe Strummer. Their prolific output was one of the reasons for the delay of the album.

"We recorded it twice as demos before we actually cut down, then we recorded about 20 songs and ended up with only 10 on the album. Everything was concise and to the point, there is nothing on it that doesn't say something. Most groups are rushed into second albums almost before they've finished the first, they don't really have time to think about what they're writing, it becomes less creative and just another sales machine.

"We said we aren't going to rush, and told the record company that they would have to wait until we thought it was right. They could have had an album six months ago but it would have been dross in comparison to the first one. I think we have got a second album which is better than the first, and we're going to do a third which will be better than the second. That doesn't mean to say it will take a long time because now we're learning about producing and stuff we'll probably knock it off a bit quicker, but I'm very wary of quick decisions.'

the one change in line-up between the T albums has been their drummer, Nicky "Topper" Headon. On the first album they used Terry Chimes, but soon after installed Topper in the drum chair and his contribution to the band both on stage and in the studio has been considerable. He is a powerful drummer, whose brief career has seen him gaining experience in a wide variety of styles the type of credentials which would satisfy even the staunchest music critic. Topper began his musical career in Dover, playing drums to alleviate the boredom of six months in hospital nursing a broken leg (an injury which ended his thoughts of becoming a footballer).

His father spotted an Ajax kit in the local paper and bought it. "The bloke who suggested it was a trumpet player in a local trad jazz band. For some reason they were always short of drummers in Dover. They needed a drummer so as soon as I could hold a tempo, I was gigging. He gave me all these Louis Armstrong and Gene Krupa records so that's what I learned first.

"I was gigging regularly, getting about 65 a gig, by the time I was 14. It was really good. The band were all about 50 and a couple of them used to be pros, they were pretty good. It taught me a lot about time keeping, just keeping it moving, keeping it swinging. When I started, just because I was straightforward no fills or anything they used to think it was great. Gradually I got better and they liked me less and less got because I started being flash. The first lesson I learned was that other musicians appreciate a solid drummer not a flash drummer, so it influenced me a lot.

"I didn't really bother with drum tutors. I used to read the introductions and things like how to set up your kit and tune the drums. Paradiddles and triple paradiddles was as far as I got, but never really got into reading.

"The Ajax kit was really good, I used it for about three years until I eventually realised that it wasn't so hot. Still, when I sold it to a shop I got £40 for it. Then I worked on the ferries and saved up to get a Premier kit. Premier have become more expensive, but at that time it was the cheapest pro kit you could get and everyone had them out of London. You could go into any local music shop and get one and everyone stocked spares and fittings. That was one of the reasons I bought one.

"The one I bought was a silver finish kit I'm really sold on silver finish kits. It was a good kit and a mate of mine is using it now with the Ian Gillan Band. It must be about six years old and it's still going strong.'

Topper's next kit came when he joined the Clash. He had missed out on their first album and was just about to undertake an extensive tour, during which he would be "on probation". He insisted on a new kit for the tour, and only a few days before they hit the road, he chose a Pearl set which he still has.

The original kit consisted of a 24" bass drum, 13" x 9", 14" x 10", 16" and 18" toms. He got rid of the two small toms and brought in an extra floor tom, so he now has just three toms, the 14", 16" and 18". The cymbals are all Zildjians, 15" hi-hats, 21" rock rides, two 16" crashes and two 20" crashes. Topper uses crash cymbals as crash rides because ordinary crash rides are too thin and frequently crack.

"When I joined the Clash I noticed that the Premier didn't seem to have that volume or that kind of depth that I needed. You've got to close-mike them to get a really good sound. A lot of heavy drummers use them, like Kenny Jones and of course Keith Moon, but I couldn't get a heavy enough sound out of them.

"When I first got the Pearl I didn't like it. There were a lot of bits and pieces that I had to get together like metal rims on the bass drum, I didn't have time to mess about with them before the tour and on the tour, which was quite long, I couldn't get a good sound out of them. When I came back I changed to wood rims and that made all the difference.

"It's the little things like that that you only appreciate after a tour, so there's no

way I'll get another kit without having a good long time to try it. The only other drums I'd use would be Ludwig and Gretsch. Even then, with the Gretsch you have to change all the fittings because they're weak, but Ludwig are good. I use all Pearl fittings on my kit, with a Premier snare drum stand, Pearl hi-hat and all Trilok stands.

"The thing I like about the Pearl kit is that they're really loud drums and at the same time you can get that depth, there's no tinniness. I use the Pearl in the studio and it's great the only time I'd get rid of it would be when it just doesn't stand up to touring any more. So far it has held up really well, it's a really strong kit."

The problems encountered by drummers are seemingly the same the world over, no matter what level you're playing at. Topper has his own drum roadie so many of these immediate problems are alleviated but he is still aware of them and remains convinced that it is an inevitable part of a drummer's life.

"I think you will always get the same problems from drummers. In order to retain a characteristic drum sound, what a drum sound is about, you've got to have individual tension rods, wooden shells, Fibreglass shells. You always have to have stuff that is likely to break to get that sound.

"I use five cymbals and although I've got them pretty well set up, they are always slightly out from where I had them the night before and it takes a couple of numbers to get it right. Also the cymbals tend to slip down due to the threads going or whatever and I was thinking of getting actual welded stands in the position I want them in. It would be like the five stands on a truss and a bar coming round the kit, so you could just plop the cymbals on and they would always be exact.

"Most of the developments in drums don't seem to have gone into actually making things stronger. I think the only company who are really trying to improve its drums are Premier. Every six months they seem to be coming out with stronger fittings and new ideas while everyone else seems to be spending their money on electronics and new skins. The number of

different types of skins you can get now is a joke, they're all the same in principle.

"I've tried Asba drums and they are lovely and loud but you just get that ring it's like playing in a marble room. I don't like the look or the sound of see-through drums. When I'm behind a kit, I like to feel I'm behind something solid. Synthesized drums make a nice sound for 10 minutes but then become boring, people just get the same sound out of them, which is not what they are designed for.

"The main drag I find is that everything de-tunes during the gig so I've got to tune between numbers. The snare drum takes a real hammering and I have to crank up the tension rods between every number. The only problem with a snare is you can tune it a bit too tight and it starts popping. You won't actually hear it acoustically, but as long as it's coming through your monitor you can tell it's popping and de-tune it."

Before joining the Clash, Topper had his share of ups and downs but still managed to cram in quite a bit of drumming experience. By the time he was 17 he was playing in a band doing Miles Davis, Blood Sweat and Tears type material before joining his first fully fledged rock band. He realised that he would have to move to London if he really wanted to make it.

He did the usual round of answering ads and auditioning but found it souldestroying. If people didn't know anyone you had played with, you were invariably immediately crossed off the list. Eventually he got a gig with a soul band from the States, which was more useful experience, before he encountered Mick Jones and joined the band.

Topper describes his style as "fast and heavy". He adds: "As long as you keep it like that and don't lag, you can fill in anything you want." His influences include Simon Kirke and Terry Williams who plays with Dave Edmunds.

Together Mick Jones and Topper Headon represent a new wave of musicians who owe little or nothing to the "progressive" era of the late Sixties and Seventies. Instead, they hark back to a simpler and more, exciting era which is closer, perhaps, to the true spirit of rock and roll.

Banging on the White House Door - On the road with the Clash

CLEVELAND SQUATS UNTIDILY BESIDE THE bleak winter expanse of Lake Erie, like a ragged child on a street corner begging for relief. A lunatic February wind whistles up its skirts, a blizzard of snow whips relentlessly down upon its frozen municipal heart.

The TWA Boeing out of New York bucks and shudders in the virulent turbulence as it circles above the city in a nervous orbit. Beneath us, Cleveland grins with callous indifference to our distress, a city as attractive in the chilling dark as an elbow in the throat.

Cleveland! Cleveland! Home of the Rockefellers and Standard Oil. Home of the Hanna Mining Corporation and Republic Steel and the Consolidation Coal Company, economic dynasties that for two generations have controlled the industrial heartlands of America with imperialistic authority.

Cleveland!

Hey, ho ó home, too, of the Cuyahoga: a river so polluted by the waste of Ohio's industrial expansion that it once exploded into flames.

Burn on, big river, burn on!

LISA PICKS ME UP FROM THE AIRPORT IN HER battered Pontiac cab. A rusted, scarred relic of some former affluence, it now seems a tired apology for Cleveland's present economic disasters. Cleveland used to be a great city, Lisa says. Now it's on the edge of bankruptcy, already in the throes of an urban crisis more severe than that of virtually any other city in the United States.

The city owes more than 15 million dollars to six Ohio banks. The banking interests are demanding either the money or financial control of the city. Cleveland's young mayor, Dennis Kucinich, is fighting for the city's independence and for the welfare and future of the poor whites and blacks lingering helplessly in the slums and ghettoes of Cleveland's inner boroughs, from which the affluent white middle-class has long since retreated.

We drive on through derelict downtown areas. Cars pass us in a somnambulant parade, creeping and sliding through the treacherous slush. Ice and snow are banked high on both sides of the road. Lisa says Cleveland is enjoying a mild winter. I shiver and chainsmoke. The streets through which we are skating are illuminated by the dull, exhausted glow of neon signs, flickering from pool halls, bars, porno cinemas ó "Eroticinemas" ó and assorted lowlife dives.

A drunk stumbles down the sidewalk like a newsprint yeti, wrapped in old newspapers. He collapses head first into a snowdrift and doesn't move. Groups of bored men gather in windswept doorways along the route. They stamp their feet, pass around bottles. Their breath is frozen on the night air like signatures of disaffection.

Unemployment and crime are partners here in an unholy marriage. Lisa says it ain't so bad in the winter. People are too cold to kill. The summers, though, that's when it gets real heavy.

"In the summer," Lisa says, "it's like someone declared war, you know, but forgot to tell the other side. There's so many unemployed, they get drunk, they get restless, they kill people. There's a lot of dope murders, a lot of drunk killing. They say the unemployment ain't so bad no more. But I don't see my man in work. No, sir. Times like this, though, in the winter ó it don't get so bad. People don't get out so much, you know.

"Mosta the guys who get killed know each other, see. They hang out together in the bars and they got no one else to fight. They get intoxicated and argue and start fighting, and ó bang! someone's dead. I'm just surprised there's enough of them to go at it again after other folk when it gets to be summer again.

"I'll drop you around the backa th'hotel. It's kinda safer."

ACCORDING TO THE SCHEDULE PROVIDED FOR me by CBS in London, The Clash are by this time meant to have checked into Swingo's Celebrity Hotel. The Clash, however, are lost somewhere between Oklahoma City and Cleveland.

Their Pearl Harbour '79 tour of North America opened on January 31, in Vancouver. They then travelled to San Francisco for two gigs. These were followed by a concert at the Santa Monica Civic. Then, while the road crew drove directly across the Midwest to Cleveland, the band lit out for the Southwest, on a three-day trip through Arizona, Kansas and Texas, travelling in a coach hired from Waylon Jennings.

"We wanted to see America," Mick Jones tells me later. "It wasn't entirely successful. I kept falling asleep. It was a long drive."

When I arrive at Swingo's, The Clash are flying in from Oklahoma. Their bus had clapped out at some point during their trek. It's now in Nashville being repaired. I am, however, presently indifferent to any problems encountered by The Clash. At the hotel, it's a definite Bethlehem vibe. They don't have a room for your exhausted correspondent. The fellow at the desk suggests I try the Holiday Inn on East 22nd Street.

"It's not too far," he advises. "You can go out the back way. That's quicker. But, if I were you, I'd go out the front. It's a longer walk, but there's more light ó you'll be able to see anyone coming at you."

I WAIT AN HOUR FOR A CALL FROM SWINGO'S telling me that The Clash have finally arrived in Cleveland. It doesn't come. I decide to investigate the city's nightlife alone. I don't, however, feel inclined to wander too far from the hotel, and settle finally into Bumper's, a bar close to the Holiday Inn.

One of the cops who'd earlier been working security at the hotel ambles in for a drink.

"You're new," he letches at the waitress. She smiles indulgently, and avoids his fat, groping arm. "Kinda cute, too," smirks the cop. "I'll have a shot of bourbon. The name's Don. What's yours, huh?"

The waitress scurries off, a look of bored anguish on her face.

A pianist on a dais next to the bar begins to play "My Life". No one's listening. He tries to attract the attention of a couple of women sitting across the room from him. One of them, a blonde with make-up on her face so thick it resembles an aerial photograph of the Colorado mudflats, smiles back at him. There's a cage hanging from the ceiling behind her. There are two parakeets in the cage. They begin to squawk hysterically.

"Shut those fucken birds up!" someone yells.

A passing waitress smacks the bars of the cage with a plastic tray. The birds scream and fly about the cage, smacking into the bars. Feathers float down into the drinks of the two women. The pianist begins a soulful version of "Help Me Make It Through The Night". He smiles suggestively at the blonde. She turns away with exaggerated coyness.

Outside, a police siren is serenading the moon above Lake Erie.

So this is Cleveland. I feel an immediate nostalgia for my safe European home. I return to Room 607 at the Holiday Inn, carrying my jetlag like a sack full of bricks.

An hour later, Caroline Coon ó who took over the management of The Clash last year when they sacked Bernie Rhodes ó calls from Swingo's. The band have finally arrived. They'd been held up for five hours because of fog at Oklahoma airport. They're in the bar at Swingo's if I want to join them. I tell her I'll meet them in the morning. She tells me nothing will happen until the group meets for the soundcheck at Cleveland's Agora club at 4.30 the following afternoon.

I say goodnight.

Down in the street, there's drunken laughter and someone screaming somewhere.

Just think. IF we had A bazooka or some machine GUNS, We Could blow it all away. Just lob a few grenades over the garden wall and wipe them all out. It's worth thinking about

Joe Strummer at the White House

JOE STRUMMER COMES TUMBLING INTO THE cocktail bar at Swingo's, resplendent in a fluorescent pink jacket, his hair in a Brylcreemed quiff, eyes hiding behind aviator shades. His face is swollen from a visit that morning to a Cleveland dentist. He's got an abscess on a tooth, which he refuses to have extracted. He's suffering, too, from the prolonged after-effects of the hepatitis he contracted last year. Furthermore, he has a savage gash on his lower right arm. He cut it on his guitar during the Vancouver gig.

"I keep ripping it open," he mentions. "I have to bind it up with Gaffa tape before a gig. I think it's turning septic." I wince as he rolls up his sleeve to show me the weeping wound.

The gig in Vancouver had been especially memorable, apparently. The audience, from all accounts, went berserk. They'd refused The Clash an easy exit, demanding three encores before the band had been able to leave the stage. Then they canned the road crew as they attempted to clear the equipment. To prevent a riot, The Clash reappeared to play another number.

"Trouble was," Topper Headon recalls, "they didn't stop canning the stage. Bottles kept bouncing off us as we were playing."

Headon finished the gig with his head split open in three places.

Strummer, meanwhile, has an anecdote about The Clash's gig at the Santa Monica Civic.

It seems that to celebrate The Clash's introduction to America CBS (or Epic, to be precise) decided to fly over to Los Angeles many of its most influential higher-echelon executives.

"Everyone deemed important enough," Strummer continues, with a bitter disgust he makes no attempt to disguise, "to get a return ticket and an expense account weekend in Los Angeles was flown out to see us."

There were, he estimates, about 40, maybe 50, record company executives in California to see The Clash: vice-presidents, area vice-presidents, regional managers, regional vice-managers, all speaking the same bureaucratic Esperanto: "Hey, ho ó have a successful day and keep thinking platinum..."

Strummer was having none of it.

"I was disgusted they were there. They've done nothing for us. And there they were, poncing about backstage with their slimy handshakes and big smiles. I just ignored them, you know. I don't have any time for it. All that record company bullshit.

"Like, I heard that they'd been taking the journalists who were coming to see us out for, like, nine-course meals before the gig. Nine-course meals! I've never had a nine-course meal in my life. I can't even imagine what a nine-course meal is like. I mean, what kind of person eats a nine-course fucking meal before a rock'n'roll show? I think it's disgusting, a disgrace that we should be even associated with something like that."

The Clash played the gig. The audience, again from all accounts, went berserk. The group, exhausted, fell into their dressing room.

It was full of Epic executives. They were escorted by Susan Blond, from the Epic press office in New York. She organised the beaming, sycophantic executives into a neatly defined group, for a photograph with The Clash. The group, sweating and tired, were hustled into the front row and asked to pose, happily, for the camera.

"There were these four seats and they told us to sit on 'em," Strummer recalls. "This was right after the gig, right? We'd just come off stage, right? We were worried about how we'd played, right? We were worried about whether we'd given a good show, right? We were wondering what those people ó the ones who'd paid for their tickets ó had really thought about us, right? We'd wanted to give them the best fucking rock'n'roll show they'd ever seen, right... and these ...these people come in from the record company. And they want their photos taken with us. For Billboard, or some crap like that.

"We don't care, you know, if it's some fan with an Instamatic backstage at the Glasgow Apollo. We'll pose for the picture or whatever, sign autographs, talk to him ó you know, that's part of the reason we're there.

"But these creeps, you know, they're all lined up, and we line up in front of them, smiling, like the good little boys they want us to be. And, just as they're about to take the photo, we just walk out, all four of us. And they're all looking at us as we walk out, with their mouths open. Cos they've flown right across America to, like, have their photo taken with us. They haven't come to see us play.

"And this guy comes out to us, where we're standing in the corridor having a beer, and he says, 'If I was you guys, I'd go back in there and apologise.' We told him to fuck off. We ain't cattle. And we were just standing there when all those guys came storming out. They didn't even look at us. Didn't say a word, you know. Just walked straight past us. You could see them fuming.

"It was great. It's the only way to treat them, you know."

Caroline Coon later verifies Strummer's account of the incident.

"Susan Blond came up to me and begged me to get the group back in. I told her I couldn't. That they'd only come back in if they wanted to. She told me that the group had humiliated the people from Epic."

"They deserved worse than that," Paul Simonon commented.

It's to be presumed that the aforementioned, humiliated Epic executives are no longer "thinking platinum" where The Clash and Give 'Em Enough Rope are concerned.

"I don't think they ever believed we'd sell more than 10 copies of the record over here," Strummer will counter. "They don't want us here. They think we only want to cause trouble. We only wanna play some music. They cause all the trouble."

THERE IS SOME TRUTH IN STRUMMER'S assertion. As we drive to the Agora, Caroline Coon tells me about some of the difficulties The Clash encountered when they first began to prepare for this tour.

Give 'Em Enough Rope was released in America at the same time it hit the racks in Britain ó to even better reviews. Greil Marcus in Rolling Stone and Lester Bangs in New York's Village Voice were especially enthusiastic about the record.

From reviews like these and the past interest in The Clash, which had grown around the import sales of their debut album (never released by Columbia in America), it was clear to the group and their manager, at least, that there was a potentially substantial audience for them in America.

The majority of their contemporaries had already made brief appearances in the States; and the major competition ó at the time, The Boomtown Rats and Elvis Costello ó were planning exhaustive spring campaigns. They couldn't afford to miss the chance of cutting in between the Costello tour, which was already under way when The Clash opened in Vancouver, and the Rats' offensive later in the month. A hit-and-run, seven-date tour was suggested, taking in Vancouver, San Francisco, LA, Cleveland, Washington, Boston and New York.

These were all areas in which The Clash believed ó quite correctly, it would transpire ó they could be assured of maximum audience attendances. They told Epic of their determined intention to tour America. Epic weren't enthusiastic.

"Basically," Caroline Coon recalls, "they told us not to come. They said the album wasn't getting any airplay. We told them we didn't care, we were coming anyway. They told us they had The Fabulous Poodles and Toto on the road, and that they wouldn't, therefore, be able to look after us properly. We told them we didn't care, we'd look after ourselves. They said they didn't think they could afford to subsidise the tour. We'd worked out a budget of 40,000 dollars ó which is relatively cheap, since we were bringing our own crew ó which they said they couldn't give us.

"By this time, I'd spent £3,000 of my own money, flying over here, organising the tour, talking to promoters, finding Bo Diddley who we wanted to support us. They said they still didn't want us to come.

"I said they couldn't stop us, we were coming anyway. That was a bluff, really we couldn't have afforded to come. Then they said they didn't want Bo Diddley. Even the promoters who were enthusiastic about The Clash didn't think it would be a good idea to tour with Bo Diddley. They said that he'd be bottled off stage or something. That audiences wouldn't listen. I said that if Bo Diddley got bottles thrown at him at a Clash gig, then The Clash wouldn't play.

"It was getting absurd. We were all set to come. Epic still wouldn't give us the money we wanted. Then they agreed to a budget of 30,000 dollars. So we agreed. Now we're having difficulty getting that out of them."

THE GIG IN CLEVELAND IS A BENEFIT CONCERT for a Vietnam veteran, Larry McIntyre. McIntyre got both his legs blown off in Vietnam while serving his country, his flag and his God. He recently moved into a new apartment in Cleveland. The apartment block had a swimming pool for the use of its tenants. McIntyre likes swimming. It's one of the few recreational sports in which he can participate.

One day, he wheeled himself up to the pool and plunged into the water. His neighbours were horrified. They called the owners of the apartment block. There was a man with no legs swimming in their pool, they complained. Larry was banned from the pool because the sight of him swimming around with no legs was more than his neighbours could possibly tolerate. They thought it distasteful. Larry's now suing them. The benefit is to raise money for his legal fees.

Caroline Coon and I arrive at the Agora to find The Clash mid-way through their soundcheck.

The club has the look of a more salubrious 100 Club. It's much larger, for a start. It has carpets, even. A games room, too, full of pinball machines. Two long bars flank the stage. There are potted plants hanging from the low ceiling. There are oak beams, and chandeliers hanging above the tables. There are mock Tudor arches and heavy oak doors.

The band complete their soundcheck and head back to the hotel, leaving the stage to Alex Bevan, a boring local folksinger who'll later be opening the show. I hang about the gig with Caroline Coon. She complains about the lack of any promotional display in the club's foyer. There's all kinds of paraphernalia for The Ramones, who'll be playing here within the next week. There's only the sleeve of Give 'Em Enough Rope, loosely pinned to a wall, to advertise The Clash. Caroline curses the local Epic marketing man. "He said it wasn't his fault," she will later say. "But he's on the list, anyway," she adds, ominously. Bo Diddley, a massive man whose mood swings unpredictably from high good humour to exaggerated, almost theatrical, pessimism, stops to talk with Caroline. I sit in some awe as he enquires after Strummer's health. He's heard about Joe's inflamed tooth, and he's full of sympathy.

Bo's had personal experience of toothache on the road, as he informs us with an obvious flair for melodrama.

"Ah wuz on tour one time. Got this sunuvabitch tooth playin' hell, man. I wen' ta this dentis', yeah. He tol' me Ah'd be fine. Ah wuz half way 'cross Texas when that dude went. Gave me no warnin'. Jes' hit me. Sonuvagun. Ah made mah driver pull over right there. Got tah th' neares' dentis' an' got him outta bed. Made him chisel that dude right outta mah head. Yah tell that boy tah watch hisself. Get s'me oil a cloves," he adds, revealing a characteristically practical turn of mind.

"An' tell him not ta worry. If he can mek th' gig, he's doin' awright," he continues. "Ya mek th' gig, you got the money. Tek it from an' old hand. Tek that dollar. 'N fuck the res'. As long as you get that dollar in yo' hand, yo' doin' awright. Y'needs th' dollar. Cuz when yo' finished, that's it. Ain't no one gonna come nowhere wi' money for yo' when yo' finished.

"When a bucket loses its bottom, everythin' goes, man."

BO DIDDLEY'S PICK-UP BAND IN CLEVELAND "Cats everywhere can play mah music" ó aren't up to much, but they make a valiant enough attempt to keep up with Bo's amusing digressions from the previously agreed script. Time and again, they end up playing one thing, while Bo's heading off in a quite different direction. They look increasingly flustered, but Bo seems highly entertained by their complete bafflement. The set, meanwhile, is dedicated entirely to history. To the Beat. To the legend of "Bo Diddley." He struts and hollers, and hollers and struts. He tells the audience how much he loves them; how much he appreciates their support over these last 23 years. He holds up his new guitar, custom-built in Australia for a mere £28,000.

"Ah love you," he tells the audience. "Ah come up here tonight ... Ah got the mos' terrible cold, y'hear ... but that's how much Ah love yah... Ah come'n play mah music ó even though Ah feel as poor as hell .. Thank you. Thank you."

THE CLASH ARE WAITING BACKSTAGE AT THE Agora. They're impatient. They want to play.

Mick Jones sits slightly apart from the rest of the band. "Comeoncomeoncomeoncomeon," he keeps repeating. Paul Simonon has his bass plugged into a practice amp. He plays the same nagging riff over and over. Strummer prowls around, running a comb through his hair. Topper Headon practices his martial arts poses.

I hadn't seen The Clash play since the Mont de Marsan punk festival in the summer of 1977. They had been shambolic then, and are often a shambles again tonight.

They begin ó predictably provocative ó with a raucous "I'm So Bored With The USA", and already the audience are punching the air and clambering hysterically about the front of the stage, climbing upon one another's shoulders, gobbing ó yes! ó at the group.

A surprisingly powerful version of "Jail Guitar Doors" (which always sounded so weedy on record), is followed by a brief announcement from Strummer ó thanking the audience for "the bits of information and bits of paper in envelopes you managed to smuggle backstage..."

"Tommy Gun" is electrifying, the final passage of which ó with Strummer screaming like he's being electrified ó sends a hot flash up the spine.

"Glad you've all come tonight," Strummer shouts, "and been so free with your money for this guy wot's got no legs ... and, uh, fuck you lot at the back with the American/English dictionaries ...

"The words to the next number are in Japanese." The next number is "City Of The Dead".

"WHEREVER WE GO," MICK JONES SAYS BACKSTAGE at the Ontario Theatre in Washington, "we're always given these bits of paper that say, 'From the City of the Dead'. They all think they're living in the City of the Dead ... I got this one tonight, I got some more in Cleveland ... actually, I think they were probably right in Cleveland. It was a bit awful, wasn't it?"

"THE NEXT NUMBER," STRUMMER IS TELLING Cleveland, "is off our first LP, released in 1965... 'Ate'n'Wah'." Mick Jones hops across the stage to take the lead vocals. It sounds impossibly quaint. It's followed by an indifferent "Clash City Rockers", with a weak guitar solo and typically garbled vocals. "White Man In Hammersmith Palais" is interrupted by the flow of bodies being dragged over the footlights and passed backstage. The crush at the front is by now murderous ó much to Mick Jones' concern. His face is washed with anxiety.

Then they hit the audience with a pulverising "Safe European Home". They pursue the climax of their set through "Stay Free", "English Civil War" ("What are you on stilts?" asks Strummer of someone trying to get on the stage, via someone else's back), "Guns On The Roof", the obligatory "Police And Thieves", "Janie Jones" (more instant nostalgia), and "Garageland". They commit the final chords of the song to Cleveland's memory, and split.

"Sex Pistols! SEX PISTOLS!" the guy behind me begins to chant, reviving a yell he had begun much earlier.

"Did you ever see The Sex Pistols?" I ask him.

"SID!" he shouts, his eyes wild, his girlfriend staggering on his arm.

"You ever see The Sex Pistols?" I ask again.

"Naaaah, man... never saw 'em... wish to fuck I had, man, I'd throw tables to see The Sex Pistols..." The Clash race back on the stage, whip through an uninspiring "Julie's Been Working For The Drug Squad" ó easily the weakest number in the set ó "White Riot" (flying the banner of '77, again), "Complete Control" and "What's My Name", which is a weak climax to a frustratingly inconsistent show.

The audience, however, is ecstatic.

I talk to a guy called Eric Schindling backstage. He and six friends have driven from Lawrence, Kansas to see The Clash. It had been a 20-hour drive ó it's 900 miles from good ol' Lawrence ó and it's taken all their money to finance the trek.

"Hell... yeah... sure it was worth it, man. We saw the Pistols in Tulsa. And, after the Pistols, there was only one other group to see. The Clash. Nah ó it wasn't too much of a drive. Like, people drove right across the States to see the King Tut exhibition. Us coming to see The Clash is just like them driving across America to see King Tut.

"And at least The Clash are still alive."

THERE HAD BEEN A BIT OF A PARTY AFTER THE show at the Agora, so the next morning in the lobby of Swingo's no one looks too healthy.

The original tour schedule had The Clash leaving Cleveland at noon for Washington in Waylon Jennings' bus. Two hours later, we're still sitting around in the lobby of the hotel.

It turns out that The Clash are for the moment financially embarrassed ó they can't pay the hotel bill. Caroline Coon has been on the telephone all morning to Epic in New York, demanding that they wire out enough money to Cleveland to cover the bill. The Epic person to whom she must speak to authorise the payment of the bill is in a meeting, she keeps being told. It looks at one point as if the group will have to do a runner. "I told Epic," says Caroline, "that they could meet us at the State border. We'd be the bus with the Highway Patrol chasing it."

Topper Headon appears. He's been watching a television news report on last night's benefit at the Agora. It had stated that Bo Diddley headlined the gig. There was even an interview with Bo. There had been no mention of The Clash.

"Which channel was it on?" I ask. "Channel 8." "Which network is that?" "It's CBS," a local fan confirms. "Whaaaat?" cries Headon, incredulously. "Fuckin' typical. What a circus."

THE BUS FINALLY LEAVES THE COLD CLUTCHES of Cleveland at 3pm and we settle down for a 10-hour drive across America to Washington, DC. It starts snowing heavily as we hit the Interstate. Things look grim already. "It's gonna get a bunch worse, too," says Bo Diddley, pessimistic to the last.

Strummer, Simonon and Mick Jones have retired to the rear lounge of the coach. The rest of us sit up front in the main compartment listening to tapes and watching television and videos.

The countryside spreads out on either side of us; a vast plain of ice and snow, frozen lakes and rivers, isolated farmhouses, truckstops, a multiplicity of zeroes. I begin to wonder whose movie I'm in. Darkness falls as the giant Exxon signs light up and snow piles down harder, freezing on the windscreen. We have to stop regularly to chip off the ice.

Everyone apart from me and Bo has by now crashed out. We're up front still, watching a video of John Carpenter's Elvis biopic.

"Maaaa-a-aan, it's gonna be a baaad night," Bo intones gravely, rolling his eyes beneath the brim of his stetson. "Ah wuz drivin' this way once," he recalls, passing me a bottle of Rock & Rye ó his favourite drink, brewed to his own specifications, and absolutely fucking lethal. "Th'road jes' wen' from unner me. Wen' straight over th'hill, whhhoooosh..." His large hand glides through the air.

I ask him whether during his years on the road he's got into a lot of trouble. This cracks him up even more. He howls with laughter.

"Yoah a comic sonuvabitch," he laughs. "Lissen ó Ah'm 50 years old. Ah'v lived all mah life in the United States, travelled in every goddam state, an' Ah'm black. An' you ask me whether Ah'v eveh been in trouble ... sheeeeit. Yeeeeeeuch. Ah been in th' kinda trouble Ah don't care even t'remember. Ah'v had dudes come up to me and put a gun to mah head. An' they'd say ó 'Nigguh! We gonna blow th' shit outta youh brains.' An' Ah'd allus be very polite an' say, 'Yessuh, sho' you are.' An' then get th' hell on outta there."

I ask which areas he found most troublesome and dangerous.

"Texas," he replies. Then, after a pause, "An' Alabama, an' Kansas, an' Virginia, an' Mississippi, an' Georgia, an' Tennessee, an' Missouri ... America, you know. Yeeeuuuch."

Washington

THE CLASH BOOK INTO THE AMERICANA HOTEL IN Washington at 2.30am, after a brief skirmish at the Barbizon Terrace, where they were originally going to stay. For some of us, the night is not over. Tour manager Johnny Green, Simonon, Strummer, Jones, DJ Barry Myers and I find a small Italian cafe, still open even at this time of the morning, even in this foul weather...

Simonon tells us about his trip last year to Moscow; he had been intrigued by the obliteration of Stalin's memory from the nation's consciousness.

"You won't find his name anywhere. In none of the history books, on any of the statues. They pulled them all down. They even dug up his body. They renamed Stalingrad..."

"You know," says Mick Jones, diverting the conversation towards the group's erstwhile manager, Bernie Rhodes, "I think it was always Bernie's ambition to have a city named after him."

"Yeah," says Strummer, "he was gonna re-name Camden Town. Call it Berniegrad."

They are still in litigation with Rhodes, Strummer says.

"We haven't spoken to him for a while," he goes on. "He doesn't answer the phone. I suppose he finds it a bit difficult since they took him off to the hospital and put him in a straitjacket."

Mick Jones has a map of Washington. He decides he'd like to go sightseeing. Now. It's 4am. Jones wants to go to Arlington, the military cemetery, where there burns an eternal flame, dedicated to the memory of John F Kennedy.

"Great," says Strummer, "let's go and piss on it and put it out."

Finally, we decide we'll visit the White House.

It's deathly silent as we drive down Pennsylvania Avenue. We pull up across the road from the White House. It looks surprisingly small, unimposing, almost insignificant.

"That it?" asks Johnny Green, disappointed. "Looks like a toilet. It's a garden shed. Don't tell me they run the entire bleedin' world from that?"

"Just think," says Strummer, "if we had a mortar or a bazooka or some machine guns, we could blow it all away. Just lob a few grenades over the garden wall and wipe them all out. It's worth thinking about." "Can we go, please? I'm getting nervous," says Mick Jones. "I can feel them looking at us and loading the guns. I don't want to be here when the bullets start flying."

STRUMMER AND HEADON ARE SITTING IN THE back of a limo outside the Americana Hotel the next afternoon. They've been persuaded to drive out to the radio station at Maryland State University to be interviewed. Strummer is furious.

"I hate doing this. It's just so much arse-licking. I'm not prepared to do it. It's the worst thing in the world. I'm here to do a job. And that job is to play the gig, not spend all afternoon poncing about Maryland in a limo talking to idiots. I just wanna get on with my job."

I tell him that Bob Geldof and Johnnie Fingers on their recent radio promotion tour of America visited three or four stations a day for a month.

"They must have been out of their fuckin' heads, then," he replies, tersely.

We drive through the campus of Maryland State, Strummer's mood darkening as we make our way through groups of duffle-coated students. We arrive outside the radio station building. Strummer gets out of the car and walks up the steps to the entrance. He scoops up a massive block of ice from the steps. He flings it viciously at the glass doors. It shatters with an enormous crash. The glass remains intact, but the impact draws inquisitive faces to the windows of the buildings around us.

"Place looks like a dog ranch," Strummer mutters as we step inside.

STRUMMER AND HEADON ARE BEING INTERVIEWED by a fresh-faced girl called Audrey. It's clear from her opening remarks that she doesn't know much about The Clash. Strummer and Headon are in no mood for this. They act dumb, answering her questions monosyllabically, with terse replies and occasional mumbles.

Audrey asks Strummer how The Clash got together. "We all met in the street one day," he replies. "I bumped into him, and he knew the other two," Topper adds, not very helpfully. "Me and him were odd-job merchants," Strummer says. "The other two were at art school..."

"How does an art major get into music?" Audrey asks. "Because art is so boring, innit?" Strummer says.

Audrey wants to know if there was some concept behind Give 'Em Enough Rope. Strummer thinks it over. "Concept...mmmm...no."

There was no message The Clash wanted to get over to their audience? "I just want to educate the world on how to speak Japanese," Strummer says.

"Yeah..." says Audrey, fascinated. "I didn't hear a whole lot of Japanese on the album..." She's sure, however, that there was something more to the record; some significant message. "Maybe," says Strummer. "But we don't like to brag about it..."

"How did you guys break into London?" Audrey asks. "We kicked our way in," says Strummer. "Literally?" asks Audrey, astonished.

"IT WAS A PATHETIC WASTE OF TIME. WE SHOULD never have done it. Caroline told me that radio station reached 40,000 people.

"More like 40. If that station has 40,000 listeners, I'm Bob Geldof. It was like a hospital radio, where you go in and speak to all the cripples. I've done that in my time, too."

We're sitting in the restaurant of the Americana Hotel, Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, photographer Bob Gruen and I. Strummer is still complaining bitterly about the radio interview. We are joined by Caroline Coon. Joe turns his complaints against her. I don't mean to eavesdrop, but I can't ignore their conversation.

"We shouldn't have done it," Strummer repeats for Caroline's benefit. She looks a little exasperated, but tries to be patient. "No one told me what it would be like. I shouldn't have to go driving around half of Maryland with some pansy journalists. I shouldn't have to go to these radio stations and talk to these morons. No one told me it was gonna be like this."

"I know how you feel," says Caroline.

"No. You don't. That's the point," Strummer argues. "You should sit down and think about it before you arrange these things. It would have been better to spend the afternoon in my room, reading a book or watching TV or something. We're here to do one job ó play the gig. That's what we should be concentrating on. What we should be doing is going out and playing the best rock'n'roll show these people have ever seen and piss off."

"That's what we are doing," says Caroline. "But at the same time I know that radio stations are the key to America. I'm sorry. I thought you wanted to get through to as many people as possible. I was wrong."

"Spare me the sarcasm, Caroline, will you?" says Strummer bitterly, ending the conversation.

JOE STRUMMER IS SITTING ON THE BUS AFTER the Washington gig. People clamber over him, settling down for the overnight journey to Boston, another 10-hour drive.

"I don't feel unhappy, you know," he tells Mick Jones. "But I don't feel particularly happy, either. I just feel sort of good, you know? I'm just glad that it's over."

"I thought it was a good gig," says Mick Jones. "I thought it was all right in the end. Smashed the neck right off my fucking guitar, though. S'funny, I used to hate bands that smashed their instruments."

Mick had smashed the neck of his guitar during a final onslaught on "London's Burning"/"White Riot", as The Clash's set roared to a furious, triumphant conclusion. There had been hints of disaster earlier, however.

"Hate And War" had collapsed into chaos, probably the lowest point of the show. "City Of The Dead" ó "This one's for Sid," Strummer declared ó had rescued things, and another blistering version of "Safe European Home" had continued the improvement. They lost the plot again, however, with a stumbling, ragged "Police And Thieves".

But a powerful "Capital Radio" had set up the audience for the climax and the encores. Strummer was even smiling as he left the stage with a rose in his teeth.

"I thought we played fuckin' great," says Topper. "Why be bashful?"

The weather forecast on the radio predicts snow and ice and sleet and all kinds of horrors on the way to Boston. Bo Diddley rolls his eyes and tucks into his bag for his bottle of Rock & Rye.

"It's gonna be a muthah of a ride. It's gonna be another baaaaaaad night," he declares, as cheerful as ever. "We'd best be goin' before we're frozen."

The engine of the bus starts ticking over. This is where I leave them. I stumble off the bus, into the snow. You can feel the temperature dropping, point by point, as the snow falls in thick ballooning flurries.

The bus draws away slowly on the icy road, and is quickly lost in the frozen American night.

This article first appeared in Melody Maker on February 24, 1979

Strummer Diaries of Pearl Harbour Tour

Joe agreed to keep a diary of the Pearl Harbour tour for NME

StrummerCaster | facebook.com - Facebook

Joe agreed to keep a diary of the Pearl Harbour tour for NME, published in March on the band's return.

JOE STRUMMER DIARIES OF PEARL HARBOUR TOUR

NME, March 1979

Vancouver

We meet at the airport and get on a plane to Vancouver. There seems to be quite a lot of us. We got Baker and Johnny Green our backline crew, and Rob and Adrian who are Welsh sound men.-Warren “Gandalf” Sparks lighting engineer, and Barry -scratchy’ Myers, the famous d.j. Then there’s the four of us and Caroline Croon to handle the business.

“even Aerosmith dont travel with so many people,” says Epic Records.

– “ah yes we reply,” but we’ve gqtta do it properly!”.

So, 17 hours later here we are Vancouver, Canada. No blizzards no snow no mounties—just the customs. They go through everything, confiscating studded belts, armbands, knives, cos they cant find any drugs. “if we’d known it was gonna be like this, we’d have brought some drugs for you” we tell ‘em. But they dont smile they just kick us out, knifeless and beltless.

Anyway, on with the show. We play the Agora Ballroom, which should be called the Agora cowboy saloon. Q. Are we not men? Ans. No, we are nervous.

But the show goes off real good an we meet Bo Diddley at last. Bo is coming on the tour and the next -morning a big shiny greyhound bus draws up outside the hotel with two Nashville drivers: its all aboard first stop, California.

The bus is real neat with bunks a pisshole an a tv video. Its just come off a Waylon Jennings tour. We cross the us border real easy, no, search, nothing; “then its non stop across Oregon.

– about midnight we doss in a ‘ faceless motel. I wake up and as i’m searching for some breakfast ,Ace Penna our us tour manager tells me ”hey, did ja know Sid is dead?” I grab him by the throat “what do you mean” I snarl. Then as it sinks in, i don’t want no breakfast. Our first morning in America.

California

In California the sun is shining weakly .the other people walk about the streets weakly.in fact everything here is done weakly except for when the cops get hold of you. We play the Berkeley Community Theatre on the college campus our first mistake, meaning, it ain’t our scene but we play and they dig it, tapping their biology books in time to the tunes.

Bill Graham, famous hippie promoter is promoting the show and making all the money, but he leaves town just before we arrive. Next night however we agree to play a benefit for this youth organization who are trying to-open up the s.f.scene by promoting cost price rock shows. The show is really great ,the hall is really great, the audience is really great but we gotta leave straight after the set to drive the 400 miles to Los Angeles.

Santa Monica Centre

The drive takes all night and we test out the bunks which are like comfy shelves. We hit L.A. In the-morning an we gotta play the Santa Monica Centre the same night. Me an Mick try to get a look at Hollywood’ but we collapse instead. Later Mick tells me his hotel bed just kept moving all the time.just like mine. And we work out it is because we were on the bus all night.

The Santa Monica Civic Centre turns out to be a concrete barn. I only remember the really good shows or the really bad shows. So this one must have been just o.k. Cos my memory is blank.

Right after the set, they drag in some Epic people. Quite a lot of em, line em up and try to get us to pose with them. I’m fed up with this so Ilook at Topper and he reads my thoughts ’lets fuck off out of it” he says almost simultaneously as Mick and Paul say it. So we do. When the Epic people leave they do not speak and they do not look the air is thick as they file past.

Again straight after the show we gotta hit the road. A load of fans give us a great send off so we are all in a good mood as we head for Oklahoma City.

On the bus Bo sits-up front’ slugging “rock n rye” and pouring out anecdotes from his 23 years on the road. The bus has three video tapes — Star Wars (groan) King Creole(hooray) an Nlood for Dracula. Topper sits with his feet up showing off his new spurs watching these or-playing tricks on Bo with -whom he has hit it off real great. Mick and Paul sit up the back plugged into-some jumping rockabilly, watching the endless truck tops slide by.

Drivling to Oklahoma City is like driving from London to Glasgow 10 times. So I get my head down and when I wake up we are in Texas, i know this because Johnny Green and Baker are wearing the biggest cowboy hats i ever seen.

Cleveland

Texas is one of the best places although i cant say why. We are trying to reach Cleveland Ohio hoping to catch a plane in Oklahoma City. There.s plenty of snow fog and ice at the airport but no planes. The bus has gone to Nashville for repairs so we sit and wait. 24 hours later we finally get to Cleveland, flying the roundabout route.

This guy called Larry McIntyre lost both his legs in Vietnam and when he went for a swim one day in the pool near his flat all the other residents banned him from the pool, on the grounds that it was too ‘disgusting'. So we agree to play a show for him, helping his legal costs but we don’t get to meet him, I think because, having forgot his name, I reffered to him over the PA as the guy with no legs.

Incidently, to give you some idea of the size of the country, we meet some people who had travelled 800 miles to see the show.

Washington, Boston

Next stop is Washington D.C.the bus has caught up with us so its all aboard. On this drive Bo gives up his bunk to his guitar and he sleeps. Sitting up. So does Mick because nothing on earth will tempt him to get back in one of the bunks.

Meanwhile outside its 32 below zero and as we are filling up some place the brakes freeze up and are locked solid. So we have to sit and wait a few hours for them to thaw.

Those of you who stayed awake in school will know this is the US capital. Strangely enough most of the population is black, which makes all the white politicians a little nervous. We was gonna pay a call on Jimmy Carter but he was down in Mexico,having a massage. So we played D.C. and headed out for Boston. Even though this was only last week my memory has gone .again so lets say it was okay and get on with it, which means New York! New York! (so good they named it twice etc.).

New York

New York is definately an o.k. Town. All the streets are straight and its laid out like a chess board. Some parts are dead flash like Manhattan and some parts are burnt out slums like the South Bronx.

We was playing the Palladium.a bit like the Rainbow.this was the third gig in three days.and with all the travelling we was pretty knackered. During the sound check I over heard a Yank talking to his mate “wow these guys have had it/they can hardly stand up, never mind play!”

Then Bo told me the worst audiences in the US were Detroit and NYC. “if you can play New York you can play anywhere” .

By gig time the place was packed and all the top liggers in town were there. We were plenty nervous halfway through the show i checked the audience and became convinced that we were going down like a ton of bricks. But like they say its a tough town and by the end of the day we managed to whip it out and give ‘em some of our best.

We stuck around for a day or so to see the sights like Studio 54 which is okay but nothing to write home about. To get in without paying you have to turn up with Andy Warhol.

Toronto

One more show to go, in Toronto. We fly there to do the gig which is in a cinema. The dressing room actually is a toilet and the pa sounds as if its filled with hamsters on coke. Even though it sounds rough we really enjoy it and so do they, storming the stage at the end English style. One of the funniest things i ever saw was these two bouncers trying to hold the whole audience back. The two of them! After the first number they were swamped so they gave up and went ‘ home.

And the next day so did we, to break, crack, storm or blitz America you have to work as hard as Elvis Costello, shake hands and smile like the Boomtown Rats, and sound like Dire Straights. Of the three. We could make the first but not the rest so we are going to go back to play the US agaln but we must also play Britain, Japan, Europe, Australia, and its fair shares all round. Hey! I hear they’re really rocking in Russia.

© Joe Strummer/New Musical Express

NME March 1979

New York

Meanwhile, a report from one of other correspondents on the subject of taking the Sound of the westway (ah! Memories) to the land of coke and money tells us of a press conference in an Italian restaurant in New York which came to a premature end . When Strummer jumped onto a table at the instigation of photographers, Prior to that, Paul Simonon had stated, “Mere they have a tendency to lay money on the stage

Instead of gobbing. I made 17 dollars the other day—it’s great!” Mick Jones added, “It’s easier when there’s no spit on the guitar — it gets ‘ Slippery. The only people who-gob in England are up north— they’re a bit behind/They also stated that to meet, play and travelwith Bo Diddley was “a great privilege” and that playing New York was “really an event”. For further Clash stuff, we turn you over to Joe’s own spiel on pages 19/20...

Whoops: instant Clash update (actually, we had this information all along, but it was buried under a pile of rubbish here at Triple Dot. Central and we just unearthec it with snow-ploughs): Bruce Springsteen, David Johansen andy warhol, Nico.John Cale, Robert deniro and all of Blondie all saw The Clash at the Palladium in New York.

When taken to Studio 54, the lads insisted that all of their

Entourage—even the unfashionable ones — be admitted to’the sacred portals of nyc's leading bastion of privilege. Natcho.they all were — even the bus driver — and all ended happily. They return Stateside to do it all

Again in June...

pages 19/20...

Clash-the world's best rock band

THE Clash may still be unable to de- cide whether they especially enjoyed recording their second album with American producer Sandy Pearl- man Joe Strummer described him in these pages as "the only contender" while Mick Jones told another re- porter that making the album was "misery 98 days in hell" - but old Sandy doesn't doubt for a moment that he has contributed no small effort to the production of one of the finest works of art known to Modern Man.

"I saw the Clash play in Manchester," he tells the editor of New York's Trouser Press magazine in a brief interview this month, "and thought that they were the best rock 'n' roll band in the world."

And such was Pearlman's enthusiasm for the Clash that he agreed to produce their album not for any financial consideration, but for the sheer art of it all!

"I announced very early in the project," he explains with a sincerity that touches us all, "that I thought there was no way I was going to make any money. I could have done two other things in the same

time but I did it for the art of it, to get this amazing revolutionary consciousness, which I really believe it has, onto vinyl, and make it sound good enough that American radio wouldn't throw it in the toilet bowl, and that Ameri- cans would also listen to it. "With a group like the Clash, I don't know what else you'd want to do except make them as powerful and aggressive as possible. To me, their first record was faultless material and great perform- ances recorded as if it were a three-hour demo. The first object was to strip away all the technical problems, to re- move all the veils and obstacles that were in their way The principal obstacle being, Pearlman implies, the boys' erstwhile manager, the hapless Bernard Rhodes.

It was as a result of Ber- nard's persistent interfering, Pearlman says, that he in- sisted that the group com- plete the album in America: "I told them that if they didn't get out of England they would really have trouble finishing the record because of their constant fights with Bernard."

He was asked finally by Trouser Press whether the Clash would prove too ex- treme. or too specifically English or obscure, even, for American tastes: "I don't understand every lyric on the album, I doubt that Mick or Topper or Paul underestand what every single word is. But if you fail to understand the import of what's going on in the lyrics, then you are a turnip. It would take a turnip personality to not understand what the Clash is about.

ALLAN JONES.

Q Magazine UK May 2001
2 pages - A short article about the Pearl Harbour Tour
February 1979

The Clash’s First American Tour

Bored with the USA? Not The Clash, who were holed up in Dolly Parton’s old tour bus, flat broke and frightened of their own support act, Bo Diddley.

31 JANUARY: Agora Ballroom, Vancouver, Canada

Topper Headon (drummer, The Clash):
Not long before that tour we’d fired our manager, Bernie Rhodes. His basic method o[ operation was to set us all against each other and also we didn’t seem to be getting the money we earned. We were a quarter of a million pounds in debt and our accountant told us [lat that we had to get a new manager. We brought in Caroline Coon, a journalist who was also our bass player Paul Simonon’s girlfriend.

Caroline Coon:
The Clash were close to breaking up because of the problems with their former manager and we faced all sorts of other difficulties. Our record company, CBS in London, refused to finance an American tour. Luckily, our American label, Epic [a CBS subsidiory], although a little afraid of the politics, knew this band could be huge, so I spent £3000 of my own money flying to New York where I arranged for Epic to give us $30,000 to fund the tour.

Joe Strummer:
We wanted Bo Diddley, one of the great original `6Os rock’n’rollers, to be our support act.

Caroline Coon:
When I told this to Epic, there was this gasp of horror. You can’t have Bo Diddley on the bill. He’s black. He’ll get canned off the stage.” And given that we were going to tour through the South, they had some justification for thinking that.

Joe Strummer:
We just stuck to our guns and insisted that Bo would be on the tour. Once all the details had been sorted out we flew to Vancouver, which was where we first met Bo. In the flesh, he was more awe- inspiring than we could possibly imagine. He dressed like he was ready to fight. He always had his huge sheriff’s hat on and a giant belt buckle, and you were unmistakably in the presence of someone who gave no quarter.

Bo Diddley:
When they first met me, I think they were scared to death, you know, but they finally came around and we began talkin’ and laughin’ and jokin’ and stuff. When they found out I was a cool dude, then everything was really beautiful.

Topper Headon:
The Vancouver audience liked us but they didn’t stop canning the stage. Bottles kept bouncing off us as we were playing.

2 FEBRUARY: The Clash arrive in California

Joe Strummer:
We spent most of the day after Vancouver driving down towards California in a big shiny Greyhound bus with two Southern drivers. We dossed in some faceless motel and the next morning I woke up to be told that Sid Vicious had died. I couldn’t eat my breakfast. That was our first morning in America. “He was more awe-inspiring than we could possibly imagine. He dressed like he was ready to fight.” Joe Strummer on Bo Diddley

7 FEBRUARY: Berkley Community Theatre Berkeley, California

Joe Strummer:
We started the show with I’m So Bored With The USA because we wanted to rind out if they had a sense of humour in America. And the answer was that they were double into that number. They loved it, because we were saying we were sick of the cheap rubbish on TV, all the sub-standard cultural imports that came out of America. The kids were as bored as we were with all that rubbish.

9 FEBRUARY 1979: Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica, California

Caroline Coon:
All the top record company people came to that gig, the very people I’d had to get the money from to make the tour possible, and I really wanted the band to meet with them and say thank you, but The Clash were determined to be as rude as possible.

Joe Strummer:
They hadn’t come to see us play. They’d flown across America to have their photo taken with us for the trade papers. These creeps were all lined up and we lined up in front of them, smiling, like the good little boys they wanted us to be. And, just as they’re about to take the photo, we walked out, all four of us. And they’re all looking at us with their mouths open. Straight after the show, we had to head off for the next gig, which was in Cleveland. Bo sat up front in the bus slugging Rock `n’ Rye and pouring out anecdotes from his 23 years on the road. Topper sat with his feet up showing off his new spurs, watching the videos or playing tricks on Bo.

Topper Headon:
I got on really well with Bo. He used to tuck up his guitar, Lucille, in his bunk on the bus at night, and he would sleep in his seat.

11 FEBRUARY: The tour bus is stopped by police in Texas

Caroline Coon:
Not long before we used it, the bus had been on a Dolly Parton tour. So one night, about 3am with the band asleep in the back, I was sitting up the front with the drivers. At that time,the way The Clash were dressing, in all their militaristic gear, would be anathema to any redneck cop. And we got pulled up for speeding. The cops wanted everybody out but the driver, thinking very quickly, said, Well, OK, but it’s Dolly Parton in the back. Immediately the police backed off, apologised and let us drive on. Respect for the queen of country.

12 FEBRUARY: Oklahoma City

Caroline Coon: The whole Mid-west was in the grip of icy blizzards, freezing fog, the whole bit. It was like the Arctic. Joe Strummer: We decided to abandon the bus and catch a plane in Oklahoma City to get us to Cleveland. There was plenty of snow, fog and ice at the airport, but no planes. The bus had gone, so all we could do was sit and wait.

13 FEBRUARY: Benefit concert at The Agora, Cleveland,
for US Army veteran Larry McIntyre

Joe Strummer:
This guy, Larry McIntyre, lost both his legs in Vietnam and when he went for a swim one day in the pool near his flat all the other residents banned him from the pool on the grounds that it was too disgusting. So we agreed to play a show for him, helping his legal costs.

Caroline Coon:
That was a particularly intense show. There were kids fainting in the crush at the front. Most bands didn’t provoke that kind of intense response from the crowd so the local security guys had never seen this kind of behaviour and their instinctive reaction was just to get them off the stage the quickest way possible - by hitting them. We’d seen these goons just punching them back into the audience. The Clash instructed me that this absolutely must not happen, and it was quite a struggle. We had to keep watch constantly for anybody who was in danger. If the band saw gig security getting brutal they would just stop playing and tell the bouncers to cool it.We would bring the kids from the pit carefully up onto the stage and off through the wings.

Joe Strummer:
The gig turned out great but, at the end, having forgotten McIntyre’s name, I said, Thanks everybody, this has been a benefit gig for the guy with no legs. I immediately regretted saying it and, I think as a result, we didn’t actually get to meet him. At least we raised a few bob for him.

15 FEBRUARY: Ontario Theatre, Washington DC

Caroline Coon: Having been royally ripped off in the past. Bo had to get his money in cash before he went on stage each night. So I had to go into Wells- Fargo every day to get 10 grand to give to him. It was costing The Clash a huge amount to have him on the show, but we felt the man deserved it. So he would have this big wad of money bulging in his back pocket as he performed.

Mick Jones (guitarist):
I thought it was a good gig. I thought it was alright in the end. Smashed the neck right off my fuckin’ guitar though. Funny, I used to hate bands that smashed their instruments.

17 FEBRUARY: At The Palladium, New York,
celebrities wandering around backstage include Paul Simon, Carrie Fisher, Bruce Springsteen, Andy Warhol, Debbie Harry, Nico and john Cale Tom Carson (reviewer, Rolling Stone): The Clash unleashed one of the most staggering performances I’ve seen. It was music of heroic grandeur, epic sweep and visceral force.

Joe Strummer:
We were plenty nervous. Halfway through the show I checked the audience and became convinced that we were going down like a ton of bricks. But by the end the Palladium gig was absolutely fantastic. We felt we’d achieved something there, definitely. A night of nights. The only person I remember talking to after the show was Andy Warhol, not that he says much. I got the impression of quite a sweet, shy guy.

Andy Warhol.
The Clash are cute but they all have bad teeth, sticks and stumps. And they scream about getting rid of the rich.

20 FEBRUARY: Rex Danforth Theatre, Toronto, Canada

Joe Strummer:
We flew in to do the gig, which was in a cinema. The dressing room actually was a toilet and the PA sounded like it was filled with hamsters on coke. Even though it sounded rough we really enjoyed it and the crowd stormed the stage at the end. One of the funniest things I ever saw was these two bouncers trying to hold the whole audience back. just the two of them! After the first number they were swamped so they gave up and went home. And the next day so did we, because we didn’t have the financial wherewithal to hang around. It was, like, get on the plane and fuck off home.

Caroline Coon:
Despite all the problems, we had achieved what we set out to do. The band was still functioning and we had laid the groundwork for the next tour, which was massive.

Thanks: Luke Crampton, Marcus Gray Allan lanes Miles, Gaflyd Rees, John Tobler

Clash City Talkers: New York Meets Jones And Co.

Ira Robbins, Trouser Press, June 1979

There's nothing quite as frustrating to watch as the hypocrisy of press, radio, and record companies rushing to get behind some new band that has successfully survived their initial indifference and become some sort of hot property.

The Clash, who couldn't get a record released in America until nearly two years after their first LP was unanimously acclaimed by the English press, suddenly became the darlings of the season when they toured here in February. Epic Records, which had first cleverly chosen not to release the debut LP in 1977 and then later failed to commit itself to the Clash enough to see the release of a proposed amalgamation of that album and subsequent single sides, couldn't wait to take credit for the success of the tour and the critical reception of Give 'Em Enough Rope. The few people in the press who had been supporters of the band from the start were either exploited (for promo quotes) or ignored as the publicity machine proudly pointed to a story praising the Clash in Time Magazine, while those NYC fourth estaters newly converted to the band fell all over themselves to meet, greet, eat, and interview the Clash.

In New York, the next-to-last date of the seven-city tour, the Clash headlined (and sold out) the 3,000-seat Palladium, playing a very enjoyable set which included large portions of both albums as well as non-LP single tracks. On the whole it was a really good show, though not the cosmically transcendent experience some later claimed it to have been, just an impressive showing by a great band. The afternoon following the date, an industrial age mass interview situation was arranged in the Indian restaurant connected to the hotel in which the Clash were staying. The numerous invited scribes were presented with tables of interviewees — the band themselves, their manager Caroline Coon and roadies. Brief, round-robin interviews were conducted over buffet lunch as several nervous publicists hovered about, deciding who had talked with whom long enough and in what order people should line up for the chance to chat with their favorite Clashperson. Truly a new wrinkle on the press conference concept. As various over-enthusiastic writer-types attempted to fully express the cataclysmic life-altering effect the previous eve's concert had had on them (where were they when only TP and the Village Voice's Robert Christgau had the courage to run rave stories in the US?), the tired-looking musicians ran through the repetitive interviews patiently, with much more apparent interest than I would have expected, judging by their published ability to destroy thick-headed writers with their cultivated British scorn. After some bartering with the powers that be, I managed to acquire the company, for 20 minutes each, of Paul Simenon and Mick Jones, in order to inquire about their impressions of the USA, now that they had experienced it from the stage-side. Jones seemed ebullient and much more willing to talk than on our first encounter, months earlier.

*

Is it easier to play when no one's spitting at you?

Yeah. It's easier when there's not spit on the guitar, cause you slip a lot worse if there’s gob on the guitar. Not many people spit anymore — only up in the North of England — they're a bit behind. It's not happening because we just said we don't dig it, and people have got enough respect for us that they won't do it. I've lived through the spitting. I've had bricks thrown at me, and bottles thrown at me as well. We've had some very heavy times.

Are you over your Keith Richards fixation, Mick?

Without a doubt. I still love his playing, but sometimes I think he seems like an ass. Townshend's something more, 'cause he's still there and he's one of the few people in England speaking up for us. He's standing up saying that he thinks we're the strongest band. He's amazed me — that he can get through all these years, and a death in the band, and still have some kind of vision, Ian Hunter has that too — these are the guys I dig because they didn't feel that we were pushing them out of the way. The people who feel that are the Aerosmiths and the Bostons; the people who are scared and useless anyway, and they're gonna go because of it.

Do you see yourselves as Mott the Hoople 1979?

No, but Ian Hunter has definitely blessed our band. He was there for the making of the first album — when we did ‘Police and Thieves’; he was in London for the making of the second album and we conferred. He's always been there — one of my great spiritual guidances. I was very fond of Mott. No, we didn't name ‘All the Young Punks’ for him — that was something else. We didn't have a title for that one, though that was the obvious one because of the chorus. It was nothing to do with ‘Dudes’, and the whole ‘New Boots’ thing was a joke with Ian Dury — that was a mistake as well. You can call that number anything — it's kind of a statement, like ‘Garageland’ was on the first album. It's our message of what's happening with us.

That's sort of what all of Give 'Em Enough Rope is, though...

But it's important that people don't see it as a kind of corny bio pic. Some do — some see it as a system of living. That's not all it is — we're more than that. It's all for them as well as us; it's for their imaginations. We're raising consciousness. It's the only thing that young people can do for other young people that's worth doing.

Were you scared about coming here — scared of failure?

No, it would just have meant that we wouldn't come back.

The gig last night went well — you looked like you were having fun.

It was real nice. We had a big stage to fill and we wanted everyone to feel a part of it which is really difficult. You couldn't do it if the audience was any larger. That [3,000 seats] is the most you can do it to and still communicate effectively — I'm not keen on playing Wembley Stadium. The biggest we've played was outdoors in that Rock Against Racism thing to about 50,000. Indoors, the most we can manage is about the same as the Palladium. We've worked those bigger places, but bigger shows aren't communication shows. I can't see it working. The last time they asked us to headline the Reading Festival [England's yearly mini-Woodstock — Ed.] we told them to stick it, so they got Tom Robinson or somebody like that.

Do you like the Public Image album?

It must really be hard to be him [Lydon]. I think people are slagging him off because they're not going to let him do what he wants to do. I think it's a bit of a con for the kids, that's the trouble. I really like ‘Fodderstompf’, that makes a lot of sense to me, and the single is great. There's some good songs on that record, it's just a bit overindulgent. It's too long. The audience that bought it rushed out and got it 'cause he was a Pistol, and it wasn't. But I can see his point of view.

The song on your album that I really love is ‘Stay Free’.

Yeah, even the skinheads cry over it. It really moves them. It's very difficult to do it every night; we certainly don't always do it. When we do it, it changes the whole tone of the set. It's like our ballad.

*

Talking to Paul Simenon proved somewhat less rewarding, although not uninteresting. The blond bassist, not usually a target for interviews, tends towards minimal answers, although he does seem as interested and aware of the affairs of the group as Mick and Joe Strummer (who spent part of the afternoon standing on a table, causing general consternation among the restaurant staff). After complaining about the raisins in the chicken tandoori, Simenon entertained a few questions. Well, sort of...

What do the Clash think of America?

It's been a pretty good tour, it's been alright, good reaction everywhere... It's just been a tour innit?

Is America what you expected?

Yes and no. It's just like every other place, really. It's nothing that important.

How has it been since you split with your manager, Bernard Rhodes?

It's been better — we now know what's going on. We tell Caroline what we want and it happens.

After the show last night a few people commented to me on the clothes you were wearing.

[OK, so it's a dumb question — but the bright shirts and white jeans and boots worn by Jones and Simenon almost looked like a uniform...]

What clothes? [Fair enough — Ed.]

Give 'Em Enough Rope is a tremendous album.

I think it's pretty good. A lot of people who like the second album don't like the first. I think they're both good.

Do you think American kids understand the lyrics?

Just as much as English kids can. I think they can get the general gist of the songs.

How do you feel about Bo Diddley [who opened on the Clash tour]?

I think he's great. I had never seen him before, but I had heard his records and saw him on film and I thought he was great. When I got a chance to meet him, and travel on the coach with him, it was a real privilege.

Do you care about the English press?

I don't believe it much. I used to read it but I can't be bothered anymore.

What are the plans for the next album?

We haven't really got any plans yet, but we're working on it, slowly. We're putting out an EP of ‘Capitol Radio’, ‘I Fought the Law’ and two other songs that would have been on Give 'Em Enough Rope — ‘Groovy Times Are Here Again’ and ‘Gates of the West’. CBS wants another single off the album, so they're putting out ‘English Civil War’ [#30 in NME, first week — Ed.] and another one of our old ones, ‘Pressure Drop’. The EP will come out after that.

Parting comment to Mick Jones as I am cajoled out of my seat to make way for the next tape recorder:

I think, if nothing else, the importance of the Clash would be that you force people to think.

Mick: "I hope so. This whole thing has forced me to think."

*A very interesting afternoon all round. The Clash got a lot of interviews packed away in short order without having to resort to the impersonal press conference format where everyone goes home with the same quotes. New York's press cadre got to meet and greet (not to mention eat) their newfound idols, without having to face the individual challenge of trying to query the Clash without first gaining their confidence. The Epic folks successfully whipped up a lot of excitement and temporary enthusiasm for their momentary charges. And one supposes the restaurant was well paid for its time, trouble, and curry powder.

The second US Clash tour is scheduled for June, by which time several other British groups, emboldened enough by the Clash's successful February venture to attempt headlining tours on the theatre circuit, will have been and gone. The Jam, whose American future had seemed a bit uncertain the past six months; Tom Robinson (whose first US tour was a low-key club affair); the Boomtown Rats, and a few others not yet announced are all playing the medium-sized venues where the Clash did so well. One hopes, for their sakes, that the same bandwagon jumping occurs for them, considering all three have been generally ignored (except for the Rats, whose second album was totally forgotten as an import — only its US release caused any significant radio/press interest). What all this sudden interest in good music will do for the Clash in the way of record sales here (pitifully low to date) remains to be seen. For the moment, their future in America seems possible, if not guaranteed. It just may take a while.

© Ira Robbins, 1979

When the Clash Finally Played Their First U.S. Show

Bryan Wawzenek
Published: February 7, 2019
Ultimate classic Rock

Archived PDF

The Clash were about two and a half years into their career before they played a gig on U.S. soil. The band's first American show wasn't at a grimy punk club: They were already too popular in the States. Besides, Give 'Em Enough Rope had already shown the Clash was moving beyond the rudimentary constraints of punk.

They played their first U.S. gig on Feb. 7, 1979 at the Berkeley Community Theatre in Berkeley, Calif. The 3,500-capacity venue on the campus of Berkeley High School had a rock pedigree, with past gigs by Bob Dylan, the Who and Jimi Hendrix.

But Joe Strummer was still dismayed that his band's American debut would be in a college town. "We shouldn't have played here," Strummer told Time magazine backstage. "It's a university town. They're boring snobs."

It wasn't how Strummer pictured this would go. But then, not much in recent months had gone that way for the Clash. The band had been forced by CBS Records to use Blue Oyster Cult producer Sandy Pearlman on their sophomore LP, Give 'Em Enough Rope, an album that - for its glossier, more radio-friendly sound - hadn't broken the Clash in the U.S. the way the record company had hoped. Meanwhile, the band was in debt to CBS, it had just fired manager Bernie Rhodes, and Strummer and guitarist Mick Jones were in the midst of a bout of writer's block.

Things started to get better after the Clash picked a new manager, Caroline Coon. Sure, she was bassist Paul Simonon's girlfriend, but she also listened to what the band members actually wanted to do.

Do a tour in America? With the Clash in debt, CBS didn't want to fund an overseas trek, but Coon was able to get the band's Stateside label, Epic, to pony up the cash. (This was somewhat remarkable, given that Epic had refused to release the Clash's raw debut album in 1977.) When Simonon and Strummer wanted rock 'n' roll pioneer Bo Diddley to open the band's U.S. tour, Coon found the singer-guitarist in Australia and agreed to pay him upfront.

The guys in the Clash met their tourmate in Vancouver, where the string of dates began on Jan. 31, before heading down to the States. Diddley was somewhat bewildered by his role in what the Clash termed the Pearl Harbor '79 Tour (and didn't particularly enjoy the volume at which the band played). Strummer was in shock the rock icon agreed to the job.

"In the flesh, he was more awe-inspiring than we could possibly imagine," Strummer recalled, according to Q. "He dressed like he was ready to fight. He always had his huge sheriff's hat on and a giant belt buckle, and you were unmistakably in the presence of someone who gave no quarter."

But Diddley and the group soon warmed up to one another, which helped since they all traveled on the same tour bus, which had been leased from another American music icon: Dolly Parton. Even though Strummer and friends didn't enjoy sleeping on the bus too much, they took to the on-board TV and videocassette machine, which allowed them (or at least drummer Topper Headon) to watch Star Wars over and over.

They were on their way from Canada to Northern California when they heard some awful news: Sid Vicious - former Sex Pistol and a member of the same London punk scene that had birthed the Clash - had died in New York, on the other side of the country the group was so eager to explore.

"I wake up and as I'm searching for some breakfast, Ace Penna, our U.S. tour manager, tells me ‘Hey, didja know Sid is dead?'" Strummer wrote in the tour diary he penned for NME. "I grab him by the throat. ‘What do you mean?' I snarl. Then, as it sinks in, I don't want no breakfast. Our first morning in America."

It might have been the Clash's first morning on tour America, but it wasn't actually their first trip to the country. The previous year, the band spent a little time while recording portions of Give 'Em Enough Rope in San Francisco. But that had given the Clash but a taste of the U.S. and the members were excited to see more.

Humorless fans in the Berkeley audience might not have realized how happy they were to be in America. As a poke in the ribs, the Clash began their set with "I'm So Bored With the U.S.A." It would become a tradition throughout the winter tour.

"We started the show with ‘I'm So Bored with the U.S.A.' because we wanted to find out if they had a sense of humor in America," Strummer said, via Q. "And the answer was that they were double into that number. They loved it, because we were saying we were sick of the cheap rubbish on TV, all the substandard cultural imports that came out of America. The kids were as bored as we were with all that rubbish."

The rest of the set featured a mix of songs from the Clash's first album (which had yet to be officially released in the States, though tens of thousands of import copies had been purchased by American fans), second album and recent singles - including "Clash City Rockers," "White Man (In Hammersmith Palais)" and their ferocious cover of "I Fought the Law." All three songs would end up on the U.S. version of The Clash. "White Riot" served as a frenetic encore.

"The first show was a blast," photographer Bob Gruen recalled in Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer. "The place was full of happy, dancing people. The Clash was more than your average good-time band. You not only had a good time but you also thought about issues that bothered people. Things were serious and there was a lot to be angry about, but there was also a lot to have fun about. The force of the music made it sound like a battlefield, a clash. The lights were always flashing, like explosions."

Newspaper and music magazine reviews of the show were largely positive. Some acknowledged that the U.S. audiences were more subdued than British punk fans, and the Clash appreciated that no one tried to spit on them as they performed. Even though Strummer would acknowledge that the university crowd loved the Clash's first U.S. show (they were "tapping their biology textbooks in time with the tunes" he snarked in his diary), he hadn't come to America to connect solely with the student population.

And so, in defiance of promoter Bill Graham, the Clash hastily organized a second show in the San Francisco area for the next evening. This one would take place at Geary Temple (which had once been Graham's old Fillmore West), cost half as much as the first show and benefit a youth organization and the homeless. The band's second concert in America was a charity benefit - a fact the Clash wore proudly.

"The show is really great, the hall is really great, the audience is really great," Strummer wrote, "but we gotta leave straight after the set to drive the 400 miles to Los Angeles."

Having only toured Britain and Europe, the guys in the Clash were surprised at how spread out the cities in the U.S. could be. Four hundred miles was nothing. After leaving L.A. to drive across the Southwest, the band became shocked by the expanse of empty space. America was more normal, more boring, than Strummer had expected, but it was still the place that had given them so much of the music he loved.

"When you've been into American music as long as I have, to go there is a trip," Strummer said in the 2000 Clash documentary Westway to the World. "To ride across the country, even better, on a bus is another trip. Fantastic. I got endless amounts of inspiration from it."

The Clash's primary songwriters - Strummer and Jones - were creatively rejuvenated not just by experiencing America for themselves but also by the reception they received from fans during the nine-date tour that took them from Vancouver to California, Cleveland to Washington D.C., New York and Toronto.

Later the band would write, record and release London Calling, a magnum opus that featured more than a little American influence with its R&B and rockabilly sounds. They also returned to North America for a second, more extensive tour. And more inspiration

C12 - EDMONTON JOURNAL, Friday, February 16, 1979

Rock Talk By Lisa Robinson

"We've always been a punk band and we always will be." claimed Clash bassist Paul Simonon when we talked recently in London. "I don't care what that term means in America, I'm proud of it."

Three years ago in Manchester, England. I saw the Clash for the first time. They were just a baby band, and had been together for only a few months when they were thrown into the international media circus that was the Sex Pistols Anarchy in the U.K. tour.

Even then, with their raw, slightly haphazard, 30-minute opening set, they took my breath away.

Now the Clash (Mick Jones, Joe Strummer, Paul Simonon. Nicky "Topper" Headon) have arrived at last for their first U.S. tour, and within a few weeks audiences in eight lucky cities will get a chance to see the British band that has been called "rock and roll's last hope."

Unlike many punk bands who tried for too much, too soon, the Clash basn't made many mistakes. They never strayed far from their audience young, working class English kids like themselves. And their attitude remains rebellious, idealistic, uncompromising in a search for solutions. Paul Simonon's personal "history" is not unlike others who, out of work and disillusioned, drifted into punk bands. "I left school, worked in a factory, got bored and went to art college so I could do some drawing," he said. "Regular art college wouldn't accept me, so I found a private art college

and the government paid for me to go there.

"I was there for about a year when I got bored with painting. so I started going to football matches and hanging out in the streets. I met Mick and he took me over to the studio where he played with his mates. The first gig I ever done I had only been playing bass for six months. I had to get another member of the band to tune the bass for me."

Paul can tune the bass now, and a lot has happened to the band who got kicked out of, or had to hide in, their hotel rooms during that now-legendary Anarchy tour. But despite the face that their second album (Give Em Enough Rope) entered the British charts at No. 2, success has not changed the Clash.

"I don't feel like a rock star," said Simonon, "I feel like some ordinary geezer. We don't ride around in limousines, drinking champagne. I don't care about stuff like that. I despise all that, it makes me sick.

As for the alleged bottle-throwing, spitting and violence that accompanied Clash concerts?

"That was just the newspapers making more out of it than there was. Basically, they didn't like it, so they enlarged on everything that was happening. The stuff that happened was just what you'd get at a normal rock concert anyway."

The Clash is here. Their performances are frenzied affairs, nonstop assaults on the senses. Stay tuned, and watch out.

20 - L.A. WEEKLY, Music - by Don Snowden

The Clash In L.A.: Just The Best

THE ARRIVAL IN L.A. OF THE Clash, the hot English rock band, had been eagerly anticipated by local hard-core rockers ever since the release of the band's debut album almost two years ago. Coming here at the end of a particularly slack period of concert action only served to fan the flames higher. The level of expectancy in the lobby before the set was the highest I've ever witnessed at a rock show. And The Clash more than lived up to expectations.

The Pistols may have sparked the whole new English scene and grabbed the most notoriety, but The Clash is-and always has been the premier punk rock band. You can hear traces of the early Who and Kinks and a heavy dose of Mott the Hoople's influence in the band's music. Add Joe Strummer's 1984-is-just-around-the-corner- so-you-better-make-your-stand-now lyrics, and you have a potent combination of words and sound.

From the opening riff of "I'm So Bored With The U.S.A." to the closing chords of "White Riot," The Clash set was an onslaught of pure energy by a band that resembles a rock 'n' roll attack squad. Lead guitarist Mick Jones leaped and sprinted from one end of the stage to the other while bassist Paul Simonon coolly loped around front stage. And I've never seen a performer so completely wrapped up in his music physically as Strummer-slashing away at his battered Telecaster, mouth agape, left leg pumping like a piston and eyes often wide open with the look of a man who's seen his worst nightmares come to life ten feet in front of his face.

High Spots

TRYING TO PINPOINT THE highlights of the set is an impos- sible task, but "Capitol Radio," a vitriolic attack on the state of English radio that was written well before Elvis Costello's "Radio, Radio," stood out. The other high spots point to another of the Clash's strengths: the rhythm section of Simonon and drummer Topper Headon is funky enough to make The Clash one of the few new bands capable of effectively tackling reggae ("Police and Thieves," "White Man In Hammersmith Palais") and New Orleans rhythm-and-blues ("Julie's in the Drug Squad") stylings.

At times The Clash seemed to be struggling against being overwhelmed by the tremendous force it unleashed. But even on the brink of chaos, it thrived. Even stopping dead in the middle of their best song, "Complete Control," to aid a fan who was getting squashed at the front of the stage, didn't faze them. Jones simply began the song from where they'd left off, and by the end they had reached the level of intensity which characterized the entire set.

At a post-gig press conference, Simonon said The Clash wants to be the best rock 'n' roll band there is. I hope they hold onto that attitude. But Simonon should know that The Clash already is the best rock 'n' roll band in the world. Just no contest, Jack.

(Jones, Headon, Strummer and Simonon)

14 - Sunday, March 4, 1979 Green Bay Press-Gazette

The Clash punk band and proud of it

By LISA ROBINSON

LONDON "We've always been a punk band, and we nd we always will be," claimed Clash bassist Paul Simonon. "I don't care what that term means in America, I'm proud of it.

Three years ago in Manchester, England, I saw the Clash for the first time. It was just a baby band, and had been together for only a few months is when it was thrown into the international media circus that was the Sex Pistols" "Anarchy in the U.K." tour.

Even then, with its raw, slightly haphazard, 30-minute opening set, the band took my breath away.

Now the Clash (Mike Jones, Joe Strummer, Paul Simonon, Nicky "Topper" Headon) has arrived for its first U.S. tour, and audiences in eight lucky cities are getting a chance to see the British band that has been called "rock and roll's last hope."

Unlike many punk bands who tried for too much, too soon, the Clash hasn't made many mistakes. It never strayed far from the audience young, working class English kids like themselves. And the attitude remains rebellious, idealistic, uncompromising in a search for solutions.

Simonon's personal "history" is not unlike others who, out of work and disillusioned, drifted into punk bands. "I left school, worked in a factory, got t bored bored and went to art college so I could do some drawing," he said. "Regular art college wouldn't accept me, so I found a private art college and the government paid for me to go there.

"I was there for about a year when I got bored with painting, so I started going to football matches and hanging out in the streets. I met Mick, and he took me over to the studio where he played with his mates. The first gig I ever done I had only been playing bass for six months. I had playing to get another member of the band to tune the bass for me.

Simonon can tune the bass now, and a lot has happened to the band which got kicked out of, or had to hide in, hotel rooms during that now-legendary "Anarchy" tour. But despite the fact that the band's second album ("Give Em Enough Rope") entered the British charts at No. 2, success has not changed the Clash.

"I don't feel like a rock star," said Simonon, "I feel like some ordinary geezer. We don't ride around in limousines, drinking champagne. I don't care about stuff like that. I despise all that; it makes me sick.

He admitted that the English punk scene had changed. "Lots of groups had to split up. But for the bands still going, there's the same kind of enthusiasm and energy. Perhaps not so much in London, but in the provinces it's really great.

As for the alleged bottle throwing, spitting and violence that accompanied Clash concerts? "That was just the newspapers making more out of it than there was. Basically, they didn't like it, so they enlarged on everything that was happening. The stuff that happened was just what you'd get at a normal rock concert anyway."

Why did it take three years for the band to get to America The vague and rather unpredictable people formerly associated with the Clash used to say, "They're not ready for America and America's not ready for them."

"In a way, that was our strategy," Paul says now. "We just held back. We did d want to come here, but we didn't care that much. We wanted to play around our own country and get better.

"When we first started to play with groups like the Pistols and the Damned and those other groups, there was a l a big rush to see who could get a single out first, who could get an album out first, and who could get to America first." (The answer in all three categories was the Damned, who are no longer together. Enough said?) The Clash is here. Its performances are frenzied affairs, non-stop assaults on the e senses. Stay tuned, and watch out.

(The Clash From left, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Joe Strummer and Nicky Headon.)

Records in REVIEW

The Clash GIVE 'EM ENOUGH ROPE (Epic JE 35543)

By WARREN GERDS

Oh, you can call them Clash. Or you can call them trash. Or you can call them punk. Or you can call them junk. But doesn't have to call 'em good. 

This is supposed to be a good punk rock band. ("Good" and "punk" may be contradictions in themselves.) If this is good, "awful" will have to be redefined.

Granted, the music is feverish. It does rock and sock. It is also very simple, and not especially imaginative.

But what's with the lead singer, Joe Strummer? If it weren't for the titles typed on the cover mer such beauts as " "Drug Stabbing Time" you'd have little idea what he's singing. If you can't understand, what's the point?

MUSIC BEAT - WEEKEND VISTAS - Friday, Feb. 16, 1979-5

'Clash' -rock's new revolutionaries

Evan Hosie it's only ROCK'N'ROLL

"If you don't like The Clash you don't like rock n' roll."
-Sounds Magazine.

The English new wave band, The Clash, heralded by many British papers as "The best rock n' roll band in the world," played their first American date at Berkeley Community Theatre Wednesday night. The next night, instead of heading down to L.A. as planned, they performed at a benefit organized by some local punk bands, at the Geary Theatre.

After making headlines in England, the suspense in this country had built to an incredible pitch. The Clash are thought by many to be the successors of the Sex Pistols; the embodiment of the new wave movement. But though the

The Clash share many qualities with the Sex Pistols energizing, powerful music with a political slant they will not detonate themselves as did the explosive Pistols.

The Pistols never seemed to take their music very seriously, as Johnny Rotten informed us sarcastically in "No Fun. But the Clash lead singer Joe Strummer, guitarist and vocalist, Mick Jones, bassist Paul Simonon, and drummer Nicky "Topper" Headon are deadly serious about their music, its effect on people, and their career. Though they may never get the kind of publicity the Pistols attracted, they will eventually have a much greater, long-term effect on modern music than the Sex Pistols.

C.B.S. Records, one of the biggest conglomerates, signed the band after watching them carefully for more than a year. They saw their first LP (which is available here only as an import) sell out of record stores, read wildly enthusiastic reviews of the band's performances, and felt the tremors. Still, whether they can break the band in America is questionable. As has been proven innumerable times in the past, a band can be gigantic in Europe and sell three records in the States. This all-important American break-through tour is complicated because many radio stations have a preconceived idea of the band as a spitting, dangerous, and destructive punk band. Hence, many radio stations haven't even listened to the record. And everyone knows that without radio airplay a band can never get the exposure it needs. Any band tagged with the punk/new wave label hits a brick wall of prejudice and ignorance in American radio. (Elvis Costello neatly sidestepped the wall by emphasizing that he was not new wave, though he was originally signed to fill C.B.S.'s quota of new wave bands.)

(THE CLASH "energize them" to a certain awareness)

Some people, who have listened to the record, take issue with the lyrics (though they are generally difficult to hear.) On "Guns On The Roof (of the world)" The Clash could mobilize an army. Joe Strummer sings:

"They tortured all the women and children,
And then they put the men to the gun,
Because across that human frontier,
Freedoms always on the run.
Guns guns shaking in terror,
Guns guns killing in error,
Guns guns in guilty hands,
Guns guns shatter the land."

Some of the resistance to this group stems from people's fear that the Clash are advocating revolution, and could be a catalyst in a country like England which is in a dangerous, primed state to begin with.

Their producer Sandy Pearlman (manager/producer of Blue Oyster Cult, the Dictators) whom I interviewed recently. said about the band: "The Clash make fundamentally revolutionary music. It's designed implicitly to energize certain mental states within the consciousness of their audiences. It's the spirit of freedom in a society which is incredibly debased and corrupted, but even so, has infinite opportunities for exaltation.

If there's a message it's that there is a constant need, no, an absolute requirement for people to "make the most of these opportunities, the opportunity for choices to stay free."

Maybe that's what they mean in their song "Stay Free;" all they're advocating is taking chances, not getting stuck in the rat race, even if you are (as two of them were) born in a London slum.

But labels, lyrics and politics aside, the bottom line is that the Clash makes dynamic, volatile music that is better than a shot of adrenalin. On the new record, Give 'Em Enough Rope, (incidentally, the cover was done by photographer Hugh Brown who lives in Albany) every single song. with the possible exception of "Julie's In The Drug Squad," delivers with an intensity and strength unheard on any past record. Anyone who can sit still through "Tommy Gun" must be in advanced stages of rigor mortis.

At Wednesday's show at the Berkeley Community theatre the hard-core punk fans, some even wearing one or two symbolic safety pins, mingled with people like the conservatively dressed reporter from Time Magazine. When the foursome hit the stage people pushed down the aisles, going right over the guards in some cases. Security wisely gave up trying to stem the tide of fans. Before they'd even struck the first chord the audience up front was on their feet, then standing on their chairs, so that everyone ended up balancing on their seats if they wanted to see. It remained that way for the entire show.

The Clash didn't disappoint. Mick Jones bounced around the stage tossing off great guitar lines (does anyone realize what a great guitarist this. English lad is?). Joe Strummer sang like it was his last night, Paul kicked in a heavy bass line and "Topper" kept the band anchored. Though the sound was poor and the mixing even worse, the drums were mixed way too high the energy and charisma of the band superceded everything. They played almost everything they've recorded, including their anthem "Complete Control," which was a definite high point, plus a dynamite cover of "I Fought The Law."

The following night they seemed much more at home at the Geary Theatre which is just next door to the People's Temple (a fact which delighted the band.) It was the next best thing to seeing them in a small club in England. Their soundmen said later that it was one of the best shows they've ever seen them do. The audience was free to jump and dance, which contributed to the mood.

Directly after the show the band boarded their bus and headed down to L.A. for their show there the next night, at Santa Monica Civic. (I heard later that they were able to get the promoter to remove all the seats in the Civic.)

One last point. What is being said about the Clash, about their being a dangerous influence, a no-good punk band that just wants to destroy everything sacred etc., etc., was said about the Stones when they started. Basically, the Clash is returning to the fundamental philosophy behind rock n' roll. Rock n' roll always has been and should always be a revolutionary force, not necessarily to incite people to burn down cities, but certainly to "energize them," as their producer says, to a certain awareness. The Stones do it, the Beatles did it, and now it's the Clash's turn.

Pop beat - D11 = THE SUN, Sunday, February 25, 1979

Punk band touring here, has limited expectations

By ERIC SIEGEL

They look like a latter-day version of the Dead End Kids and sound like the caterwauling of alley cats set against the crumpling of steel girders.

They are Nicky (Topper) Headon, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Joe Strummer collectively known as the Clash. They are, if not the absolute last of the British punk bands, then certainly the last of any consequence.

The Clash has just completed a seven city tour of the United States following the release of their first American album, "Give 'Em Enough Rope," including a sold-out show recently at Washington's Ontario Theater.

Given the Clash's popularity in England ("Give 'Em Enough Rope" entered the British charts at No. 2) and critical acclaim in the United States (including a favorable review of the album in these pages last month), an obvious question becomes what expectations the group has for achieving here the kind of popularity it enjoys abroad, something no punk group has been able to do.

"Pretty limited expectations," answered Strummer, lead singer, chief spokesman and, with guitarist Jones, author of the group's sometimes angry, sometimes ironic, often lyrically obtuse but always powerful songs of a world in confusion. Dressed offstage in a nondescript sport coat with a flower in the left lapel, over an open-collar knit shirt, with slick-backed black hair, Strummer looks the part of the quintessential British working-class anti-hero popularized in the Fifties novels of John Wain, Kingsley Amis and Alan Sillitoe.

No threat to the Bee Gees

"If you want to sell records, you have to be prepared to lick your way to the top, smile and shake hands," he continued. "None of us like that. So I don't think we can sell that many records [in the United States). As far as being the next Bee Gees, forget it."

The Clash's show is not exactly designed to be ingratiating to a wider audience, either. At the Ontario, the group opened its straight-on attack with "I'm So Bored With the USA." The song off their first British album entitled "The Clash" rails against the evils of the exportation of American culture and politics.

The pace was frantic, with one high-energy song immediately following another and the best saved for last: a four-song encore that begins with "Julie's in the Drug Squad" arguably one of the best cuts on "Give 'Em Enough Rope" and one that proves that the Clash, and Strummer particular, is capable of subtlety as well as bombast and ends with the raw, angry "White Riot," a classic song of rebel-

One of the more interesting aspects of the Clash tour was the presence of the near-legendary Fifties-rocker Bo Diddley as one of two opening acts. Musically, the similarities between Diddley and the Clash were striking; both emphasized spare, often frenetic guitar work. But where the lyrics to Diddley's songs are simple, often silly, those of the Clash are pointed.

"We went looking for him," Strummer said, explaining how Diddley came to be part of the tour. "It's a dream of a lifetime to be on a bus with Bo. It's like rolling the clock back. He's made so many great records. They're ones we're constantly listening to."

The burden of rebellion

Strummer said the members of the Clash began listening to Diddley after listening to groups like the Rolling Stones and the Who and then discovering "who they got their music from rockabilly black music.'

The Clash formed just after the Sex Pistols. Within a year, as the Sex Pistols degenerated, the Clash became Britain's pre-eminent punk band.

Bearing the burden of rebellion of British youth was bound to produce its own conflicts. Already there have been com plaints in the British press that the Clash has lost a lot of its hard-toned edge on its second album, a criticism Strummer dis misses as spurious.

"The ones who saw us two years ago want to have something over the people who're discovering us now," he said.

That criticism hints at what would seem to be an essential artistic dilemma of punk rock: Can a group continue to de fine the world for an angry, frustrated underclass when its very success removes it farther and farther from those for whom its music is intended?

"How can we possibly be as hungry and lean as we were?" Strummer asked in mocking response. "I try and have at least one meal a dav.

"Punk is not a limitation," he added. "It's merely a convenient word. When we go in a studio, anything goes, even if it comes from 30 trumpets.

In fact, though the Clash's songs suggest otherwise, Strummer professes to be less interested in making a political and social statement than he is in making music in his own mold.

"When you turn on the radio, where's the rock and roll?" he asked.

Not ready for prime time?

That leads back to the original question about the level of popularity the group's music can achieve in the United States.

"I think the fans in America are miles ahead of the radio programmers," Strummer said, suggesting the Clash could have more than a limited appeal if only given the proper airplay, a lament not restricted to punk groups.

Another theory is that the Clash may be ahead of America, that the rebelliousness that British youth find so appealing may not play so well here.

But that may change as good jobs here become scarcer and opportunity and affluence dwindle, leading today's prospective business administration major to become tomorrow's malcontent.

In the meantime, the Clash is proving a point for anyone who cares to look and listen. The point was made at the Ontario Theater, where a television crew came to film Bo Diddley and left before the Clash ever appeared. This came as no surprise

to a representative from Epic Records, the group's label, who said, "I wouldn't even try and get the Clash on TV."

The point is, sometimes the best rock and roll is not always fit for prime time.

(The Clash, from left: Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Joe Strummer, Nicky (Topper) Headon.)

'Secret' history of The Clash penned by Oberlin College assistant dean

Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Joe Strummer, Terry Chimes

In this 1982 image released by Epic/Legacy Records, members of The Clash, from left, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Joe Strummer, and Terry Chimes are shown backstage at Shea Stadium in New York. (AP Photo/Epic/Legacy Records, Bob Gruen) ** NO SALES ** (Bob Gruen)

Randal Doane, 46, is Oberlin College's assistant dean of studies, responsible for academic advising and coordinating leaves and withdrawals for students. He also oversees a peer adviser program for first-year students and the senior symposium, a one-day conference in April featuring 50 seniors presenting their research to the campus.

He is in his ninth year at Oberlin College, and has lived in Oberlin for 15. He has a wife, and 10-year-old daughter. He also claims "amateur bike mechanic" as a hobby.

Doane also is the author of "Stealing All Transmissions: A Secret History of the Clash." The English punk band -- the classic lineup includes Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Nicky "Topper" Headon -- became widely known as "The Only Band That Matters" in the 1980s, influenced a generation of musicians who followed and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003.

Doane recently gave a talk on his book at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Archive. Doane spoke with Plain Dealer reporter Michael Heaton.

Q: When did the book come out?

A: October 2014.

Q: What kind of reviews has it gotten?

A: Los Angeles magazine listed "Stealing" among their best-of-2014 books on music, and I figure I'm the only writer to secure high praise in Counterfire, a socialist magazine, and PJ Media, a bastion for American conservatism. The reviewers who understand that it's not a Clash biography review it quite favorably.

Q: How did your membership in the Boy Scouts at age 13, in Stockton, California, bring you to The Clash?

When I was 13, I toured Europe and England with the Boy Scouts of America, and the eldest son of my host family in Coventry, England, made me a mix tape with tracks by The Specials, The Selecter, Echo and the Bunnymen, and The Clash. Once I returned to the states, and learned more about the do-it-yourself ethos of punk, my days as a scout were numbered.

Q: Did you ever see them play live?

A: I didn't, alas. My best opportunity to see The Clash was in Stockton, in 1984, after Mick Jones and Topper Headon had been kicked out of the band. I took a pass. I can't tell you why exactly, since nearly everyone in my high school went to the show. Maybe it's because nearly everyone in my high school went to the show.

Q: Do you remember some flash point at which you knew you had to write this book?

A: I had some interest from The New Yorker about a 10,000-word version of this story, but not sufficient interest, apparently. (I understand getting rejected by The New Yorker is not an exclusive club.) After that, I did some more research, conducted more interviews, and produced what I believe is a tidy 130-page book.

Q: You have a PhD. Was it difficult to shake a scholarly writing style when writing this book?

A: Um, no. I've always written with the hopes of being understood.

Q: Are you a secret punk in academic clothing?

A: If I told you, it wouldn't be a secret.

Q: What in your opinion is the funniest scene in the book?

A: That's a good question, and a difficult choice. The Clash and their entourage were full of compelling, hilarious characters, and seemed to bring out those qualities in their primary handlers at Epic (Records), too. One scene that's particularly fun entailed Dan Beck and Bob Feineigle at Epic Records doing an end-around on the staff in charge of product management for black radio, in order to get the song "The Magnificent Seven" to the local stations, including WBLS. Lo and behold, when The Clash came to New York in May 1981 for a three-week residency, WBLS had "The Magnificent Seven" in heavy rotation. There are good tales of mayhem in Barry "The Baker" Auguste's foreword, too.

Randal Doane is the author of "Stealing All Transmissions: The Secret History of the Clash." Courtesy

Q: Why do you think living band members didn't want to talk to you about the book?

A: I decided not to contact the living members of the band, actually. There is so much material in the archives and in great books about that era, and I'm confident that those materials are likely more accurate than the memories of Messrs. Jones, Simonon, and Headon. Also, each tale recounted to me by Barry "The Baker" Auguste, former back line roadie for The Clash (and author of the foreword), checked out perfectly. I couldn't have asked for a better comrade in the trenches of punk historiography.

Q: What was so special about The Clash that brings them such fevered following to this day?

A: I like Robert Christgau's description of The Clash as "politically effective and aesthetically effective." Their politics were great, from the get-go to the not-quite-glorious end, and they grew so much musically from album to album, thanks especially to Mick Jones and Topper Headon. Headon could play in any style, and that made it possible on "London Calling" for them to perform rock steady, reggae, ska, and straight ahead rock 'n' roll, and on "Sandinista!" to perform dub, hip-hop, disco, and soul tunes. Minus some of the filler on "Sandinista!" that's eight great album sides in 12 months. Who else has come close?

It's not just the music, though. Strummer especially wanted to get to know their fans, and -- like good punks -- The Clash rejected the growing divide between performers and fans that plagued the stadium rock acts of the late 1970s. In terms of that ethos: they started out that way, and ended that way. I wish there was more footage from their last gigs together, when they hit the road in England with plenty of guitars and no money (by choice), and they had to busk for their daily keep.

Q: What was so important about the free format NYC radio scene in the '70s that made the Clash's success possible?

A: Free-form radio started in the late 1960s, and WNEW in New York City had some of the biggest names in radio through the 1970s and 1980s. These guys played The Who, Sinatra, John Coltrane, readings by Shel Silverstein, and one of the key programs at WNEW was their "Live at the Bottom Line" series. It got started with Melissa Manchester, featured Bruce Springsteen just before the release of "Born to Run," and in 1976 included shows by a young Billy Joel, Donovan, and Jerry Jeff Walker -- the "Mr. Bojangles" guy. Meg Griffin joined the station in 1977 while she was in her mid-20s, and she would go to concerts at CBGB and elsewhere and, on her overnight shift, fill the airwaves with tracks by Talking Heads, Television, Blondie, and even The Clash. Her fellow DJs resisted it at first, but she kept playing punk, as did DJs at WLIR. And local rock scribes started writing about great discs from local bands and stuff arriving on import, and the fan base for The Clash and punk writ large kept growing. So, with The Clash coming back to New York for the second time in 1979 to play two shows at The Palladium, it was an easy sell for Harvey Leeds of Epic Records to get WNEW to do a live simulcast that reached from Philadelphia to southern Connecticut.

Q: Why is the subtitle the SECRET history of the Clash? Why is it secret?

A: It's logical for punk history fans to make the connection between "Stealing" and Greil Marcus' brilliant "Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century," which includes some of the best writing on punk ever. I had "The Secret History," a novel by Donna Tartt, in mind when I came up with the title, actually. It's a secret of sorts since the big biographies on The Clash (Pat Gilbert's is my fave) effectively missed this story, as did Marcus Gray in his 560-page book about "London Calling."

Q: How difficult was it to get permission from Pennie Smith to use her iconic photo from the cover of "London Calling" as the cover of your book?

A: The difficulty was in finding Pennie, actually, and once that happened, and we got to talking, she was happy to license my use of the greatest photograph in rock history.

Q: What new music do you like? Are you still actively listening to the new?

A: I'm a big fan of Hamell on Trial, and I just picked up Sleater-Kinney's new LP on vinyl. I listen to stuff my 10-year-old daughter likes, too, including St. Vincent, Santigold, Rubblebucket, and The Julie Ruin.

Q: How does the music we listen to today have an influence on the written word and is that any different than when the Clash was coming up?

A: The digital era is fantastic, don't get me wrong. The quantity of good music today is astounding. In the final years of the analog era, there was simply less music and less writing about music and, depending upon where you lived, less access to both. So, if your tastes were not mainstream, it was easier to construct a consensus of fellow listeners and readers around bands like The Clash, and bands on the SST, IRS, or 4AD labels. Today, the access is phenomenal, but I believe these conditions don't foster the devoted, repetitive listening and depth of fandom when you're listening to one, maybe three, new LPs at a time.

Q: Why do you think the Clash broke up?

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A: In part, I suspect, because they never took a break. It was tour, rehearse, record, and tour, rehearse, and record. I think this was Strummer's doing, but Jones worked seven days a week during the lead-up to "London Calling." Had they taken a break early on, maybe Headon would have pursued proper treatment for his drug problem, and maybe Jones wouldn't have been so chronically difficult. "Rock 'n' roll Mick" was not an easy guy to work with, but music-wise, he brought the goods.

Q: Are you working on another book?

A: I'm working on a screenplay adaptation of "Stealing," hoping to cast Justin Bieber as the young Joe Strummer -- just kidding, Clash-o-philes! Seriously, though: If The Specials' Jerry Dammers were to inquire about collaborating on his memoir, I'd sign on in a heartbeat.

Clash Crests on New Wave Punk Wave

Los Angeles Times 1/20/79

Even with Elvis Costello's five previously announced concerts, February promised to be an exciting period for rock in Southern California. But now we can look forward to a bonus: The Clash has just been signed for a Feb. 9 appearance at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.

Tickets for the Clash concert - part of the English band's first U.S. tour - will go on sale Monday. Tickets also go on sale that day for two of Costello's shows: Feb. 14 at the Long Beach Arena and Feb 18 at San Diego's Fox Theater.

Carl ("Blue Suede Shoes") Perkins will open both days for Costello, while another rock pioneer - Bo Diddley - will be with the Clash. Tickets for Costello's show at the Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara go on sale Jan. 29. Tickets for his two Palomino shows on Feb. 16 won't be available until next month. With the breakup last year of the Sex Pistols, the Clash became the most formidable of the British punk/new wave outfits.

The group - featuring singer-guitarists Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, bassist Paul Simonon and drummer Topper Headon - reflects much the same aggressive, socio-political drive as the Pistols. But there's a difference. While the Sex Pistols paired confrontation onstage and offstage to an ultimately self-destructive degree, the Clash reportedly operates from a more stable base.

The music is just as independent and intense, but there's not the same 24-hour obsession with a notorious image. The Clash's first album is among the most dynamic rock LP's of the '70's, but the production work was considered primitive by even the band's own U.S. record company. Thus , the label, Epic, didn't even release the album in this country. Epic, however, has released the Clash's second album, "Give 'Em Enough Rope."

Despite priduction assistance from Sandy Pearlman (who has worked with the commercially viable Blue Oyster Cult band), the new album has met with much of the same radio resistance that kept the Pistols largely unheard here. So, the Clash's only way to convince the American rock audience that it offers a vaild alternative to such lumbering best-sellers such as Boston and Foreigner is to tour. That begins Jan. 31 in Vancouver B.C.

Hilburn, Robert. Los Angeles Times January 20, 1979
Los Angeles Times 1/20/79

Clash: New Import for Rockers

BY ROBERT HILBURN - Times Pop Music Critic

VANCOUVER, B.C.-A year ago, the ballroom manager would have been squirming, the press table jammed and the local vice squad on alert. America, then, was braced for the Sex Pistols' "invasion."

When Britain's "notorious" Pistols played San Antonio, Tex., in January, 1977, the policereacting to exaggerated news accounts about unruliness at the Pistols' English concerts-warned in a newspaper story that they'd be on hand to guard against lewdness and violence.

But things were different Wednesday night when the Clash-the successor in England to the now-defunct Pistols' punk throne-began its first North American tour in the faded elegance of the downtown Commodore ballroom, which once hosted dance bands like Russ Morgan and Tommy Dorsey.

The hall manager this time was relaxed, the press representation minimal and the vice squad nowhere in sight. The only music story in the local paper the day of the concert was a report about a symphony strike in nearby Seattle.

The audience reaction, too, was different from that on the Pistols' tour. Instead of hurling insults and hundreds of beer cans at the band, the capacity 1,000 fans simply cheered. For the most part, this was just a rock 'n' roll show-which was exactly what the Clash wanted.

Please Turn to Page 21, Col. 1

(JOE STRUMMER opening Clash's North American tour. Times photo by Larry Armstrong)

While musically akin to the Pistols, the Clash WANTED*****

Los Angeles Times, R Fri., Feb. 2, 1979-Part IV 25

1,000 CHEER

Clash: a New Rock Import

BY ROBERT HILBURN Times Pop Music Critic

VANCOUVER, B.C. A year ago, the ballroom manager would have been squirming, the press table jammed and the local vice squad on alert, America, then, was braced for the Sex Pistols' "invasion."

When Britain's "notorious" Pistols played San Antonio, Tex., in January, 1977, the police reacting to exaggerated news accounts about unruliness at the Pistol's English concerts warned in a newspaper story that they'd be on hand to guard against lewdness and violence.

But things were different Wednesday night when the Clash the successor in England to the now-defunct Pistols' punk throne began its first North American tour in the faded elegance of the downtown Commodore ballroom, which once hosted dance bands like Russ Morgan and Tommy Dorsey.

The hall manager this time was relaxed, the press representation minimal and the vice squad nowhere in sight. The only music story in the local paper the day of the concert was a report about a symphony strike in nearby Seattle.

The audience reaction, too, was different from that on the Pistols' tour. Instead of hurling insults and hundreds of beer cans at the band, the capacity 1,000 fans simply cheered. For the most part, this was just a rock 'n' roll show which was exactly what the Clash wanted.

While musically akin to the Pistols, the Clash which will be at the Santa Monica Civic next Friday does not exhibit, on stage or off, that band's apparent obsession with confrontation. It states its case with music, not image.

Still, the Clash has its irreverent side. When putting together a tour-button slogan that would reflect its "attack" on U.S. pop-rock lethargy, the band didn't shy away from testing wider U.S. sensibilities. The slogan: "Pearl Harbor 79." The Pistols' Johnny Rotten would have been proud.

For a while Wednesday, it looked as if the Clash's longawaited debut here was going to be more of a whimper than a bang.

The rock quartet is the most celebrated of the new British punk/new wave outfits, and the first 40 minutes of its set did have some lively moments.

But, "the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band? Come on, now. That claim from some British critics and Clash fans seemed shaky indeed as the group headed off stage. Despite the frantic pogo-dancing near the edge of the stage. the audience seemed only mildly stirred.

It was hard, based on this performance, even to put the group in the same class as the Pistols, the band that inspired the Clash and the rest of the British punk move ment.

THEN, it happened.

Returning for the first encore, the Clash went through four blistering, exquisitely designed songs-including the mocking "I'm So Bored With the U.S.A." and the anthemlike "White Riot" that were a torrent of sheer rock 'n' roll joy.

In that 20-minute span, the Clash's aggressive music and socio-cultural themes merged into the kind of uplifting blend of ideas and sounds that the band is known for in Britain.

When the Clash left the stage, British disc jockey Barry Myers-who is traveling with the band to program the intermission music-put on a Rolling Stones record, and the connection was perfect.

More than any other current band, the Clash has what appears to be the skills and instincts to follow up on what had seemed in the Sex Pistols' grasp last year. It may eventually prove to be the band that takes away the Stones' rock crown.

The Stones made a remarkable recovery in 1978 with its "Some Girls" album, but its music these days generally lacks the urgency and youthful tenacity that the Clash brings to the stage.

Rather than rebellion, the Stones' longtime trademark. the Clash deals more in challenge. Its target is apathy. Given the '70s' conservative rock climate, it's an ideal subject.

JeThough its lyrics reflect a British frame of reference, the themes carry the same universal liberating tone that always has been at the heart of rock.

In songs like "London's Burning" and "White Riot," the Clash strikes out at what lead singer Joe Strummer brands the sheepish tendency of modern youth: All the power is in the hands/Of people rich enough to buy it/While we walk the steets/Too chicken to even try it."

(Before anyone thinks I'm switching allegiance from Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello and Tom Petty, I think of those performers more in the rock singer-songwriter tradition than as rock bands. It's the difference between Bob Dylan and David Bowie as songwriter/performers and the Stones and the Who as bands.)

The Clash's Joe Strummer doesn't have the commanding stage presence of Mick Jagger or Johnny Rotten, but the Clash does have the firmness both in its playing and in its point. of view that cha characterizes all great rock groups.

Strummer is by no means a wallflower on stage. Не sings with a vein-popping intensity, holding onto the microphone with the anxious expression of a man whose car has just stalled in the path speeding of a train. Guitarist Mick Jones and bassist Paul Simonon zip across the stage with typical new-wave energy. The fourth member is drummer Topper Headon.

The Clash's songs-by Strummer and Jones-are more varied and melodic than the Pistols', and have more gutlevel street orientation than the music of cerebral bands like Talking Heads. Still, there's an element of sophistication in the lyrics of songs like "Safe European Home" and "English Civil War." There's none of the put-on dumbness of the Ramones.

Before the Clash can reasonably claim the Stones' title, it needs to be far more consistent on stage, and weed out some of the repetitive elements in its sound. Most important, it also has to build an audience. A wide constituency is a prerequisite for claiming any pop dominance.

That may not be an easy task. Many in y in this conservative rock period will dismiss the Clash as too primitive musically. While more able as musicians than the Pistols, the Clash is hardly at the technical level of rock's premier players.

But the Clash-whose members all are in their early 20s -doesn't aim for technical superiority. Its ammunition is ideas and emotion. That objective, however, runs counter to current AM and FM preferences. That has resulted in the band's receiving virtually no U.S. airplay. Though in the Top 20 in England, the Clash's new album is not in the Top 200 in this country.

Sandy Pearlman, who produced the new Clash album. feels radio's reluctance is due to a prejudice against newwave punk music.

"The term 'new wave' is a red flag for a lot of people in radio and record companies," he said. "I don't know why. If this record was by, say. Tony and the Tuna Fish and they were known as the best new hard-rock band to come out of the Midwest since Ted Nugent, it would be getting all kinds of airplay."

(CLASH CONSCIOUS-From left, Mick Jones, Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon excite Vancouver fans. Times photo by Larry Armstrong)

CALENDAR - POP MUSIC -

ACTIVE OR PASSIVE: TWO ROCK VOICES

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1979 - CALENDAR
BY ROBERT HILBURN

Let's throw away the old labels-new wave, punk, power pop, mainstream -they miss the point. There are only two main types of rock bands these days: the Active and the Passive. We'll see both in town this week.

The Clash, which debuts Friday night at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, and Toto, which opens the same night at the Roxy, represent the extremities. The Clash is Active, it deals in ideas. Toto is Passive, it deals in sounds.

The separation isn't just attitude, it's also sales. On paper, the Clash annihilates Toto. Critics love the British foursome. They respond to the Clash's individuality and substance.

But during this period of extreme pop conservatism, the L.A.-based Toto walks away from the Clash in sales. Toto's sprightly "Hold the Line" single has been in the national Top 10 for weeks and has helped push the group's debut LP past the million mark.

Passive banda can do enticing work (Boston's "More Than a Feeling"), but the artistic heartbeat of rock rests with the more challenging Active outfits: Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Tom Petty, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, the Cars. Devo -and the Clash.

While they welcome sales, the primary intent of Active rockers is to say some thing, and Ito say it with the individuality that is at the base e of all worthwhile art.

The trouble with most Active bands from a commercial standpoint is that you have to pay attention to the music to fully appreciate what's going on. The surfaces can be noisy and intense. You may even have to strain to understand the words. And there isn't always just tone interpretation. The aim is to make you you feel and sider: get involved. con-

This involvement was once prized in rock. During the key 50s and '60s periods, Elvis, Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, Hendrix, the Kinks, Joplin all teased imaginations. They stepped away from the pop norm in a way that invited you to weigh your own attitudes.

PAGE 76

But adventure has become a commercial liability in the 1970s. The emphasis is on groups that do all the work for you, there by taking true involvement out of pop. The God of AM radio is Accessibility. Anything challenging is shunned by program directors.

Accessibility once was a valuable element in rock. It kept bands from becoming stuffy. But it has become an unfortunate end in itself. Accessibility without content is the curse of Passive music.

The technique of Passive outfits like Toto, Boston, Foreigner, Kansas and Styx is to reduce all challenge and mystery so that a listener can absorb the music as easily as the handsome photos in in a glossy

coffee-table book. The textures are clean, the lyrics straightforward, the themes simple. Everything is spelled out on the first hearing. All the listener has to do is put the record on on the the e turntable turntable and his job is done.

This doesn't mean that all Active bands. are noisy and Passive ones ultra-accessible. The Eagles is a highly accessible unit with generally clean musical features, but there are ideas in songs like "Hotel California" and "Life in the Fast Lane." The band, therefore, is Active.

At the same time, Ted Nugent is the essence of high energy noise, but the music is as void of ideas as the most innocuous Ve gas lounge singer. Nugent may excite his audience, but it's only on the most mindless "get-down-and-boogie" level. So, it's es sentially Passive music.

Whatever the specifics of its songs, the Clash's music has a constant theme You don't have to conform. You can hear the band's independence in the fury of its in strumentation and in the urgency of Joe.

British import the Clash, above, and Toto, left, symbolize the Active and the Passive approach to rock music.

Strummer's vocals The Clash was influenced by the Sex Pistols, the late, great, and greatly misunderstood British "punk" band. Its ts target is the same as the Pistols': apathy. Songs like "London's Burning" and "White Riot, from the first Clash album, attacked indifference.

In the new "Give 'Em Enough Rope" LP. the Clash deals with various issues-from sociocultural matters in England to autobiographical reflections. But the enemy remains hypocrisy and compromise.

While these attitudes fit neatly into the Presley-to-Stones tradition of rock rebellion, a band can't succeed on intent alone. The group has to back it up with music. The Clash does. What makes the Clash an exhilarating force on record are the dynamics of its sound.

The new album doesn't have the consistent power of the Sex Pistols "Bollocks" but there album, b e are moments in which the explosion of sounds and ideas is captivating. The band is young and evolving. It is one of the most important and potentially influential rock bands in the world.

Toto, on the other hand, holds less immediate punch and promise. The group's musicians are first-rate. Though most are still in their mid-to-early 20s, the six musicians include some of Los Angeles' most prized session players. Their credits include backing such pop hotshots as Boz Scaggs, the Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, Barbra Streisand and Alice Cooper. their mid-to-car

But the step from support musicians to frontmen is a difficult one. The difference is you have to stop implementing someone else's musical vision and supply your own. All Toto's first LP demonstrates is that the band spem a lot of time listening to what's been selling in recent years.

The "Hold the Line" single and the equally commercial "I'll Supply the Love" fit squarely into the soaring, but also vapid pop-rock style of Boston and Foreigner. The songs rely mainly on catchy riffs. Some are fresh, some are borrowed.

If the band's "Georgy Porgy" reminds you of Boz Scaggs, excuse Toto because the group's David Paich cowrote and arranged Scaggs' "Silk Degrees" LP. But what about the use of ELO's "Do Ya" riff in "I'll Supply the Love"?

Leaning on influences is common in pop. The difference between the best Active bands and most Passive ones is that the influence is incorporated with style rather than left simply intact. The Clash's use of the melody from "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" in "English Civil War" makes a wry point. Most Passive bands simply use a familiar riff because it has proven successful.

While most of the Toto album is uninspired, the band has a potential ace in the hole. Paich is a promising writer who also shows character as a singer on the spicy "Manuela Run," the LP's most attractive track. If Paich develops in both areas, Toto could have a longer and more interesting career than either Boston or Foreigner.

But Toto needs to make considerable strides before one can feel comfortable with its Passive approach. As it is now, the pop-music climate in America would be much healthier if the Clash were selling a million copies and Toto was struggling-like the Clash-to make the Top 200. Whether or not America responds to the Clash, the band needs to be considered. With the AM/FM blackout on the band, that's not happening. Nothing's gained from listening to Toto. Something may be lost from not hearing the Clash.

The New York Times - January 14, 1979, Section D, Page 35

Experimental Rock. Vigorous in Britain

By John Rockwell

Rock is an indisputably American creation. But the British caught on quickly, and from the time of the Beatles onwards, British acts have defined the form in disproportionate strength to the relative populations of the two countries. A re- cent sampling of British “new wave” disks indicates that there is still a lot of life left in that country's experimental rock camp.

With punk or new‐wave rock, the situation between the two countries has perpetuated itself, but with some interesting variants that relate directly to the music's relative commercial “failure.” Punk was arguably an American invention, dating back to the late 1960's and such Detroit acts as the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges, and developing rapidly in the early 1970's with the New York Dolls and other bands here. But as soon as the major acts from the first burst of mid‐70's New York punk rock arrived in Britain—the Ramones especially, on their first tour there — the British new wave erupted with a force that has threatened to obscure the American originals.

Or at least it would have, had the music attracted the music industry in really serious way. Britain lacks the heavily influential commerical AM radio of the United States. Records are sold through key televison program appearances and, to a much larger extent than in this country, through the rock press. British critical tastemakers tend to be a far more trendy, excitable lot than their American counterparts, and so the rock critics’ mass conversion to new‐wave rock in the past three years has led to a far more formidable commercial success for this radical music than it has in this country.

By and large, new‐wave rock has failed to challenge the top of the charts in this country. There is a market for soft, sloppy music in Britain, to be sure. But it seems to be more stratified in terms of age and class than the “mellow rock” market here, and less capable (given the paucity of top‐40 AM stations) of driving progressive music from the sales charts.

Since new‐wave rock hasn't aroused the fervent interest of the commercial powers behind the music, it hasn't (yet) been co‐opted. This means that in America and in Britain the new‐wave rockers have proceeded with greater independence — both of each other and of industry pressure — than rockers were allowed to in the mid‐60's, when every record‐company executive suddenly got hip.

Thus there remains a greater differentiation between the British and American new‐wave scenes than one might expect. On both sides of the ocean bands are still willing to experiment in ways that suggest that they aren't just interested in gigantic commercial success. Despite the muchbruited “death of punk,” the music seems very much alive. The Americans remain artier than the British, who tend to use the music to vocalize longrepressed class hatreds and attitudes. But the vitality in both camps is equally impressive, and there is a good deal of similarity to be discerned between American and British rock experimenters.

But whether the terms “punk” or “new wave” mean much any more is real question. “New wave” replaced punk when Seymour Stein of Sire Records and other American executives worried that the connotations of “punk” were needlessly offensive to mid‐American tastes. The two terms still suggest a valuable distinction between overtly raw, crude rock on the one hand, and a slightly more intellectualized variety on the other.

But some recent LP's from Britain make one wonder if even the term “new wave” has much meaning any more. Like most such movements, the original energy came from musicians and young managerial types who formed a grouping as much sociological as musical. By now all sorts of interlopers have tried to cash in on the punk craze, and at the same time many of the originals have extended their interests to include defiantly progressive rock, reggae, pub‐rock and other form of rhythm-and-blues and early‐rock revivalism.

By far the most famous/notorious of the first wave of Brish punk bands was the Sex Pistols, and the “death of punk” stories heated up When that band broke apart early last year. Since then its various members have pursued different paths, from the industriously workaday to the sad (Sid Vicious). But the most prominent member of the Pistols and its lead singer, Johnny Rotten, laid low. Gradually it emerged that he had formed a new band, and a couple of months ago a single emerged. Now the debut album is out (as a Virgin import now in the speciality shops, with a domestic release on Warner Brothers due imminently). The band is called Public Image Ltd, and the album is “Public Image.”

On it Mr. Lydon (for that was the singer's original name, to which he has reverted) seems determined to put behind him what he apparently regards as the manipulative behavior of the Pistols and their manager, Malcolm McLaren, and the simply brutal rock the Pistols espoused. One has to admire him for his insistence on experimentation and his willingness to court commercial failure with this album. But that doesn't make it a success.

Public Image is a quartet, and theoretically all the members are equal (which doesn't stop Virgin from putting Mr. Lydon's face on the cover, including a poster of him’ on the inside — titled “Johnny Rotten” — and billboarding the poster with a sticker on the front. But the supposed democracy of the band means a’ sharing of responsibility for the musical results. That means Mr. Lydon's voice is mixed less prominently than it was on the Pistols album, and that everyone has a chance to shine in one way or another. Unfortunately, Mr. Lydon's voice seems better suited to the snarling aggression of the Pistols than it is to this fancier skuff, and the instrumental experimentation here isn't all that interesting. Still, Mr. Lydon has already proven himself charismatic performer, so perhaps Public Image in concert will prove more exciting than this disk, and the group's future records will find a more focus.

With the demise of the Pistols, the leadership of the British punk mow.ment devolved upon the Clash. This is quartet whose more excitable admirers have taken to praising in extravagent terms. The band's first album in American release, “Give Em Enough Rope,” is a fine record. It isn't as raw or striking as the band's debut LP (which CBS has stubbornly refused to release here). But it is still a fine example of rock that is both radically energetic and clever in a basic sort of way. The Clash's lack of a really strong singer and its slightly hectoring murkiness of textrure are taken by its fans as a sign of integrity; the implication is that any accessiblity would constitute cop‐out. To this taste, the Clash's music so far is simply too limited in range for real artistic success, quite apart from the issue of how many people buy its records.

Stiff Records is a British new‐wave label known both for the quality of its artists and for its flamboyant, ingenious way of promoting them. Crucial to the promotional efforts have been two package tours featuring the company's artists. In 1977 the talent included Elvis Costello, Ian Dury and Nick Lowe, and such. The 1978 version, which reached the Bottom Line almost intact last month, offered generally lesser attractions, but still had its charms.

One says “almost intact” because one member of the tour in Britain and in Europe, Mickey Jupp, failed to make it to America (for fear of flying), although his backup band did, with largely sodden results. Mr. Jupp's “Juppanese” album is a real charmer, and it makes one realize all by itself how amorphous the notion of “new wave rock” has become. Mr. Jupp is basically a pub‐rock veteran on the order of Mr. Lowe and Dave Edmunds. But building atop his solid, traditional rock is a lilting gift for softer, folkier ballads and a sleepy way with soft country‐rock songs that suggests British Billy Swan. Perhaps somebody will get smart soon and ship Mr. Jupp over to these shores by boat.

One highlight of the Stiff artists who did appear here was Lene Lovich (the other was Wreckless Eric, whose insoucicant charm in live performance doesn't work quite so well on disk). Miss Lovich, whose album is called “Stateless,” is a prime example of Stiff's promotional cleverness. As the title and the name imply, she purports to be some sort of mysteriously Slavic emigree. As it happens, Miss Lovich was born in America and moved to England, where she studied mime and engaged in such odd pursuits as writing English lyrics for Cerrone, the French disco star. She came into her own when she auditioned as a saxophonist, and was persuaded to expand her act into singing and theatrics; using songs mostly co‐written by herself and Les Chappell, the bald and determinedly weird‐looking in her band.

Miss Lovich looks pretty weird, too, dressed in bizarre tatters and long pigtails and screwing up her face like some Saturday‐afternoon television cartoon. But she has an engaging good humor about her, too, for all the selfconscious weirdness, and that virtue remains intact on her album. Miss Lovich is still developing a musical style and a performing character. At times her record sounds derivative of Patti Smith in the vocals, and of too many other arty new‐wavers in the instrumentals. But there's talent here, no doubt about it.

Two other women singers round out the current sampling, and one of them, Poly Styrene and her band, X‐Ray Spex, echoes Miss Lovich in the prominent use of a saxophone. X‐Ray Spex's album, “Germfree Adolescents,” has the liability of other new‐wave debut albums in lacking the group's earlier singles. These underground bands come to one's attention through their live performances and their (usually selfproduced) singles. The fans buy them, and the bands take the honorable position that those fans shouldn't be penalized when the first album comes out by having to duplicate singles they've already purchased. But, unfortunately, those singles are hard to keep track of and hard to obtain, and often contain the bands’ freshest early inspirations. That said, X‐Ray Spex's album is really superior one - not so much for Poly Styrene's raw if forceful singing as for the instrumentals, which are hot, exciting rock-and-roll.

Finally we have the evocatively entitled Siouxsie and the Banshees's “The Scream” (people make fun of punk band names, but as a whole they're as telling symbols of modern culture as graffiti). Siouxsie and the Banshees resisted signing a record deal and making an album long after the other pia neers of the British punk scene had made their moves. But “The Scream,” if not an epochal disk, is still worth the wait. Siouxsie herself is no prize-winner as a singer. But like most of these vocalists she makes a strong effect as chanting force and focus, and the band's instrumental experimentations prove (if proof were needed) that there is plenty of non‐commercial but gripping originality left within the seemingly limited resources of new‐wave rock.

January 14, 1979 - Page 5, Section Three
The Sunday Rutland Herald and The Sunday Times Argus

Popular Music

British Groups Enliven Rock Music Tradition

Times News Service

Rock is an indisputably American creation. But the British caught on quickly, and from the time of the Beatles onwards, British acts have defined the form in disproportionate strength to the relative populations of the two two countries. A recent sampling of British "new wave" disks indicates that there is still a lot of life left in that country's experimental rock camp.

With punk or new-wave rock, the situation between the two countries has perpetuated itself, but with some interesting variants that relate directly to the music's relative commercial "failure." Punk was arguably an relative American invention, dating back to the late 1960s and such Detroit acts as the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges, and developing rapidly in the early 1970s with the New York Dolls and other bands here. But as soon as the major acts from the first burst of mid-1970s New York punk rock arrived in Britain the Ramones especially, on their first tour there the British new wave erupted with a force that has threatened to obscure the American originals.

t least it would have, had the music attracted the music industry in a really serious way. Britain lacks the heavily influential commercial AM radio of the United States. Records are sold through key television program. appearances and, to a much larger extent than in this country, through the rock press. British critical tastemakers tend to be a far more trendy, excitable lot than their American counterparts, and so the rock criticsí mass conversion to new-wave rock in the past three years has led to a far more formidable commercial success for this radical music than it has in this country.

By and large, new-wave rock has failed to challenge the top of the charts in this country. There is a market for soft, sloppy music in Britain, Britain, to to be be sure. But it seems to be more stratified in terms of age and class than the "mellow rock' market here, and less capable (given the paucity of top-40 AM stations) of driving progressive music from the sales charts.

Since new-wave rock hasn't aroused the fervent interest of the commercial powers behind the music, it hasn't (yet) been co-opted. This means that in America and in Britain the new-wave rockers have proceeded with greater independence both of each other and of industry pressure than rockers were allowed to in the mid-1960s, when every record-company executive suddenly p got hip.

Thus there remains a greater differentiation b between the British and American new-wave scenes than one might expect. On both sides of the ocean, bands are still willing to experiment in ways that suggest that they aren't just interested in gigantic commercial success. Despite the much-bruited "death of punk," the music seems very much alive. The Americans remain artier than the British, who tend to use the music to vocalise long-repressed class hatreds and attitudes. But the vitality in both camps is equally impressive, and there is a good deal of similarity to be discerned between American and British rock perimeters.

But whether the terms "punk" or "new wave" mean. much any more is a real question. "New wave" replaced punk when Seymour Stein of Sire Records and other American executives worried that the connotations of "punk" were needlessly offensive to mid-American tastes. The two terms still suggest a valuable distinction between overtly raw, crude rock on the one hand, and a slightly more intellectualised variety on the other.

But some recent LP's from Britain make one wonder if even the term "new wave" has much uch meaning any more. Like most such movements, the original energy came from musicians and young managerial types who formed a grouping as much sociological as musical. By now all sorts of interlopers have tried to cash in on the punk craze, , and at the same time many of the originals have extended their interests include defiantly progressive rock, reggae, pub-rock and other forms of rhythm-and-blues and early rock revivalism.

By far the most famous-notorious of the first wave of British punk bands was the Sex Pistols, and the "death of punk" stories heated up when that band broke apart early last year. Since then its various members have pursued different paths, from the industriously workaday to the sad (Sid Vicious). But the most prominent member of the Pistols and its lead singer, Johnny Rotten, laid low. Gradually it emerged that he had formed a new band, and a couple of months ago a single emerged. Now the debut album is out (as a Virgin import now in the speciality shops, with a domestic release on Warner Brothers due imminently). The band is called Public Image Ltd, and the album is "Public Image."

On it Lydon (for that was the singer's original name, to which he has reverted) seems determined to put behind him what he apparently regards as the manipulative behavior of the Pistols and their manager, Malcolm McLaren, and the simply brutal rock the Pistols espoused. One has to admire him for his insistence on experimentation and his willingness to court commercial failure with this album. But that doesn't make it a success.

Public Image is a quartet, and theoretically all the members are equal (which doesn't stop Virgin from putting Lydon's face on the cover, including a poster of him on the inside titled "Johnny Rotten" and billboarding the poster with a sticker on the front. But the supposed democracy of the band means a sharing of responsibility for the musical results. That means Lydon's voice is mixed less prominently than it was on the Pistols album, and that everyone has a chance to shine in one way or another. Unfortunately, Lydon's voice seems better suited to the snarling aggression of the Pistols than it is to this more fancy stuff, and the instrumental experimentation here isn't all that interesting. Still, Lydon has already proven himself a charismatic performer, so perhaps Public Image in concert will prove more exciting than this disk, and the group's future records will find a more convincing focus.

With the demise of the Pistols, the he leadership of the British punk movement devolved upon the Clash. This is a quartet whose more excitable admirers have taken to praising g in extravagant terms. The band's s first first album album in in American release, "Give Em Enough Rope," is a fine record. It isn't as raw or striking as the band's debut LP (which CBS has stubbornly refused to release here). But it is still a fine example of rock that tis both radically y energetic and clever in a basic sort of way. The Clash's lack of a really strong singer and its slightly hectoring murkiness of texture are taken by its fans as a sign of integrity; the implication is that any accessibility would constitute a copout. To this taste, the Clash's music so far is simply too limited in range for real artistic success, quite apart from the issue of how many people buy its its records.

Stiff Records is a British new-wave label known both for the quality of its artists and for its flamboyant, ingenious way of promoting them. Crucial to the promotional efforts have been two package tours featuring the company's artists. In 1977 the talent included such as Elvis Costello, Ian Dury and Nick Lowe. The 1978 version, which reached the Bottom Line almost intact last month, offered generally lesser attractions, but still had its charms.

One says "almost intact" because one member of the tour in Britain and in Europe, Mickey Jupp, failed to make it to America (for fear of flying), although his backup band America (fo did, with largely sodden results Jupp's "Juppanese" album is a real charmer, and it makes one realize all by itself how amorphous the notion of "new wave rock" has become.

1979, Cleveland — Bo Diddley opened for The Clash on their US tour — Image by © Bob Gruen. In 1979, Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon of the Clash asked that Diddley open for them on the band’s first American tour. “I can’t look at him without my mouth falling open,” Strummer, starstruck, told a journalist during the tour. For his part, Diddley had no misgivings about facing a skeptical audience. “You cannot say what people are gonna like or not gonna like,” he explained later to the biographer George White. “You have to stick it out there and find out! If they taste it, and they like the way it tastes, you can bet they’ll eat some of it!” via

The Clash where huge fans of Bo Diddley, as many of the formative British bands (and American too) of the ’60s and ’70s were– The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Beatles, The Yardbirds, and many more. Bo Diddley joined The Clash as their opening act on their 1979 US Tour– opening up a radical, young, new crowd to the sound of the man many consider to be one of the most important pioneers of American Rock & Roll music. Bo Diddley himself made no bones about stating that HE was THE beginning of Rock & Roll. Bo Diddley not only influenced sound– he also influenced the attitude, energy, and look of Rock & Roll for decades to come. Look at the pics here, I see the bold plaids that Diddley and other Rockers of the ’50s wore (Plaid was for hipsters, not squares, in the ’50s..), that emerged again strongly in the ’70s through the Sex Pistols (great credit due to Vivienne Westwood), The Clash and others. You can also see and hear where Jack Black got the lion’s share of his game from– no doubt Bo Diddley. The man is a legend and has never gotten his due, and the due that came, came too late. He had a well-earned chip on his shoulder, and even insisted The Clash pay him upfront, as he’d been screwed over so many times before.

“I was the cat that went and opened the door, and everyone else ran through it. And I said– what the heck, you know? …I was left holding the doorknob” –Bo Diddley

ca. 1950s — Norma Jean “The Duchess” Wofford in white blouse, Jerome Green squatting in front with maracas, and Bo Diddley with his signature rectangular Gretsch guitar. Bo and his crew were the badasses of their generation, just as The Clash were in theirs. — Image by © Michael Ochs

“If you can play– all you need is one amp, your axe, and you. “ –Bo Diddley explaining his feelings about The Clash’s monstrous wall of sound during their 1979 US tour.

1979, Cleveland — Bo Diddley opened for The Clash on their 1979 US tour. I love seeing Mick Jones in his red tartan plaid shirt, and then looking down at the photo of Bo Diddley and crew rocking them back in the ’50s, and looking extremely badass. — Image by © Bob Gruen  

ca. 1950s, New York — Bo Diddley, Jerome Green on left playing maracas. — Image by © Michael Ochs. Back in the 1950s, plaids like this may have been accepted among the Hipsters, but it was a different story in Middle America where it was still thought of it as the fabric of a counter culture movement– outlaw fashion. via

“This group the Sex Pistols pukes onstage? I don’t necessarily like that. That’s not showmanship… They gotta get themselves an act.”  –Bo Diddley

Bo Diddley opened for The Clash in 1979 on their US tour, here on their bus. — Image by © Bob Gruen 

So how did Bo reflect back upon his 1979 US tour with The Clash? I think he summed it up pretty well when he stated that, “Every generation has its own little bag of tricks…” Watch the video below–