Anyone who attended the first Seattle concert appearance by the British band Clash (at the Paramount in 1979) will likely remember both...

Anyone who attended the first Seattle concert appearance by the British band Clash (at the Paramount in 1979) will likely remember both a remarkable performance by the premiere punk band of the era and a tense, onstage drama in which the group squared off with theater security over the latter’s heavy-handed treatment of fans.

The situation got particularly edgy when Joe Strummer — guitarist, lead vocalist and the Clash’s unofficial leader — ran backstage and re-emerged with a fire ax. Strummer intended to chop down a barrier separating the stage from the audience, but fan safety made him change his mind.

That unforgettable Seattle moment underscored the Clash’s radical populism, thrillingly revisited in Julien Temple’s bustling and soulful documentary “Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten.”

Temple’s film offers a rich, detailed portrait of a commanding but idealistic Strummer against the backdrop of the do-it-yourself punk ethos of the late ’70s. But, more important, it features something exceedingly rare: a narrative about a prematurely dead rock innovator (Strummer passed away from a heart condition in 2002 at age 50) with a satisfying arc to the complete story of his artistry. Strummer, had he lived, probably had many good years ahead of him as a gifted musician of vision.

Temple clearly defines the guiding principles in his subject’s creative life and grass-roots politics, showing us how Strummer’s career-long search for original sounds, at their best, captured his essential drive for inclusiveness, a sense of community that extended to the whole world. His life might have been cut short, but Temple reveals its novelistic shape.

“The Future Is Unwritten” is the story of Strummer’s pursuit of that musical goal and wholehearted embrace of the people/politics that went with it. From his early days playing rockabilly with fellow London squatters, through the incomparable Clash years, to a midlife passion for jamming around a campfire, he always wanted, the film tells us, the same thing. Whenever he drifted from it, he was lost and unhappy.

Temple (“Absolute Beginners”) appropriately honors Strummer’s memory by gathering people who knew him in an intimate setting around a fire by the Thames. His frenetic samplings of images and sounds from diverse, sometimes confusing sources has an anything-goes eclecticism that Strummer probably would have appreciated. “Joe Strummer” should be a lively, emotionally fulfilling experience for anyone who ever cared about rock ‘n’ roll.

Tom Keogh: tomwkeogh@yahoo.com

https://www.loudersound.com/

(Image credit: Allan Tannenbaum/Getty Images)

In September 1979, having just completed the recording of their third album, London Calling at Wessex Sound Studios, The Clash embarked upon a six week American tour. The west London quartet had played a handful of shows in the US and Canada on their provocatively-titled 'Pearl Harbour' tour at the start of the year, but this more extensive run, dubbed the 'Take The Fifth' tour, was their first genuine attempt at winning hearts and minds in the heartlands of America.

"I want to get through to the person in high school," Joe Strummer told the NME's Paul Morley as the tour launched in the mid-west. "All the people that we've got to in the cities, they're sussed, right, it's the kid in the high school who doesn't know anything about it even yet. I hope ultimately we get through to him. Because he's the one at home in his bedroom, he's got Kansas albums and racks of Kiss and all that, and I feel like he should have a dose of us."

Michael 'Duff' McKagan could hardly have been a more perfect example of the type of kid that Strummer and The Clash were targeting.

"I had older siblings, so I heard Led Zeppelin and The Beatles and the James Gang and Sly and The Family Stone at home before I really knew music," Guns N' Roses bassist once told this writer, revealing that the first records he bought as a teenager were Kiss Alive, and Pat Travers’ Puttin’ It Straight. But seeing The Clash at the Paramount Theater in his hometown on October 15, 1979, would prove to be a transformative experience which turned the then-15-year-old's world upside down.

In an interview conduced by Alice In Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell to promote his current album Lighthouse, McKagan revisits that fateful evening, and it's immediately evident that his memories of the gig are still vivid.

"This gig changed my life," he says simply. "These guys... like, so exotic, from England,  at the Paramount, and there was 150 people there, and they were just... it was so truthful. I'd seen Led Zeppelin, loved it, at the King Dome [in 1977], but they're way far away, you know, you can't touch them, they're Led Zeppelin. They fly away in a jet plane that says 'Led Zeppelin' on it! The Clash pulled up in a station wagon."

The show became enshrined in local legend because of a confrontation between The Clash and the venue's security team after some fans were treated roughly, and the band threatened to remove the stage barriers to be closer to their audience.

"A security guy punched a guy who was pogoing, he thought he was being violent," McKagan tells Cantrell. "He broke his nose, and it's one of our friends. So The Clash stopped the show and [bassist] Paul Simonon went back [stage] and got the firefighting axe, and Strummer is like, 'There's no difference between us and you, we'll cut down this this fucking fence here, we're in this together.' You know, 'We're in this together!' What a moment!'

You can watch the full interview below:

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.

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