Coon, Caroline. "New Faces: Clash and The Damned." Melody Maker, 13 Nov. 1976, pp. 31-32.
New Faces: Clash and The Damned
— Caroline Coon profiles "New Faces: Clash and The Damned." The Clash's politically charged anthems like "White Riot" and their members' tough backgrounds, contrasting them with The Damned's more horror-influenced, high-energy aesthetic and their rebuttal of media-fuelled violence accusations.
— The Clash performance at London's ICA , The 100 Club's London Punk Rock Festival — The First European Punk Rock Festival in France
Melody Maker | November 13, 1976 | Cover
Melody Maker
November 13, 1976 15p weekly USA 75 cents
Melody Maker | November 13, 1976 | Page 31 & Page 32
New faces
Caroline Coon introduces two hot punk rock bands
Clash: down and out and proud
Three weeks ago at London’s ICA, Jane and Shane, regulars on the new-wave punk rock scene, were sprawled at the edge of the stage. Blood covered Shane’s face. Jane, very drunk, had kissed, bitten and, with broken glass, cut him in a calm, but no less macabre, love rite.
The Clash were not pleased. “All of you who think violence is tough — why don't you go home and collect stamps? That’s much tougher,” roared Joe Strummer. Then he slammed into the band's anthem "White Riot."
All the power is in the hands
Of people rich enough to buy it,
While we walk the streets too chicken to even try it
And everybody does what they're told to,
And everybody eats supermarket soul-food.
White riot, I wanna riot
White riot — a riot of my own!
The song, played with the force of an acetylene torch, is no less politically uncompromising than the other numbers in the band's repertoire — numbers like "Deny," "Protex Blues," "Career Opportunities" and "1977." To hammer home their impact, the Clash play with enough committed force to bring down the walls of Babylon, Jericho, Heaven and Hell if necessary. And their audiences go wild.
But, far from wanting people to hurt each other, Joe Strummer (vocals, guitar), Mick Jones (guitar), Paul Simonon (bass) and Terry Chimes (drums) insist that their aim is to shake audiences into channelling their frustrations into creative outlets. It’s difficult, however, trying to maintain a balance between positive reaction and violence.
How easy it is though, when you examine the Clash's background (one only too similar to that experienced by the thousands of young people who identify with the new-wave rock bands), to explain their emotional intensity.
Aware that, like the rest of the band, he'd rather not talk about his childhood,
I asked Joe (22) where he came from. “That's the trouble, see.” He speaks fast, using words economically.
“The only place I considered home was the boarding school, in Yorkshire, my parents sent me to. It's easier, isn't it? I mean it gets kids out the way, doesn't it?” Then he adds defiantly: “It was great! You have to stand up for yourself. You get beaten up the first day you get there.”
“And I'm really glad that I went because I shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn't gone to boarding school. I only saw my father twice a year. If I'd seen him all the time I’d probably have murdered him by now. He was very strict.”
While Joe is talking, Paul (20) is sitting next to him pointing and shooting a realistic, replica pistol — bang — at the posters on the walls — bang — at Mick across the room — bang — at Gertie the roadie’s dog — bang, bang — anywhere at all.
“I get on all right with my parents,” he says. “But I don't see them very much. They split up when I was eight. I stayed with my mum but I felt it was a bit soft with her. I could do whatever I liked and I wasn't getting nowhere so I went to stay with my Dad.
It was good training because I had to do all the laundrette and that. In a way I worked for him — getting money together and that — down Portobello market and doing the paper rounds after school. It got me sort of prepared for when things get harder.”
Paul liked school. “I never learned anything. All you done is play about... there were forty-five in our class and we had a Pakistani teacher who didn't even speak English.”
Mick (21), like Paul, comes from Brixton. His father is a taxi driver and his mother is in America. “They kind of left home one at a time,” he says. “I was much more interested in them than they were in me. They decided I wasn't happening, I suppose. I stayed with my gran for a long time. And I read a lot.
“Psychologically it really did me in. I wish I knew then what I know now. Now I know it isn't that big a deal. But then, at school, I'd sit there with this word 'divorce, divorce' in my head all the time. But there was no social stigma attached to it because all the other kids seemed to be going through the same thing. Very few of the kids I knew were living a sheltered family life.”
When he was sixteen, Mick believes he had two choices — football or rock 'n' roll. He chose rock. Why? “Because he couldn't afford toilet rolls,” quips Joe. Much laughter. Mick explains: “I thought it was much less limiting. And it was more exciting and I got into music at a very early age.
“I went to my first rock concert when I was twelve. It was free, in Hyde Park and Nice, Traffic, Junior’s Eyes and The Pretty Things were playing.
“The first guitar I had was a second-hand Hofner. I paid sixteen quid for it and I think I was ripped off. But, I tell you something — I sold it for thirty to a Sex Pistol.” Everyone laughs again, gleefully.
Laughter is a cheap luxury when, like the Clash, you never have the money for a square meal and when, like Joe, you live in a squat — or like Paul, you “crash” in your manager's vast unseated rehearsal room (where this interview took place) with no hot water or cooking facilities.
After Paul and Mick left school, they both eventually ended up as casual art students. Mick was already in a group when a friend of his dragged Paul down to a rehearsal. “The first live rock 'n' roll I can remember seeing was the Sex Pistols, less than a year ago. All I listened to before then was ska and bluebeat down at the Streatham Locarno.
“But when I went to this rehearsal, as soon as I got there Mick said ‘you can sing, can't you?’. And they got me singing. But I couldn't get into it. They were into the New York Dolls and they all had very long hair so it only lasted a couple of days.”
Ten days later however, Paul had “acquired” a bass guitar, Mick had cut his hair, they had formed a group called the Heartdrops (although the Phones, the Mirrors, the Outsiders and the Psychotic Negatives were also names for a day). Then walking down Golborne Road with Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols, they bumped into Joe.
The meeting was auspicious. “I don't like your group (The 101ers),” said Mick. “But we think you're great.”
“As soon as I saw these guys,” says Joe, “I knew that that was what a group, in my eyes, was supposed to look like. So I didn't really hesitate when they asked me to join.”
How did Joe first get into a rock 'n' roll band? “Because I owned a drum kit. Someone gave me a camera and then I met this guy who had a drum kit in his garage and I had a go on it one day. And I thought ‘this guy’s going to swap me this little camera for all that kit.’ And I said ‘here you are.’
“Then I went down to Wales and I ran into a band who had a drummer but no drum kit. But I didn't want to play drums because I wanted to be the star of the show, right? So I said ‘if you use my drum kit you're going to have me as your singer.’ And they had no option but to accept.” Before Joe joined the band they were called Flaming Youth. He changed their name to the Vultures. They did six gigs before Joe decided to come back to London to form The 101ers.
Joe broke up The 101ers directly as a result of seeing the Sex Pistols. A few months ago he told me: “Yesterday I thought I was a crud. Then I saw the Sex Pistols and I became a King and decided to move into the future.”
Today he says: “As soon as I saw them I knew that rhythm and blues was dead, that the future was here somehow. Every other group was riffing their way through the Black Sabbath catalogue. But hearing the Pistols I knew. I just knew. It was something you just knew without bothering to think about.”
What is it about punk rock which is so important to Joe? “It's the music of now. And it's in English. We sing in English, not mimicking some American rock singer’s accent. That's just pretending to be something you ain’t.”
Continues Mick: “It’s the only music which is about young white kids. Black kids have got it all sewn up. They have their own cultural music. Basically young white kids are relying on a different time to provide for their kids.”
But what's so different about youth today then? Silence. Joe stands up and, relishing the drama, he turns to reveal the stark, hand-painted graffiti on the back of his boiler suit. Hate and War glare letters in red and white across his shoulders. It's the hippy motto reversed.
“The hippy movement was a failure,” is Joe's explanation. “All hippies around now just represent complete apathy. There's a million good reasons why the thing failed, O.K. But the only thing we’ve got to live with is that it failed.
“At least you tried. But I'm not interested in why it failed. I'll jeer at hippies because that's helpful. They'll realise they're stuck in a rut and maybe they’ll get out of it.”
The pervading, resentful feeling on the New Youth Front is that the older generation, squandering the opportunities of the rich Sixties, has left them with the shell of a disintegrating society. One of the reasons drummer Terry Chimes is notable for his absence is that he is having a serious argument with Joe. Terry wants to “get out” of the country while there's still time. Joe thinks he should stick around to see it — the political chaos they see as inevitable — through.
What do they feel about society today? “It's alienating the individual,” says Mick. “No one gives a s— about you.”
Says Joe: “There's nowhere to go. Nothing to do. The radio's for housewives. Nothing caters for us.
“All the laws are against you. Whoever's got the money’s got the power. The Rent Act's a complete mockery. It's a big joke. I just have to f— off into the night for somewhere to sleep.”
Adds Paul, with feeling: “At the moment what the Government should do is put licences on clubs so that kids can have somewhere to go. But they’re clamping down on all that. But it's great because there's going to be kids on the streets. And they’re going to want something to do. And when there ain't nothing to do you wreck up cars and that.
“The situation that is beginning to happen now is their fault. If we end up wrecking the place it's the Government’s fault. They'll bring back National Service and we'll all be sent down to South Africa or Rhodesia to protect white capital interest. And then we’ll all be slaughtered...”
They may knock society, but they’re all on the dole, aren't they? “Yeah. We get a little freedom from social security. Otherwise I'd have to spend 40 hours a week lifting cardboard boxes or washing dishes, or whatever I done in the past. But because we're on the dole — which is £9.70 a week — I can get a rock 'n' roll band together.
“If I got up at 4.00 a.m. and went to Soho and joined a queue I could get a job as a casual washer-upper. That's the other opportunity I've got. Or the opportunity to work in a factory!”
But someone's got to work in a factory? “Why have they?” demands Mick. “Don't you think technology is advanced enough to give all those jobs over to a few people and machines.
“There's a social stigma attached to being unemployed. Like ‘Social Security Scroungers’ every day in the Sun. I don't want to hear that. I cheer them. You go up North and the kids are ashamed that they can't get a job.”
Aren't they being rather pious when all they are doing is playing in a rock 'n' roll band? “No,” says Paul. “It’s the most immediate way we can handle it. We can inspire people. There's no one else to inspire you. Rock 'n' roll is a really good medium. It has impact, and, if we do our job properly then we're making people aware of a situation they'd otherwise tend to ignore. We can have a vast effect!”
Oh yer, I jibe, rock stars have usually started out saying they’re going to change everything. Joe reacts first. “But you learn by mistakes. The Rolling Stones made mistakes. But I want to do something useful. I'm not going to spend all my money on drugs.
“I'm going to start a radio station with my money. I want to be active. I don't want to end up in a villa on the South of France watching colour TV.”
Do they want money then? “Yes,” says Paul. “Money’s good because you can do things with it. Bands like the Stones and Led Zeppelin took everything without putting anything back. But we can put money back into the situation we were in before and get something going for the kids our own age.”
Not that there are any profits at all at the moment — which completely belies the resentment in some quarters that these new-wave bands are having it easy, and don’t deserve all the exposure they're getting. Apart from playing such — as Mick Jones himself so aptly puts it — “wonderfully vital” music, which deserves all the encouragement it can get, these bands are struggling harder than ever to stay on the road.
“We make a loss at every gig,” says Joe. “It’s the promoters who we want to attack. I bet you can only name one or two who really care about music and I'm amazed that there isn’t one that really cares about what’s happening at the moment. We’re really having to get down on our knees and grovel for venues.”
No doubt life will be easier when the Clash sign the contract dangling under their manager’s nose. They are more politically motivated than the Damned, perhaps more musically accessible than the Pistols. Their lovingly painted clothes (the same on and off stage, of course), which are acrylic spattered with the ferocity of a Jackson Pollock action painting, have started one of the most creative fashion crazes of the year.
And their acute awareness, and ability to articulate the essence of the era which inspires their music, will ensure that their contribution to the history of rock is of lasting significance.
Clash’s Paul Simonon: “If we end up wrecking the place it's the Government's fault.”
Violent world of the Damned
“The violence has been blown up out of all proportion to what there really is,” says Brian James, lead guitarist with the Damned. Yes, although he has spiky black hair and, in his tattered raincoat, looks as razor-sharp as the sleaziest street hustler, his voice is smooth and voluptuous — more than a little indicative of his band’s true nature. “There’s always violence,” he continues. “There’s violence anywhere you go.”
Although, like all the other new-wave punk rock bands, the Damned have no truck whatever with hurting other people, they witnessed the worst incident of violence at a concert this year. Right in front of the stage during their set at The 100 Club's London Punk Rock Festival, a young girl was accidentally blinded in one eye by flying glass.
On stage the band could be hardly more aggressive. Brian, always in black, has a leer on his face like an open flick-knife. Bassist Ray Burns has to be gagged through most of the set, so abusive is his language.
Rat Scabies, looking like a bomber pilot marking time as a scrap-metal merchant, demolishes his drum kit at every gig. And, as quiet as lead singer Dave Vanian is off stage, as soon as he grabs a mike he’s transformed into a spitting, half-human, blood-lusting bat. Violent young men?
Dave Vanian (as in Transylvanian) has his own theory, which he offers in the band’s thinking-sensitive voice. “I think violence happens in every sort of culture. There's always violence and it just so happens that some of those people take over the same attitude and clothes as the audience. They are violent anyway.
“But when there’s something new, people are very quick to blame it for the violence. It’s a good excuse. They say ‘this has caused it.’ They’re always naming the new thing. It gives them something to put the blame on rather than take the blame themselves. It’s like Presley. They said he was corrupting the youth of America — which was b—.”
As usual, ex-grave digger Dave is looking amazing. When we walked into the busy Fulham restaurant (the lads, being poor, were ravenously hungry) there was a stunned hush as he swept to his seat. His black cloak, stark white shirt, bow tie, satin waistcoat, hair smoothed back like an ebony skull-cap and lavish, purple eye shadow caused a sensation. (Rat and Ray, in the interests of tranquillity, were not in attendance.)
Why, I asked Dave, if they hated violence, was the Damned’s music more aggressive than any rock has been for ages?
“Probably because it's more intense. We like the high energy it’s got. I wouldn’t be happy in a psychedelic rock band singing about flowers. I’m not that interested in flowers. Not in that way, anyway — pretty colours and all that. I’m interested in life today. And it’s all synthetic.”
Brian takes up the theme. “Violence is the wrong word,” he says, tucking into a hunk of steak. “Our music is intense because it comes from inside us and we want to let it out. And you’ve got to do it in a direction. You don’t play around with it. You go, go, go! That’s the only way.
“Even when we do a slow number it will still be very intense and may look aggressive and violent to the audience. But it's not violence in our heads. We don’t think ‘I’m going to look violent. I’m going to be violent.’ It just comes out that way.
“We play intensely — extremely intensely — because if you're going to do something you might as well do it as well as you can. In the last few years I’ve really got p— off with the guys who just get on stage and don't even look as if they’re into what they're doing. It’s like a job to them and they might as well be sitting in a factory.”
Perhaps to prove that they are, after all, very civilised young men, both Brian and Dave are eating with immaculate manners. Actually, Vanian probably does have a more genteel background than the other three. He still lives at home in Hemel Hempstead. It’s a weird environment there, he tells me. But Dave's father nearly died in a car crash, and was hospitalised for years, so, rather than rough it on the streets, Dave stayed at home to console his mother.
Brian left home ages ago and “crashes” in Notting Hill Gate. His father repairs buses in a depot and his mother's a typist. Rat Scabies goes home occasionally for a bath, and sleeps wherever he can. And Ray, affectionately called Captain Sensible, is so nervous at home he can hardly cut himself a slice of bread. He often sleeps on a park bench.
They are all basically self-educated and working-class. They claim to be between the ages of 16 and 24. What their real names are is anybody's guess. And who cares? They are just a fine, righteously rocking, new-wave punk rock band.
Originally, Brian and Rat were in a band called The London SS which also sported Mick Jones, who’s now with the Clash.
“He had a lot of arty ideas,” explains Brian, “which I didn't personally think had much to do with music — or what I wanted to put into music. He was into concepts and I just like to get up and play and let whatever happens happen.”
This band fell apart and Brian and Rat went looking for new members. Rat recruited his old mate Ray. They had both worked (and got sacked together) as floor cleaners at Fairfield Halls, Croydon. The three of them played a couple of gigs as the Subterraneans with journalist Nick Kent. But that didn't work out either.
“We needed a lead singer,” says Brian. “We wanted someone who looked interesting, who had the same ideas as us. An individual who could do something and who had an image of his own.”
Rat spotted Dave first, in London's Nashville Rooms. “I thought he was talking to a chick,” recalls Brian. “Dave had his collar up and his hair like this” (he mimes a kind of bouffant) “and he was wearing lots of make-up. And I thought: fantastic!”
“Rat said to me,” continues Dave, “‘there's someone I want you to meet — a guitarist.’ And it was Brian. He looked great and we got on and there seemed nothing to lose. It's what I always wanted to do so I thought I'd give it a try. I’d been trying to get my own band together, out in the sticks where I live, and it was a hopeless task.”
They rehearsed for four weeks in a church hall. They played their first gig at the 100 Club, supporting the Sex Pistols, on July 6. Their second and third gigs were at the Nashville Rooms on August 6 and 15, and on the 21st of the same month they were the only “authentic” punk-rock band to play at The First European Punk Rock Festival in France.
By this time London was the haven of the emerging new-wave punk rock bands. The Pistols had a six-month start. They were the inspiration and they set the pace. But the Damned followed and got on stage just before the Clash.
The incredible musical buzz generated by these bands was heard far and wide. In Birmingham, the old glam-rockers Suburban Studs cut their hair and double-timed their tempos. The Buzzcocks from Manchester came to London, saw, and went home with new energy. The Fifties-style rockers, Bazooka Joe, became the Vibrators (now Chris Spedding's band).
Fans like the Bromley Contingent formed bands called Chelsea and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Schoolboys like the Jam, Eater, and Subway Sect got into the act. And more groups are forming every week.
The Damned epitomise one aspect of the new wave. They are not punk rock in the deliberately dumb style traditionally defined by this word. Sure, they play without finesse, starkly and very fast. But they are committed to playing as well as their developing technique will allow.
They have all the power of the New York Dolls (if you need a comparison), and more. Since London isn’t such a fashionably incestuous rock scene as New York, the Damned have been able to develop without becoming the “in” thing. They are, therefore, likely to survive as more than just a passing fad. With the Pistols and the Clash, they are one of the most exciting bands around.
They are incensed by the myth that they can’t play their instruments. “That’s absolute s—. It’s rubbish,” says Brian. “I don’t read music. I learned from a chord book and I picked up a 12-bar blues and branched out from there. I sometimes feel limited because I’m the only lead player in the band. I’m progressing all the time.”
David is just as unpretentious about his technique. He sings the only way he can, and it's his voice at least. When he first went to the “audition” he had nothing on his mind except “let’s get on with it.” He was confronted with new material and new tunes and he didn't have time to think. He just sang. And that's the way he's stayed.
It's been said, however, that he's something of an Iggy look-a-like. “Yeah, I heard. But I've never seen Iggy so I wouldn't know. The first thing I heard of his was Raw Power and it's not been an influence on me at all.”
“I don't look at lead vocalists very much. It’s usually the lead guitarist that interests me most. When I went to see the Dolls I was watching Thunders more than Johansen. I don’t draw on any rock star to help my performance. I have more affinity to camp horror films.”
David’s interest in music started when he was seven. At school they had to recite some Greek mythology and, to give the occasion atmosphere, Holst's Planet Suite was used as background music. The music impressed Dave more than the mythology. (At this very moment he could be locked away in his room listening to Walter Carlos on synthesizer playing a glossy interpretation of Beethoven’s Ninth.) The first rock he heard was when, in his early teens, he hung out with the local Hells Angels-types who were Eddie Cochran and Chuck Berry fanatics.
He finally knew what he wanted to do when he saw the New York Dolls at Biba’s. “I always wanted something different,” he says. “I went to a secondary modern school and all they cared about was football.
“They didn’t class music or painting as a serious subject — it was just a recreation. I had quite a hard time. I spent most of my early years getting beaten up or nearly expelled because I was always in the art room.
“I always wanted to be creative and I tried photography and I did a bit of commercial art but I wasn’t producing anything I was very fond of. Then when I saw the Dolls, that was it. I thought what they were doing was really new. And it wasn't just them on stage, it kind of carried on into the audience.”
Dave, like Brian, exudes a very dramatic, 21st-century transsexual quality. He's always made up. Does this mean that he’s ambivalent about his sex? “No, I never wanted to be a woman, if that’s what you mean. I don’t think of makeup as feminine. I wasn't brought up with any morals thrown on me so it seemed just a natural thing to do.”
Brian is the band's steadying influence. He is the most experienced and worldly, and his self-confident style enables the others to express their own extreme ideas. He was the one ultimately to endorse Dave's slicked-back hair — he liked the style reference to Udo Kier in Warhol's The Blood Of Dracula. The Stooges' James Williamson and Syd Barrett are his favourite guitarists and, if pressed, he'll admit a taste for jazzers like Cecil Taylor.
Brian writes most of the band's songs. “Feel The Pain,” “One Of The Two,” “Alone,” “See Her Tonight,” “So Messed Up” and the just-released single, “New Rose”, all have intensely personal lyrics. The feeling is sensitive without being maudlin and the theme, revealed through a tough but richly imaginative juxtaposition of private images, is love. In this respect the Damned differ from the Pistols and the Clash who are more inclined to write political songs.
Brian, like Dave, thinks that the Damned is the best thing that ever happened to him. “The very fact that we're all together amazes me.
I was never interested in getting a straight job. I wasn't even interested in work for a start. I don’t like being told what to do at any pet time. I don't want to obey anybody else’s rules. I've got my own rules.”
Did he always want to be famous? “Yes, but only because it would be the end result of what I wanted to do. You don’t do it because you want to be famous. I don't yet know who I am. I just know what I do and how I feel. Everyone's living on a buzz, in a fantasy world that they are making real all the time. The whole idea of insanity and sanity has lost its meaning.
“Before us,” he continues, “there was nothing going on. We came out of apathy and we felt we just had to push hard otherwise we wouldn't get accepted. And, I suppose as society gets tougher the music gets tougher too. Or the reaction to what’s going on gets tougher because you’ve got more to react against.”
Why, I asked Dave, hadn’t the Damned taken a similar politically aggressive stance to society as the Pistols? “We do it more with the feel of our music. But we have the same interests and we play the same sort of music.
“I don’t think you can be angry about your position in society. If you're going to have a hard time, you’re going to have a hard time. There’s nothing personally I can do about it unless I start some radical movement. All you can do is make it better for yourself.”
Damned drummer Rat Scabies: looks like a bomber pilot marking time as a scrap-metal merchant
Melody Maker | November 13, 1976