The Last Crusade
©2005 Chris Knowles may not be reproduced or reposted
This article is courtesy [and copyright] of Chris Knowles, Clash fan and author. Chris's Clash book Clash City Showdown is available from all online retailers.
Here is the book available through Amazon
Chris has written other articles. This Article in edited form appeared in Classic Rock Magazine Summer 2005.
This is a full unedited version and includes two interviews, oine with Nick Sheppard and one with Pete Howard.
The Last Crusade
©2005 Chris Knowles may not be reproduced or reposted
The official statement, released 10 September, 1983, was brief and blunt:
“Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon have decided that Mick Jones should leave the group. It is felt that Jones drifted away from the original idea of the group...”
If you had asked anyone in the know, they would have told you that the Clash were dead long before that axe fell. The Clash had divided into two camps- Mick Jones on one side and everyone else on the other. Strummer, Simonon and manager-slash-svengali Bernie Rhodes constantly rowed with Jones over contentious issues like tour schedules, album lengths and the Clash’s musical direction. Jones had also become obsessed with the New York Hip Hop scene and was growing tired of his second banana role in the band. Onstage, Jones had reinvented himself as the Clash’s co-lead singer and co-rhythm guitarist, or to be concise, the Clash’s co-Joe. Offstage, he spent his time futzing around with beatboxes and synthesizers while his Les Paul collection gathered dust in the corner.
On Jones’ insistence, a brief holiday break in 1982 had stretched into a nine-month indolence. Not only was nothing being worked on, but the boys were not on speaking terms. The Clash’s only activity in 1983 was a mini-tour leading up to their controversial appearance at the mammoth, 3-day Us Festival in California.
The Clash were a man short at the time. Drummer Topper Headon had been sacked the year before and his predecessor/ replacement Terry Chimes signed up for the Combat Rock tour but chose not to stay on. Following a series of auditions, an astonishingly powerful and prodigious 23 year-old from Bath named Pete Howard came onboard to slam the cans. But Pete was soon to discover that this dream gig was more like a nightmare. The Clash’s ongoing, behind-the-scenes dysfunction was not going to make his job an easy one.
PETE: After the auditions, they basically just said, "Go away and learn everything." They didn't say, "Go away and learn these," they said, "Go away and learn everything." We had some rehearsals at Air Studios in Notting Hill, and basically Mick wouldn't turn up. If he turned up at all, he would turn up three hours after everyone else had. The tension between Mick and Joe was palpable.
The Clash did not put on their happy-smiley faces for the Us gig. The prolonged tug of war with Mick had made the already volatile Strummer practically explosive. And unfortunately, he took his frustrations out on the fans, who had waited for hours in scorching desert heat only to have their mellows harshed. After their fiery set and a zesty little brawl with festival security , the band took their half-million dollar cut, flew back to London and resumed their stand-off.
PETE: I was freaking out. We did the Us Festival and then I didn't get a phone call for four months. And then all of a sudden I got this incredibly fucking vitriolic phone call from Joe, saying "I fuckin' sacked the stoned cunt! Whose side are you on, mine or his?" And I was like, "Uh...uh...uh...yours, Joe, yours!"
Bernie Rhodes had been planning Mick’s sacking for about seven years or so, so the band wasted little time in replacing him. A series of auditions were held at the Clash’s rehearsal space, Lucky 8. One of the hundreds of applicants was 24 year-old Nick Sheppard, former guitarist for 70’s Punk act the Cortinas.
NICK: Auditions were held initially in Camden. Hundreds of guitarists lined up to play along to a backing tape. I was going out with a girl who's friend worked in the Clash office above Lucky 8, so I knew who I was auditioning for. The huge majority had no idea . I was in the pub before; it was full of nervous guys with guitars. Someone asked me if I knew who the audition was for. When I said "The Clash," half the room cleared!
Sheppard got the gig and the new Clash got to work. Marathon rehearsals were held and over a dozen new Strummer songs were worked on. But the mandate was not yet Punk Rock Redux...
NICK: I don't recall Punk Rock being the premise - that would have been seen as going backwards. It was more a back to basics approach, after the excesses of Mick's last days . (Joe’s new tunes) were far more an eclectic bunch of tunes than we ended up with. Lots of World Music influences - Latin, African grooves - that kind of thing.
However, ‘that kind of thing’ wasn’t what Rhodes had in mind for the new Clash. ‘Back to Basics’ was soon upgraded to ‘Back to Punk Rock,’ or ‘Rebel Rock’ as Joe rechristened it. After a couple weeks of rehearsals, another new guitarist, Gregory “Vince” White, was brought onboard.Then, Joe shocked everyone by announcing that he would no longer be playing guitar. Then he changed his mind back, and the new Clash became a three-guitar band.
NICK: Vince's real name is Greg, but he was told that he had to change it because it wasn't cool enough. Paul said, "name me one cool guy called Greg." To which Vince instantly replied "Gregory Isaacs." (aka ‘the Cool Ruler’) That shut every-one up!
PETE: Vince is from a very middle-class background, he went to university. Out of me, Nick, and Vince, his (Vince’s) family are probably the wealthiest.
A rowdy new batch of face-punching rants was eventually chosen to be played on tour. Three Card Trick , Jericho, Are You Ready for War, the Dictator, Sex Mad War, Glue Zombie and This is England displayed Rockabilly, Funk, Reggae, Surf and Brazilian influences, but were wrapped up in an iron-hard blanket of guitar aggro that strongly recalled Give ‘Em Enough Rope...
NICK: I felt a similarity of intent between the new songs and that era, although it was never specifically mentioned. I think the twin Les Paul sound lent itself very well to that style, and songs from that period translated very quickly to the new set-up. Bernie was adamant that we both play Les Pauls; he wanted The Pistols’ guitar sound.
After rehearsals, Joe would subject his new band to marathon pub sermons. Strummer was a man on a mission- a mission to save the world from Ronald Reagan and Duran Duran. Combat Rock’s success had done nothing but bolster Strummer’s messianic complex. The mandate of the new Clash was nothing less than total revolution.
Seeking to secure the Clash name, a mini-tour was booked in Southern Calfornia in January ‘84, a mere few weeks after the new lineup had been in existence. Despite touring without record company support, the dates received a substantial amount of attention. Rolling Stone, Entertainment Tonight and the LA Times all covered the gigs. However, the unexpected spotlight on the new band piled on the pressure for Strummer to make it all work. The credit or blame for the new Clash would fall solely on his shoulders, and he was touring with a greenhorn band unaccustomed to large venues. Of the new members, only Howard had played to more than 200 people. And as if there wasn’t enough pressure to begin with, Mick’s zealous legal team harrassed the new Clash at every turn, seemingly just out of spite.
NICK: Apparently they placed injunctions on every venue we booked during '84. The band’s bank accounts were frozen. I don't think any thing came of the injunctions, and I don't think we were unable to use the name.
PETE: The pressure on Joe was big, you know? I mean, fucking hell, Bob Dylan came back to see him after we played. And Joe-- he was crying. There was a lot to take on. In that respect, I can understand why he had to see himself as being in fighting form. He believed in Bernie as his trainer very much like a boxer.
NICK: I always thought we should have done some commando-style secret club gigs before we played any halls or arenas. If you've never played those big stages, there's a lot of adjusting to do.
Without a record to promote and no corporate advertising, most gigs were not on the scale of the 1982 tour. Except in San Francisco. There the new Clash played to a capacity crowd of over 10,000 gone-apeshit fans. A critic from the Examiner captured the mood: “On Saturday at the overcrowded Civic Auditorium we had a chance to hear the (new) Clash. I seldom get fearful and claustrophobic in jammed arenas, but I was on this occasion.” San Francisco was chafing under Ronald Reagan’s rule and the new Clash were treated as conquering heroes. It should come as no surprise that a Clash-influenced Punk scene emerged not long after in the Bay Area...
After California, the band flew to Europe and found that the Clash were superstars on the continent. They were front page news in the European Music press and headlined larger venues than they were used to playing in the US and UK. However, just as the new Clash were finding their footing, the Fates dealt them their first hammer blow. In late February, while preparing to play the first of two nights at Milan’s Palasport stadium, Joe received news that his father died.
"I only saw my father once a year (after being sent to boarding school). He was a real disciplinarian, who was always giving me speeches about how he had pulled himself up by the sweat of his brow: a real guts and determination man. What he was really saying to me was, ‘If you play by the rules, you can end up like me.’ And I saw right away I didn’t want to end up like him." Joe Strummer to LA Times writer Robert Hillburn, December 1983
Joe’s relationship with his family was strained. Joe had once said that if had seen his father more than once a year he “probably would have murdered him.” His only sibling, brother David, had succumbed to mental illness and committed suicide in 1971. In his increasingly volatile state of mind, this latest tragedy was the last thing Strummer needed.
PETE: When we were in Milan, Joe was fucking mental. He stayed up for about three days drinking bottle after bottle of brandy, and berating everyone around him for their weaknesses, and just really fucking losing it. We had a couple days off or something, and we didn't see him. And then he came back. We were all sound checking and Vince was pissing and moaning saying, "I can't hear my fucking guitar in the monitor." And it led to an argument. Bernie was going, "Look at you. You're so fucking pathetic. You're so middle-class, you're so fucking weak." He said, "Look, this guy here's just fucking buried his father, and you don't hear him talking about it, do you?" I remember that time very clearly as being among the worst.
NICK: I didn't find out what had happened until the next day. He didn't know us that well, so I guess he didn't feel comfortable sharing his hurt with us.
The pressure was now on full boil when the Clash returned to the UK. The smoochfest they encountered in Europe would not be repeated on their home shores. In Year Five of Margaret Thatcher’s reign, the UK pop scene was in full simian-submission mode. Record labels were churning out ersatz bands like Frankie Goes to Hollywood faster than their payola could prod the Press into making them seem important. For the past four years, the press slagged the Clash for abandoning Punk and now they were slagging them for returning to it. Though the NME admitted through gritted teeth that the tour was a “lightning sell-out”, longtime Clash-basher Gavin Martin dismissed a Brixton date as “the heaviest and most orthodox rock show I’ve ever seen the Clash play.”
NICK: After the first album, the Clash hardly ever got good press. Have a look at the recent NME collection of Clash articles.
The critics were also put off by the paramilitary ambiance of the new Clash’s shows and what Lola Borg of Record Mirror described as their fans’ “total hero worship.” She warned that “a Clash concert isn’t a suitable place for those of a nervous disposition”.
Borg wasn’t the only one with a beef with the Clash’s fans. Joe’s volatile temperament not helped by the revival of “gobbing” ( the charming British custom of honoring your favorite band by hocking a loogie on them). Strummer had contacted hepatitis in 1978 from a well-aimed gob, and following the death of his father he had no intention of humoring this repugnant ritual. One reviewer wrote that in Dublin “Joe faced down a gang of right wing skinheads who harassed and spat at him all throughout the gig. At one point he singled out a particularly nasty thug, saying ‘You, the one who can't spell Nietzsche!’ "
But after facing a nightly rain of phlegm, Strummer’s string snapped. Towards tour’s end, he singled out a gobber, and, well, threatened to kill him.
“Are you a gobber? Are you a gobber? Have you spat on me? Well, get the hell of here then, you berk!! Listen! I’m prepared to murder someone tonight! I don’t give two fucks! I want some fucking human respect- when I clear my throat, I do it on the floor! I’m serious! I’m prepared to kill someone! I dont give a fuck anymore! All right? Blood, if you want it! Let’s have it! Let’s get down to it! And fuck the lot of you!!!”
Joe Strummer, Brixton Academy 3/16/84
Following this drama, the band then returned to the US for a relentless two month jaunt. Having experienced several difficult tours, Joe and management laid down the law to the new lads. Joe, obsessed with military metaphors, repeatedly referred to his band in interviews as his “new recruits” and his “new platoon” . Bernie, for his part, saw himself as the the Clash’s drill instructor.
PETE: There was a lot of that when you're on the road, that's it. You don't contact your fucking family. If you do, you're a pussy. No girlfriends on tour, we don't want women around. Bernie used to frequently talk about boxers not being allowed to fuck their wives before a fight. And I do understand where that comes from, because if you're going to look at yourself in the world arena, then you have to be up for the competition.
Unfortunately, Bernie was often more abrasive and abusive than anything else. Quasi-Stalinist tactics were used to keep the new boys on edge. Attempts would be made to turn the new boys against one another and they would often be subjected to aimless lectures and inquisitions.
NICK: Questions like "What would you do with a Million Dollars?" to which every answer proved you were an idiot. I stared at Bernie's "new" nose and said I'd have my ears pinned back. It was like being hauled into the headmasters office, and served as much purpose.
PETE: It was constantly, every day, "Right, tonight you're going to wear sunglasses." And then after that show, it was like, "You look like a wanker in sunglasses. Never wear them again."
NICK: I lent Vic Goddard a guitar, a beautiful ’64 Telecaster that I had owned for years and loved. But Vic was a junkie, and so of course he sold it for smack. I was fucking furious. When I told Bernie about it, Bernie informed me that I was a "failure junkie" - so it was my fault.
PETE: I remember having an argument with (Clash road manger) Kosmo Vinyl once. I was saying, "This is like being in the fucking Moonies. You've got this fucking dwarf Buddha standing up there handing out dictums, and you have to follow them." I said, "I don't think like that, I don't want to live that way." And he just said, "It is like that, that is how it is. You take it with Bernie or you don't take it at all." And then he went on to tell the story about Bernie turning Joe from a nothing to a something. And he said, "If you don't believe that Joe is an iconic figure, then that's your issue. But most of the world who know of him do believe that, and Joe believes that Bernie made him that."
NICK: It was a frustrating, intimidating and humiliating experience to be lectured by Bernie. It ultimately achieved nothing as far as I was concerned.
PETE: Bernie and Kosmo were constantly hatching up things. They were constantly coming up with ideas, and they were often really good. Their heart was in the right place in one sense, but their methods were unsound. Their methods were fucked.
For all of his middle class pedigree, Vince White was the wildest card in the deck. Though picked primarily for his Townsend-like antics during his audition, Vince had the chops to back up his pose. But there was something feral about him, a hint of barely suppressed violence in his perpetual smirk. Bernie would soon discover he got more than he bargained for when he brought Vince aboard.
PETE: Bernie was going out with this kind of crazy wild-child girl from Detroit who was probably a third his age. We were all in a restaurant, everyone was there around the table. And this girl had been flirting around a bit for days. Anyway, she got up and went out. Then Vince, about two minutes later, got up and went out. And when they both came back in, (we knew) they'd been fucking in the car park. I don't know if Bernie sussed it or not, but he didn't give it away. My bedroom in the hotel was next to Bernie's, and me and Nick could hear this argument beginning, so we basically brought everyone in, and we were all in my bedroom leaning against the wall, pissing ourselves laughing at Bernie, with that ‘ridiculouth lithp’ of his, going "You shag, you fucked my fucking bird? You shag!" To be honest, my respect for Vince went up quite considerably after he'd done that. It was one in the eye from all of us, really.
Nick: Bernie brought Vince in as the "Punk," and got what he asked for.
As the tour progressed, Joe felt confident enough to introduce subtler tracks from Sandinista and Combat Rock into the set. The band would work them up at sound-checks and put them on the setlist when deemed ready. Joe also felt less pressure to showcase as many new tracks. And under the heavy duty discipline, the once-ragged band had quickly matured into a raging, razor-sharp, Rock and Roll leviathan.
NICK: We were definitely a heavier, more Hard Rock proposition than the previous incarnation - our versions of Broadway, Magnificent 7 and Rock the Casbah didn't mess about.
Critical opinion in the US was nearly uniform. Like most of her peers, Jane Scott of the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote that the new Clash “sprayed out songs like a Mafia with Machine guns” and added “their intensity made most other British groups soundlike Wimps Anonymous. From their first shot, London Calling, the crowd of 4,000 was jumping on its feet.” But like the other wags, she then lapsed into vague theoretics saying that “all that power, all that speed, all that intensity seemed a little empty.” Though few reviews lamented Mick’s absence, Punk Rock was definitely not on the critics’ agenda in 1984.
Which is not to say Punk wasn’t still in favor with the punters. And the band’s entrance into the mainstream had brought an entirely different sort of fan than the disaffected art students that attended their early gigs. A younger and more athletic audience had been turned onto the Clash, and audience approval was often displayed through acts of mayhem. Near-riots broke out at venues in Philadelphia, Chicago and Providence. But as the tour progressed, nerves began to fray. Like the original Clash, the new band soon discovered that Rhodes’ Spartan ideals didn’t apply to himself.
PETE: Three months in a fucking Greyhound bus because we were so fucking middle class that we were used to luxury, and that's why we couldn't have a fucking bus with a toilet on it, or we couldn't have a TV, or a sofa to sit on. We were basically on a fucking Greyhound bus, and that's harsh. It's hard work. It makes a hard job harder. It doesn't make you into an elite, mean killing machine. It just makes you angry.
NCIK: Bernie wasn't there - he flew.
PETE: We were at a sound check at a gig and Bernie just said something that was just one thing too fucking far, and I just left and went back to the hotel and packed my bag. One of my biggest regrets is that I didn't leave at that point because I would have liked to have been able to fuck Bernie over in that way, I'd liked him to have to cancel gigs. But he actually curled around my legs like a fucking cat. He was kind of, "You know, you've got to understand the pressures of this and the pressures of that, we really value you being in it, bla bla bla." And then I was like, "Right, fine, okay," And two days later, he was being exactly the same all over again.
Touring the US is a difficult proposition under any circumstances, but the Clash were doing it without record company support. Advertising and promotion were minimal. Sales were healthy in the metropolitan areas but lagged in secondary markets. But by bringing real Punk Rock deep into Red State America, the new Clash’s influence would far outweigh their ticket sales. Kids were given a opportunity to experience the power of Punk Rock on a grand scale. This was brand new for America, and would have a profound influence on kids who would go on to form bands like Rancid, Green Day, and Pearl Jam. The new Clash taught New Hampshire’s Al Barr, now of the Dropkick Murphys, that “Punk Rock isn’t a stepping stone. It isnt ‘I’ve learned this now I can be an opera singer.’ It’s valid on its own.”
Nick Hexum of 311 stated that ”I want to carry on what the Clash began. My biggest thrill was first going to see The Clash (in Omaha, Nebraska) when I was 14-years old. When they came out, it made my knees buckle. It was everything I’d ever imagined after listening to them for so long.”
And while travelling these hinterlands, old road warrior Joe made sure his new platoon got a full dose of Kerouac-style American road romance...
NICK: We had a three day drive from Denver which Joe turned into a cultural and historical tour of the Oregon Trail. We stopped at Pony Express stations, swam in the Snake River and hung out with some native American Indians. We had a fantastic time; Joe had a book about the Oregon Trail and would read from it when we stopped at various places. We had other great days off in Chicago, Kansas City and Detroit. We saw Black Flag in Atlanta. Shopping, eating soul food, watching protest marches, being taken out by great looking girls - I've had worse jobs, believe me.
PETE: When it was good, it was fun. People encouraged you to behave badly. There were very, very good times. The problem was that it would almost always be stopped by a slap in the face.
NICK: In Philadelphia, we stayed at the same hotel as The Grateful Dead. When I got on the bus in the morning neither Joe or Koz had been to sleep, and Joe had this pillow of ‘hippy hair’. Apparently Kosmo had setup a Mohawk barber service in the Dead's entertainment suite and cut mohawks all night!
Paul Simonon, who had chafed under Mick’s Napoleonic excesses, enjoyed his time with the new Clash and acted as a mentor to them. He also found it refreshing to work with musicians who weren’t constantly shooting up or locking themselves in their hotel rooms. But even he was tiring of Bernie’s schtick.
PETE: Everybody was sort of muttering, "If Joe could get away from Bernie, then this thing could actually be good." And Paul was very much of that party. He'd never really stick his neck out about it, but he was one of us mutterers who were going on about Bernie the whole time.
Despite Rhodes’ machinations, the band was battle-tested and ready to record. But as soon as the band returned from their US marathon, the other shoe dropped. Right on the heels of Joe’s fathers death, Joe’s mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. This news sent Joe into an emotional tailspin and the Clash’s back was broken for good.
Faced with new familial repsonsibilities, the recent death of his father, the pressure of making this new band work and now the impending mortality of his mother, Joe abandoned his plans for the new Clash and left them to fend for themselves. A mini-tour of Italy in September was undertaken without Joe rehearsing with the band.
Joe’s sole preoccupation in the second half of 1984 was tending to his dying mother. The Clash withered without his involvement. Two concerts were planned in December to benefit striking coal miners. The band had barely rehearsed for these important shows. Joe’s old mate Gary Hardy went backstage at the Brixton Academy during one of the benefits. There was only one topic that Joe wanted to discuss .
GARY: He was just worrying about his sick mother. He said that one of her arms was swollen and he was wondering why that was happening. I was working in a hospital at the time and he asked me to talk to the doctors there.
Rhodes took advantage of Joe’s plight and finally seized his long-sought “complete control” of the Clash. He booked a studio in Munich to record a new Clash album, the notorious Cut the Crap. Most of the backing tracks were assembled by anonymous studio musicians, using the very synthesizers and drum machines that led to Mick Jones’ dismissal. Pete Howard was replaced by some dolt with a drum machine, which was like replacing a Maserati with a Matchbox. When White and Sheppard were finally summoned to provide guitar overdubs, they were stunned to discover that album was nearly complete.
Inevitably, Joe and Bernie soon fell out. Rhodes took the master tapes from the Munich sessions and disappeared. Boxed in by his new contract, Joe was powerless to stop him. He went so far as to track down Mick Jones in the Bahamas and beg him to rejoin the Clash, only to be rebuffed. At the end of his rope, Strummer called a band meeting in October of ‘85.
PETE: We all met up in a bar in Soho. We sat down, and Joe said, "It's over." He gave us a thousand pounds each, and I said, "You followed Bernie's advice, and this is where it got you." He said, "Yeah, I know." I said, "I think you should take out a page in every music paper -in fact, why don't you take it out in some of the broadsheets as well - saying, "Crap cutting commencing - here's the real fucking deal." And he sat down and composed this incredibly eloquent kind of, "This is where we went wrong, these are the reasons that things went the way they did, and this is why this album is awful."
Joe never placed that ad.
In 1999, Joe tore himself out of his ten year retirement, formed a new group and called them the Mescaleros. Reviewing the band’s first gig, Clash nemesis Gavin Martin instantly recognized the strong parallels with Clash II. It was hard not to. Though the Meskies were considerably mellower, the mix of new, Clash-like material and Clash favorites, along with the multi-guitar frontline, was taken right from Joe’s 1984 playbook.
The Mescaleros’ endless tour also helped Joe settle accounts left outstanding from 1984. After an appearance at Australia’s Big Day Out festival in 2001, Joe hooked up Nick Sheppard and spent a week at Sheppard’s home in Perth. Joe and Nick lived it up and healed old wounds.
NICK: We were out a lot, and did a show together on the radio. We did speak about my time in the band; Joe apologized for what happened. He was upset at how things turned out for everyone. I told him I didn't regret a moment of the time I had spent in the band. I know we were never The "classic" Clash, and that circumstances prevented us from reaching our potential, but I've moved on, made some great music, and have a great life.
PETE: Joe said something before he died in an interview. He said, "I felt really sorry for Pete, Vince and Nick, because you had a chemistry between four people that worked really well, and there was no way anyone could have replaced that. " And I felt somewhat exonerated by that. Because I was limping, mentally, for a while.
Now playing with the highly regarded Indie band Queen Adreena, Pete Howard never had the opportunity to square things with Joe. While recording a new album with the Mescaleros, Joe died in his home just before Christmas 2002.
Sadly, Cut the Crap is the albatross forever slung around Clash II’s shoulders, And given the poisonous feelings in the Clash camp about the entire episode, hell will freeze over before any Clash II live album is ever officially released. But the trading trees out there in cyberspace have kept the band’s legacy alive. A growing cult of converts to the Clash II cause have kept recordings of nearly every concert from 1984 in circulation. Most of them are worth hearing.
EXCERPTS FROM NICK SHEPPARD INTERVIEW
©2005 Chris Knowles may not be reproduced or reposted
> When did you start to realize that something was seriously wrong with Joe and Bernie?
During the recording of the album, I realized that Joe was struggling to keep his head above water. He had committed to Bernie and his ideas, and there was no way back, so he couldn’t countenance the possibility of failure; that the whole thing was going to be terrible. He was coming to realize, however, that the unthinkable was happening, and that Bernie was to blame.
For quite a lot of the time in Munich, Joe and I were the only two there, so we had a few talks about “staying Strong, keeping together, making it work”. I could see the whole experience crushing Joe. This was also where I just lost any interest in Bernie, as I watched him wank about with the record.
Endless over dubs of “PUNK” guitar that all sounded the same, and ridicule if you tried to inject any melody. I’m sure he didn’t use any guitar parts I had already worked out purely because they were mine! The last day of recording, I ended having a real set to with him over some backing vocals, and I told him he didn’t have a fucking clue what he was doing! Kosmo “pulled me off” and they let me do what I wanted.
I think Bernie was a bit shocked. Obviously, Joe was feeling the same thing; it really started to tear him apart. As a result he wasn’t always the nicest guy to be around, but on the whole he was fine with me. Bernie, on the other hand, took great pleasure in telling me at Heathrow that I had “failed”! We basically went straight off on the busking tour, which was like a holiday, certainly for me, and it definitely lifted Joe’s mood. I remember him playing me “Shouting Street” on a bus going to Edinburgh - which I took as a good sign...
The great thing about that tour was that we were on equal terms and dealt with each other directly; no Bernie or Kosmo in any-one’s ear. We had really intense discussions and a couple of serious rows; fantastic gigs, met great people and slept on their floors,and were a proper band! We had to stop in Manchester when Joes voice went completely. I had slipped my Credit Card in my sock before we left, and paid every-one’s train ticket back to London.
We got back: I for one was shattered but elated. Straight back to the usual nonsense - no communication, hell from Bernie, more endless sessions on the album, which I could no longer make any sense of, and had totally lost interest in. Lots of hanging about and going out drinking. As I said before, the first time I realized that Joe and Bernie had fallen out big time was on the bus ride to the Roskilde festival in Denmark.
Bernie was giving us all a lecture about T.V. Cameras or something, and Joe shothim a look of pure hate; I remember thinking ‘hello, this is going to get interesting”. Joe had obviously turned a corner, and in that kind of situation it was all or nothing... As a result of that look, I thought “fuckIt” and had a great time on those last festival gigs. I had nothing to lose, so I did and said what the fuck I wanted. I think Athens has to be in my top ten best ever gigs (along with Paris ‘84), and that was the last one...
> > Describe the singer auditions
After the festival gigs in The Summer of ‘85, we all went back to drinking in London, rehearsing in Stoke Newington with Paul but not Joe. Lots of talk of a World tour etc. This is when the wake up calls from Bernie started, and it was through them that I learnt that Joe had gone to Spain.
I asked Bernie why he kept calling me (it was fucking Unbearable!) and he said “there’s no one else”! We were then summoned to a meeting at the Hilton Hotel in Holland Park! Bernie told us that Joe had left and that he was setting up auditions for a new singer, and that we would tour the album!
I had absolutely no intentions of doing anything of the sort, but I thought I might find a singer to work with on what was obviously going to be my next band. Theauditions were held at the Music Machine (where I had auditioned 2 years earlier) and every one had to sing Be Bop A Lula with piano accompaniment. Every single person was rubbish, apart from one black guy, who just got the key off the piano player and went off on a fantastic improvisation. I turned to Kosmo and said “he’s brilliant; I’d love to try something with him”. His reply was “no brothers in The Clash”!!!!
That was it for me - apart from the racism involved, and that was fucking unbelievable coming from that camp, I just realized that if I kept on working with Bernie and Kosmo I would never have any artistic freedom - how ironic is that! I never managed to get the black guys number...
> > Tell me about Joe meeting with you guys and telling you he was not going to continue.
We all went round to Joes house, and sat in his front room. He said “ I can’t work with Bernie any more. I’m not going to continue with The Clash, and I’m asking you guys not to.” I was relieved that we knew what was going on, and that I wouldn’t have to work with Bernie again, and said so. We all had our say on the matter, so to speak, and then went out and got drunk! That night , we walked past a Def Leppard Poster. Their drummer had just lost his arm, so I said to Pete, “there you go, you can try out for that now”! I think that was when we both realized it was all over!
> > Do you recall Joe’s open letter about Cut the Crap?
I remember Pete saying two things at the meeting at Joe’s. One was about the open letter, and another was that we should re-record the album using the band and release it in competition with Bernie’s version. I thought both ideas were absolutely fucking brilliant, especially the guerrilla version of the album! I never saw the open letter, and wasn’t surprised when neither eventuated.
Pete Howard speaks
©2005 Chris Knowles may not be reproduced or reposted in any way or form.
CK: I have a lot of questions for you, because you’re really the point man between the two eras. One of the main questions is why weren’t you on the album? I mean, that is just so insane. That was crazy.
PH: I can’t answer that. I really don’t know. It’s a mystery to me. I have to be honest that that particular thing bugged me for a long time. I kind of felt like-- Because Joe and Bernie were always criticizing me for being too middle-class, for over-thinking things, for being burdened by where I was from.
And I felt that that was how they were reading everything, and I did. That period of time was a severe dent to my confidence. But the other element about that was the fact that, because they had realized--
I do have to say it, but the songs they wrote when Mick wasn’t around anymore, and the way in which they worked, meant that they weren’t producing the same caliber of music anymore. And also Topper, I think Topper had a huge influence on a lot of the stuff that they did.
CK: He did a lot of writing.
PH: Yeah, he wrote Rock the Casbah. He was a huge influence on the whole thing.
CK: But there was a lot of other-- He wrote the music for “Ivan Meets G.I. Joe,” and there were other songs that were never released, that he wrote.
PH: Yeah. So Topper wasn’t there anymore, and then things between Joe and Mick got very, very strained. And he sacked Mick, and then I think they suddenly realized that the only chance they had was in some way to become contemporaneous. They had to be “of the time,” so they had a rehearsal in the recording studio in Camden.
There was this guy called Michael Faney, a black guy, who was the engineer there, and he was fucking around with drum machines. And they thought, because of a lot of hip-hop and stuff like that, that the way forward with that album would be to have a black guy with a drum machine. I think they felt that that would mean it was “of the time.”
CK: The irony of that is that, even for that time, the drum machine’s so incredibly badly programmed.
PH: I know.
CK: It so primitive. It’s sounds like a 1980 drum machine.
PH: I know, it’s awful. But then, what do you say? The thing is, I think they believed an illusion about me, like they believed an illusion about Michael Faney. They believed that Michael Faney was the streetwise hip-hop guy from Stoke-Newington, which at the time, Stoke-Newington was pretty gritty. Now it’s completely fucking gentrified.
CK: So they think that he gave them some sort of street credibility?
PH: Yeah, exactly.
CK: That’s insane. [laughs]
PH: Well, I think it’s insane, but then, on the other hand, I think they were also glancing over at what Mick was doing with Big Audio Dynamite.
CK: It’s funny, because in the circles of people that I associate with, really trying to figure out exactly what happened, everybody says, “Somebody got hold of Big Audio Dynamite demos and said, ‘All right, well, we’ve got to copy what Mick’s doing.’”
PH: Yeah. I remember going to a Big Audio Dynamite gig and Mick basically slagging The Clash off and saying, “I’m much better off without those wankers” type things. But there was a lot of animosity flying around, but I think Mick always had an eye on-- He was a very typical West Londoner. He was very all Notting Hill, because he’s now-- I mean, there’s an expression for people in Notting Hill called “Trustafarians,” which is basically young, white guys with dreadlocks who are living off their parents’ money, and they’re all in Notting Hill.
CK: We have those over here, too. [laughs]
PH: There you go. Mick Jones was very into street stuff, as you can tell by Big Audio Dynamite. He was very into hip hop and reggae and drumbeats and [electron?] and those kinds of things. Paul Simonon was very into black music, as well.
And to be honest, Big Audio Dynamite have got that four tracks that I like, but it wasn’t really my kind of cup of tea at all. But the irony of that is that when Joe sacked Mick, he said later in interviews that he really wanted to ask me to join Big Audio Dynamite.
CK: Yeah, I just wanted to mention that. [laughs]
PH: Then I was thinking, well, if only you fucking * had *, then I wouldn’t have gone to the absolute fucking nightmare that it became after he left.
CK: Well, let me ask you a question, because-- Here’s another thing that people don’t understand. Were you guys rehearsing at all in ‘83? Because it didn’t seem like anything was going on.
PH: When, after we’d done the US Festival?
CK: Yeah.
PH: No, because I was freaking out as well. I basically got the gig to do it, we had about ten days rehearsal, then we did those gigs in Texas, and then we did the US Festival. And I was 21, 22, from Bath, a tiny, beautiful, provincial town. Blah-blah-blah. It was really fucking thrilling. And then we got back from there, and I didn’t get a phone call for, like, four months.
CK: Until Mick was fired.
PH: Yeah. And then I got a phone call from Joe, literally. An extreme velocity kind of guy. “I fuckin’ sacked the fuckin’ stone cunt!!. Whose side are you on, mine or his?” And I was like, “Uh...uh...uh...yours, Joe, yours!” Because I didn’t even know what was going on, and as far as I was concerned, they weren’t calling me. And then all of a sudden I got this incredibly fucking vitriolic phone call.
And when I joined the band then, I was getting a lot of money, for me. I was getting, like, 300 quid a week in nineteen-eighty-whatever, and I’d been living on the dole up to that point. They paid all my phone bills, my electricity bills, my rent.
Admittedly, they never paid me for doing a gig for the whole time that I played with them. But I didn’t need to get any money for the US Festival. Here’s a really good example of what Bernie Rhodes is like. At the time I’d been in this awful band, we had a manager. And when I got the job in The Clash, I got the manager, was saying, “Look, I know Bernie.
I know him of old. He’ll fuck you over if he can. Let me talk to him and I’ll make sure that he does give you a fair deal for everything.” So my manager rang up Bernie, and Bernie the next day came up to me and said, “How fucking dare you give that wanker my telephone number? If you don’t get him off my back and get rid of him * now *, you can’t have the job!”
And so, consequently, I was never in a position of negotiating any kind of anything, really. I just basically got what I was given. But again, in the initial stages, that was great. That was really, really cool. And then, as soon as Mick was sacked, then they got [?] and they halved my wages, and that was all I ever got, just didn’t get anything other than 150 quid a week.
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