Bonds News Reports

The Clash on Broadway
Chris Salewicz, Mojo, August 1994

IF THERE WAS ONE PIVOTAL EVENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE Clash's assault on the USA it was the season of 17 shows they played at Bond's, a tacky former disco on Broadway and Times Square, New York, New York in May and June 1981.

They had already achieved cult status; the London Calling album had made the US Top 30. But after these extraordinary shows, large-scale American stardom was theirs for the taking. The Top 5 chart placing of Combat Rock the following year can be traced back to this springboard. And therefore we might say it also marked the beginning of the end, the apex of The Clash, who in Manhattan in the summer of 1981, simply seemed like the most perfect rock and roll group in the world, and these two weeks the perfect rock and roll time.

The sexy, sultry weather helped. The temperature never dropped below 90 degrees. Waiting for the group's flight from London on a Monday night at JFK airport, Kosmo Vinyl's chief cause of concern was that the heat was melting the Dixie Peach pomade on his quiff. It seemed churlish to enquire about the return of Bernie Rhodes, notorious scamster, tireless talker and erstwhile crony of Malcolm McLaren, to the management helm of The Clash.

At the beginning of the year, The Clash had been in disarray. With Vinyl, a former punk in his early twenties, as their spokesman and – for want of a better term – creative manager, the group had taken to running itself as a collective, having fallen out with the seasoned management team of Peter Jenner and Andrew King in 1980. Joe Strummer, who'd been playing again with his former group The 101'ers, had run into Rhodes in a Wimpy Bar and invited him to a band meeting. The deal The Clash subsequently struck with Rhodes permitted him a percentage of the group's net profits, so it was in his interest to make sure The Clash made wads of cash.

He also had to sort out the shaky relationship with their American record company and the problems surrounding Sandinista!. The band had had to agree to a punitive financial deal before Epic would release the triple-set at the price of a single album. They'd need to sell 200,000 copies in Britain alone before receiving a penny in royalties – it took years to get there. But after a profitable set of European dates, slotted in when Epic refused to bankroll a scheduled 60-show US tour, the group was back in good financial shape. The New York gigs were regarded as the final leg of the tour, which had tightened up The Clash after a year off the road.

Bond's was chosen after Rhodes and Vinyl visited New York in the early spring. They picked the former disco as the venue for a planned eight night stint in an attempt to replicate the sleazy, intimate, low-life romance of the venues which Rhodes had booked The Clash into early in their career. A lot of New Yorkers were confused by the idea: the now defunct SoHo News asked me to write a piece investigating why The Clash had turned down Madison Square Garden – where they could have made far more money for far less effort. Find the real story, they said. This was indicative of the cultural abyss between The Clash and the American media. In the frequent words of members of the group: they didn't understand.

But it doesn't mean the media weren't fascinated by The Clash. The band were booked into the Gramercy Park hotel, located midway between Times Square and Greenwich Village and SoHo. Popular with musicians, the hotel was playing host to another group at the same time, a fledgling outfit called U2. But, as film crews, graffiti artists and break-dancers swanning through the lobby made clear, the Gramercy Park would, for the time-being, quite definitively become Clash Central.

Suddenly, in a flurry of hair grease, chrome-encrusted ghetto-blasters and dramatic shades of pink, ice blue and black, The Clash and their entourage stepped through the arrivals gate at JFK into the airport concourse. There was a palpable rush of energy. This could be very good for New York, you felt. This could be a lot of fun.

AS THE DIMINUTIVE BERNIE Rhodes entered the arrivals lounge, trailing behind the group in a pair of boat-sized, blue suede brothel creepers, it was clear he'd had a facial re-fit. His giant hooter had vanished and contact lenses had replaced his thick-lensed spectacles. Between them, Kosmo Vinyl and the refurbished Rhodes stage-managed the New York visit with an efficiency whose machine-like momentum was cleverly concealed. The group's elite status was manipulated for maximum media coverage in a quantity completely disproportionate to the amount of records they'd sold. You could ever tune into the TV news and there would be The Clash, paying an official visit to some school in Brooklyn, like alternative statesmen.

Half the British punk scene seemed to be on Manhattan island. John Lydon, busy sneering at everyone, was in residence at some midtown hotel, along with Keith Levene and Jeanette Lee of Public Image. The Jam had just left. The Fall – Mark E. Smith even surpassing Lydon for caustic sarcasm – were just about to arrive. At the Peppermint Lounge there was the inevitable benefit for the latest Johnny Thunders bust.

On May 27, two days after The Clash arrived, a press conference was held in the foyer of Bond's. A journalist pointed out that, the previous week, Paul Weller had accused The Clash of selling out. "What constitutes a sell-out to The Clash?" he demanded. Mick Jones took up the gauntlet. "What happens," he deadpanned, "is that all the tickets go on sale for a concert and people go and buy them, and if as many go and buy them as there are tickets, that constitutes a sell-out." The ladies and gentlemen of the American press thought this was quite witty.

Manhattan was a perfect backdrop for a group of former art students in love with the switchblade ethos of Scorsese's Mean Streets. Across the road from Bond's, on 49th Street and Broadway, was a bar in which one of the final scenes of Raging Bull had been shot. The joint, whose mythology included a feminist former bank robber as its manager, was soon taken over by The Clash posse. This was the heyday of the New York after hours bar scene. Half dead from lack of sleep, or from whatever you'd ingested, you could slide into yet another downtown sleazehole at eight in the morning and find Strummer and Vinyl there playing pool.

Pearl Harbour, the rockabilly singer, had arrived with Paul Simonon, her boyfriend, to DJ at the shows. Mick Jones threw a birthday party for his current main squeeze, Ellen Foley, at Interferon, the club that a year or so later became Danceteria. Future members of European royalty could be found snorting coke in cubby-holes at Bond's. Graffiti artists Futura 2000 and Fab Five Freddy were also soon part of the Clash camp. Even Allen Ginsberg joined the hangers-on.

THE TEMPERATURE HAD RISEN YET AGAIN, TO JUST OVER 100 degrees, on the Thursday night The Clash opened at Bond's. In the street outside kids from Harlem were breakdancing – an early, riveting sighting of a new phenomenon. Inside the packed hall, though, it was another matter. That night's support act, Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five, were soundly booed – even pelted with garbage – by this audience of out-of-towners. (A freak consequence of sales patterns from the Ticketron computer ticket outlets. The group seemed amused by the idea of fans travelling to see them, rather than the musicians travelling to the fans. "It's the mountain coming to Mohammed," said Strummer.) Standing halfway down the packed hall was Don Letts, making a film about the visit to New York, with the working title of Clash On Broadway. Letts and I looked at each other in amazement; it seemed proof of every-thing you had heard about the blinkered bigotry of US 'rock' fans. How on earth, you wondered, will they respond to the T-shirt stall in the lobby, run by the Committee In Solidarity With The People Of El Salvador?

"It's so fucking narrow-minded," Mick Jones said furiously later underlining that The Clash were always more than just a rock group. They were a musical distillery: dub reggae, rockabilly and the new rap music were hungrily absorbed into their brew 'Magnificent Dance', a mix of 'The Magnificent Seven', was bubbling on WBLS, the most happening black dance station. "I mean, it's an insult to us in a way," Mick continued. "We picked the bands to open for us, so supposedly we liked them. They're too narrow-minded to open up to something new"

But they went crazy for The Clash, in a way I'd never seen a more reserved British audience behave, even truly crackers crowds like those at the Glasgow Apollo. In the tradition of great rock'n'roll groups, like The Faces and even The Rolling Stones, there had often been something ramshackle, unpredictable and occasionally shambolic about The Clash's performances. But that was in the past: this group was a powerhouse – tight, tough and immeasurably confident. They played for a long time: almost two and a half hours. You were struck by their virtuosity, their power and the variety of material. They kicked off, appropriately, with 'London Calling' and then pillaged all four of their albums for the strongest material. High points were 'Ivan Meets GI. Joe', 'Career Opportunities', 'Brand New Cadillac' and new song 'This Is Radio Clash'. But really, it was all great. You had no doubt that The Clash was the best rock'n'roll group there had ever been.

But after the first night's set the problems started. Someone had called in the Fire Department and the Manhattan Building Inspector. Bond's had been dangerously oversold; if there had been a fire no more than 900 of the 3,500 strong audience could have escaped; the season looked about to be cancelled. A deal was eventually done. The shows could continue if more fire exits were opened up and there was an audience maximum of 1,750. The Clash found themselves agreeing to play 17 dates instead of the eight they'd flown in for. "I'm very worried about Joe's voice. I hope he can hold up," said Mick Jones. Other members of the group were perhaps greater cause for concern than Joe. In an interview sequence filmed by Don Letts, Topper Headon is asked how he feels about having to play 17 shows. He is unshaven, his voice is slurred and he is not looking in good shape. It is not a problem, he says, playing all those dates. But his face tells a different story... By the time The Clash came back on the Combat Rock tour, Topper was no longer in the group.

But adversity was turned to advantage. The Friday night show had been cancelled as talks dragged on between Rhodes, the club and the various authorities. As a result there was a virtual riot in Times Square by frustrated ticket-holders. So there was even more TV and press coverage. The additional ten days in New York established the group in the consciousness of the city's cultural underground. Lauded by the likes of Scorsese and De Niro, as well as kids from Queens with spray-cans, they became a fixture on the coolest edge of the New York art scene. Even the support acts began to be given an easier time. Lee 'Scratch' Perry, who the week before had re-painted an entire corridor of the Essex House hotel after redecorating his bedroom, only baffled the audience.

In the group's dressing-room the giant TV was always on. It never worked but it was always on, a constant flickering presence. As Scratch painted crosses on one wall, Pearl Harbour negotiated an unsteady path through empty bottles of Remy Martin and crumpled pink plastic carrier bags from Trash And Vaudeville, the retro clothing store in Manhattan where the group bought much of their stage-wear. She collapsed into a beat-up armchair; her eyeballs appearing to spin, cartoon-like. Someone had spiked her drink with acid. Paul Simonon took her to the nearest hospital. As Pearl was wheeled into casualty, a black hospital orderly walked past them. He took one look at Paul. "Ring, ring, seven am," he rapped with a laugh, hitting them with the first line of 'The Magnificent Seven'.

If anything, that was the moment you knew that The Clash's season at Bond's had worked.

Joe Strummer talks to Chris Salewicz

When was the first time you toured America?

I think it was in 1978. We went to finish off Give 'Em Enough Rope in San Francisco. So it would have been to tour that.

The response was very good. We were playing in dance-halls and clubs. Small places, maybe a thousand capacity. We had quite a buzz off that first album. They'd eventually put it out, after adding all the later singles to it, things like 'Complete Control' and '(White Man In) Hammersmith Palais'.

Who was your audience then? Presumably it wasn't punks.

It was music fans. Just people who were into music. We just went out there all guns blazing and blew them away with the attack and with the intensity.

Did you have any contact with any American groups when you went there? Did you have any idea what they felt about you?

Not really. You just get on a bus and go from gig to gig. You don't see many other people. I can remember when Ted Nugent wanted to jam with us in Detroit. We said if he got a crew-cut he could do it. He stormed out.

This was pre-MTV, so the only way to do it was Hank Williams-style: just get on a bus and slug it out. London Calling only sold about 300,000 copies in America. Today Pearl Jam sell nine million.

The Bond's dates took place because Epic wouldn't give you any financial support for an American tour. Was this because they were reacting badly to the subject-matter of Sandinista!?

They just gave us no royalties. They wanted to kill it off. It wasn't because of the subject-matter. They were more worried that Bruce Springsteen had caught the same fever – he'd just released The River. They didn't want it to catch on, giving fans three LPs for the price of one. But it was only meant as a fans' record. It was too weighty to be more than a fans' album. I think we knew that it would never sell huge quantities. We were just interested in the music. It just got out of hand when we were making it.

You came to those shows straight from a tour of Europe. Can you remember much about that?

Only the high points. The traditional riot in Hamburg, for example. We're all banned for life from Hamburg. We were never that popular in Germany. But on this occasion all these snotty, middle-class German kids had become punks, but only purist punk – people like Crass. So they tried to attack us on the way into the show. Anyway, I told the promoter to let them in for free.

When we started playing the show the stage was only about six inches off the ground. They rushed us, and we slugged it out with them. When you get up on that stage, you just don't care. You're a raging psychotic, you suspend all normal living – you'd grab a rhinoceros by the tusk and swing it around. So we beat them off. The cops dragged me off and breathalysed me. When it was proved I was sober, this huge guy with a fat revolver in his belt looks at me and goes, Pfffff... And threw me out of the station.

So how was morale by the time you hit New York?

Well, we had great morale because we knew we were a great group. We knew we wrote great songs, and played great live.

Bernie had this idea to do seven nights in various cities, because it enables you to hang out and get in touch with the place. It makes it far more of an event, far more intimate. We did seven nights in Sydney, Tokyo and Paris. I think we did it in London too. It was great, fantastic. Bond's was more controversial, necessitating a 17 night stand.

Various people suggested this was Bernie pulling some kind of scam. But do you know what realty happened with the Fire Department?

This is the truth, I think. You can't come into New York and take the club crowd for seven nights. So somebody paid somebody who paid somebody who paid somebody to come in and shut the building down. The Fire Departments are very heavy in America. If it had just been one night it would have been different. And they had oversold it. But instead of running we stayed and did the 17 nights. There was a riot on Times Square and it made the national TV news.

It's often assumed that the Bond's audience didn't really understand what you were singing about, that to them you were just a hard rock group with short hair.

People always used to ask us if they listened to the lyrics in America. I think it's rash to presume they didn't. I think they knew damn well what was going on. Anyway, maybe the message wasn't in the lyrics. Maybe it was in the energy, the vigour, the drive.

What did you feel about their response to Grandmaster Flash?

We really came up against it there. But you mustn't forget, these were kids from places like New Jersey. Most of them had never encountered anything like that before: just two turntables at the back of the stage. And not long after that they were going out and buying 'The Message'.

The reception for you was extraordinary. It seemed to lift you right up.

It did. But so did the energy in England and Ireland and Wales and Scotland. It was all One World to us.

Why do you think you succeeded in the USA?

Every time we had a record out we'd go off and tour everywhere we could. And I think Americans like groups – they've liked groups ever since The Beatles went there in 1964. We were a four man British group and I think they could really relate to that.

You were also about the only group out there who seemed to still believe you could bring about change through rock'n'roll music.

At that point it was pretty barren. Now it's a bit different: there's the hardcore scene, people like Henry Rollins, hip hop as well, I suppose.

Did the mythology of New York have a particularly poignant effect on you?

Of course. I'd been listening to American blues records since I was at school. America as a whole just seemed amazing and great, as it does to anyone who's interested in music. But New York – hell, New York.

Martin Scorsese shot the group for a scene in The King Of Comedy. Did that come out of the Bond's dates?

We'd met him on the previous visit. He'd been editing Raging Bull in his flat on the hundredth floor of some building, one of those places that's ceiling to floor glass. He was with Thelma Schoonmaker, that woman he always edits with. They showed us the first five minutes of the film. He was interested in us doing the music for another film, Kings Of New York, about street gangs in the 1850s. We had a couple of meetings about it: he seemed to just want some wild music. I think it's one of those life project films: he's still talking about doing it.

Then De Niro came to one of the Bond's shows, and Scorsese told us to show up on this street corner for a scene for The King Of Comedy.

Me and Paul once took De Niro and Christopher Walken down to Gaz's Rockin' Blues. They loved it. I think it was just what they wanted.

What happened to Don Letts's Clash On Broadway film?

As far as I know, the reels were stored in a rental place in New York. Bernie forgot to pay the rent and the footage was destroyed. The only surviving bit was ten minutes that Don Letts found at the bottom of his wardrobe. Part of a cutting copy, but only about ten minutes of it.

Can you remember the gamut of emotions you went through at Bond's, from when you arrived to the end of the dates?

It sort of took off like a rocket and suddenly exploded. We arrived in the city, the trouble went down, and the whole thing seemed to take off. The Gramercy was overrun with our thing. It was good fun, a real golden time.