Paris Is Burning? Clash & Damned
BEST MAGAZINE (France) | May? 1977 | Pages 54, 55, 56
Paris Is Burning? Clash & Damned
The Clash
In the capital shaken by strikes, the nights of the punk spring finally made it possible to see these spearheads of the New Wave. The Damned, who responded perfectly to what could be expected of them, and then The Clash who, quite simply, established themselves as the best rock'n'roll band of the moment...
Friday, April 29, 6 p.m., Place de la République. Facing the Modern' Palace, which from the outside might rather make one think of a natural history museum or even an oceanographic reserve, the heap of household garbage had visibly grown since the night before. Past the smoked-glass doors, the hostess’s grey crêpe leg-of-mutton sleeved dress (receptionist?) fidgets nervously in front of a teletype that rattles and crackles in the cold silence of the hall, a true mausoleum in funeral colours. The hostess (switchboard operator?) enters the manager’s office and hands him a rectangle of serrated paper. After reading the telex, the manager picks up the telephone receiver and dials a number.
(The telex: the agreement from CBS London, acting as guarantor and responsible for all damage and misdeeds that could be caused inside the hotel by the members of The Clash, signed to their catalogue.
The phone call: addressed to a certain Mr. Lipsick, director of international promotion at Pathé Marconi, informing him that the band who had stayed the night before in his establishment, in this case The Damned, had spent the evening wrecking the rooms they occupied and frightening the other guests on the floor; while the organiser of their concert had suddenly disappeared without paying the bill.)
We are the day after a general strike, with major demonstrations parading through the central arteries of the capital, serious governmental turmoil, and then there is the worsening of the conflict opposing the municipality of Paris, its mayor Monsieur Chirac, to the garbage collectors, a conflict resulting in these numerous piles of trash cluttering the sidewalks of Paris like giant turds. The army will soon be called in. Events of all kinds have taken place here, in this hotel and a few metres away in a small neighbourhood cinema. Here and there, a mixture of decrepitude, outbursts and violence, waste and rot of all kinds. Rock'n'roll has the virtue of fire, it purifies.
1977
Whoever had written one year ago: “English groups are above all groups. They are only musicians incidentally. The music is a pretext to do things together. The things more than the sounds. They foreshadow armed groups. There is in their amps, their feedback, their screams, their clothes, in everything surrounding their music, the foreboding of a sumptuous storm, of a beautiful destruction.” could not have grasped more acutely the deep essence of English rock of 1977.
The Clash and The Damned are its two best representatives along with the Sex Pistols, and precede in renown a good dozen of small instant formations who live meagrely without recourse to the financial largesse of the business. Such is the case of Subway Sect (the excellent opening act for The Clash in Paris), The Slits, Buzzcocks, Chelsea and others, who under the label of “new wave” secrete a fresh electricity at full speed.
And a thousand people (or more) who increasingly resemble them, at full speed, will no longer be able to endure their daily lives, will copy their lyricism and mixed sarcasm. This fashion will no doubt pass (because everything is destined to change), but the relationship is different, for once it is outside the industry, that which rock music has long since become, and if it is nothing more than a game or parade offered by our society, it may end up being the suggestion of an execution. No Elvis, Beatles or The Rolling Stones in 1977 (The Clash, “1977”).
Hate And War
The Clash form an urban commando. They wear uniforms (or rather a parody of uniforms). Paul Simenon, the bassist, displays on his left hip,
held by a chain around his waist, a strange utensil that instantly evokes the most vicious tortures, but up close, one sees that it is in fact only the most common type of snail tongs. The Clash know how to surround themselves with a sufficiently unhealthy aura while maintaining recourse to satire and sarcasm. The two central figures are Joe Strummer, the singer, and Mick Jones, guitarist, both deeply concerned with their social, political and cultural environment.
They wrote here, with a suicidal energy that is entirely their own, “White Riot”, “1977” and especially “Career Opportunities”, which evokes a difficult episode experienced by Mick: “I had been unemployed too long and ready to take any job. The Social Security office of West London therefore sent me to a department where I had to sort the mail, at the most critical moment of the war against the IRA, when any letter, any package could be a bomb. They had hired me because I looked like a hothead.”
The words spewed by Joe Strummer with his exasperated, violently desperate voice are those that cover the adolescent mentality in the United Kingdom, that of the million unemployed. “I hate the army, I hate the RAF. You won’t send me to fight in the tropical heat. I hate the rules of civil service. And I won’t open the letter bombs for you!”. The Clash adopt the same radicalism as the Jamaican people whose culture they respect infinitely. It is this same ethical synthesis — honesty, hatred, fear, and suspicion — that predominates in their personal morality.
They love reggae and play it with a conviction, a visceral commitment that categorically opposes the cultural and somewhat too abstract adoption the Stones made of it with “Cherry Oh Baby”. The Clash redo “Pressure Drop” by Toots and “Police and Thieves” by Junior Murvin, because they live in conditions analogous to those of the hustlers of Kingston, since they come from the same neighbourhood as the majority of Jamaican immigrants, West London.
But they do not forget that the ideal subversive vehicle for white youth must make reference to the culture, to the heritage to which that youth belongs. So do not be surprised if “White Riot” sounds like those battle chants sung on the terraces of football stadiums. I wanna riot, a riot of me own.
The Clash do not believe they have reached their integrity by having signed with CBS. They received an advance of £100,000 (while the Pistols had received £150,000 from the hands of A&M) but this advance represented only a part of the investments they made in organising the group and recording the first album.
The Clash persist in playing small halls, another radical position vis-à-vis the system, those that do not fall under the category monitored by the G.L.C., that militia in the service of the English show business. Joe: “We only played once at the Rainbow, our most important concert to date. We prefer small venues. On the one hand, because a single concert at the Rainbow prevents us from playing for six months in small halls. We reach many more people there.
On the other hand, where we play, these small cinemas in poor neighbourhoods that only programme porno or kung-fu films escape the control of the G.L.C., which enforces the rules. For example, you are forbidden to exceed 17 decibels. The G.L.C. has agents in every district, agents elected by a small parliament that lives off the taxes paid by musicians, actors, presenters, etc. It has ramifications everywhere and takes care of everything: security, hospital care, the BBC, television. It’s a kind of parallel police. Lately, they stopped a Stranglers concert because the guitarist wore a T-shirt that said Fuck.”
Garageband
The Palais des Glaces held only 500 people (and the next day, barely half that for the Damned concert) but many had the distinction that only certain thugs can claim. And those suavely perverse girls, with clinical whiteness, eyes without expression, gestures softly mechanical, carried within them that prodigious indifference that characterises our mutants of today. A new morphological species, visibly distinct, sprung no doubt from the future.
The four members of The Clash (there is a drummer, Nicky Headon) have a visual impact that does not deceive. The guitarist Mick Jones pushes his convulsions to the limits of balance, while Paul Simenon makes great scissors with his legs. Patti Smith said of him: “His bass playing is totally shitty, but the way he approaches the instrument is so physical that the sound is pure sex.” Joe Strummer stands in the centre, very authoritarian (“Hey Paris, what do you spend your time doing? Watching television?”).
From his person as from his voice emanates a human potential that I have felt only on very rare occasions (Bob Marley, Graham Parker). Because, you see, we are very far from the infantile nihilism of the Sex Pistols; The Clash are of an uncompromising humanism. Mick Jones will tell me: “I strive to be as honest as possible” and to take up that universal slogan, we are indeed in the presence of a rebel of the purest kind, as were Billy the Kid, Dylan, or Townshend. “To be an outlaw, you must be honest.” The music of The Clash is thus violent, very violent, but not blind.
A concert by the group is a bloody bullfight, with, as an arena backdrop, those wide panels representing a riot and the charge of cops in the streets of London (“London's Burning”). The rock of The Clash is the most subversive there is. This is what the music of Peter Frampton, Rod Stewart, Elton John, Eagles and other gems of a nauseating industry is totally devoid of. “London's Burning” is definitely the new “Street Fighting Man” (let us not forget that “Beggars Banquet” was released in 1968).
The Clash, finally, know how to create anthems: “1977”, “White Riot”, “London's Burning”, but also “Janie Jones”, “Protex Blue” and that superb “Garage Land”: “We're a garage band, we're come from garage land.” The “punk” movement had until then been only a press phenomenon, managing to congest the media. With The Clash, it reaches the operational stage. No Elvis, Beatles or The Rolling Stones in 1977.
Damned Damned Damned
The other group that brightened up those “punk” evenings was The Damned. The Damned knew of France only Mont-de-Marsan since they took part last summer in the Punk Festival organised by Skydog and his mentor Marc Zermati (who, let it be noted, perfectly organised the concert and the tour of The Clash).
It was in fact at Mont-de-Marsan that The Damned got in touch with Jake Riviera, the founder of Stiff Records, who offered them a contract. This contract, if not dazzling, was at least honest. Since then, the release of their first album (the first also for Stiff) placed them on the crest of the “new wave”.
The Damned do not lose sight of the fact that they are not made to last, so their main concern is to “get rich as quickly as possible”. Drummer Rat Scabies wants to buy a Cadillac, a swimming pool, a house and have the maximum number of girls in the minimum time allowed. For them it is now or never. So one understands the mad energy they put in so that it is now and not never.
Their origin is that of the slums, the hovels, the urban mire. Rat has had so many occasions to sleep on other people’s floors that he can no longer stand beds. (Rat was the first to have worn safety pins, a real punk.) Dave Vanian, the singer, is a sort of disciple of Dracula and Nosferatu the Vampire who on stage is totally possessed, but once out of the spotlights becomes as if by enchantment peaceful and affable.
Brian James is the rock guitarist par excellence, entirely traditional, the little brother of Keith Richard, if you will. Finally, there is Captain Sensible, the bassist, a unique character, who sometimes performs on stage wearing a nurse’s uniform. It was Larry Wallis, guitarist of the Pink Fairies, who christened him thus because his vocation in life is to do the most extravagant things. “From a very young age I was already like that, wandering naked in the corridors of my school.”
Sensible (Ray Burns is his real name) is more than a big mischievous child: “I care little for people, they are too oriented toward money and hierarchy.” Sensible is an anarchist in the best sense of the word, an individual who does not subordinate himself to any rule: “Anarchists like the Sex Pistols are posers, and you cannot be an anarchist while being bound by aesthetic criteria. We, The Damned, have two rules. Rule no. 1: to have no rules. Rule no. 2: to make your own rules (...) Our violence is directed against established music.
A key point of what rock is today is EMI throwing out the Sex Pistols because they were too outrageous and then, two months later, signing the Rolling Stones. The Pistols provoke the academicism, mediocrity and fascism of institutions. You know, the day Johnny Rotten and his mates took part in that televised interview which caused a scandal, many young English people reacted: some threw their television sets out the window, others joined the police.”
Apathy is the sworn enemy of The Damned. Their concert is a call to chaos, to destruction, to a final solution, a true catastrophe show that sweeps clean with a great electric gust. The stage performance of singer Dave Vanian has no precedent. The blackness of his image, the giant and menacing shadow that covers him simply recall the majesty and cruelty of a Bela Lugosi as well as the masterpieces of German expressionism, those of Murnau, Griffith or Fritz Lang. Vanian does not play with The Damned, he is damned, possessed, and as one of their songs, “Fall”, proclaims: “I'm a fallen angel” (“I am a fallen angel”). Captain Sensible provokes the audience, urging them to invade the stage (which the Parisian public did not dare, with the exception of a young guy who began with Vanian a dance, a simulacrum of combat entirely ambiguous).
The Damned are pure energy, vitriol that tears cries of pain and spasms of fear from you. In contrast to The Clash, it is the refusal of control, as with the Stooges (whose “I Feel Alright” they covered), it is a sanguine impulse where the adrenaline burns your heart, paralyses you violently, like death. “Neat Neat Neat”, “Born to Kill”, “New Rose” are the romances of today, crystallising violence, hatred and destruction, poisoned feelings, the visceral expression of what urban reality is in England, in France, in this decaying Europe.
Francis Dordor.