Here is a list of known articles around the time of the tour. If you know of anything that is missing please do let us know.

Joe Strummer in York on the 1985 busking tour by photographer Peter Byrne. Peter says "It was published in the NME & kick-started my photography career."

About the 1985 Busking Tour

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After the Munich session, Bernie was smart enough to realise the group were feeling stifled and restricted. In May 1985, he, Kosmo and Joe devised The Clash's last hurrah - a busking tour of Britain. The idea was that the group would assemble at Vince's flat, leave their wallets on the table and hitch to Nottingham with a few acoustic guitars. They'd then see where the wind would take them. Over the next two-and-a-half weeks, Britain's provincial towns and cities were thus treated to the extraordinary sight of the Clash popping up under railway bridges and in subways to entertain them with Monkees, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran and Cramps songs.

The group kipped on fans' floors and and cheap B&Bs. They survived on the money thrown into their hats. It was a genuinely exciting and unpredictable experience. Joe described it as 'the best tour we ever did'.

Paul agrees. 'It was like starting out fresh again', he says. 'It was great. "We'll meet you in Glasgow in a week's time", and idea was to leave everything behind other than the guitars. You couldn't take any money with you. We survived by our wits. It was as exciting as the Anarchy tour, you never know where you were going next'

Joe: 'When we came back to London after that busking tour, we felt we had something good going inside the group. But as soon as we met Bernie and Kosmo in Holland Park later, I understood that Bernie felt it was slipping out of his control, he didn't know where we were. We only came back because I lost my voice. Bernie didn't like that (loss of control).'

(from Pat Gilbert 'Passion Is A Fashion: the real story of The Clash' the 2009 paperback edition, p.352-353)

Fyr: https://dangerousminds.net/.../the_clashs_forgotten_years...

Joe explains the Busking Tour to Jon Savage

Mohawk Revenge: | Facebook

I’D LIKE to start with the busking tour – can you tell me what the point of that was?

I think Bernard suggested the busking tour. The point of it was he sensed that the Clash had become too prey to his ideas, he realised he had it under his thumb too much, and there wasn’t a lot of life in there, so he said to us – what he expected us to do was to go up north, somewhere like Bradford and live in a house while we I don’t know what. We just went up and kept moving, and to me it was the best tour that we ever did.

Where did you play? I know you played in Leeds.

We played a lot of gigs in Leeds, and in Glasgow, in York, we didn’t get to play in Manchester, cos my voice had gone by then.

About twenty gigs?

More, much more. We would knock off eight or ten a day, we’d play in any pub, any club anywhere. The sets were ten numbers, maybe seven numbers the whole band. Three acoustic guitars and a pair of sticks. Pete would drum on anything, mostly a plastic chair. We played in some university in Glasgow or Edinburgh anyway, Paul and Nick and Vince would play acoustics and I’d just sing.

Was that all Clash stuff?

We played a couple of Cramps stuff, some Clash stuff and maybe a couple of standards. We used to play ‘Movers and Shakers’.

You didn’t tape them did you?

No. There are tapes circulating around the north, apparently, and there are tapes of us rehearsing in someone’s flat in, I don’t know what city.

Was that it after that, or did you do another tour after that?

When we came back to London after that busking tour, we felt we had something good going inside the group, but as soon as we came back and met Bernie and Kosmo in Holland Park, later I understood that Bernie felt it was slipping from his control, ‘cos he didn’t know where we were, and we only came back ‘cos I’d lost my voice. Bernie didn’t like that it was slipping out of his control, so somehow he put a stop to the good feeling that we had at that moment.

I fell out with Bernie after we returned from Munich, where we recorded the tracks, somewhere between that and when he began to mix it.

So the LP’s release was something you had no control over?

Absolutely none. But Bernie’s trip was at the time, he wanted to know what it was like to be Mick Jones. Mick used to sit in that seat where you arrange the songs, and produce them, and once he’d encouraged me and the rest of us to get rid of Mick, I didn’t realise until after the Cut the Crap sessions that that was Bernie’s trip. He was fed up with organising tours and stuff, he wanted to get right in on the music. He hated song writing ‘cos it was the one mysterious area where he couldn’t go. He hated that. He wanted to reduce songs to slabs of bacon off the roast, he didn’t see why it should be strange. He hated the tortured artist thing that Mick would lay on him, it was slightly out of his grasp. He used to say to me, I’ve analysed life so completely – that its boring. I used to look at him and think, that’s insane. Song writing was one of the things he didn’t understand how it was done, and he resented that, he wanted to do the pop Svengali thing, he could make the boots, the t-shirts, the look, the direction, everything, but when it came to the songs, that was the one thing that he couldn’t understand.

Maybe that’s what Bernie should have done.

Come on then Bernie, Malcolm is doing it. Come on!

Is that why he had his nose done?

I think that was just to make himself more beautiful.

Pardeep Singh

I believe it was suggested as a publicity stunt thought off by Bernie, but that when it began the band members actually really enjoyed it and it was the onky time The Clash mk2 were free from the control of Bernie. Whatever version you choose to believe it was an epic idea

Rare busking footage

Rare footage has emerged of Clash frontman Joe Strummer busking in a BBC Alba series to be shown this week.

The grainy film shows the legendary musician playing guitar and singing in an unidentified street. It is believed the footage, shot on a hand-held camera, dates back to the mid 1980s.

It was uncovered by a BBC Alba producer researching the history of busking in new series Buskers, which starts this week. The video had been bought by a music fan from an Edinburgh music store.

BBC Alba bosses are excited by the lucky find, and are hoping the footage pulls in a wider audience on digital platforms as well as BBC iPlayer....

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NME, Clash City Buskers

85 05 18 NME Clash City Buskers Paul Syrysko

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