Clash extension

THE Clash, who started a lengthy American tour last week, are due to tour Britain in November to tie in with the release of their new album.

The band's American tour, which included the Monterey Festival last week and will peak with two nights at New York's Palladium, seems likely to be extended from the original six weeks to about two months, and the Clash had to work against a tight deadline last week to finish the album in time for their US flight.

By November the Clash movie and soundtrack should be completed. The band, still manager-less, plan an extensive series of British shows to follow their two-month assault on America.

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Wed Sept. 5 Fly to States
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Sat Sept. & CLASH; Chambers Bros: Soul Syndicate: Robert Fripp (Monterey Festival) Best Birthday ever!!! Joe Ely
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Mon Sept 10 Buzzcodes (Langhom, Minneapolis)
Tues Sept. 11
Wed Sept 12 CLASH: David Johansson Group, Undertones (St.Paul Civic)
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Fri Sept 14 CLASH, Bo Diddley; Undertones (Aragon Ballroom, Chiago)
Sat Sept. 15 Blues Band (B.L.U.E.S)
Sun Sept. 16
Mon Sept 17 CAPH; Johanssen: Undertas (MasonicTemple, Detroit with Flirt as J Thunders and Wayne Kramer (New Album)
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Wed Sept 19 CLASH: Same Dare; Undertones (Orpheum, Boston) W WBCN
Thur Sept 20 CLASH: Sam Dave; Vedatores (Palladan, NYC) W
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Sat Sept. 22 CLASH: Undertones (Walent St.Theatre, Philly) W Gang War (Hot Club)
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Tues Sept. 25 CLASH; Undertones; B-Girls (St-Denis Theatre Montral) w
Wed Sept 26 CLASH; Undertones, B-Girls (O'Keefe Centre, Toronto/W
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Fri Sept. 28 CLASH: Sang War, Necessities (Clark Uni. Worcester) W
Sat. Sept. 29 (LASH: Screamin Jay Hawkins: 4 out of of 5 Doctors (College Pk, Mayland)
Oct 1
Tues Oct 2 CDASH:Willy Guy Raney; Restrants (Agora, Atlanta)
Wed Oct 3 Skunks (Raouls) Austin. Texas)
Thur Oct 4 CLASH: Joe Ely, Skunks (Armadillo World HQ Austin)
Fri Oct 5 CLASH: Joe Ely; Legionaires Disease (Cullen Auditorium, Houston U)
Sat Oct. 6 CASH: Joe Ely; Nervebrakes (Palladium Dallas) W
Sun Oct 7 CUASH; Joe Ely (Rox, Lubbock)
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Tues Oct 9 Orchids (Starwood (LA) 20/20 (Whiskey)
Wed Oct 10 CLASH; Rebek; Standbys (Golden Hall, San Diego) W
Thurs Oct 11 CLASH: Joe Ely; Rebels (Palladium Hollywood (0) W
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Sat Oct 13 CLASH; Cramp; Dead Kennedys; Rebels (Kazar, SF.).W
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Mon Oct 15 CLASH; Rebels; Dishrags (Paramount, Seattle) W
Thes Oct 16 CLACH: Rebels: DOA (PNE Gdns, Vancouver) W
Wed Oct 17 Fly late evening to New York for break.
Thurs Oct. 18 Richard Lloyd Quartet; Colors (CBGB)
Fri Oct. 19 Only Ones, Student Teachers (Irving Plaza)

THE CLASH TURN PRO (SORT OF)

PETE SILVERTON reports from the deepest mid-west as they finally find American success (and hookers in the dressing room)

Page 20
SOUNDS
September 29, 1979

TUESDAY LUNCHTIME: Cleveland Airport.
With a couple of hours to kill before my one-stop-only flight to Minneapolis and the first date on the Clash's second American tour (bewilderingly named 'The Clash Take The Fifth'), I dragged out the Corona Calypso, balanced it sloppily on a tubular chrome ashtray (everything's bigger and shinier at Cleveland Airport), and started attacking the keys. Unfortunately, this attracted the attention of a perambulating mahogany tree.

"Hey, you, man, whaddya doin', man? I was gonna buy myself a fuckin' Remington, man. That's the best fuckin' typewriter in the world, man. And it only cost a hundred bucks."

The giant interloper paused to fiddle with his oversized shoulder bag before adding somewhat perplexingly: "But I never did get it ’cos my apartment got burgled… Hey, man, what are you?"

"A journalist."

He wandered off to allow this piece of information time to find his brain and then eased his three hundred and fifty pounds onto the blue vinyl upholstery right slap next to my right ear.

"You're a German, huh?"

I chose to ignore this Pinteresque reply.

"Which part of Germany?"

Remembering what my mother told me about talking to strange black men in airport lounges, I kept my lips tightly clamped on my Kent.

"Hey, man, you some kind of fuckin' communist?" This last word was spat from his gullet like he thought he was just about to choke on his gum. "I fuckin' hate communists, man." (This from a man who looks like he drew a five, a seven, and a three in the Great American poker game.)

"I fuckin' wish I could fuckin' kill you, you motherfucker. If I had a gun on me right now, I'd blow your fuckin' head away, you goddamn motherfucker."

He drifted away.

America is a foreign country. They do things differently there.

TUESDAY TEATIME: A Minneapolis hotel room.
Having just left Paul Simonon in the nineteenth-floor bar with a brace of double Brandy Alexanders and his girlfriend Debbie (who he introduced to me with the words, “This is Debbie, she takes photographs”), I’m sitting in Room 511.

Kosmo Vinyl and his yellow-blond-with-black-roots hair is sitting at the coffee table. I’m perched by the window. One of Ian Dury’s managers, Andrew King, is lounging on a bed talking into the phone.

Both Kosmo and I remain conspicuously silent.

Page 21
Although we can only hear one end of the conversation, it’s obviously one of those phone calls that are awarded the respect normally reserved for the dead. With half the information trapped in the confines of a long-distance line, little of it makes much sense. I do, however, pick up on a couple of phrases: “Get out in the marketplace” and “shift some units.”

The Clash turn pro in the depths of the American heartland, indeed.

Being a naturally inquisitive sort, I wonder exactly why Ian Dury’s PR and manager are sitting in an American hotel room dealing with Clash business. It’s explained to me that this is one of those most modern of relationships: a trial marriage.

The Clash, although still connected to Bernard Rhodes by law and contract, are technically without management. At home in England, they’d taken turns—one week Mike would carry the attaché case, the next week Joe would get the honor. But, on the road in America, they desperately needed someone to take care of the business.

And, after all, Andrew King did have the necessary experience of American backwaters—he’d seen ’em all handling Ian Dury’s failed attempt to interest the Yanks by supporting Lou Reed.

And so the Clash, Kosmo Vinyl, Andrew King, and his partner, Pete Jenner, are all currently huddled together under the church porch, trying to make up their minds and waiting for the priest to arrive.

By the time this is all clear, Kosmo is beginning to enjoy himself. “So I asked him if he’d got a copy of the new album (the new album, for the purposes of this article, refers to The Clash You Ess of Ay style) an’ ’e said ’e ’adn’t… ooooh, is there gonna be some fun at Epic tomorrow. I’ll get right on the blower and they’ll get a bloody vice president down there.”

Relations with Epic, their American record label, are, I quickly discover, far from conjugal.

(Not that the Clash ever bitched to me about Epic. They learned that lesson long ago. Blabbing off to the press about what is essentially a family affair can make you look like the silly, whining children of the relationship. They didn’t even moan in public about CBS England insisting on a £1.49 cover price for The Cost of Living EP when they wanted to keep it down to a quid!)

I don’t know for certain why they’re not exactly cuddling up under a nuptial blanket with Epic, but I’d hazard a guess that it’s not because Epic don’t think they’re worth it, can’t see their effort being returned in hard currency, but precisely because Epic figure (ha, ha) they stand a more than fair chance of using the Clash to buoy up their books as their profits slide nearer and nearer the red column and the total of Indians they’ve sacked starts pushing past treble figures.

Figure it this way. Having originally decided not to release the debut album, Epic were taken aback by the relative success of Give ’Em Enough Rope (which they did put out), the following tour of North America, and, perhaps most tellingly, the overwhelming critical acclaim for the band, writ largest in Rolling Stone and Village Voice, respectively the Bible and the Koran of the American music consumer press as it’s viewed by the American record industry. (Being suggested as an escape valve for the fear and frustration engendered by China invading Vietnam might seem a touch hyperbolic to English ears; to an American record company it quite likely seems understated.)

So, after putting out the debut album (which has already set a record by selling 100,000 on import) to keep the band and the potential audience sweet, Epic reckon that the third album (which only needs to be mixed at the end of this tour) could maybe be the big one for these boys, elephant dollar time. But, if that’s to work out to Epic’s advantage, they need a degree of control over the band they’ve so far been unable to gain. Even without management, the Clash have retained their independence (of sorts—they still needed tour support for this swing through North America).

Accordingly, the label put the bite on the band, saying no to this, maybe (if you do this) to that, and generally making life not easy for a band on the road. That way, if Epic play a careful game, by third album time, they hope the Clash’ll be doing it their way. Add Kosmo Vinyl and Andrew King to this mess of divergent ambitions, and you have the perfect recipe for tension between a band and their record company.

This, you understand, is all supposition, but I was told by one of the Clash’s two American tour managers that if Billy Gaff (Rod Stewart’s manager, who was once rumoured to be taking over the Clash) was in charge, he would be getting everything they wanted out of Epic with ease.

As we cross the fledgling Mississippi, the journey takes a good half hour. As we arrive, we are greeted by an illuminated sign outside the St. Paul Civic Centre promising the Clash tomorrow and Abba next week, and the four Clash bouncing around the stage in mufti.

TUESDAY EVENING: St. Paul Civic Centre.
We’d been told to be ready to leave for the rehearsal around six-thirty—the following day’s show was to be the first gig of the tour proper. The only previous date had been an open-air show in Monterey. We finally left around ten. The journey from the safe Minneapolis home of the Sheraton hotel along a dark and drizzly freeway to St. Paul took a good half hour.

Paul, as always in a peaked cap and black, was swinging his bass like he was building a railroad. Mick, in a trilby, white vest, and black pegged pants—Bruce Springsteen’s obviously big in the Jones book this year. Topper was behind his kit, and Joe was in a green shirt, shouting down at me:

"’Ow long you been ’ere?"

"Since last Friday."

"Oh, I thought you’d been here for ages. You’ve got fat."

Retreating in shame to the back of the hall that Peter Frampton couldn’t fill the week before, I joined Andrew King, who was dancing along to Paul Simonon’s first song, Guns of Brixton, which featured him and Joe switching instruments—Paul on the 240 Volts Killer Telecaster and Joe on the Pressure bass. It’s a moody, dub-like nonentity, which doesn’t improve with subsequent listenings.

Really, it’s like a sideshow to the main action, which is Mick running the show from the center of the stage. It’s him who’s arguing with the roadies, chivvying the sound guys, and deciding which song they’re gonna run through next.

Now they’ve got someone running the road show, Mick’s free to concentrate on the music while Joe messes around with the presentation, getting Johnny Green, the band’s ‘personal,’ to shine a torch up into his face as a dramatic addition to their new reggae cover version, Armagideon Time.

A few more runs through new songs like (The Police Walked in on) Jimmy Jazz, an R&B number with a heavy debt to Staggerlee, and London Calling, which is a bridging link between the histrionics of the past and the more measured pacing of the present.

On past midnight, when the union crew for the whole hall switches on to treble time, I fall asleep and get woken by a bottle of beer over my head courtesy of Topper.

The band return to the hotel and their girlfriends—only Mick didn’t bring his beloved; she’s on tour with The Slits.

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON: Dressing room.
"See what I did was put the jacket carefully in the case so when I took it out there were no creases," Topper’s girlfriend Dee says. She’s in a multi-colored spotty suit, Gabba’s blonde-haired finest in a more functional drab boiler suit and boots.

"Mum ironed all my stuff before I left," replies Mick.

Back in the hall, the American sound mixer, Tommy, who’s identifying the band by means of the cartoons from the Sounds Christmas Clash game taped to the desk, announces:

"The hall union has requested we break for lunch."

Bemused by the crew politics, the union men tell another non-union guy, "Didja ever see such prices? Christ."

WEDNESDAY EVENING: Show time.
The Clash kick off with I’m So Bored with the U.S.A., as the Stars and Stripes beams down on them from the center of the backdrop, butted right up against the red, white, and green of Italy.

All in black, apart from Topper’s white shirt and collar points aiming for the sky, they’re running around the stage Clash-wise as Mick "testifies about Brixton" on Stay Free and starts to take chances with his solos on Complete Control—longer, freer, less structured, and, for once, not a carbon copy of the recorded version.

Joe reaches for the mic and starts blurting:

"I come over here and I switch the radio and all I hear are the Eagles and Steely Dan, so I turn it to a country and western station."

The crowd boos. Country and western is not the coolest thing in the world to a Clash fan who doesn’t know that, in Monterey, they brought Joe Ely on for the encore to do his I Keep My Fingernails Long So They Click When I Play the Piano.

The gig starts to disintegrate as Joe’s guitar refuses to work, leaving him skanking guitarless in front of the mic, sticking alternate hands in his pockets, and wailing through The Prisoner.

As the crowd wildly applauds White Man, Joe tells them:

"It’s no good. It’s a pile of shit." And later: "You gotta say, ‘Fuck off, you Limeys.’"

THURSDAY: The bus to Chicago.
Minneapolis to Chicago. Seven hours on a bus with one short stop. The tinted windows make it almost impossible to see, but the comforts of the bus make it seem more like a vibrating hotel room than a means of transportation.

By squeezing against a window and squinting, you can see out:

"Holiday Inn 41 miles. Exit 53 North."

We pull up by the Chicago Downtown Holiday Inn three hours later than scheduled. Everything except going onstage seems to happen three hours late on this tour.

Johnny Green rushes out and grabs me.

"Have you got your credit card? They insist on either full payment in advance or a credit card, and we haven’t got either. Just stroll in there looking like you’re the manager. I’ll take that bottle of Jack Daniels off you and give ’em the card."

FRIDAY NIGHT: Aragon Ballroom.
On this summer's tour of the States, Rod Stewart played the Uptown Theatre in Chicago. It holds four thousand. The Clash played the Aragon, which holds six thousand, and drew maybe four thousand to their first gig in the city.

The Aragon looks like the architect couldn't make up his mind on which style to copy… so he used them all. It's got a little bit of Mexican, a touch of Inca, some Spanish, and an entrance hall that looks like a catacomb.

An old ballroom that once played host to the likes of Glenn Miller and Count Basie, it's got history, the Lawrence 4800N 1200W "El" running right up its side, level with the stage, a warm feeling, and lousy acoustics. Topper sounds like he's the Scots Guards. And the Coldstream Guards.

Supporting them this night (as well as The Undertones, who are on all of the first half of the tour and got two encores in Chicago) was the mighty lumberjack himself, Uncle Bo Diddley, in his element and his hometown. With his computer-assisted guitar and primal rhythms, he's the point where the jungle and the research lab walk and talk hand in hand. And he plays the drone guitar to beat all drone guitars.

Holding "USA" back for the second number, The Clash opened with that R&B song "Jimmy Jazz." Most of the audience stared hard at the stage, trying to work out if they'd turned up on the right night, but by the end of "USA," you could tell Mick was enjoying it—he did a giant leap in the air for the final chord.

Already by this second date, the band are beginning to work out a new choreography—Joe advancing to the front of the stage during the subdued section of "Complete Control," and all of them retreating to the back of the stage in "I Fought the Law," which the audience interprets as drama, and I reckon is maybe, "We can't hear the drums."

Joe: "This is an American song. I want you to put your hands on your heart like this…"
Mick straps on a blond Ovation acoustic guitar. "When Johnny comes marching home again, hurrah tra-la, he's coming by bus or underground…"

The acoustic has everyone confused, but the crowd still applaud convincingly. Having survived this test and wading through Paul's song, they push on through to the end of the set on at least five out of the six cylinders. The shouting, screaming, dancing, cheering, and lighted matches (lighted matches? Who do they think this is, Bob Dylan?) make it clear that if The Clash want to take America, it's theirs to take.

September 29, 1979 – SOUNDS Page 23

Amidst the Epic execs and fans in the dressing room are two bovine women looking very out of place in halter tops, fishnet tights, hot pants, garters, gloves, and very heavy eye-shadow. They look like ten-bucks-for-a-blowjob hookers and the least likely people you can imagine in a Clash dressing room. Later I'm told that they were brought by a local dee-jay as a little (refused) present for the band. I realize America is obviously ready to shower its fruits on The Clash.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON: Air Canada 727, smoking section, window seat.
I leaf through a copy of People Magazine, the one with the 'Music Biz Blues' cover story. A flighty, unthought-out, and soft piece on the recession in the American record business, one line caught my eye:

"Most of the major record companies have fired at least fifty employees. At CBS Records, where the body count was 172, victims took to wearing t-shirts reading THE CRASH OF '79.'"

How long before Epic alters that R to an L?

Page 18 New Musical Express 3rd November, 1979

ARCHIVE FUN

FOLLOWING Adrian Thrills' article last week on the fab re-emergence of Shane O'Hooligan, we here at Archive Fun thought it fitting that you should feast your mincers once again on one of the most important landmarks of the Anarchy Era. Let us take you wafting back to the November of '76 and to the sweaty, angry. amphetamine fizz of the ICA in London's Mall. Onstage were an outfit called Clash just one of those tinpot bands destined to support the likes of Neo and Masterswitch and who quite possibly are involved in some Mod operation these days-but the real action came amongst the gathered punkerie. It was to be the night when one enterprising young lass went Into the Ears Pierced While-U-Walt business in a dramatic way.

Our top photo shows the improvising Ms applying the all-numbing aerosol to her first customer's luglobe while the band plough on through a rendition of their unrecorded classic "Only 24 Centre Spreads From Tulsa'. Below we find Shane for it is he- wondering if he's got such a good deal after all while the good doctor goes on to create all out Lobal Warfare.

Elsewhere you may, by eerie coincidence, note one Adrian Thrills (bottom centre with boy-scout uniform next to John Conteh lookalike) 'truckin' and 'groovin' and just generally waiting for Secret Affair to show the tat on the boards the way home. Plus, aren't Shane's lapels just a little on the wide side? Ah, what days they were!

Incidentally the ICA is currently running an exhibition of the original Shane lobe till October 29. Admission is £40 or an unplayed copy of The Cortinas CBS album. (Aren't they all?-Ed.)

THRILLS

Both pix: Red Saunders.

THAT’S COOL THAT’S TRASH: A HISTORY OF THE FIRST PUNK ERA

For fifteen years there has been an enigmatic force, burrowing underground, pulling people by their roots down toward the core of white-hot rawness. Gripped by this power, one is doomed forever, to stalk the earth in search of a primitive sound that remains as elusive as a bad photocopy of a ghost. One cannot read about this awesome omnipotence in the Holy Bible or the Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll, but the story of its impact is a remarkable tale indeed.

Hindsight labeled it "punk rock," a catch-all term endorsed by fans and collectors (and perhaps conceived in this very mag when it was just a struggling zine) that has come to represent an attitude, a lifestyle, and an aesthetic. By definition, of course, punk means "bunkum," "a hood," "someone inexperienced," or "inferior trash," but recently it has come to suggest hostility and nihilism. Today's concept of punk includes everybody from Elvis to Iggy under its umbrella, and demands stringent rules of order (eat burgers, drink, puke). Its pose is sanctioned and even standardized.

Yet the, confusion surrounding the term "punk rock" is that, like "soul music," it symbolizes too much, describing an experience rather than a genre of music. Having evolved from the consciousness that haunted the bargain bins in the late 60's and early 70's, punk's conception offered a role to fulfill—a swagger that could somehow link the Trashmen with the heavymetal yawn of the 70's. Fanzines proliferated (two named Punk— CREEM's Billy Altman fathered the first). Local bands began forming to emulate their mid-60's forefathers. Something called "punk" was causing a commotion—a real bustle in the Big Apple, from where it floated over to England where, in the wake of a tottering Pub-rock scene, the British punk movement of late-'76-'78 spat out pus like a festered boil.

The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" Is punk music Incarnate, a drunken brawl with bodies and cymbals crashing.

But this is the story of "p--k" before it became "PuNk!!"—the story of a musical force, although somewhat peripheral to the entire History of Rock 'n' Roll, that still refuses to die even though it lived only three short years, nurtured by the primeval noise of only three brusque chords.

☆ ☆ ☆

You may think it's /unny

That I like this stuff

But once you've tried it

You can't get enough.—the Sonics, "Strychnine"

During 1959-62 instrumental bands were.providing the dance beat. Regional groups played at local dances, not really as performers but functioning mainly as animate jukeboxes. The Twist and other dance crazes were in full swing so thousands of instrumental bands were getting work, thereby keeping music from stagnating at a local level.

Home of the Ventures (the most significant band of the instrumental era—along with the Shadows from England), the Pacific Northwest, was burgeoning with these groups (the Frantics, the Dynamics, the Viceroys). Rocking the teen palaces of Tacoma, Wash., was a combo called the Wailers. This/band hit With "Tall Cool One" in '59, released a superb LP, The Fabulous Wailers (as well as a sloppy one recorded live at a dance—Fab Wailers At The Castle), and eventually developed into punks in their own Yight ("Out Of Our Tree").

More important to this discussion, however, was a single on which the Wailers backed up a local vocalist, Rockin' Robin Roberts. Entitled "Louie Louie," it was a revival of Richard Berry's 1956 R&B tune but with a subtle difference—the original tempo was slowed down while the riff was emphasized, forming the structure of the song, repeating constantly the chord progression I-IV-V-IV-I.

Released in '61, this record never went beyond Tacoma. But early in '63, DJsin Portland started giving it airplay; suddenly Rockin' Roberts' "Louie Louie" was climbing the local charts. At this time two struggling bands working in Portland, the Kingsmen and Paul Revere and the Raiders, decided to advance their careers by recording close imitations of Roberts' regional hit. Thus began a real Battle of the Bands in the summer of '63 (the basic chord progression of "Louie Louie" as ammunition), establishing the aggressive tradition of the punk ethos.

In terms of sales, the winning version was by the Kingsmen (purchased by Wand). The influence of this record should not be underestimated. The reason it may have saturated the national market was because of the rumor, that the Kingsmen were singing dirty Words (causing it to be "banned" in Indiana by the state's governor). Despite whatever teens imagined, the band was simply mumbling, an inarticulate mode of expression soon to become a distinguishing trait among punk bands.

The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" is punk music incarnate, a drunken brawl with bodies and cymbals crashing. The record is so sloppy that, after the guitar break ("OK, let's give it to 'em—right now!"), the vocalist interrupts too early, nearly throwing everybody off the beat into a tumbling heap. In that the informality of chance supersedes the dictates of professionalism, this careless moment defines punk rock.

The other version of "Louie Louie" by the Raiders (bought by Columbia), with its dominant sax and R&B influence, was more in the style of the Northwest instrumental bands. The_ Raiders had already hit with "Like Longhair" in '61, so their approach was enmeshed with the Northwest Sound. After their "Louie Louie" got squelched by the Kingsmen's messy version, the Raiders continued recording dance songs (that is, until "Steppin' Out" and "Just Like Me" topped the charts in '65 due to heavy promotion via Where The Action Is, proving they could be just as raucous as the Kingsmen). Clearly the Raiders had been set back by the spirit of punk stumbling into the mainstream.

The confusion surrounding "punk rock" is that it symbolizes too much, describing an experience rather than a genre of music.

Down in sunny California a different type of instrumental rock had developed as a response to the sensation of riding the ocean's waves. Introduced in '61, primarily through Dick Dale's "Let's Go Trippin'," surf music became a brief national fad, but its influence on local instrumental bands was immense. By '63, surfing groups were having

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national hits—"Wipe Out"/"Surfer Joe" by the Surfaris, "Pipeline" by the Chantays, "Penetration" by the Pyramids, etc. Local dance bands began, copying the reverberative sound of surf. Far away from the slap of the waves on the beach, the Astronauts from Boulder, Colorado, were perhaps the first to incorporate this new sound with any success (especially on Surfin' With The Astronauts. By their second LP, Everything Is A-OK!, a live one, the Astronauts were again playing punky dance music).

Credit for punk rock's reputation as garbage must go to a group of pseudosurfers from the unlikely burg of Minneapolis—the imperishable Trashmen. In '63 their "Surfin' Bird," attached to the Rivingtons' '62 hit, "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow," by its stuttering message which signified the genesis of punk's dumbness ("The Bird's The Word"), became a national chant, a slogan for the retarded. The liner notes on their LP explain the origin of this loony tune: " 'Surfin' Bird' was born at one of the hundreds of teen dances. The Trashmen were playing at a crammed, jammed local ballroom when they decided to try their own concept of the dance craze, 'The Bird.' The crowd listened, but only for a moment. Then they were dancing and rocking as never before."

Even the Northwest's Wailers had decided to ride the wild surf ("We're Goin' Surfin' "). Hoping to get national attention focused upon his band, Wailers' leader Kent Morrill had formed his own record company, Etiquette. He signed fellow Tacoma band, the Sonics, and unleashed a fireball.

In early '64, the British Invasion clobbered the U.S. with a furious wallop. The local dance bands that were sprouting across country, having already absorbed the tremelo and reverb of surf music, began assimilating Merseybeat into their styles. Possibly influenced by the early Kinks, the Sonics (still employing the wailing sax of Northwest raunch) were early champs of traditional punk. Vocalist Gerry Roslie sang like Little Richard with a frog in his throat, his hoarse screams interjected in wild spasms. If punk rock was music created on the ragged edge, then the Sonics were its exemplars.

The Sonics had a local hit with "The Witch" in '64 (a two-chord riff), but their next record, "Psycho," was more earth-shaking. With pounding drums as powerful as those of the DC5, "Psycho" exploded like the boom of an amplified cannon (the Sonics' second LP was even entitled Boom). "I'm goin' outa my head/Now I wish I was dead," shouted Roslie, ripping his larynx. Although this was their last semi-hit until they moved to the Jerden label and cut the Yardbird-influenced. "You've Got Your Head On Backwards" ('66), the Sbnics recorded several gritty classics—"He's Waitin'," "Boss Hoss," "Strychnine," "Shot Down," and "Cinderella"—all composed by G. Roslie in a rabid fit of genius. As Sonics-scholar Mark Shipper wrote in his astute essay, "Five Great Musicians!! Three Great Chords!!": "Whew! Now I ask you, what'd the Kingsmen ever do with the same three chords?"

Not only did the Sonics cut a shrieking version of Richard Berry's "Have Love Will Travel," but they also tackled his "Louie Louie," by now (thanks to the Kingsmen) the standard test of strength among thousands of aspiring punk bands. Through the Sonics, however, "Louie Louie" (in the best version ever) was transformed from an expression of bumbling ineptitude into a frantic testament to the solidarity of teen bands everywhere.

All week long I been waitin' for a Saturday night ,

With the teen clubs rockin' and stompin' with all their might

I'm gonna throw away my books and all of my studies

So I can ride around with all my buddies.—the Bobby Fuller Four, "Saturday Night"

The abrupt rhythms of "Tex-Mex" (a des^rtic sound that originated from, the triangle of Clovis-Lubbock-Amarillo, fostered by Buddy Holly, Buddy Knox, and the Fireballs) were a key influence in the spread of punk passion out of mammoth Texas. In '63, a hit by the Nightcaps (from Dallas), "Wine Wine Wine," was fast becoming a standard for local dance bands. A streamlined version of Stick McGhee and His Buddies' "Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-ODee," this song emphasized a backbeat that competed with wild sax and savage vocals. But it wasn't until the Mexican^ Influenced dance songs of two other Texas bands, the Sir Douglas Quintet (San Antonio) and Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs (Dallas), climbed the charts during the summer of '65 that punk mania ignited across the Lone Star State.

Although the records probably were born from the beat introduced by the Nightcaps, "Wooly Bully" and "She's About A Mover" were actually charlatans' shams. Producer Huey Meaux wanted a band for his Tribe label that could deliver a punch to the encroaching British Invasion. Doug Sahm (who had been recording since age twelve— Little Doug Sanm, "A Real American Joe," Sarg 113) bugged Meaux enough so that his band, the Sir Douglas Quintet, was chosen and then promoted as "the first American group to have a hit with the very famous English sound" (Meaux's liner notes for Best Of Sir Doug). Even the cover on their Tribe LP shows the band posing in the dark like faceless shadows pretending to be one of the many unknown limey invaders. But Sahm's "She's About A Mover" couldn't escape its environment—its rhythms were more Mexican than Merseybeat. Later, Meaux would jump on the punk bandwagon, producing a Trashmen single on Tribe.

As for Sam the Sham (Domingo Samudio, of obvious descent), his whole act was a joke. With his Pharoahs, he toured local dance circuits in a hearse—each member dressed like a Middle Eastern Moron in turban and flowing robe. As a full-fledged member of the lunatic fringe, Sam had recorded a cover of Gene Simmons' "Haunted House" (Dingo 001) with a '64 Memphis beat. But he settled in the Dallas area, releasing the prankish "Wooly Bully," a brilliant parody of dance tunes. (For the complete story of Sam the Sham, fact and fiction, see my article, "Peacocks On' Parade" in CREEM, Vol. 4, No. 10, 73.)

The insanity of Sam the Sham and the ersatz-Anglo sound of Sir Doug (particularly Augie Meyer's throbbing organ) infected a rash of teen bands hiding in clubs, garages, and closets all over Texas. The Five Americans (Dallas) used the organ's pulsations as the central sound on their records ("I See The Light," "Western Union," "Zip Code") in a rather gimmicky manner. Often classified as a band from Michigan, Question Mark and the Mysterians chariged the simple organ chord into symbolic fibrillation on "96 Tears," a #1 national smash. (Rudy Martinez, alias ?, and his Mysterians were Texas Mexicans from Corpus Christi; "96' Tears" was initially released on a Texas label, Pa-Go-Go, and then purchased by Cameo after the band had moved to Michigan.)

But the greatest band utilizing Texasstyle organ during the Garage Era was Kenny and the Kasuals. They had originally formed to play AM hits at a Dallas high school gym each morning before school (the idea was to wake up the students). Kenny's Kasuals were soon booked at sock hops and frat parties and eventually at Dallas' Studio Club, where the band perfected their craft of copying frantically other groups' material (the Kinks, Stones), a craft that can be heard on their simulated Impact-Live LP. Now a lost art form, reproducing hit songs live was once a way of paying tribute through mimicry, for by emulating a famous band one's own grunge became respectable dance club music. By proving that any dummy could perform, say, British Invasion music, garage bands became the democratic link between kids and their radios. In any conversation about basement bands, no name will invoke a longer period of respectful silence than that of Kenny and the Kasuals.

If mimicry was the motivation behind most punk bands, then two of punkdom's finest stylists were from Texas— Mouse & the Traps and the Bobby Fuller Four. Growing up in Tyler, Ronny Weiss (Mouse) must have worn out twenty copies of Highway 61 Revisited in '65 trying to re-create the quintessence of his mentor, Bob Dylan. Mouse's "A Public Execution" is better neo-Dylan than virtually any record released during the folk-rock epoch (including P.F. Sloan's stuff). (Footnote: Although Mouse will always be remembered as the Notorious Dylan Impersonator, Mouse & the Traps cut eighteen sides, and not all of them are conscious attempts to imitate Dylan. E.g. "I Satisfy" is a fuzz-killer from the Hot House of Sin.)

In a '66 issue of Record Beat, Bobby Fuller is quoted: "I certainly never intended to sound like Buddy Holly," What bullshit. Not only did Bobby Fuller (El Paso), with his brother Randy, duplicate Holly's homemade sound, but he also had his first hit with "I Fought the Law" written by Sonny, Curtis (of the Crickets), followed by a version of Holly's "Love's Made A Fool Of You." Fuller was so mimetic that, like Holly, he even died unexpectedly in mid-career. Also like Holly, Bobby Fuller's legacy is astounding—"Let Her Dance," "Never To Be Forgotten," "Don't Ever Let Me Know," every record a marvelous example of studio expertise. In addition, the Bobby Fuller Four's second LP, I Fought the Law, remains the perfect companion to The

"Chirping" Crickets, both masterpieces of meticulous restraint.

Following in the footsteps of the deranged Samudio the Sham were the acid crazies that took over Texas ('66-'67) in a chemically-induced ravage (especially those recorded by the Houston-based International Artists).

Although the story of bands like the 13th Floor Elevators and the Red Krayola belongs to the colorful history of psychedelia, they usually evolved (kindled by LSD and ART) from a punk, tradition. For instance, the Elevators' Roky Erickson quit high school and joined the Spades, who recorded his "You're Gonna Miss Me" in a style less hallucinatory than the Elevators' later version. Prior to freaking out with the Familiar Ugly ("Hurricane Fighter Plane"), Mayo Thompson's Red Krayola was playing "Hey Joe" at dances and frat parties. Even a pure acid band like the Moving Sidewalks (their LP, Flash, satiated with purple psychedelics) , an early version of ZZ Top, was capable of producing hard-boiled punk ("99th Floor").

Nevertheless, Texas punk gradually began surrendering to acid rock (eventually dissolving into the outright dementia of the Legendary Stardust Cowboy). Kenny and the Kasuals, the old Garage Kings themselves, bowed before the mesmerizing bloodshot eye and cut "Journey To Tyme." "Our band tried to make a record that everyone would call psychedelic—fuzz tones, the whole bit," Bobby Fuller once stated in an interview. "It's just another trend. The Hollywood strip has gone psychedelic crazy—the kids, the clubs, the whole effect of hallucination."

In the mid-60's, punk and psychedelic rock were dialectical forces (cocky rebels vs. hippies is a 70's fantasy) with a cquple of elements distinctly in common—folk rock (pioneered by Dylan) and the fuzztone. During '65 and '66 in California, these two ingredients coalesced to create a revolutionary variety of punk. Whereas Mouse harmlessly echoed Dylan's sound, local bands with growling vocalists in Los Angeles adopted ^ Dylan's protest stance, giving punk a tough acrimony that could trigger riots on Sunset Strip.

☆ ☆ ☆

All I want is uh-just be free

Uh, live my life the way I wanna be

All I want is uh-just have fun

Uh, live my life like it just begun

But you're pushin' too hard

Pushin'too hard on me.—the Seeds, "Pushin' Too Hard"

Texas was not the only place where Mexican-American punk flourished— East L.A. had its share of Chicano groups as well. Although they were basically sloppy dance bands (the Romancers, Rortnie & the Pomona Casuals), some of them hqd national hits—the Premiers with "Farmer John," both The Midniters and Cannibal & the Headhunters with Chris Kenner's "Land of 10Q0 Dances." Yet not even the loose R&B-style dance music pouring out of clubs in the Chicano community could override the wave of frenzied fuzz sizzling from the | guitars (and hearts) of wild youths crowding the clubs (and sidewalks) of the seething Strip. And amid this anarchy in L.A. were two of punk's most celebrated and prolific progenitors —the_Standells and the Seeds.

(NEXT MONTH: West Coast Fuzz, Michigan Rocks —Chicago & Boston Too, Punk TV, Southern Trash, and Punk's Dissolution By the Troggs. Plus King-Size Discography!)

LETTER FROM BRITAIN

I Don't Like Hangovers

by Penny Valentine

I hadn't been to Clash for a while (we missed their Christmas concerts due to being in America and soaking up Talking Heads at the Beacon and the fireworks in Central Park) so we decided to combine enjoyment with political conscience and catch them at a special Rock Against Racism gig "People Unite—Southall Kids Are Innocent". The gig was one of two especially put on to raise money for the hundreds of people arrested at Southall during an anti-Nazi demo during the election campaign, when the police Special Patrol Group swung into action killing one young white schoolteacher and manhandling not a few Asian kids into the bargain. The night before, Peter Townshend had headlined a special show. This was a surprise since Townshend has never come up front with any solid political commitment before. It seems now that he's involved with the British reggae band Misty, his consciousness has been raised as to what's actually going on out there in the streets.

The extraordinary thing about the Clash gig was that the audience proved punk's alive in no mean way. It reminded me of the first time we went to a punk gig a couple of years ago—and the odd thing was it felt just the same as though we were interlopers, observers. It was really a massive reassertion of punk. I suppose really there's a new (how weird!) punk underground who move out en masse to celebrate an occasion like this. Apart from the once de rigeur bondage stuff and spiky hair, the really together punkettes seemed to have a uniform of short tartan skirt, thick tights and what looked like pixie boots. T was the only person in the auditorium in dungarees.

Clash followed Aswaad who'd come on after a friend of the dead teadher had sung a number about the SPG. He'd had a hard time at the start with a bit of barracking from below us where the seats had been taken out to give everyone room to pogo (last time the kids had ripped the seats out themselves). Even when Aswaad yelled out about the Southall kids the response seemed more half-hearted than to their reggae vitality on stage. It's the usual question RAR gigs pose. The kids come in but really the audience just wants the music, not the messages. Still the badges move and something gets through here and there and without RAR there'd be nothing at all. By the way, a point here. RAR in Britain seems very different from what we've heard of the American organization. Here it's definitely not a bunch of yippies.

Clash's politics are firmly entrenched in their attitude to the music business but I kept wishing they'd say something political on stage. I mean Strummer did mutter as usual between songs so it was impossible to hear exactly what he was saying but I didn't catch any particular reference to the reason for the gig and although "I Fought The Law" had a certain irony under the circumstances they could have made more of it. Maybe it's expecting too much, I don't know, but it's a shame because Clash still have the power and really they're the only surviving punk band. Currently they seem to have got themselves in an exhausting situation where Strummer is a sort of manager; they still refuse to bow to the establishment and make sure of a hit record by appearing on Top Of The Pops (a TV show here that assures you of a hit even if you can't string two words together); and continue to cling to a single-minded ethos that prevents them writing anything that looks like it's been specifically moulded for the commercial market. I think that's one of the reasons they've not had an easy time in America. It's a rotten . situation. Admirable but at the same time | defensive, too pure in a way. There is a kind of " middle path but I guess when you feel the record i industry is waiting for you to cave in under the o pressure and do it their way you hold on for grim " death.

§ There's another problem. Live they are still playing specifically for a punk audience. At the moment it's OK and probably why the underground punks emerge so confidently at their dates. But I'm always hyped up to the idea of seeing them, then after the third number I begin to submerge. Maybe it's my problem. Perhaps I want them to be showmen in the traditional rock way, rather than a superior punk band. But equally I look on them as leaders and'right now they don't seem to be leading anywhere.

I admire Tom Robinson too, for roughly the same reasons, though 1 get the feeling his personal/public politics seem to be under stress these days. I keep being reminded of Elton John. There seem to be whirlpools round him and a protective managerial coating building up. Dangerous stuff if you want to stay ahead of the crowd and in touch with your own reality. Too redolent of all those real rock stars and everything THAT stands for. During Gay Pride Week here Tom did a series of solo concerts with a jazz backing group. A couple of camp Noel Coward numbers, a few new love songs. They were pretty uninspiring and I really missed some of the bite I'd been expecting once he had the stage to himself. But he was nervous out there alone and it was odd how few gays actually turned up (the majority of the audience seemed to be. cosy couples that used to attend EJ concerts en masse). The thing is that Tom's becoming very acceptable and I'm not sure that's a good thing. Much as I was against the critics who put his last album down (there really isn't anything wrong .with providing melodic, good commercial rock music we can all get off on) he seems to be following the old pattern. And that disturbs me. First his original drummer "Dolphin" and he parted company, now it looks like the whole TRB situation has fallen apart, with Danny Kustow going off to play with other groups. I'm really beginning to wonder if Tom really doesn't just want to be another Elton John with a slightly better political perspective. And maybe he'll even finally ditch that in public too.

The problem's always the same. Once you make the decision to sign a record contract you've already hit a major snag, you become part of the establishment. And maybe we all expect too much. Maybe it finally does get impossible to ignore ego, success and how to achieve it and easier to sing along with Abba because they never had anything to sell out in the first place.

TURN TO PAGE 62

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 24

Bob Geldof\is a classic new case of having settled firmly in the "If this what it takes to be a household name I'll do it" syndrome. The national newspapers here love him, projecting him as the new bad boy of rock, which is a pretty bad sign for anyone who wants to be taken seriously as a musician but a good one for anyone who sees rock as a big circus. Even though the Boomtown Rats' "1 Don't Like Mondays"/is a straight cross between Queen, Bowie and Elton and Bernie's sniper song, and will probably drive me crazy in a week's time, it's a brilliant piece of construction. Written about the girl in San Diego who went to school and started shooting everyone in sight it works on two levels. One as an adequate piece of narrative, the other as a memorable chorus line (the number of people who just think it's about waking up after the weekend and feeling lousy -and I suppose in a way that's just what it is). Geldof hasn't got a great voice - it would sound even better if he got angry or desperate - but there's no doubt he's shrewd. That track doesn't bear one hallmark of spontaneity, carefully planned and executed and so in a way, pretentious. But it's not surprising it's likely to beat the wretched "Mull of Kintyre" as the biggest selling single ever in the British chart. Geldof knows the game within a game. It's one Clash may have to learn.

Meanwhile, Nils Lofgren's new album is a piece of vinyl that could actually be a piece of gamesmanship unequalled. I don't think it is, but that could be the winning hand. Lofgren always seems such a rock 'n' roll innocent, with absolute affection for his music. There's such an untainted quality to "Shine On", for instance, that it really does defy critical cynicism. There's ,an optimism at work here arid yes, in its owrf way, a real purity too.

RASH CLASH
MASH IN MOTOR CITY BASH

photos by Kate Siman

(Paul offers band salami; band demurs.)

by Dave DiMartino

Joe Strummer and I are sitting in a bar, talking about his band. I ask him about "I Fought the Law" and its relatively unex- pected success on American radio. Doesn't he think it odd that the one song promising to break the Clash in America is a tune he didn't even write?

Joe shakes his head in disgust, some- thing he's been doing quite a bit of. "It just goes to show ya, ya know?" he says.

"I'd just like to say this: America, how is it we make twenty-nine brilliant records and you won't give us a drop of airplay-and we make one shitty one and you lap it up. How Is It? Tell me..."

☆☆☆

Howard Johnson has a lot more going for him than HoJo cola. His hotels, for Instance Right in the middle of beautiful downtown Detroit sits a real beauty of a scrap-heap, the kind of mammoth, over- grown monstrosity that only the Motor City or any other dying metropolis can provide

Vertical, not horizontal, it shoots upward and leaves little room for people to walk about comfortably, The ceiling of each floor's hallway hangs down ominously, threatening the safe passage of anybody over six feet tall and adding even more to the already pervasive, claustrophobic at mosphere. The view outside-cars and busses streaming in every direction, city construction men attempting to beautify what can't be beautiful with their jackham- mers and sledges it all says more about Detroit than any chamber of commerce ever could. [Ah, go back to Miami. wetback. -Ed.)

In the lobby, we sit waiting for the Clash's bus to take us to an afternoon soundcheck at the nearby Masonic Temple, tonight's venue. A well-dressed, fifty-ish man sticks some change into a lobby vending machine as we wait and pulls out a fresh new copy of the latest Penthouse magazine. Outside, a weary-looking black man, old and hunched over, sticks his arm deep into a city garbage can and pulls out a prize-an empty Stroh's bottle that some unknowing tourist didn't

realize was worth five cents. He sticks it into his half-full burlap sack, throws the sack over his shoulder, and walks on, halfway to his own bottle or halfway to his own copy of Penthouse. Who cares? Welcome troit to De-

We climb on the bus.

(Dear Abby: Do leather pants couse Jock itch? A: Ask Forrest Tucker.)

☆☆☆

Mick, had you any preconceptions about what America would be like before you came here?

Mick Jones: Yeah, plenty. And?

Mick Jones: Most of my preconceptions were absolutely true.

Like?

Mick Jones: Everything's bigger here. And the food tastes twice as bland. Like the tomatoes, for instance-they're so big, but they don't taste like anything. Everything's been given a shot of something. It doesn't seem quite real

How about you, Paul? Any preconcep tions about your Detroit audience?

Paul Simenon: I dunno. Only that they must all have cars or something.

☆☆☆

("We've done it the American way and It won't work. --Mick Jones ")

Detroit is the Clash's fourth stop on this, their second American tour. They began at Monterey an ex-hippie's failed attempt at recreating the 60's festival and a total financial washout and reportedly went down a storm, pulling in encore after encore. They've hit Minneapolis, Chicago a night ago, and tomorrow they're on their way to Boston. They have a way to go yet, and they want to make sure everything will be running smoothly for tonight's Detroit show.

At the Masonic Temple, the equipment is already set up. The ban goes through several numbers, extending them, obvious- ly less concerned with tightness and more concerned with sound quality. Everything sounds good-the system, the players, the monitor system they weren't quite sure about-and another part of the band, the less disciplined, more adventurous part, surfaces. They have no one to impress but themselves, and they sound terrific. They ought to do more things like this. In public.

☆☆☆

Clash bassist Paul Simenon is upstairs relaxing in a Masonic Temple dressing room. The soundcheck is over, and Simenon sits talking to the most spectacu- larly beautiful girl I've ever seen.

Some questions about the band's new album. The on one you just recorded, OK? What were you looking for when you asked Guy Stevens to produce it?

"Madness," Simenon says. "And we found it." How so?

"Well-he's just loony." ny." Simenon points down at the tape recorder. "Like he'd pick this up and just throw it somewhere, ya know? He wouldn't care." A smile creeps up on his face. "Like we had this big piano in the studio, right? He poured beer all over it. Once everybody was getting ready to watch Marilyn Monroe films on the telly. right? He started crying. He walked over to the telly, hugged it and then poured beer all over it. And then it blew up. So we didn't do much telly watching while we were recor ding."

Simenon is extremely happy with the new album, as is the rest of the band. Sandy Pearlman's production efforts on Give 'Em Enough Rope, its predecessor, seem to have left no small impression.

"I'm not as pleased with the second album as I'd like to be," Simenon says, "I dunno it's just like He pauses. "It doesn't seem loose enough, that's all. Seems a bit uptight."

Mick Jones, who's just walked into the room, is even harsher. The new album, recorded within two months, slam-bang, In and out of the studio, seems the total antithesis of the carefully measured, la- boriously drawn-out Pearlman affair.

"I didn't realize the significance of how quickly it was done until people kept bringing it up," says Jones of the new LP. "That's only because all the records over here take nine years to do. And believe me the big production, the last one- we've done it, we've done it the American way, and it don't work, and it's a load a shit. So we've done it the English way now and we've got two albums instead of one. And it's all much better. Guy Stevens is probably the best English producer of the last two decades."

"Definitely," says Simenon.

☆☆☆

In the Howard Johnson's bar, Joe Strummer is methodically removing ice cubes from the mixture of orange juice, grenadine and tequila that makes up his Tequila Sunrise. He's putting them in the ashtray that sits on the table between us, talking about America to yet another anonymous American. He's also talking about business.

"Clash will one day sell millions of records in America," he says. "But in the 1990's.

You plan to stay together that long? "No," he grins. "It'll be like on TV, ya

know? Thirty Hits from the Temptations, Twenty-two Highballin' Truckers' Hits. It'll be one of those. Thirty-nine Greats from Old England or Remember the Seventies. Yeah, they'll buy all that shit-and now, when we need the dough. need it to keep going, we're gonna get the two fingers. But that's how you like it over here, don't you? Repackaged nostalgia.

Again, Strummer looks disgusted. "I saw a fuckin' Jackie Wilson record on sale on the telly, right? And Jackie Wilson's lyin' sick 'n half dead in a New York hospital, but they're still floggin' it. I bet Jackie Wilson don't see none of the $9.99 that goes for that."

☆☆☆

photos by Kate Siman

("I'm In a situation where I couldn't even go Into a drugstore and get a hamburger. --Joe Strummer")

(Well, I could go to art school, I suppose...)

("Since Margaret Thatcher, things aren't as easy for poor people. Or young people. --Paul Simenon")

(Audience? What audience?)

(Here's how much we love ya, Mick)

☆☆☆

So what do you think of American audiences so far?

Mick Jones: Well, they're pretty receptive, at least on some levels. They seem to listen, they seem to be aware. I mean it's not like it's made out, it's not like they're all dummies or something. No, the people that come to our concerts seem to be pretty alive.

What exactly are you talking about? The mass American audience that goes to see all the heavy metal groups and drop quaa- ludes and throw firecrackers? Man, if that's representative of America then you know you're in shit as well as I do

☆☆☆ Joe Strummer is still back at the bar, talking about business, while a nearby cocktail pianist plays Barry Manilow's "Daybreak." It's an interesting scene.

It's also been fascinating watching Strum- mer speak. At first, he makes absolutely no eye contact with me-making it painfully obvious that a) he's only speaking with me because he feels he should, and b) personally, he doesn't like me in the least. But as he warms up to the subject-record company screw-ups, American screw- ups-he looks me straight in the eye. He's talking advice now, advice to newer bands who've seen the Clash grow and become what they now are. He's talking about traps on the wayside for new, younger bands, unavoidable corporate politics that might be avoided. Maybe.

"I'd say that there are several smart things you can do," says Joe. "Number one-set up your own business operation before you start, so that-Number two-you can peg your own prices. And I'd say, speaking personally, that it's a bit of a wind-up to get with a major label. You never make a

penny out of it, as far as I can see. How would you have done things differently?

"I would have set up my own operation, for a start. You know, my own company, my own publishing, I'd set it up all our own. Maybe we we couldn't in those days, maybe if we did we wouldn't still be here. I dunno-but if I had a chance to go back and do it again, that's one thing I'd change, I think. 'Cause the understanding is virtually nil, and you always are pulling in the opposite direction. Ya know, we pull pretty hard, but we face a battery of 60 lawyers. When we try to get the price down on one of our things we face a battery of 60 lawyers all pullin' the other way. I just see it as a waste of spirit and effort and time. I think maybe if we got free we'd try to do something like. that.

Can you get free? What're the terms of your contract?

"It's a 99-year deal with 18 tracks a year. Same sorta contracts like the ones they give at Sing-Sing.'

☆☆☆

The bill tonight features not only the Clash but the Undertones, a very young, very talented outfit from Ireland whose debut LP should be out here soon on Sire Records. More than likely, few in the Detroit audience will have ever seen or heard the band before.

Not so with David Johansen. Johansen is to follow the Undertones, and Detroit is very much a New York Dolls stronghold. Johnny Thunders' recent local gigs with former MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer seem to have rekindled interest in what the Dolls. have wrought. Detroit is very anxious to see David Johansen.

☆☆☆

Have the things the band sung about on the first LP changed much since the record was made?

Paul Simenon: No, I think those songs still ring pretty true. Probably more so, now. Like "Career Opportunities" we wrote it a couple of years ago, but the situation about getting jobs is worse, and it's getting worse. Since Margaret Thatcher's come in it, I dunno, things aren't as easy for poor people. Or young people.

☆☆☆

Back in the bar again. Joe's half-finished his drink and I'm on maybe the sixth or seventh beer of what's become a very long day, asking if Joe thinks his experiences will

ultimately be of any value to anyone but himself.

"At least some buncha jerks will read this article," he scowls, "if you're ever gonna write it, that is, and, I dunno, maybe it'll help'em a little, maybe it won't. hel Actually.

I'd like t to think that I've done all that for a good purpose. So you can pass on a message, so all that bollockin' around wouldn't have been in vain. But secretly I have to believe that you cannot tell one person anything-1 can't tell you anything, can't give you no advice, 'cause you won't believe me until it happens to you. Not t you personally, but to everybody,

"I mean it's vice-versa, too, 'cause I heard things like 'don't sign anything. Keith Richards, for instance, he did an interview five years ago. 'Don't sign anything, kids, he said. I read that, ya know, thousands of others like me read it but I signed the fuckin' thing. So I'm not sure. Only now I know, 'cause I been ripped, now I know 'don't sign anything, but I had to be ripped to get here. Even though I read that before. So I'm not sure that what we're sayin' can really help anybody. Not until you've really been in it yourself-done in, done over.

"That's why I don't mind bein' done over-'cause I use I know that I'm learning something. Slowly."

Do you think you might be able to remove yourself from the situation?

"Lissen," says Joe, "I'm in a situation where I couldn't even go into a drugstore and get myself a hamburger. So I'm not in any situation I can get myself out of.

☆☆☆

I manage to make it to the Masonic Temple shortly after the Undertones' set, which apparently met mixed reactions. Barry Meyer, also with the Clash on their debut U.S. tour, is back again between sets spinning 45's and having a great time. The Detroit audience seems especially feisty, here to witness a headlining band they've heard on record, read a lot about, but never actually seen in person. When David Johansen emerges onstage, cheers are heard-but there's a tacit understanding between the performer and the audience. He's not the headliner, it's not really his show, and what happens next is essentially Johansen's own making.

In short: Johansen is superb. Three encores, Mitch Ryder and Four Tops tunes, even "Personality Crisis." The audience loves it, totally behind Johansen, totally behind his surprisingly magnetic stage appeal. Fists raised in the air after his third encore, he shouts "DETROIT!!!" into the microphone and the audience shouts just as loudly. And the Clash are next.

☆☆☆

A final trip back to the bar. Joe Strummer is getting ready to leave, I've got yet another beer and the day's third pack of Merit Menthols, a new record, I want to talk about Joe's record company problems.

Joe, you've been saying that you've been done in and screwed over and taken advantage of. What exactly is the deal? What do you have to do that's so terrible? What exactly is the obligation to CBS that's so unfair you can't even get a hamburger at a drugstore?

"How do ya mean 'obligation?"

Creem

——

THE BOOT Goes On
Clash Cool Bash With Trash

LONDON-The recent wave of crowd violence at punk rock concerts may soon be under control, thanks to that lovable gang of peacemakers, the Clash

At future concerts, when a fight breaks out, the plan is to turn the spotlights on the braw- lers and then play "the most boring song we know" until the situation cools down.

Clash boss Joe Strummer is currently going through the Joan Baez songbook, looking for a tune boring enough to settle any punch-out without actually boring the participants to death.

Rick Johnson

LETTER FROM BRITAIN

I Don't Like Hangovers

by Penny Valentine

I hadn't been to Clash for a while (we missed their Christmas concerts due to being in America and soaking up Talking Heads at the Beacon and the fireworks in Central Park) so we decided to combine enjoyment with political conscience and catch them at a special Rock Against Racism gig "People Unite—Southall Kids Are Innocent". The gig was one of two especially put on to raise money for the hundreds of people arrested at Southall during an anti-Nazi demo during the election campaign, when the police Special Patrol Group swung into action killing one young white schoolteacher and manhandling not a few Asian kids into the bargain. The night before, Peter Townshend had headlined a special show. This was a surprise since Townshend has never come up front with any solid political commitment before. It seems now that he's involved with the British reggae band Misty, his consciousness has been raised as to what's actually going on out there in the streets.

The extraordinary thing about the Clash gig was that the audience proved punk's alive in no mean way. It reminded me of the first time we went to a punk gig a couple of years ago—and the odd thing was it felt just the same as though we were interlopers, observers. It was really a massive reassertion of punk. I suppose really there's a new (how weird!) punk underground who move out en masse to celebrate an occasion like this. Apart from the once de rigeur bondage stuff and spiky hair, the really together punkettes seemed to have a uniform of short tartan skirt, thick tights and what looked like pixie boots. T was the only person in the auditorium in dungarees.

Clash followed Aswaad who'd come on after a friend of the dead teadher had sung a number about the SPG. He'd had a hard time at the start with a bit of barracking from below us where the seats had been taken out to give everyone room to pogo (last time the kids had ripped the seats out themselves). Even when Aswaad yelled out about the Southall kids the response seemed more half-hearted than to their reggae vitality on stage. It's the usual question RAR gigs pose. The kids come in but really the audience just wants the music, not the messages. Still the badges move and something gets through here and there and without RAR there'd be nothing at all. By the way, a point here. RAR in Britain seems very different from what we've heard of the American organization. Here it's definitely not a bunch of yippies.

Clash's politics are firmly entrenched in their attitude to the music business but I kept wishing they'd say something political on stage. I mean Strummer did mutter as usual between songs so it was impossible to hear exactly what he was saying but I didn't catch any particular reference to the reason for the gig and although "I Fought The Law" had a certain irony under the circumstances they could have made more of it. Maybe it's expecting too much, I don't know, but it's a shame because Clash still have the power and really they're the only surviving punk band. Currently they seem to have got themselves in an exhausting situation where Strummer is a sort of manager; they still refuse to bow to the establishment and make sure of a hit record by appearing on Top Of The Pops (a TV show here that assures you of a hit even if you can't string two words together); and continue to cling to a single-minded ethos that prevents them writing anything that looks like it's been specifically moulded for the commercial market. I think that's one of the reasons they've not had an easy time in America. It's a rotten . situation. Admirable but at the same time | defensive, too pure in a way. There is a kind of " middle path but I guess when you feel the record i industry is waiting for you to cave in under the o pressure and do it their way you hold on for grim " death.

§ There's another problem. Live they are still playing specifically for a punk audience. At the moment it's OK and probably why the underground punks emerge so confidently at their dates. But I'm always hyped up to the idea of seeing them, then after the third number I begin to submerge. Maybe it's my problem. Perhaps I want them to be showmen in the traditional rock way, rather than a superior punk band. But equally I look on them as leaders and'right now they don't seem to be leading anywhere.

I admire Tom Robinson too, for roughly the same reasons, though 1 get the feeling his personal/public politics seem to be under stress these days. I keep being reminded of Elton John. There seem to be whirlpools round him and a protective managerial coating building up. Dangerous stuff if you want to stay ahead of the crowd and in touch with your own reality. Too redolent of all those real rock stars and everything THAT stands for. During Gay Pride Week here Tom did a series of solo concerts with a jazz backing group. A couple of camp Noel Coward numbers, a few new love songs. They were pretty uninspiring and I really missed some of the bite I'd been expecting once he had the stage to himself. But he was nervous out there alone and it was odd how few gays actually turned up (the majority of the audience seemed to be. cosy couples that used to attend EJ concerts en masse). The thing is that Tom's becoming very acceptable and I'm not sure that's a good thing. Much as I was against the critics who put his last album down (there really isn't anything wrong .with providing melodic, good commercial rock music we can all get off on) he seems to be following the old pattern. And that disturbs me. First his original drummer "Dolphin" and he parted company, now it looks like the whole TRB situation has fallen apart, with Danny Kustow going off to play with other groups. I'm really beginning to wonder if Tom really doesn't just want to be another Elton John with a slightly better political perspective. And maybe he'll even finally ditch that in public too.

The problem's always the same. Once you make the decision to sign a record contract you've already hit a major snag, you become part of the establishment. And maybe we all expect too much. Maybe it finally does get impossible to ignore ego, success and how to achieve it and easier to sing along with Abba because they never had anything to sell out in the first place.

TURN TO PAGE 62

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 24

Bob Geldof\is a classic new case of having settled firmly in the "If this what it takes to be a household name I'll do it" syndrome. The national newspapers here love him, projecting him as the new bad boy of rock, which is a pretty bad sign for anyone who wants to be taken seriously as a musician but a good one for anyone who sees rock as a big circus. Even though the Boomtown Rats' "1 Don't Like Mondays"/is a straight cross between Queen, Bowie and Elton and Bernie's sniper song, and will probably drive me crazy in a week's time, it's a brilliant piece of construction. Written about the girl in San Diego who went to school and started shooting everyone in sight it works on two levels. One as an adequate piece of narrative, the other as a memorable chorus line (the number of people who just think it's about waking up after the weekend and feeling lousy -and I suppose in a way that's just what it is). Geldof hasn't got a great voice - it would sound even better if he got angry or desperate - but there's no doubt he's shrewd. That track doesn't bear one hallmark of spontaneity, carefully planned and executed and so in a way, pretentious. But it's not surprising it's likely to beat the wretched "Mull of Kintyre" as the biggest selling single ever in the British chart. Geldof knows the game within a game. It's one Clash may have to learn.

Meanwhile, Nils Lofgren's new album is a piece of vinyl that could actually be a piece of gamesmanship unequalled. I don't think it is, but that could be the winning hand. Lofgren always seems such a rock 'n' roll innocent, with absolute affection for his music. There's such an untainted quality to "Shine On", for instance, that it really does defy critical cynicism. There's ,an optimism at work here arid yes, in its owrf way, a real purity too.

The Clash Still Drawing Big U.S. Audiences

Lisa Robinson

IT'S BEEN FOUR years since the Clash began in England and when, on that infamous "Anarchy in The U.K." tour with the Sex Pistols, reports filtered back to America that here was, indeed, a band to take one's breath away.

But even though their recent American shows sold out in a matter of hours, and their double LP (London Calling) can be considered nothing less than a commercial success as well as a superb musical achievement the Clash insist that nothing's changed.

"I don't feel no different," said guitarist Mick Jones, following the band's incredible New York show. "We're not stars." This, despite the crowd waiting to get inside the stage door to get a glimpse of the foursome. The difference? The Clash let their fans inside, downstairs to the Green Room to pose with them for photos, get autographs and chat. A bit different than the usual Andy Warholin-the-dressing-room bit you tend to find with other bands who have Made It.

Do the Clash really consider themselves a punk band still?

"Yes and no," said Jones. "It depends on how I feel," he laughed. "We've grown and changed, yes. It was inevitable, yes. We've gained lots of things. A wider apprecitation of things, for example. We've learned how to be subtle instead of just shouting out loud. And we write better songs. We've learned different ways to say things.

"BUT," MICK EMPHASIZED, "it's all been a natural thing for us. We've done it all on our instincts."

One of the things the Clash did try to do this last time in the U.S. was to perform in halls where the seats could be removed, where the audience could dance. And they tried

to keep the ticket prices down, plus they attempted to find opening acts who would continue to show American audiences where their music came from like Lee Dorsey (famed New Orleans musician who scored in the 1960s with "Ya Ya" and "Working In The Coal Mine"). "We try to play fair," said Jones, "we do feel responsible."

How does he feel about the enthusiastic way that London Calling has been received?

"I'm pleased about it," said Mick, "I'm glad that people like it. Although there are some people who think it's perfectly dreadful," he laughed.

When told that London Calling has been played in places like Studio 54 (where the Clash paid a visit this week to see James Brown perform), Mick laughed and said, "Really? That's pretty strange."

Not really, for the Clash, certainly more than any other hardcore "new" rock and roll band, have arrived. And it couldn't happen to a better bunch of geezers.

Field Newspaper Syndicate

The Clash Still Drawing Big U.S. Audiences

IT'S BEEN FOUR years since the Clash began in England and when, on that infamous "Anarchy in The U.K." tour with the Sex Pistols, reports fil- tered back to America that here was, indeed, a band to take one's breath away.

But even though their recent American shows sold out in a matter of hours, and their double LP (Lon- don Calling) can be considered noth- ing less than a commercial success as well as a superb musical achieve- ment the Clash insist that nothing's changed.

"I don't feel no different," said guitarist Mick Jones, following the band's incredible New York show. "We're not stars." This, despite the crowd waiting to get inside the stage door to get a glimpse of the four- some. The difference? The Clash let their fans inside, downstairs to the Green Room to pose with them for photos, get autographs and chat. A bit different than the usual Andy Warhol- in-the-dressing-room bit you tend to find with other bands who have Made It.

Do the Clash really consider

Lisa Robinson

themselves a punk band still?

"Yes and no," said Jones. "It de- pends on how I feel," he laughed. "We've grown and changed, yes. It was inevitable, yes. We've gained lots of things. A wider apprecitation of things, for example. We've learned how to be subtle instead of just shout- ing out loud. And we write better songs. We've learned different ways to say things.

"BUT," MICK EMPHASIZED, "it's all been a natural thing for us. We've done it all on our instincts."

One of the things the Clash did try to do this last time in the U.S. was to perform in halls where the seats could be removed, where the audience could dance. And they tried

to keep the ticket prices down, plus they attempted to find opening acts who would continue to show Ameri- can audiences where their music came from like Lee Dorsey (famed New Orleans musician who scored in the 1960s with "Ya Ya" and "Working In The Coal Mine"). "We try to play fair," said Jones, "we do feel respon- sible."

How does he feel about the enthu- siastic way that London Calling has been received?

"I'm pleased about it," said Mick, "I'm glad that people like it. Although there are some people who think it's perfectly dreadful," he laughed.

When told that London Calling has been played in places like Studio 54 (where the Clash paid a visit this week to see James Brown perform), Mick laughed and said, "Really? That's pretty strange."

Not really, for the Clash, certainly more than any other hardcore "new" rock and roll band, have arrived. And it couldn't happen to a better bunch of geezers.

Field Newspaper Syndicate

The Clash Play Revolution Rock
Chris Salewicz, Trouser Press, March 1980

Aklam Hall gigs

US Tour - LA Fallout end of tour

Boston Radio Show

IT'S FOUR days before Christmas. A dark, early evening damp with snow and rain. Immediately south of the Thames, in the inappropriately genteel Victorian suburb of Putney, the Clash is stashed away in a rehearsal studio. They are readying their set of reggaebilly rockers for a 40-date British tour set to start on the fifth day of the New Year. As elevated tube trains rumble past a few yards away from the building, the Clash - vibed in on several hours of playing and spliffing - are into serious work, running repeatedly through the backing track for 'Rudie Can't Fail'.

Drummer Topper Headon retains a spiky haircut (albeit growing out), but the three front-line Clashers now bear little sign of the band's punk origins. In keeping with their fascination with and love for their musical roots, they all resemble variants on late-'50s rockers. Lead guitarist Mick Jones sports a black slim-lapelled, drainpipe-trousered suit and pomaded black hair; all he lacks is a pencil-thin moustache to seem at home cleaning his nails with the end of a metal comb in a backstreet Italian bar. Bassist Paul Simonon wears a brown chalk-striped variant on the same cut of suit as Jones; his blonde locks are plastered back too, in homage to James Dean. (Simonon is due in Hollywood this March to act in a feature film.) Lead singer/rhythm guitarist Joe Strummer's dark blue woolen shortie overcoat proclaims hitman cool, though this image is softened by faded tight jeans and battered shoes.

Strummer's seated at the organ in the middle of the rehearsal room, and pouring out his soul on 'The Bankrobbing Song', an unrecorded slow blues featuring Jones on bottleneck. As he sprawls over the notes and squeezes his mournful words into the mike, Strummer invokes memories of countless anonymous bar-room bluesers, their voices husky from too many nights of booze and cigarette smoke - though Joe hardly drinks at all these days. (Live, the Clash's keyboards are handled by Blockhead Mickey Gallagher, who in another incarnation co-wrote Peter Frampton's fab smasheroo, 'Show Me the Way'.

'The Bankrobbing Song' completed, the Clash replenish the energies of several hours' playing with Chinese and Indian foods brought in during the last song by personal assistant Johnny Green. Jones and Strummer check carefully to ensure no animal flesh comes their way (Jones: "Chrissie Hynde once told me that if you eat meat you inherit the fear of the animal as it was killed"); the assorted dishes are shared around until a no-waste situation is achieved.

London Calling, the new Clash double LP, has been in the shops for about 10 days, and entered the British charts at number nine. With legendary, supposed loony, producer Guy Stevens at the controls, the album - cut in three and a half weeks prior to the band's summer '79 US tour - transcends the introversion (not to mention the Blue Oyster Cult sound) of the Sandy Pearlman-produced Give 'Em Enough Rope.
Dealing with emotions, decrying self-defeatism, London Calling is direct spiritual heir to The Clash. Just as that LP was probably the best debut album ever made by any group, so London Calling, appearing at the tail end of 1979 is possibly the definitive '70s rock 'n' roll record, an ironic antidote to Me Generation selfishness and self-defeatism.

"It's our 20 Greatest Hits currently," Mick Jones comments after dinner. (Only 19 titles are listed on the cover; the closing 'Train In Vain' was a last minute inclusion after a plan to give it away free with New Musical Express hit insurmountable technical problems.) "We knew it was coming out at Christmastime so we thought it would go up well against all the other 20 Greatest. We think ours stands up quite well against Lena Martell."

"Tell you something," the lead guitarist turns to Strummer, clambering back to the organ like a kid returning to a school desk. "We're going to have to do something to make the album come out as cheap as posible in America. That's quite important. How much is Tusk?" Jones turns to me.

About $15, I hazard.

Strummer: "But that's made of ivory, isn't it?"

Simonon: "Must be."

Jones: "Well, I reckon we must definitely go for about ten bucks. And we'll have to stand by it, 'cos, you know, once you've said it - "
Strummer "Stand by your price."

Doubters have suggested that the Clash's open derision towards their record company is little more than a chic urban pose; this is hardly a worthy estimation of the intensity of passion within the band. The Clash just despairs at the generally ham-fisted lack of humanity displayed by the soulless super-corporation, and their company's depressingly low level of understanding of what rock music is all about. Consider Strummer's appalled reaction to the news that, prior to the band's spring Los Angeles show, Epic Records execs had gorged down nine-course meals. "What sort of person goes out and eats a nine-course meal and then goes to see some rock 'n' roll?" he demanded incredulously.

Despite constant public confrontation between the band and their Babylonian Paymaster General, genuine Clashfans apparently exist at boardroom level. There seems to be little question of the band's being dropped by Epic should London Calling fail to shift the required number of units. Headon hands me a highly laudatory, slightly unctuous cable from an Epic bigwig comparing the Clash to such mighties as John Lennon. It says he will love them always and that they are jolly smashing.

"There you go then," Jones says with a decisive nod of his head. "That's what they think of us...Though they probably will turn against us if [the new album] doesn't happen.

"It's not as though they almost haven't anyway. Perhaps they haven't in America, but here it's different. They've always got so many problems with us; we're the problem cases.

"You see, they're not very musical people at CBS. They're not really interested in music. The ones in charge don't know anything about music." He turns to the bassist who is sitting on my left. "What do you think of CBS, Paul?"

"I don't really know." Simonon shrugs his shoulders. "I don't really deal with them."

"Yeah," Jones adds reflectively, turning to me. "We don't really. We've stopped."

Simonon: "But before it was always a pain. I can't bear to go up there."

Headon: "We never ever speak to them."

Jones: "See, they're the sort of company - their latest Christmas card, right, is a classic. It's in full color: a picture of the managing director holding his dog's paw..."

Simonon: "...which is holding a pen..."

Jones: "...which is signing a contract..."

Headon: "...in front of all these gold albums."

Simonon: "That must be what they think of us."

Jones: "People on our label are the same as dogs. Anytime it looks like you're going to get out of it they find loads of different ways for you to owe them money."

Simonon: "They sort of say, 'Well, here's some money to help you out'; but it doesn't help at all. It just appears on a bit of paper later. You think, 'Oh, great.

We've got out of the mess we're in.' And there it comes again."

Jones: "We did think that we could just do a load of records, right - like just quick, jazz albums - hand them all in at once and it'd be over with. But this is a contract we signed when we were naive youngsters. It says the records have to be made over a certain period of time. So it's just a case of us doing our time, really."

Besides guerrilla warfare with their record company, until recently the Clash was involved in a similar situation with former manager Bernie Rhodes (who signed the band to British CBS the same day the group thought they were signing with Polydor). The diminutive Rhodes, former second-in-command to one Malcolm McLaren, appeared to thrive on tensions and disharmony at direct odds with the growth of the group's collective strength. Having settled out of court with Rhodes, the Clash is now managed by Blackhill, one of the world's more trustworthy management operations. The original managers of Pink Floyd currently care for the career of Ian Dury, as well as Roy Harper and Philip Rambow.

"You've got to get ripped off," Strummer concludes, "to know what it's all about."

London Calling is littered with allusions to and pastiches of rockabilly, R&B and especially reggae, not forgetting rock steady and ska. These are sources, though, not Bowie-type steals. There's nothing self-conscious or sneaky about them; it's all out in the open. The Clash wit, and the fiery positivism it hangs out with, sees to that.

Of all the sources, reggae is certainly dominant. It pervades London Calling, sometimes unobtrusively, sometimes not. The Clash listens to a lot of reggae; on-the-road traveling music is invariably chosen from the Paul Simonon cassette collection. 'Rudie Can't Fail', 'Wrong 'Em Boyo' (originally cut by the Groovers in '64), 'Lover's Rock' and 'Revolution Rock' are obviously under the influence, but it's all over the place: 'Hateful', 'Jimmy Jazz', 'Death or Glory', 'Clampdown' and others.

For the B-side of the 'London Calling' 45 the Clash cut their version of Willie Williams' summer reggae single, 'Armagideon Time'. The original was released on Coxsone Dodd's Studio One label, a company renowned for some of the best sounds that come out of Jamaica (and also for the philosophical manner in which its artists seem to accept not being paid).

'Armagideon Time' used one of the most popular rhythms of the year, Sound Dimension's 'Real Rock'. The Clash had hoped to go to Jamaica after their US tour to use the same rhythm track. Studio One expressed no interest whatsoever. "They didn't want to know," Jones says sadly, "though they don't mind selling us the publishing! I was bitterly disappointed that I had to come back to England instead.

"There were all these plans: we were going to have gone to Cuba. And to Mexico. And Japan. We were going everywhere. And instead we came back here as soon as it was all over." The Cuban tour idea fell through during the mini-crisis about Russian troops on the island.

The last US tour seemed almost pre-destined to end in chaos. The organization completely fell apart at the last date in Los Angeles.

"Me 'n' Joe were stuck at the airport," Headon recalls. "We didn't even have the money to fly the luggage out. As soon as the last gig was over everyone did a runner. We woke up in the hotel the morning after the last gig and there was just the four of us left."

"We were in charge that night," Jones continues. "Kosmo [Vinyl, member of the Blackhill team and legendary rock 'n' roll visionary] had lost his passport and had to go up to Vancouver to fetch it. Then the geezers in the road crew wouldn't start the show unless they'd been paid. And there was this massive audience going bonkers. All bribes and things to get them to turn the power on. After that even the tour manager skipped."

How about the famous Clash vs. America stand-off?

"America hasn't really woken up to us on any massive scale. The concerts are good. I think we have a bit of a rep as a live band.

"I imagine" - Jones's lips curl contemptuously - "the Police - someone like that - must have sold quite a lot of records there. Like the Knack have."

And radio airplay?

"Some...It's like - [to the others] I mean, are we underrating it or what?"

Strummer: "Underrating what?"

Jones: "Do we get played on the radio a lot or not?"

Strummer: "Definitely not!"

Headon: "On John Peel-type shows."

Strummer: "What's that station in Boston?"

Jones: "Can't remember. We had a good time in Boston. Took over a radio station."

Headon: "Oedipus."

Jones: "That's the name of the DJ."

Headon: "We smashed all his records up."

Jones: "Yeah, we were taking his Boston and Foreigner albums out of their sleeves and scratching them. His most popular records totally fucked. The program director was talking to us as he stood on this pile of hundreds of records that had just been chucked down on the floor."
What sort of radio programs did the Clash find themselves stuck on?

Strummer: "'Look at the latest drivel that's come into town'."

Headon: "'Latest gimmick'."

Jones: "'Four novelties from England'."

Headon: "We'd play up to it 'n' all."

Christmas Eve. The Clash is rehearsing in Acklam Hall off Notting Hill's Portobello Road, directly beneath the Westway flyover that is such a vital symbol in the group's mythology. On Christmas Day and Boxing Day (the 26th) the Clash is playing two "secret" gigs at the hall (tickets $1) as an antidote to the holidays and as warm-up dates (with Mickey Gallagher) for their British tour.

Afterwards, Simonon, Strummer, Headon and myself walk to Simonon's basement flat a couple of blocks away. It's a modest two-room place, decorated and carpeted in various shades of red that are totally appropriate for a fire-sign person. The other two Clashers call for cabs to take them home. Simonon and I sit down in the kitchen with some rum and my tape recorder. His American woman friend and her friend watch a Gene Kelly film on one of the two TVs that are switched on in the front room.

Like Strummer and Jones, Simonon is a former art student. The offspring of a broken marriage (as are Joe and Mick), he used the first money he earned with the Clash as a deposit on the flat. He badly needed a place of his own after years of sharing bedrooms with his brother and living in squats. He bought this flat very cheaply indeed. "It's great in this neighborhood," he says. "There's this black family next door and really early in the morning they play all this dub. I don't even need to put anything on to listen to when I'm getting up."
We return to the subject of America. The country does seem to be accepting more new wave.

"Yeah, slowly. Something seems to be stirring over there. I think all those other groups like the Police - and whether I like them or not is another thing - you do hear them a lot on the radio, so it does help us in some ways. Makes them a bit more open to our music.

"New York's really great for us. It's probably about the only place in America I really enjoy. Then again it's got all its bullshit attached to it.
"I think someone from England coming up against all that stuff can easily be taken in and sink with it. Everytime I go over there I'm aware of that. Funny thing is, after a while it gets boring."

Recording also tires Simonon, although that wasn't the case with London Calling.

"Usually I get really bored because the producers and people aren't interesting. But Guy Stevens is really different from the others. He's much more than a producer, really."

Mick Jones had said that Stevens absorbed all the nuttiness and tensions within the band.

"Yeah. You could just pour it all out. Great!

"Making the last one was terrible. CBS or Bernie or whoever it was kept us separated from each other. Blackhill, our new management people, seem okay so far, but we've got our eyes open more than before. We no longer sign things when we don't know what they're for. I suppose that showed stupidity - though it's good in a way that happened to us because we'll actually tell people about it."

After two superb Acklam Hall shows the Clash climaxes its holiday gigs December 27th at the Hammersmith Odeon as the "Mystery Act" on an Ian Dury-topping benefit for Cambodian refugees.

Twenty minutes or so before the Clash is due on I meet Guy Stevens at the backstage bar. In addition to his incredible production work, Stevens was responsible for the release of about half the classic R&B and soul Britain heard in the mid-'60s. Music is precious stuff to him, and he deplores its bastardization by large record conglomerates for the sake of mere profit. The Clash, he knows, is true to the cause. The Clash is part of the Quest.

"Listen," he shouts in my ear, spraying the entire right side of my face with spittle. "Did you see Joe Strummer in the dressing-room just now? Down on the floor, ironing his stage-clothes on a towel? Gene Vincent would've done that! Eddie Cochran would've done that! Jerry Lee Lewis would've done that!" He has a firm hold on my arm, and a fan's passion in his voice. He loosens my arm and slumps down on a seat, as though in a trance, to contemplate this perfect rock 'n' roll image.

Midway through the Clash's set I look up from my seat and see a squirming Guy Stevens carried up the center aisle by four security men. Fearful he may be kicked out of the theater or even beaten up, I go in search of him at the rear of the auditorium.

He's okay. One of the guards has recognized him and is mildly scolding him for causing them any bother. Carried away by the Clash's music, Guy had been dancing in front of one of the cameras filming the event. He is very drunk.

We are negotiating a swaying journey down the side of the auditorium to the backstage door when someone suddenly rushes up behind us and throws his arms about Guy. It is what seems to be an equally pissed Pete Townshend! Leaving Stevens in good hands, I wend my way back to my seat.

Eight days later I'm seated between Jones and Strummer on the mini-bus the Clash has rented for their British tour. It's about midnight. We're traveling up the M1 to Birmingham where the band will appear next morning (Saturday) in a children's TV show, Tiswas. Hard Jamaican sounds pour out of the Simonon portable cassette player, filling the rather too warm vehicle.

The intention is to discuss specific details of London Calling with the self-contained and highly romantic (a compliment, of course) Strummer. We start off with 'Lover's Rock'. The title refers to a reggae sub-division popular in England over the past couple of years and featuring what sounds like twee 14-year-old girls and electronic drums. The Clash song discusses just how lovers should rock, invoking Taoism through quotes from The Tao of Love ("You can make a lover in a thousand goes") and decrying the Pill's subtle Babylonian oppression.

"It's been misunderstood, that song, you know," Strummer half-grins, wryly self-mocking. "You have to be a bit gone in the head to try to get that over."

'The Right Profile' is about Montgomery Clift. I recall Guy Stevens saying he lent Strummer a paperback on Clift.

"I read two of them," he nods. "It's quite interesting to read two books about the same person because they both give you a completely different picture. You read one and you think, 'Oh, that's how the guy really was!' If you read another you get a totally different angle, and you think, 'Was he like this, or like that?' And you realize he was probably like neither."

Through Strummer's recent reading, the conversation turns to the Odyssey, Greek and Roman mythology, the Basques and Atlantis, Karl Jung, Edgar Cayce and Rasta passivity. The last topic reminds me that London Calling advocates just the opposite: people should step forward, get on with it and blow out their apathy.

"Yeah, but - It's very hard to deal with apathy. Making like you've got the answers to everybody's problems - it's impossible, of course. Everybody must sort out their own problems; that's the key to everything. You sort one problem out and get the will to go on and sort another one out. You can't expect any help, I don't think.

"Mainly, though, we were thinking about people accepting shit as gold. Just a little while ago we heard a record on the radio which was pure shit, and this guy goes, 'Mmmm...that's good.' It's just the Emperor's new clothes again and again. Of course, it ain't good. It's just a load of fuckin' shit, y'know."

The Clash questions everything, which is why they're so positive. They don't believe in hopelessness; they believe we have nothing but hope.
"Only the lazy ones look to us for a solution," Strummer says. "We just made our feelings clear; other people happened to feel that way too, so they got behind it. But making your feelings clear is a long way from solving everything.

"That 'Bored with the USA' song has always been misconstrued. We say, 'We're so bored with the USA' having to sit at home and have it pumped into us. The second you turn on the TV you know it's in America somewhere, and there's this bird who's probably a detective, and then a car's gonna roll over a cliff - you know all the plots by heart. 'I'm So Bored with the USA' was about the importing of culture.
"A quick spree 'round the States taking in all the sights and buying all the crap you can lay your hands on - that's what we call fun. So long as we don't have to live there."

The next afternoon, arriving at the gates of the Aylesbury Civic Hall for the first date of the tour, Joe Strummer gazes out of the mini-bus window at the street filled with punks and punkettes.

"See," he turns to Paul. "We've sold out again. And we said we'd never sell out."
© Chris Salewicz, 1980

Tuesday, October 16, 1979 - Akron Beacon Journal - D11

Irony plagues punk rockers

By Kim McAuliffe Knight-Ridder News Service

The Clash, some critics think, play music that could make them the next Who or Rolling Stones.

That comparison has a touch of irony. The Clash, a two-year-old group from England, springs from the punk movement, which publicly detests the kind of commercial and social success groups like the Who and the Stones have achieved.

The irony isn't lost on the Clash's 23year-old vocalist-guitarist Joe Strummer:

"Yeah, it's really ironic. On the one hand, it's kind of flattering because everyone thinks we're so great. But on the other hand, it's really frustrating.

"If we were just going to be another Stones or another Who, it (would be) a bit of a bore, really. That's why we're going to try to turn left where we should've turned right, you know?"

Something else the Clash would like to straighten out: Group members, who have released two albums in the United States ("Give 'Em Enough Rope" and "The Clash," which contains the hit single, "I Fought the Law"), don't view themselves as social critics, though most of their songs

comment on Britain's chaotic econony and social fabric.

SAYS, STRUMMER: "First, we're a

combo, a group. Secondly, we got something to say in the words of the songs. But first, a group. To me, music is more than anything, and I'd rather sing about hunger and that just because it seems kind of deceitful not to."

For those who regard punk music as trash, Strummer says, "Journalists in London used to say three years ago that Little Feat rhythms was where it was at. Now they're all coming around, saying, 'Hi, Joe. Gee, Joe. Love your latest, Joe.""

What the critics are loving lately is the Clash's raucous, high-energy sound that comes from 23-year-old Mick Jones' aggressive guitar, spitting drum lines, and the group's shocking, yet reflective lyrics sung in a battling style.

Despite its energy, the Clash is much more accessible audibly than many punk groups. Its sound is based upon more familiar styles, '50s vocals and '60s diversity. Thus, the Clash has developed a formidable audience.

"That's because," Strummer says, "we really know our onions."

Punk group making it big

Knight News Wire.

The Clash, some critics think, play music that could make them the next Who or Rolling Stones.

That comparison has a touch of irony. The Clash, a two-year-old group from England, springs from the punk movement, which publicly detests the kind of commercial and social suc cess groups like the Who and the Stones have achieved.

The irony isn't lost on the Clash's 23-year-old vocalist- guitarist Joe Strummer:

"Yeah, it's really ironic. On the one hand, it's kind of flattering because everyone thinks we're so great. But on the other hand, it's really frustrating.

"If we were just going to be another Stones or another Who, it (would be) a bit of a bore, really. That's why why we're going to try to turn left where we should've turned right, you know?"

SOMETHING else the Clash would like to straighten out: Group members, who have releas ty. ed two alburns in the United States ("Give 'Em Enough Rope" and "The Clash," which contains the hit single, "I Fought the Law"), don't view themselves as social critics, though most of their songs comment on Britain's chaotic econony and social fabric.

Says Strummer: "First, we're a combo, a group. Secondly, we got something. to say in the words of the songs. But first, a group. To me, music is more than a thing, and I'd rather sing about hunger and that just because it seems kind of deceitful not to."

There are other statements to make, about the punk movement and what it has done for music and for society.

"In 10 years time," Strum- mer says, "if you got all the punk rock records and burn- ed them, and said they were

all no good, even if that's so, it's still done more than anything in music lately. Especially for young musi- cians.

"It made them realize that they could do it, that they didn't have to stand and watch. And that's paying out all in Winnepeg, in France, in Wales. Beause every time now, there (is) a group where, before, there wouldn't be any group at all."

FOR THOSE who regard punk music as trash, Strum- mer says, "Journalists in London used to say three years ago that Little Feat rhythms was where it was at. Now they're all coming around, saying, 'Hi, Joe. Gee, Joe. Love your latest, Joe. But we haven't forgot- ten when they called us rub- bish."

Despite its energy, the Clash is much more accessi- ble audibly than many punk groups. Its sound is based upon more familiar styles, '50s vocals and '60s diversity.

THE CLASH

SHOCK TROOPS FOR THE GUITAR ARMY

By Robert Ferrigno and Steven Bialer

"A true punk digs rock 'n' roll whatever kind it is" - Joe Strummer

Backed by a huge bank of flashing colored lights, the Clash stalk the stage like starving alleycats. Guitarist Mick Jones does a modified shuffle at the mike, leers at the audience and races off, trailing a long guitar cord. The sound is not heard so much as felt, tickling the inner ear like a rusty nail.

White riot, I wanna riot
White riot, a riot of my own

Guitarist/songwriter Joe Strummer is riveted against the mike, the muscles in his throat bulging out the veins as he sings:

All of the power is in the hands
Of the people rich enough to buy it
While we walk the street
Too chicken to even try it
White riot, I wanna riot
White riot, a riot of my own

Bass player Paul Simonon, dressed in tight leather pants and a white shirt, plays an effective bottom with drummer Nicky "Topper" Headon providing a driving rhythm. A final crashing chord and Headon throws his sticks out into the crowd. The crowd, on its feet the whole time, explodes.

Joe Strummer leaned back on the leatherette couch in the dressing room below the Paramount Theatre and blinked in the glare of the overhead light. The concert was over. The other three members of the band were sprawled around the room, each in a separate corner, relaxed and silent. It was as though the proximity to each other without the structure of a stage and audience risked a detonation, rather than the continuous high energy of their stage performance. A swarm of friends, lovers, roadies, reporters and assorted well-wishers who had somehow made it backstage moved around them, mumbling compliments and questions.

The Rebels, an L.A. rockabilly band that had opened for The Clash all along the coast, stood in the center of the room gulping beer. "Rollin'" Colin Winski, vocalist and guitarist, sang scraps of a Carl Perkins tune and burped.

The five- and seven-year-old sons of Mickey Gallagher, organist for Ian Dury and the Blockheads, ran around the room. Gallagher played keyboards on the last Clash album and had joined the band for the last half of their American tour.

Like the other Clash members, Strummer is gaunt and raw looking. They appear on stage like four surly sharecroppers, gangly arms, whitewalls around their ears and protruding ribcages. Bassist Simonon has a black space between his front teeth you could drive a '57 Chevy through.

Strummer speaks with a noticeable British accent, quietly and with obvious intelligence, far different from the "punk suicidal-rebellion" image caricatured recently in the Dick Tracy comic strip, and the generally sensationalistic coverage afforded the new wave music scene in the American press.

"They're narrow-minded assholes. The ones that can't dig rock in all its forms, those are the posers. That's how you tell a poser from a true punk. It's posing to say it stinks 'cause they haven't got zips in their trousers, when in fact rockabilly is brilliant music."

Strummer was referring to the members of the audience who weren't ready to accept the Rebels on the same bill as The Clash. The first time Rebels guitarist Jerry Sikowski, a chunky, deceptively agile rocker with a blonde pompadour, had moved to the apron of the stage, the whole right section of the audience had screamed "FUCK YOU GET OFF!" Sikowski had pretended to be deaf but stayed stage left for the duration.

The Clash have consistently showcased various styles of music. They travel with an English D.J., Barry Myers, who's just as likely to play Gene Vincent or reggae during a break as the B-52's or Throbbing Gristle. On their first album, "The Clash," they featured a reggae song "Police and Thieves" and on a previous show in Washington, D.C., Bo Diddley played with them. They also give local new wave bands an opportunity to open the show, which not only gives a young band like The Dishrags (who opened in Seattle) a chance to play before a large crowd, but also gives the audience a welcome relief from the heavy metal bands that promoters always seem to stick before new wave acts.

Taking chances is what the Clash are all about. Inspired by the Sex Pistols several years ago, Strummer left a previous band, The 101'ers, and started the Clash. The group was formed to bridge the distance between musicians and listeners, to get the crowd out of their seats and moving. In Seattle, Strummer argued with a security guard to let the crowd dance. The guard pointed to the wooden railings that separated the stage from the crowd and shook his head, no. Later Strummer left the stage, reappeared moments later with a fireax and eyed the guards and the guardrail. "I kept wanting to just start swinging, knock the thing apart and let the kids get closer. But then I realized I wouldn't be able to just chop wood. There were bodies everywhere," said Strummer.

That air of tension, of violence about to burst loose, is an integral part of the appeal of the Clash. This simmering energy emphasized their allegiance to all other manifestations of rock 'n' roll. Their music, while not merely repeating, carries the same charge as early rock, the raucous frenzy of Little Richard and Screamin' Jay Hawkins. The same dissonant fury runs through much of the new wave sounds, driving today's audience to the same emotional outpourings.

Lyrically, The Clash avoids the macho "Do You Think I'm Sexy" school of rock writing, instead performing songs that reflect the conflicts of modern life. In "Remote Control" they sing:

Who needs remote control from the city hall?
Push a button, activate, you gotta work
You're late
Don't make no noise
Don't get no gear
Don't make no money
Don't get outa here

Financial success for the Clash has proven elusive, so they are unlikely to soon lose their struggling image. The record company (CBS/EPIC) never released their first album in the States (until the recent remixed version) despite it being the largest selling import album. Even though this is the band's first full American tour, the company has only come up with $20,000 for expenses. And this for three months touring. The crew and the band weren't paid for the first two weeks and even here, the next to last stop, money was still scarce. "Our record company doesn't seem to be interested," said Strummer. His voice was soft, almost wistful. He shook his head. "It's really screwed up. We finally got enough to pay the crew but the band won't be paid til we're back in England. That's cause we don't have a manager, which is our own fault. We need someone to go in there and say, 'Alright you fuckers, come up with the money!'"

Mickey Gallagher, drafted from The Blockheads for the tour, was still in a state of ecstatic shock. "With the Blockheads it's very arranged music we do because Ian Dury demands it. You know, tighter arrangements. When you've got six or seven people blaring away, as we do in The Blockheads, there has to be some control. But this lot, their energy comes from the anarchy which is around them 24 hours a day. The only time they really come together is on stage. I didn't believe it when I first joined this tour after where I'd come from. With The Blockheads the pressure is with the gig, with this lot the pressure is living, and the release is the stage."

The Clash are planning to record a single in Jamaica. They just completed a double album called "London Calling" to be released simultaneously in Britain and the USA and sold for the price of a single disc.

"You should see us at truckstops. There's all this great stuff to get, stickers and T-shirts. I love America. How could you not? It's where rock-n-roll began." - Joe Strummer

Page 8-9/The Rocket

November, 1979

INTERVIEW

THE CLASH

Rebel rockers storm the barricades

by Charlie Frick and Harry Wasserman
(Art by Steve Sprouse, photo by Kate Simon)

The Clash are more like a guerrilla army than a rock band. They incite their volatile audience to take up guns, storm the barricades, and overthrow the status quo. The Clash embody the drive, rebellious spirit, and intense, uncompro mising, shove-it-down-your-throat delivery of the ill-fated Sex Pistols, but with clearer political motivation-legalization of marijuana, redistribution of the wealth, an end to racism.

The Clash-lead singer-guitarists Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, bassist Paul Simonon and drummer Nicky "Topper" Headon-are radicals, but they're not poseurs. They got their politics the hard way, growing up in cramped, working class, high-rise housing developments in

clammy-cold London, surrounded by bomb craters left over from World War II. Amid racial strife and rubble, these rebels opted for a rabble-rousing rock band rather than a bleak future of living on the dole for $25 a week like most of their generation.

The closer they got to the front lines of rock 'n' roll, the more the Clash fought against oppression. They fought with their early audiences, who struck back at the Clash's politically inflammatory lyrics by throwing bags of vomit at the band. They fought with the legit rock press, giving them a reputation of being unmanageable, unpredictable and unflinching in their ideals. They fought with the police, incurring several busts

-one for cocaine possession, one for sleeping on the beds in a German hotel with their boots on, and one on weapons charges for shooting pigeons, which resulted in the song "Guns on the Roof."

They fought with their record com pany. Their first album, called simply The Clash, was a smash hit in England, with such roaring machine-gun blasts. as "London's Burning." "Police and Thieves" and "White Riot."

Also on the album is "I'm So Bored with the USA," a scathing indictment of U.S. cultural imperialism in an era of post-Watergate corruption, which debuted on the Anarchy Tour of '77

Yankees a-dictatin' are always on the TV

36

(Bob Gruen)
(The Clash play a round of supermarket sweep.)
(Clash's Mick Jones leaps into action.)

The killers in America work seven days a week

Never mind the stars 'n' stripes Let's play the Watergate tapes

I'll salute the new age

An' I hope nobody escapes

I'm so bored with the U!SIA!

I'm so bored with the UISIA!

But what can I do?

The recording of the Clash's first album was so raw, and the lyrics So heavy, that CBS, the record company that released the album in England and picked up the band's American option, declined to release the album in the Stutes. Instead, CBS sent their top gunslinger, rock producer Sandy "Don't Fear the Reaper" Pearlman (Blue Oyster Cult, the Dictators) to work with the Clash in a secluded West Coast recording studio until a rough gem of an album, Give 'Em Enough Rope, was released in England and America to rave reviews. Rope includes the rousing tribute to terrorists "Tommy Gun" and two dynamite dope tunes, "Julie's in the Drug Squad" and "Drug-Stabbing Time."

"Julie's in the Drug Squad" chronicles the career of the woman who infiltrated the London drug subculture and was responsible for "Operation Julie," the largest LSD bust in British history:

An' then there come the night of the greatest ever raid They arrested every drug that had ever been mode

They took 82 laws

Through 82 doors

An' they didn't halt the pull till the cells were all full

'Cos Julie's been working for the drug squad

An' it's ten years for you

Nineteen for you

An' you can get out in 25

That is if you're still alive.

They fought with their manager, Bernard Rhodes, who was offed just in time for their whirlwind eight-city first tour

of the USA, hitting all the rock 'n' roll capitals from Frisco to New York. On tour they fought with the American press and Epic publicists, quickly be coming known as the new bad boys of rock 'n' roll in '79. Their outrageous stateside exploits left a trail of broken

"When you smoke a joint, the meaning of life is all there, and you write it on a piece of toilet paper and wipe your ass with it."

hearts, busted eardrums, and pissed-off record-company babysitters in Valium and martini-choked stupors.

After the unexpected success of the American Give 'Em Enough Rope album and tour, Epic Records decided to give in and release a new expanded version of the band's first album. The Clash, released symbolically on the Fourth of July in conjunction with a new major USA tour, contains all of the material on the U.K. release plus an EP and a handful of tunes never before available to Stateside punkers, including "Groovy Time." "Gates of the West," and a remake of the Bobby Fuller Four's all-time classic outlaw song "I Fought the Law and the Law Won."

Suzy Blond, Epic Records' publicity czarina, called us shortly after the be ginning of the Clash's summer USA tour and said, "They're being very tough on the press; they're makin' me cry. But if anyone can handle them, I know you can." We expected hoods who pick their teeth with switchblades, but we found the Clash to be dope-smoking. fast-talk ing, righteously indignant fork-haired yippies. We talked with the Clash's dual front men, composer-singer-guitarists Joe Strummer and Mick Jones-backstage, in their hotel room, and walking the streets of New York's Lower East Side.

High Times: Wanna smoke a joint of dynamite Colombo?

Jones: Gimme a little toke of that and let's see where we go. [Inhales deeply.] C'mon in, Joe, smoke some of this, we're going to get high. That's what it's all about.

Strummer: When we roll spliffs we cut em in half with tobacco.

High Times: Does everybody in England

do that? Jones: Everybody. Because it's so

scarce, so rare. High Times: How much does an ounce of grass cost over there?

Jones: Forty-five quid. Ninety dollars. That's if you can get it. It's great if you've got that money and you can get it. You're a king. It's like the ultimate luxury goods.

Strummer: You can get crappy hash for $50, but there's no hope of getting stoned on it.

Jones: When I last left England, there was no food there, there were petrol queues, ambulance men were on strike. Dope would be a luxury. A rock concert is a luxury because people are concerned with survival. I've been to a lot of places I've seen worse poverty in Jamaica, for instance-but in England at the moment it's like people aren't normal anymore. It's like they can't realize it's all crumbling around them. It's not like here, where you can go out and smoke a joint or something. It's really pathetic, holding on to a smidge of hash, waitin' to smoke it in your room on your own one blow of the joint, and. "It's really far out, you know."

Strummer: The Yipster Times says the Drug Enforcement Administration is trying to make pot like cocaine, trying to freak out everybody with massive crackdowns and paraquat scares, so they could get pot to be a rich man's drug and thus remove its threat. They're really scared of dope-otherwise they'd have made it legal, right? Jones: So the first thing we say is: Yes,we stand for legalization of marijuana.

37

(Charlie Frick)
(Joe Strummer tokes a Jamaican-style spliff.)

High Times: Were you ever inspired to write songs when you were stoned?

Strummer: Tell him about the yellow clouds, Mick.

Jones: The yellow clouds is when you take a joint to relax yourself and all of a sudden the yellow clouds appear and everything is great, but it ain't happenin' as far as bein' creative is concerned. And very often it's like that big joke: when you've discovered it all becomes clear, the meaning of life is all there, and you go to the toilet and you write it on a piece of toilet paper and you wipe your ass with it.

High Times: Mick, weren't you busted for coke last year?

Jones: Yeah, I got busted; they said they got some coke on me, but I don't usually take coke, but they might find some in my pocket or something. I was on the front page of the New Musical Express saying all this political shit, and the next night they came to the concert, and the next morning they busted us in the hotel. So they read the papers, and they keep everybody in line. High Times: You're like antiauthority to them. symbol of

Jones: Well, somebody's got to say something about it. We're just trying to raise some consciousness. I used to be really into coke, but now I think it's a shit. 'Cause it places you outside, so you can't stand anyone. If you take it regularly, it changes you. Since I stopped taking it I'm not having to deal with a reason for life. When it was up my nose it became apparent that I didn't have any fucking reason for existence. I may smoke a joint or have a drink, but I won't do anything else now. And I've been adhering to this since the last time I was in America when everybody offered it to me.

High Times: Do you think that because there's so much cocaine in the music business it has an effect on motivating the trends?

Jones: Yeah: I mean, now the executives think it's a joke. Right? But the only reason is, they snort so much cocaine that they realize what a joke it is. We knew it was a joke anyway. Now the music executives can practice associating themselves with us, and perhaps we can do something together. We can actually use these companies. But this may be wishful thinking again.

"The Clash share with the reggae bands the sense of oppression. You deserve not to be oppressed."

High Times: What's your song "Julie's in the Drug Squad" about?

Jones: That's the Operation Julie case, in which this narc who called herself Julie was pretending to be a kind of stoned hippie person in this Welsh commune where they were making all the acid for England. They were making all the acid for England, which is not a lot. Everybody was freaked out when the bust hit the newspapers, because a lot of people in England didn't even know what acid is. No one takes acid anymore, except maybe one or two Rastas. High Times: Did you ever take any acid?

Jones: I was taking acid when I was a youngster-16 or something. I was beginning to pick up the guitar. I remember I thought it was something which completely opened me up. I stopped when I had a bad trip. I've never had it since, and that was years ago. I would never suggest it to someone, but really and truly I think everyone should try it at least once.

High Times: If pot and hash are scarce, coke is too expensive, and nobody does acid, what do they do in England to get really ripped?

Jones: Everyone drinks. It's worse in other European countries, but the whole thing is everybody goes to the bar to get pissed.

High Times: Is it mostly beer, or are they drinking the hard stuff?

Jones: They drink beer, and they drink Scotch whiskey. It's a whole booze cul ture. And that's what it's all about. My parents drink. My dad lives in England, and he drinks every night. He's an alcoholic. It's a nation of alcoholics. The government couldn't repress the people there to make them completely straight. It would be impossible. People have got to deal with their lives as best they can, and people's lives are such miseries. It's like self-righteous living. You de serve not to be fucking oppressed. How dare they fucking do that to us? Who are they they're only other people, right? And they know more than you or me? We're just other people and they can't do that to us. In England we're dealing with oppression every day. But that's the kind of talk that gets me shot. High Times: What do you think about heroin?

Strummer: I read in the Yipster Times that "the CIA smuggled heroin back in the dead bodies of Vietnam vets for the Mafia." That sentence should be carved in marble and set on top of Capitol Hill.

Jones: That guy Aron Kay, the pieman, he came backstage at our last show and gave us a bunch of issues of the Yipster Times. And when we played Vancouver we met a lot of guys from the local underground paper there. Open Road, libertarian guys. I'm a bit nervous of it all, you understand, because we get approached by a lot of politically motivated groups, and we really can't commit ourselves to anything. But everybody knows where we stand as far as we're anti certain things we're anti right-wing fascism.

High Times: You guys played a Rock against Racism festival that drew 80,000.

Strummer: We did, but a lot of people made a big deal about it. I suppose it is a big deal,

Jones: It was. It made a lot of difference in getting rid of the Nazis. It helped get rid of them, in terms of immediate votes. We actually made a change, you know. They came for the free music, but the festival changed the way they thought. The National Front didn't get any votes. and they got kicked out of all the boroughs during the general election. And it made an immediate change. It was called the Anti-Nazi Carnival. But on the other hand you can't have an organization where you're just anti something. Strummer: We feel it's pretty weird"Let's have an organization, let's be anti chairs, let's call ourselves the AntiChair League."

Jones: As far as we're concerned it's always been the same. Any gig we do is a Rock against Racism gig, because we play black music, we're as interested in making sure that the black culture survives as that the white culture does. We play their music and hope that they'll play ours. We have a common bond with these people.

High Times: Didn't the Rock against Racism movement start in England when Eric Clapton came out in support of right-wing politician Enoch Powell, who wants to send England's blacks. back to Africa?

Jones: Eric Clapton is just like an old idiot. Who cares? He's got the opinions of a bricklayer, and he plays guitar like it, as well! Don't care how laid-back he is, it's bricklaying politics. Drinking beer up against the bar with the lads.

38

(Kate Simon)
(Mick Jones plays guitar with an iron fist.)

Leave him out of it. He made an idiot out of himself, that's the thing. I don't find that kind of thing admirable in an artist.

High Times: So you think a rock concert can raise people's consciousnesses? Jones: You make them think more than

just a rock concert. At its worst, a rock concert can get you through life. If you're a worker, it'll get you through the next day's work. But I think it can do more than just get you through. I think it can get you to leave that. Get you to say "fuck it." It's the power of the finger [flips the bird]. The MC5 were doing it. John Sinclair was doing it.. they were out there every night rockin', and people were diggin' the rock of it, but they were pickin' up on the other message. High Times: Are there a lot of Nazis in England?

Jones: It's small, Column 88, but they're most fanatical. They put bombs in immigrants houses. You know, there's a movie showing at theaters in England called Hitler: A Career; it was a big hit in Germany, and now it's playing in England with English subtitles. All the Nazis in England go to see it, and they cheer the concentration-camp scene. The theater is packed full of Nazi guys and they're really, seriously rooting for the Nazis. But don't print "packed full." Say "there's a mob of people."

Strummer: When they show Goebbels, they'll go, "Yaaaaaayyy," clap clap clap, and give him a round of applause. Insane!

High Times: What's the racial situation like in England? Strummer: Well, the British Movement, which is really the Nazi party, they're all Paki bashers. But in England it's really kind of like nobody loves a Paki. You could even talk to a punk, with his Rock against Racism badge on, and he might go bash a Paki. That's the truth, because the Pakis are great, really great, supermarket owners. They've really got it cornered in London, all over England. Every grocery shop is a Paki shop; it's bound to be. And I used to, we all used to, steal off them. It was very much us against them because they were the guys in the store and we were the guys who were hungry. Up the cheese up the sleeves.....

Jones:...and out the door and over the fence!

Strummer: It's got a root. It's 'cause they had the stores and we didn't have the money.

Jones: It's like the British Empire in reverse!

Strummer: It's a pretty good joke, actually. This is what we base our antiracist thing on; it makes life richer. Cosmopolitan life in London is so rich: reggae music, Indian food, Chinese take-away.

"At its worst, a rock concert can get you through the next day's work. But it can also get workers to say 'fuck it." "

Jones: And everybody should live together without bothering anybody else's shit, you know.

Strummer: That's our vision,

Jones: But the bricklayer attitude is that the food stinks. They're so narrowminded. The food stinks; they're a dif ferent color. You have to encourage people, and then they see what the food's like, and then you see them in an Indian restaurant the next week.

High Times: How do the Jamaican Ras tafarians in England get along with the whites?

Strummer: The Rasta youth, in their late teens and early 20s, are all British born; the ones from Birmingham are as black as coal, and they come up to you and say, "Allo, kid, 'ow you doin'!" They're real bummies, right? The Rasta kids have become like what the hippies were, because their parents are holding down steady jobs. But these guys, they don't want to know about no jobs, right? They've totally broken away from their parents. And they hate the white man.

But we get along all right with them. Jones: We're like exceptions. Punks are exceptions, because the Rastas realize that we're rojected by society.

Strummer: The Rasta kids are really on their own. 'Cause they ain't even with their own kind, their families. They're really on their own-that's exceptionally heavy.

Jones: They get into fights with the police, because the police harass them. The Clash share with the reggae bands the sense of oppression, you know? Because I lived in Brixton, a black area of London, until I was a teenager. I grew up with the black music, and their way of looking at things was the same as mine. Only, people told me that there was a difference between me and black kids. Parents told me. Yeah, I was poor and they were poor, but I was being told that they were worse than me. But I got along great with the Rastas when I was in school, and I thought their music was great. And there ain't no difference-I can play that.

But the poverty I lived in was nothing. compared to what I saw when we were in Jamaica. I've never seen poverty like that before. There were people living in corrugated iron shacks, and the situation when we were there-November 1977 was that there was no peace in the ghetto. The police would patrol the streets by flashlight from helicopters. After we left, there was a Peace Concert with Peter Tosh and everything was going cool for a while; but last week I heard the police shot one of the ghetto leaders there, who was a peacemaker. So I imagine there's going to be some awful shit goin' down 'cause there's already been threats of retaliation.

High Times: Your cover of Junior Murvin's reggae hit "Police and Thieves" seemed to relate the situation in Jamaica to the situation in England.

Jones: Lee Perry, also known as "Scratch the Upsetter." originally cowrote and produced "Police and Thieves" for Junior Murvin, and when he heard our version he added a picture of the Clash to his "wall of fame" at the Black Ark Studios in Jamaica. Ours are the only white faces on his wall. Later he came to London in '77-and produced the song "Complete Control" for our first album. He smoked a lot of spliffs with his dreadlocked Rasta engineers in the control room. He was looking through the console, through the glass, and he was seeing the cymbals, and there were red and green lights on the cymbals, and he was saying. "Yeah, red, green and gold!" He was seeing all these kinds of things into what was actually there there were lights shining on the cymbals, and he saw it as the colors of the Jamaican flag.

Strummer: Scratch told Mick he played guitar "with an iron fist."

Jones: Yeah, he did. Scratch is a Rasta, and the Rastafarian religion is great, because it actually induces a certain way of thought, a religious and righteous way.

Strummer: What about the way the Rastas treat their women? If they were smoking a chillum, they wouldn't pass it to a woman. And that's the way they treat them all the way down the line. Jones: Any repression is just like hypocrisy. You can't talk about freedom if you're practicing repression. Strummer: A lot of people think this Rasta stuff is just a load of bollocks, and

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I'm one of them, because of that basic insane flaw, I got to thinking that all religions are just kind of weird coincidences. Like the Christian religion was stamped out by Rome, and all of a sudden, hey, everybody wakes up and everybody's a Christian!

High Times: What were the audiences like back home in England?

Jones: They were hostile. There were punk clubs where the punks could go and fight among themselves, and when they went outside they could fight punks plus hostile people. High Times: Is there still a lot of fighting in the clubs?

Jones: No more than anywhere else. There's always going to be something to fight about.

High Times: How about on the Anarchy Tour with the Pistols? Was there a lot of violence?

Strummer: No, not really, it was all sensationalized. If anything happened, it got blown way out of proportion. Jones: All of the battles in England have to do with style. It's a question of style, and everybody's got their own fucking style. The whole thing in London is a style thing. I tried to explain this once when I was trying to get into an art college. And that's why I got turned down at the Chelsea School of Art, because I tried to explain that it was a question of style and not a question of what you painted. It was a question of what you said, not what you saw. I got turned down because it's important.

Actually, when you find the economic situation not so hot, then people don't bother about style so much. When it's leisure time, they get into fighting among themselves; but when there's no leisure time.. You got to understand. the culture. Most of the skinheads were punks last year.

Strummer: Most of the skinheads are working-class types, and that's where the British Movement got its strength, That's the only relation. You can't just say because he's a skinhead that he's a Nazi.

Jones: A few of the skinheads are Nazis, but there was like thousands of skinhead guys. Skinhead is like punk; it's like a big thing like punk, but they haven't got the groups. They follow the punk groups. You know how it is in England you have the mods, the rockers, the skinheads.

High Times: Here in America you have the freaks, greasers, jocks, straights... Jones: We fight over haircuts. Last summer there were such battles between the punks and the teddy boys because of their haircuts and different styles.

Strummer: The teddy boys were the bad boys on the block until punk rock came along, and the punk rockers came out looking more outlandish and more evil.

And the punks wouldn't take shit from no one. I see teddy boys goin', "They look like they come from another planet." Teddy boys are tellin' me, and they should go fuckin' look in the mirror. They're in Edwardian dress, pompadours, velvet cuffs.

High Times: What kind of music are they into?

Strummer: Rockabilly.

Jones: No, no, they call it rock 'n' roll, but it's rockabilly.

Strummer: Then there's the rockabilly rebels. The rockabilly rebels and the teds will fight each other if there's no one else to fight.

Jones: I remember when I only knew punks; we were in the Hundred Club together, and there were just punks, and when there were no battles to fight the punks would fight each other. It was the most violent place to be. All of a sudden all the people would come piling through with chains and knives and stuff. It was like part of the concert. And then all of a sudden it was like you had to have an antiforce. So that summer everyone was out fighting the teddy

boys in the street. And the police... Strummer: The police were saying we started it, and we were saying they started it, and...

Jones: The teds thought that we were trying to take the piss out of rock 'n' roll, but we're just as much rock 'n' roll as they are!

Strummer: Because we were wearing their clothes, you know? We were ripping the drapes, sticking pins in the drapes, and they thought this was sacrilege.

Jones: They're reactionary, you know. Some aren't, but now they come to concerts and pick fights. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but the kids should get together and fight the real enemy. Why are we so stupid, fightin' each other, when the real enemy is laughing his head off because we're killing each other?

Strummer: Yeah, the cops will stand there laughing while the kids kill each other. They're beatin' each other's heads in, you know?

High Times: The myth is that all the kids in England are unemployed. Is that true?

Jones: You come out of school and there's nothing to do. You're out of college and they suggest that you join the army. What is that shit!? You go into the army in England, you get your head shot off in Ireland in fucking ten minutes.

High Times: Same thing here. They used to take you right after high school and send you off to 'Nam. Send your ass right over there.

Jones: It's the same thing as Vietnam. You go to Ireland, you get your head shot off. It's the most horrific thing that you can imagine between human beings.

Strummer: The draft's not comin' back here, is it, man?

High Times: They're talking about it.

Strummer: Jesus, if that happens, you

just gotta burn the whole place down from coast to coast. If they bring the draft back...

Jones: Then it's got to change. The change will come now.

High Times: When you stand up for certain things, the kids that come to see you play and listen to your music look to you as musical heroes, feeling like, okay, if they can do it or feel a certain way, then we can do it too.

Jones: Well, that's the way it's sup posed to be. Theoretically, that's what it's all about, that people will be in spired to do it for themselves, right? Not inspired to imitate but to actually break out. There are those that actually do. When we went to Belfast, for instance, the first time we didn't get to play, and there were kids lying in front of armored cars, and all you'd see was threatening us that there would never be another concert in Ulster. We came back and the kids began to get a scene. together there, you know, Protestants and Catholics together.

When we came there it kind of brought the people together. Another thing was that the first time, we met kids who were trying to form groups, and they were half Protestant and half Catholic. We went back the next time and said, "Where are they?" And the guys are being shot because they're practicing in a Protestant area. A guy got shot going between the borders. High Times: A musician?

Jones: Yeah, like kids. Not musicians, kids trying to form groups. They can't relate to the first time we came there and kind of helped them fight their battles. When we go places we kind of contribute to the culture of the place.

High Times: On your recent tour of Europe you had some trouble with the locals not exactly reacting favorably to your kind of culture or your kind of politics.

Jones: They really don't like us in Germany. They like us on a teeny-bopper level, but when we played they were vomiting into bags and throwing them at us.

Strummer: Yeah, it was the pits. The worst place you can name. Germany's like the worst. The most unfriendly place. We had a lot of trouble with the hotel people there. They're really kind of straight.

Jones: We got to the hotel, and we were so tired that we just fell on the beds and snored we were out cold. The thing is that they came in and saw us with our boots on the bed; they said that we hadn't paid the bill or something, and we were dragged off to prison.

Strummer: They thought it was a really big deal that we were in their beds with our boots on.

Jones: We were just tired, you know. Then we were sitting in the police station. It was real funny, 'cause we had this teeny-bopper-press clipping to try and tell the policemen who we were. It said, "Die vier die nieman will," and to us it meant "we four are great." I showed him the pictures; he said, "Ah,

"The four that nobody wants." It was about how we got thrown off this German TV program a month before. They said that we had smashed the dressing rooms. We really didn't. Like, there were some floorboards and we dropped some money down them; so we took the floorboards up and a few things got broken. So we got thrown out. There was all of this stuff in the paper. and we're showing it to the cops, saying, "Okay, look, we're okay, we can go." So if we could read it, it's saying what cunts we are and how we aren't wanted in Germany. Our manager was refusing to pay the bill and provoking the situation on purpose. It was really ridiculous!

Strummer: That happened all along the tour, every place we got to. When we got to Sweden there was the Regaray. They're weird. They worship American cars and dress like cowboys.

Jones: They beat up the immigrants in Sweden: they beat up on the Italians.

Strummer: They go around beating up the punks. All of the groups that had played there before the Jam, the Stranglers-had been bolted off the stage when the Regaray invaded the concerts. They attacked because they were punk groups. These are young kids in their 20s. It's a real big problem, 'cause the Swedish punks have to deal with this every day. When they heard we were coming, the police were already blocking off the streets. The police stopped a hundred-car caravan coming into one of the towns.

Jones: We got through it all right, so the Regaray had to retaliate by putting a bomb threat in one of our gigs. We were all standing outside waiting for the building to blow up. We were in this. town, and they had never had a bomb scare since the war.

These guys would come, and we were on this bridge freezing, waiting to go on with the show. All the audience was standing out there as well. But we got through that one.

High Times: Some people say that Italy is really bad on musicians. I heard that when Santana was touring there years ago, they had to pay the Mafia off to let the band leave the country with all of their instruments. Lou Reed had a bad time there; they threw rocks at him at one of his concerts.

Strummer: We haven't been there yet.

Jones: Also, they say that the kids. decide what side they're on, right or left. That's the decision they make when they are 14. The kids decide what side they're going to be on, and they generally stick to it. And that's their battle, in Italy, for the kids; it's kind of a political thing. It has to do with the Christian Democrat policy, or whatever.

High Times: How important do you think rock 'n' roll is in trying to wake the public out of its sleep state?

Strummer: Heavy metal can't do this.

Jones: People don't need to be reminded what robots they really are. They need to be told to wake up. Don't be such a fucking robot!

High Times: You mean they need to be slapped around to wake up?

Jones: It's no good if no one understands it. I mean, why can't they be more honest? Like, "You're among a bunch of robots. Whatcha gonna do about it?"

Strummer: It's mind expanding how this kind of urban society thrives on the motto "It's no use." People need to be inspired to see something else, 'cause who needs the mirror? The mirror is there.

Jones: Even in the '50s, when Hollywood made the science-fiction movies, that's the way they thought the robots moved. People often accuse us of thinking only in terms of as far as 1984, but we lived 1984 in '77. We are thinking beyond that now as well. We got to ask ourselves these questions.

The whole thing with the computer industry is that nobody is asking themselves the question "What are you going to do when you put all the people out of work?" As a defense in England they're saying, well don't worry because we're ahead in certain industries, like maybe the watches. But do you know that the Swiss watch industry. went out of work, went out of business overnight with the invention of the quartz watches?

The adding machines that go into the computers... It's such a boom, this technological thing and leisure. And then people are going to be out of work. No one's asking themselves at this point in time what are we going to do with the people when they get fed up with the leisure. Right? And this is kind of another problem-they're going to have to have a program where they get rid of the people.

High Times: What were the Sex Pistols really like? Do you think that they were too wild and out of control to stay together?

Strummer: No, it's a question of songs. They kicked off Glen Matlock and got in Sid. Sid didn't really have time to get it together, he was just learning how to play the bass when they went off on tour. I guess they just got fed up with playing the same songs for two years and not really comin' on with any new ones. That really gets you down, don't it? The same old crap all of the time. Makes you feel like a dog.

Jones: We read in the Yipster Times that when the Sex Pistols were denied their visa to come over here for the tour, Capricorn Records president Phil Walden went, in favor of the record company, to President Carter and said, "Jimmy, remember me? All of the money early in the campaign? What do you say? Loosen up on the band and let them come over here to play." The government didn't want to let them come in because they had been busted so much, but at the very last minute the visas were all okayed. It's just very weird, you know?

Strummer: Last night I sat up reading back issues of Yipster Times. I read all about Carter and cocaine. Did you hear that they put the no-no on punk rock? It seems that those guys in the record companies have Jimmy's ear, and they ain't going to be promoting any of the punk-rock bands because they still have all of these old rock artists, they still want to sell thousands and millions of truckloads of rock stars on ego trips. Next year you won't be able to give away a Livin' in the USA album, which is the way that it's goin' in the USA. That's a bit limp, you know.

High Times: Mick, you played with Sid Vicious at Max's Kansas City in New York.

Jones: Yeah, six songs a show, six bucks will get you in. A buck a song. That's the way Sid did things. He didn't practice very much. A slight rehearsal the night before, Sid wasn't very well. The show wasn't very together. I wouldn't even say anybody enjoyed the evening. It was kind of a downbeat.

High Times: Do you guys know Elvis. Costello at all?

Jones: Yeah, we done a gig once with him in Belgium.

Strummer: He's got a sort of big head. Jones: He used to be a computer operator. So he's all right either way, you know? If the music don't turn out, he can always rule the world by being a computer operator. I actually did a record with him, I played the guitar on one of his albums. I played rhythm on "Pump It Up" actually, but you wouldn't hear me. I also played on "Big Tears." On "Pump It Up" they mixed me down and gave me 50 quid to shut me up.

High Times: That's all they paid you?. Jones: Actually, they got me stoned. The Elvis Costello people got me stoned. So maybe Costello is just stoned all the time. Or if he doesn't smoke, I know he sports.

Strummer: So do horses.

Jones: And pigs. They all snort.