The Clash are in Chicago where the streets can be intimidating if you're a goddam wimp, English white boy like me. Battered, old pimp mobiles glide around like wounded animals and the taxi style resembles seventeen size two hundred with a girder Dr. Martens for a fender. Slapped MADE IN HONG KONG style and paint scheme complete with tinted windows and driver, the false start of Monterey.

AND ON TO CHICAGO

Where I hide behind a double-locked door from the violence and intimidation which is room service emptying the ashtrays. A body of steel bridges roughly banged together from scrap metal and excess over lengths of junk. Haphazardly, rows of sewage and worse delivered The Clash to their first Chicago gig. The Aragon Ballroom is the American ranch with the Albert Hall setting it down in Blackpool this week and calling in the hordes. And love the Cloggies! The Undertones and Bo Diddley stoked up the rampant insanity and by the time The Clash darkened the stage, beat-up amplifiers...

CHICAGO CALLING

Kicked into things. Minneapolis where it rains a fair amount. Undertones and David Johannson supported and it became clear Americans do still care about Rock Music. The Brits finally, and though it's bad news for English isolation, The Clash got lost over here. Fuckers like me can example every bit as much as the horrendous alternatives doing the rounds and the impracticability of the rock and roll population. Common sense says that they have to get out here periodically to stamp their authority on the Cowboys.

Had finished their set and the audience melted down into a heap of steaming insides and thrashing around the theatre. Songs like The Right Profile, Guns of Brixton, Revolution Rock infiltrated into the older material and made for a great Clash set. This band is still rock and roll, they're setting the standards and are still so nasty. Any of the popular English criticisms of them pale against their admirable achievements. GOT TO MOVE NOW - NEXT WEEK THE MEANING OF LIFE, to be continued...

This corrected text appears to be a review or personal account of The Clash's performance at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago on September 14, 1979

6th October, 1979 - New Musical Express, By Ray Lowry

One-off, Johnny Hestivs was blasted before the Clash came out and shredded the New York Palladium second-night audience with magnificent rock and roll. Opinions vary as to which shows stand out, but every time I’ve sat down in the audience to witness the Clash, it’s clear they are shouldering the weight of rock and roll for the rest of the world. They are doing it so well on so many levels that predecessors and contemporaries seem like slobs and jerks in comparison.

But on with the tour. From Boston to New York on a bus called "Arpeggia," fueled by great feeds like they used to make. The New York audiences were expensive and demanding, but after the Undertones and Sam & Dave got them boiling, they went outrageous for the Clash, shouting and applauding like mad.

After New York, I became embroiled in the ongoing saga of the new backdrops. This involved spending most of September 29 hunting for a 40-foot piece of sackcloth to replace the previous one. It was a fruitless mission, ending in frustration as I could only find a small boxy substitute. For all I know, the sackcloth has since been chopped into small pieces and hurled around as relics.

THE BIG CRAB APPLE

Meanwhile, after a brief stopover in Philadelphia, where fans clapped their hands together for so long that encores were fired off like cannonballs, Joe Strummer had to come out after the set to explain that they couldn’t play any more. The next day was rough—mostly spent nursing hangovers, occasionally crying into my hands while shoveling periodic quantities of water and pain pills into my system.

NEOVASTERY AND THE SOILED PILLOWS TOUR

Philadelphia left its mark, but New York was something else entirely. The Clash delivered electrifying performances at the Palladium, weaving new material like "The Right Profile," "Guns of Brixton," and "Revolution Rock" seamlessly into their older catalog. The result was a fresh yet familiar set that proved this band is still rock and roll royalty. They’re setting standards so high that any criticism from English detractors feels hollow compared to their admirable achievements.

Next week: The Meaning of Life. This corrected version organizes the text into coherent sections while maintaining its original tone and content. It highlights key moments from The Clash's 1979 U.S. tour, including their performances in New York and Philadelphia, as well as some behind-the-scenes struggles with logistics and exhaustion.

13th October, 1979, Clash USA '79 By Ray Lowry

Atlanta, Georgia, October 1st

I forgot to mention Philadelphia's mutants—more disturbing-looking people than even Liverpool or Warrington can boast. People with noses in their ears and hands growing out of the sides of their heads, dripping. Heads like hairy sunsets over the paraffin pillows stuffed down. There’s a metal statue of these people ostentatiously displayed. All that was left behind on to Montreal and Toronto on September 26th. The Clash aspired to the level of England, and this meant a lot for this tour.

Although from Joe, the long-awaited stage at the end of the Centre in Toronto, their legs were like a handful of stones. Faces like jelly and flaming complexions like beds. Walking potatoes with holes where their heads should be, smeared all over them like a giant clothes peg.

The Clash bus clogged for two shows on the 25th. Canuck audiences visibly displayed enthusiasm, with the first serious gobbing after a touching request. Distance throat clearing invaded the set at O'Keefe, where about twenty or thirty seats died. That's New Pop.

THIS IS AN AMAZING TOUR

The Americans had "Give 'Em Enough Rope" as the first official album release (although The Clash is said to have sold in vast quantities as an import). An amended version of the first album has only recently been released, but the lights are going on over people's heads all over the place, and the political message has obviously been picked up by many of the punters who try to get their messages of goodwill through at the end of each show.

"What I saw in the band was a concentration of all the pain and outrage lodged in my gut." To many, of course, it's just a great rock and roll show. Guided by some infallible rock and roll tribal consciousness, The Clash are looking more than ever like the bastard offspring of Eddie Cochran out of Gene Vincent and a Harley Davidson.

It’s dumbfounding to see the most intelligent, positive rock and roll on earth at present being presented nightly by a band who look like the wild ones who haunted the troubled skies of the fifties. America is being reminded of how rock and roll looks, as well as how it’s never sounded before. A girl hesitantly unveiled two oil paintings of Mick and Paul in Monterey; she was face to face with different incarnations.

But there's much more going on here than that. American kids are being given the rude awakening that was so swiftly pooh-poohed by vested interests when it happened in England. After Canada, it's marathon drives again to Worcester, Massachusetts, and Maryland—more images of America being given the message: London's calling to faraway towns.

To the abandoned drive-ins and big Macs like sleeping dinosaurs in the fog at the side of the truck stop, to the gas attendant in yellow at the all-night doorway, to the uneasy sleep of cities, to the people.

Rolling Stone has just printed the album review that was needed here in 1977. This is the beginning of the end for many things.

NEXT WEEK: WAR WITH THE U.S.S.R. This version corrects spelling errors, punctuation issues, and improves overall readability while maintaining the original message's intent and style.

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)

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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?