It was February 1982 and our friends had petitioned The Clash to play our city, Christchurch, on their New Zealand tour. They were doing the usual thing and only playing Auckland but suddenly our signatures worked and they arrived to blast the roof off the town hall to 2,500 students, punks and rockers.

My band Desperate Measures were due to play the Clash aftershow party and we were stoked, and after all the other bands had played we set our gear up on the stage. "I've decided I'm not going to let you play," the psycho bouncer who ran the place said though, as he battered one of our mates with a pair of nunchucks. We were the only punk band on the bill and poor old psychotherapy didn't like us. We reluctantly packed our gear up and painstakingly lugged it down the deathtrap stairwell. Loading it into the car, a van pulled up behind us.

I went over and had a word with Joe Strummer, who I'd just seen onstage an hour before: This wanker won't let us play Joe! "Let me see what I can do," he replied and within five minutes we were back on stage blasting out our homegrown anthem '1984' to Joe, Paul Simonon and the Clash's entourage. We spoke with them afterwards and they said they loved our band even though we'd played like shit. Once again, The Clash had saved the day and gave us something to believe in.

Ten years after his death, Joe Strummer's vision, music and memory lives on. He was leader of the greatest band of our generation and will never be forgotten. This issue is dedicated to you Joe.

Vive Le Rock!
Eugene Butcher, Editor In Chief
Cover photo by Kevin Estrada.

Vive Le Rock | 2012 #No.10 | Contents & Streetcore Advert, Global a Go Go advert, Competition

Incandescent and undeniable, The Clash were the heart and soul of punk. This is the story of the last gang in town, told by those that were there. Ten years on from the death of Joe Strummer, Kris Needs pulls no punches with his firsthand account of life with London's finest.

Reworking traditional Jamaican reggae into vibrant new forms, British reggae remains as influential and inventive today as it did in the early seventies. Reggae expert and one half of the Bristol Archive/Reggae Archive team Martin Langford provides a brief history.

Kris Needs pulls no punches with his firsthand account of life with London's finest.

Dunstable Civic Hall, January 25, 1978: Police roam the oval-shaped hall's outer perimeter as ambulance crews treat young punks with blood streaming down their faces, stoned from fights or low-flying beer cans. Onstage, the front monitors are already trashed. The frothing crowd, who've already abused two support bands, bellow "White Riot", terrace-style.

In the dressing room, The Clash are steeling themselves for what promises to be one of those stellar detonations between them and the ever-swelling ranks of their followers. Joe Strummer jokes, as he applies his customary strum-guard to his wrist: "Maybe I should wrap it all over as a body suit?" He had already experienced the violent electricity of the auditorium, diving into the crowd to shake hands during opening group Model Mania’s besieged set. Topper Headon did similar trying to stop the hordes from pelting French female support group The Lous (employing a handy mic stand). The impending danger seems to hotwire the group’s collective loins, transforming any fears into the sort of energy which turns them into the most exciting, unstoppable group on the planet.

The place goes mad from the moment The Clash stride into the fray and tear into ‘Complete Control’. ‘London’s Burning’ becomes ‘Dunstable’s Burning’, hotly pursued by ‘Clash City Rockers’, ‘Protex Blue’, an early airing of ‘Tommy Gun’, ‘Police And Thieves’, ‘Capital Radio’ and ‘Last Gang In Town’, another of the new songs. Cans, beer and gob rain throughout, spurring the band into one of the most thrilling displays of the classic lineup at full throttle it was ever my pleasure to witness (tonight from a relatively safe vantage point behind Paul Simonon’s amp).

Each member has gained a wild gleam in their eyes, Joe positively frothing at the mouth. ‘Janie Jones’ flicks the switch for proper carnage, bodies being carried out of a seething pit that now seems to encompass the entire building. Joe drops his guitar to honour the reaching hands at the front (road manager Johnny Green’s work is cut out tonight — the mission now: just to rescue everything). Topper crashes through his snare skin, Paul’s ripping strings off his bass and Mick’s darting around the stage, slashing power chords with a malevolent grin lighting up his face. If that burst the dam, ‘Garageland’ is the all-consuming torrent of rampant energy, roaring unity and all life’s frustrations uncorked and booted around the building.

Then comes the moment; the one I wish you could at least see on film as nothing came close in ‘Rude Boy’. Joe starts singing ‘Career Opportunities’, softly at first. The crowd join in, before the whole group crashes in at just the right moment. ‘White Riot’ is the green light for over 100 fans to invade the stage. Joe’s lost his microphone but the whole hall is singing anyway as Mick and Paul stand either side of Topper on the drum riser, like the last men at the Alamo, taking the song out as Strummer lurches around with a look of wild, unfettered glee on his face. There’s been a lot of senseless, unnecessary violence tonight but, just for this moment, everything solidifies into a glorious celebration of what can only be called proper anarchy in the UK.

Afterwards in the dressing room, a mood of silent shell-shock prevents much conversation as Mick dabs a blood-filling can-gouge on his cheek, while the rest inspect their bruises. The hall looks like a deserted battleground as the crew try to put together the disparate strands of equipment littered around the stage. Away from the teenage rampage sparked by the almost frightening power of The Clash at that time, this was both unbridled example of the crowd’s frustration finding an outlet for release and tabloid brainwashing on supposed punky behaviour. In 1978, The Clash were leading a charge but also facing a monster. The power Joe had over audiences was frightening; he could’ve told them to go and burn down the town and they probably would have tried. Joe knew this, but never told them to riot. He hated the spitting and missile throwing, but also got cathartically fired up when the live beast went careering into lunatic overdrive like all great rock ’n’ roll is supposed to. Joe never lost that ethos, just spent the next few years inviting, refining or occasionally just letting it fly by its own free will. I wrote then that it was the wildest, most frightening but exciting gig I’d ever been to. Nearly 35 years later, that still stands, even out of over a hundred Clash gigs I witnessed.

From 1978 to 2012. The period around that dreadful anniversary on December 22 will be awash with tributes, mostly by career writers who never saw The Clash, therefore never experiencing that white-hot surge which started at Joe’s strum-guard and worked its way into the most blindingly apocalyptic rock ’n’ roll tsunami the world had ever seen. Sitting there in a safe European home scouring YouTube is, sadly, the only option many have to get an idea of this and see this most mesmerisingly intense of front men. Now Joe is more likely to be (quite rightly) praised for campfire camaraderie, global passion and the mature new career phase he was settling into with The Mescaleros when he died. From hate and war to posthumous deification, he was a deeply complex individual, but we can leave all that to the pundits. The Clash story itself has been told many times (including in my book 'Joe Strummer And The Legend Of The Clash'), so here’s the most vivid memories of my time with the band, 1976 to 1983, before they dissolved in a sea of misguided decisions, drum machines and dead horse-flaying, told from the eye of the hurricane.

The Joe Strummer I met in 1976 had burned his pub-rock bridges to embrace punk as its most energised statesman, gorging the requisite diet of speed and Special Brew with gusto, so often gruff, even belligerent. This was at one of The Clash’s earliest gigs, at an anonymous leisure centre in the Bedfordshire market town of Leighton Buzzard on October 9, 1976, their seventh public appearance since debuting with the Sex Pistols in Sheffield that July. The promoter was a school-friend who put on local gigs, persuaded to stick The Clash on with long-forgotten R&B pub band The Rockets for 20 quid. 65p to get in, attracting a half-capacity crowd of old hippies and curious local beer boys. The only ones excited about what was about to happen were us young punks, who’d read the first published Clash interview in Sniffin’ Glue fanzine (where Joe uttered his immortal phrase, “Like trousers, like brain!”). As I was covering The Clash for New York Rocker, and later Zigzag, manager Bernie Rhodes had called me relentlessly, declaring how this was the most important group of all time, about to turn music upside down.

“The Clash changed my life, totally. They changed my perception of things.” — Robin ‘Banks’ Crocker

He was right about that; I was never the same again. Everyone’s got the rock ’n’ roll epiphany which changes their life and tilts the world onto a different axis. I’d been primed by the Rolling Stones and Mott The Hoople but this was something closer to home (also it helped being sufficiently grown up to understand and take aboard what they were saying).

On arrival, I met Bernie and The Clash in the bar, recognising Mick from the Mott shows we both lived for in the same way kids would soon do with The Clash. We hit it off immediately with our mutual musical obsessions, while Joe was friendly but obviously psyching himself for the show. It’s still hard to describe the sheer impact of seeing The Clash run onstage in their DIY Jackson Pollock paint-splattered finery to rip into the recently written ‘White Riot’ for the first time. The Clash taking the stage was like an injection of electricity into the smoky gaff, I wrote at the time; Mick leaping and slashing razor-chords, Paul the moody, bass heart-throb, while Joe positively vibrated with rage and fervour (“Like clockwork robots out of control”). Two elements which didn’t change between then and Joe’s last show in 2002 were his frantically-scrubbing forearm and the electric leg, pumping double time to the music.

For a concentrated assault on everything familiar, it eclipsed the Pistols the same month up the road at the cavernous Dunstable Queensway Hall, which boomed and spluttered rather than caught fire. The Clash’s set already boasted future first album faves including ‘London’s Burning’, ‘I’m So Bored With The USA’, ‘Protex Blue’, ‘Janie Jones’, ‘What’s My Name’, ‘Career Opportunities’ plus ‘1977’. Over in 35 minutes but now war was declared on all past rock ’n’ roll values and current bullshit. When I got home I daubed an old school shirt with red emulsion until it stood up on its own and stank.

Afterwards, the band were in the bar, drained but triumphant at the best show so far, in their short life. Three days later I met Joe, Mick and Paul at their Rehearsals Rehearsals HQ in Camden (drummer Terry Chimes kept pretty much in the background). We adjourned to the Caernarvon Castle over the road and, once I’d got ’em in, sat down to my first experience of the Strummer wit when he disappeared under the table and started pulling at my trouser leg. “What do you call those, then?” he enquired sternly, referring to the new strides I thought were straight-legged but obviously still too flared for his liking. Wouldn’t be the last time these trousers got me into trouble. I’d been more worried about being 22 at the time, little knowing that Joe was two years older than me, but keeping it quiet.

The interview laid down the Clash Manifesto of the time: “We’re one up the arse for the rich, established groups”... “There’s so many useless bands around it’s not even worth naming any.” Joe weighed in about London: “We love the place. Blocks of flats, concrete...” “I hate the country,” added Mick. “The minute I see cows I get sick! I ain’t never lived below eighteen floors.” They added that the only music they liked was reggae and the Ramones’ first album. This was the topical reportage informed by the reggae tunes then scorching London’s blues parties and Don Letts’ Roxy sets that inspired The Clash to inject the same social bulletin element into their own lyrics, writing about the despair and hopelessness of inner city life.

Next was the fabled Night Of Pure Energy at London’s ICA, where Patti Smith leapt onstage for ‘I’m So Bored With The USA’ then dragged Paul off on tour with her. Shane MacGowan was reported as having his ear bitten off by a punkette called ‘Mad’ Jane (I was standing behind them and it was just a bit of over-enthusiastic play-fighting). Above the shenanigans, The Clash were flaming more fiercely than ever, even upping the energy levels from that first gig, Joe slavering and hollering, face contorted as he wrung every drop of passion from his convulsing body and tortured throat. This was one of the early home-turf punk rock milestone gigs, the moment The Clash entered the London arena as serious contenders, playing to enthusiastic response and their own crowd, including Sid Vicious, nascent Slits, Generation X and the little crowd who’d known each other from the start. There were also curious record company people and journalists. This wouldn’t be a closed shop much longer.

Having missed my last train home, Mick said I could stay at Davis Road, the squat where The Clash had their first rehearsals with Joe. It was a prime hang-out spot/crash-pad for the Clash-Pistols axis (all that sniping in the press was unrepresentative; they were all in this together then). My strides struck again as, before walking to Shepherds Bush, Mick said he had to loan me some less-offensive jeans to avoid a possible pasting from Sid, who took this matter seriously. “You might get hurt otherwise,” he warned. On a high from the gig, we walked laughing and babbling to Wilmcote House, the tower block near Royal Oak where Mick had grown up in the care of his wonderful grandmother. He took me onto the little balcony, looking down at the yellow light of the Westway below. “This is where me and Joe wrote ‘London’s Burning’,” he explained. I was really warming to Mick by now; passionate about music, many mutual musical reference points, hilariously funny but, most of all, utterly convinced his new band was going to change the world. The jeans did save my bacon, just as well as I ended up sitting next to Sid all night while he taught himself to play bass to the Ramones’ ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’. Pre-Nancy he was brilliant company.

The gigs followed thick and fast. The Night Of Treason at the Royal College Of Art on November 5 nearly flared into a mini-riot when drunken students threw bottles, necessitating hands-on intervention from the group and Sid, who saved me from certain beating after the gig when the same bottle-brandishing students mistook me for Mick and started steaming in, but were dispelled by Hurricane Vicious, who had to be held back by four bouncers when the lunkheads followed us back to Davis Road. Sid saved the day again by lobbing roof slates at their car. This was my first taste of lunk-on-punk violence which would be an ugly sub-plot over the next few years.

Further scorching gigs included High Wycombe’s Nag’s Head, Joe sporting his ‘Hate And War’ boiler-suit and new peroxide blond look (which, for some reason, prompted me to liken him to “a paint-spattered Greek god” in a review). Most of the first album’s songs were in place, dead wood trimmed, begging the question why The Clash weren’t signed yet. First they had to endure the torpedoed Anarchy Tour with the Pistols, more waiting around hiding from tabloid reporters than gigs. “The tour turned into a cause in a way,” Paul told me: “Us kids just wanted to play. We were stuck in hotel rooms for days waiting to play, then we’d be told the gig was cancelled and we’d wait for another three days in the hotel room.” Joe reasoned that it “really put punk rock on the map.” Now everybody knew about the revolution about to grasp the oncoming year by its testicles. Back then, even wearing straight jeans and short hair could mean taking your life into your hands. “What we wear is dangerous gear,” sang Joe and, in the wake of the Bill Grundy incident, punk was now regarded as a national scourge, to be stomped on bureaucratically by the establishment and physically by ignorant meatheads. This should also be taken into account when looking at the early Clash, stoking but making their energised defiance all the more important at the time. Now we had our own band.

The Clash came into their own when they played the recently-opened Roxy club on New Year’s Day, 1977. Punk’s London epicentre was a former gay bar taken over by Damned manager Andy Czezowski, soundtracked by Don Letts’ reggae selection, which started the crucial punky-reggae party. Turning up early on the night of the gig, I ran into Joe, sporting his 1977 shirt. His manner was speedy and surly, my initial ‘How ya doing?’ greeted with a semi-snarled “How do I look?” Around then, I grasped a little more of Joe’s character — if he got into something, he jumped in feet first and took it to the furthest extremes. Pissed and speeding, he landed in bad fights, getting beaten up by a teddy boy in the Speakeasy club’s toilets. He had all but dismissed his previous life with the 101’ers in squat-land, adopted an aggressive demeanour and seemed determined to push himself to the outer limits of wild-eyed menace when onstage or even in interviews. The Anarchy debacle seemed to have instilled a new aggressive stance in him, which lasted most of the coming year. The whole mood seemed darker, punk having turned into a dangerous cause, while Johnny Thunders’ Heartbreakers had introduced heroin and Nancy Spungen to the scene. Bye bye Sid.

After demo sessions with madcap Mott producer Guy Stevens didn’t work out, The Clash eventually signed to CBS for £100,000, sparking outrage from punk purists although it wasn’t the financial jackpot the band’s mendacious detractors made out. The band now got £25 a week, while the rest went on equipment. Plus the deal was for a whopping ten albums. "I've been numbered wherever I go with that thing about selling out," revealed Mick: "This way more people will hear our record... We’ve got complete control. Everything is our own ideas." Or as Joe put it at gigs: "If we hadn’t signed to CBS, none of you lot would have heard of us, so stuff that down your gizzard."

The Clash were soon in CBS’s Whitfield Street studios recording debut single ‘White Riot’, Joe insisting on one take all the way, before album sessions commenced in February, spanning three consecutive four-day chunks. I went along a couple of times, usually finding the old studio (where The Stooges recorded ‘Raw Power’) crammed with revellers; none grasping that history was being made as they foraged for the next beer or line of speed. I got stuck in the lift with some punkettes too, but particularly remember being struck by Mick’s all-consuming interest in realising the sounds in his head via the mixing desk; launching the sonic quest which he’d turn into an awe-inspiring art form over the next few years. “We knew what we wanted to do, so we went in the studio and learned as we went along,” he enthused later. Joe was already declaring Mick’s genius as an arranger in the studio, adding the little touches which elevated songs beyond one-dimensional punk thrash.

The next big Clash gig was at Asian-owned Harlesden Colosseum in March, their Night Of Action featuring the newly-formed Slits and unveiling of the Clash look with Alex Michon’s zips-and-studs stage gear, live set additions including their stonking version of Junior Murvin’s ‘Police And Thieves’. It also saw the first major showers of gob and they weren’t impressed. ‘White Riot’ was released that month. An event. I agreed with Tom Robinson’s declaration that punk was really born the day ‘White Riot’ hit the shops, consummated when the debut album appeared the following month.

The final piece of the Clash jigsaw fell into place when, after auditioning a string of hopefuls to replace the departed Chimes, Nicky Headon turned up from Dover to give The Clash their unstoppable engine room. Dubbed ‘Topper’ by Paul (after Mickey the Monkey in the comic of the same name), he brought jazz and funk chops with formidable skill and attack, providing the turning point in the band’s evolution. “I just wanted to be the best drummer in the world back then,” he says now. Topper immediately showed that was no idle ambition as he relished his deep-end trial by fire by propelling the band through May’s White Riot tour, The Clash supported by The Jam (for a bit), The Slits, Buzzcocks and Subway Sect. “We were lost until we found Topper,” said Joe later.

On the tour I’d encountered Robin Crocker, aka Robin Banks, Mick’s old school friend who’d just come out of nick for armed robbery. One night at punk watering hole The Vortex, Mick asked if Robin could write for Zigzag, the original fanzine, which founder Pete Frame handed to me as editor that June. The mag was swiftly becoming the biggest widely available music publication primarily devoted to the new revolution (and biggest champion of The Clash). Robin’s first contribution was a world exclusive preview of ‘Complete Control’, the storming new Clash single, which Mick had played him at Wilmcote House. Robin’s presence enhanced Zigzag’s position as a source of information from within the band as he accompanied them through every scrape and triumph.

“That was the night that punk really broke out of the clubs.” — Joe Strummer

The White Riot tour delivered everything the Anarchy jaunt failed to. I caught several dates, Dunstable’s California Ballroom and St Albans City Hall standing out. This was when both The Clash and punk rock came of age and went supernova. Apart from the increased size and ferocity of the crowds, there was the improvement in the other bands on the bill too. For the first time, The Clash used a backdrop — the Notting Hill riot scene from the back of the album. Topper was an ongoing revelation, while Joe had taken to hands-on communication with the audience, handing down the mic or falling into the mayhem at his feet. At St Albans he became pissed off with the ever-present security in front of the stage, insisting the bouncers be removed before suddenly diving offstage. It could’ve been nasty, if the crowd hadn’t caught him and tossed him back up again. After the gig, police raided the tour bus, turning up nearly 50 unreturned room keys and pillows from the hotel in Newcastle. “They were going to charge everyone in the band and crew individually with nicking a pillow and a key,” recalls Topper: “But we had a conflab and decided that Joe would take responsibility for the pillows and me the keys.” The pair would have to attend court in Newcastle at a later date, the drummer now earning his stripes in a different respect.

When the White Riot tour descended on the Rainbow on May 9, The Clash were on fire, the crowd ripping out over 200 seats and dumping them in front of the stage. This was a venue I’d frequented for years, seeing names like Bowie and The Faces. I went with Sniffin’ Glue’s Mark Perry and Danny Baker, who agreed the sense of occasion was overwhelming. The group looked like they were born for this kind of gig as they commanded the biggest stage I’d seen them on so far. During the encores they spotted a kid being pushed around by bouncers. Mick hauled him up onstage and he sang along with ‘London’s Burning’ and ‘White Riot’, before Joe gave him his t-shirt.

Joe always cited that concert as his favourite Clash moment of all. “That was the night that punk really broke out of the clubs,” he recalled: “The Rainbow at the time was a big venue. We played there with The Jam, Subway Sect and The Slits and the audience came and filled it. Trashed the place as well, but it really felt like, through a combination of luck and effort, we were in the right place doing the right thing at the right time. And that kind of night happens once or twice in a lifetime.”

“The Clash changed my life, totally,” he says now: “Not just my friendship with Mick. They changed my perception of things. Who would have thought we would be sitting around talking about it 35 years hence? At the time, it was just get on with it and do the best you could for all concerned, just to keep everything cool. It was just a day-to-day thing at the time. There was no idea what it would become later.”

In 2012, The Clash’s extended family echoes each other in saying how none of this mythological status which they’ve gained over the years was ever imagined at the time. “There was never any master plan,” says Mick, a recurring theme when talking to him. At times, it seemed like a dysfunctional family careering through day-to-day mayhem with, at this time, the kind of relentless determination which meant Joe refusing to cancel gigs, despite being sick or in pain and dealing with the increasing hysteria of crowds who, by late 1977, were “doing what they were told to” by a media desperate to bring this much-reviled movement down. Traversing the nation’s motorways in a cramped mini-bus (no luxury tour coaches then), it was hard to think that the group sitting around me making animal noises were public enemies in the eyes of the establishment. Legendary US gonzo scribe Lester Bangs had great trouble getting his head around how The Clash accepted and even brushed off the nightly gauntlets of gob, casual violence and mayhem, while treating their fans with a rare compassion.

I’m talking about that October’s Out Of Control tour, which Lester was covering for NME. Several factors still stand out from those dates, particularly the relentless gobbing and can-throwing; a negative, stupid and disgusting craze. The Clash often went into the crowd to sort out those throwing missiles at support bands. They never let a fan’s questions or autograph requests go unanswered in the dressing room and even let some sleep on their hotel room floors — the kind of consideration Mick remembered from the Mott days.

The tour also marked the entry of the rooster-like Johnny Green as road manager after Roadent quit over Bernie issues. Very quickly, he became a trusted member of the band’s inner circle, keeping the show on the road in different ways, while fortuitously blessed with a sense of humour capable of outdoing the band’s for surreal japes. Johnny also had a penchant for on-the-road mayhem and excess, as he so brilliantly recounted in his book, ‘A Riot of Our Own’.

“I loved it!” he booms: “I’d always felt like an outsider and it was good to be with people who felt the same way. We had a perverse kind of unity; the ‘us and them’ thing. I like chaos. I thrive on all that being in the eye of the hurricane.”

The Clash were now starting sets with ‘London’s Burning’, followed by the rush of ‘Complete Control’, newly written ‘Clash City Rockers’, ‘City Of The Dead’ and ‘The Prisoner’ then ‘(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais’ — throwing crowds at first but destined to become Joe’s all-time anthem. New anti-tribal war anthem ‘Last Gang In Town’, far from being a chest-beating myth-booster, bemoaned the divisions occurring in the nation’s youth while unfurling more signs that The Clash were ready to bust out of the three-chord straitjacket now watered down in endless variations by untold bands across the country. Punk’s original manifesto of change and running free with personal expression was now coursing through The Clash, destined to incur flak. It was on this tour that the band’s legendary post-show wind-down antics started developing a life of their own. Anywhere from Derby to Cardiff, we’d be sprawled around some conference-friendly hotel foyer drinking and throwing sandwiches; “sometimes in our mouths, mostly at each other. In Cardiff, a full-scale battle broke out, Joe holding up an NME for protection as Paul hurled a whole plateful at Bernie. I got a cucumber in Paul’s drink but then found several in my lap and a ham sandwich in my face as he covered my legs with milk.”

Lester Bangs was fascinated, despite sitting there obliviously relating his rock ’n’ roll war stories while Paul heaped everything from matches and paper cups to tomatoes on his shoulders, blew smoke behind his hair so it looked like he was on fire and finally built a bonfire under his chair. Lester laughed through it all. Bernie wasn’t so amused when Paul heaped lettuce on his shoulders and set him on fire from behind the next night. Paul invented a new game that has stuck with The Clash until the present day. You could call it ‘Unlikely Animal Combinations’, and soon all were at it. “A budgie with human arms ... a fish with a penis ... Bernie with the legs of a vole,” and so on. ‘The Cry of the Wildebeest’ was also popular. This entailed holding back the head and going “Aarooo!!!” as loud and for as long as you could. You can hear it in several Clash songs. There was also a penchant for mice and moth impressions [You had to be there]. The rarely-absent but little-reported humour was an essential element of Clash life, being both counterpart and steam-letting diversion against the weight of their mission.

Next morning, Pennie Smith took the band outside the hotel to do the photo session with Lester that appeared in NME and later in her book, ‘The Clash: Before & After’. It was Pennie who coined the famous quote: “Being on the road with The Clash is like a commando raid being performed by the Bash Street Kids.”

On a less mirthful note, it may be hard to believe that The Clash, particularly Joe, were often savaged by the music press while it was all going on. Many times I saw Mick get depressed after reading that week’s music papers, which he’d devoured since a kid, while several writers seemed determined to denounce Joe as a fake. By late 1977, he was arguably the most powerful voice in music, the Pistols’ potency neutered by McLaren antics.

Certain writers delighted in bringing up his public school background, having a field day when he moved into a tiny room on the top floor of Clash roadie (and Habitat heir) Sebastian Conran’s Regents Park house.

Dubbed ‘the white mansion’, the bare-boarded old servants’ room was far from palatial, containing just a cassette recorder and milk bottles for early hours emergency pissing. It was at that time that troubled Joe developed his interest in the mechanics and imagery of international terrorism, leading to new songs such as ‘Tommy Gun’, plus t-shirts and interview quotes which incurred further sniping.

Besieged media, psychotic camp followers and shadow authority, it’s no wonder The Clash increasingly seemed to survive in their own bubble, with their own rules, inter-band justice, flirtations with taboo subjects and that escape-valve, humour. Even the politics they were charged with propagating were their own politics, rather than someone else’s cause, as Mick explains now: “Nowadays, it’s such a dirty word synonymous with corruption and stuff. It’s like a bad thing to be, but we were never that side of politics. It was always more about how it affected us. Overtures were made by left-wing people and parties but we didn’t really want to know. We just did it.”

By late 1977, CBS were baying for a second album. The Clash had to write some new songs double-quick to order. Gigs were duly arranged for the benefit of designated producer Sandy Pearlman, the mastermind behind overblown rockers Blue Öyster Cult and, most recently, The Dictators. Mick was familiar with BOC, while the rest of the band hadn’t heard his work. Joe just thought he was your quintessential AOR rock producer.

The night after Dunstable at Lanchester Poly, Pearlman tried to get into the dressing room guarded by Robin Banks, who smacked him in the face; blood everywhere, which a panicking Bernie mopped with a handkerchief while the group stepped over him to get on stage. “I knew exactly who he was and I’m glad I hit him!” roars Robin today: “I took the first opportunity I got because he was a fucking MOR producer brought in for the American market. In The Clash there was one faction who wanted him and one who didn’t, which was me, Johnny Green, Paul and Joe. I knew that this would be the most boring album ever to record so I whacked him in the face.” Pearlman seemed to view the incident as his initiation into Clash-world.

Before work started on the next album, Joe spent two weeks in hospital with hepatitis, while the other three worked up new material at Rehearsals Rehearsals. When Joe came out, they spent time at Marquee Studios recording demos and B-sides, although at one session I stumbled into there Mick was recording the harmonica on ‘White Man (In Hammersmith Palais)’. March saw the release of ‘Clash City Rockers’, recorded in December, a landmark for Joe’s rapidly progressing lyrical flair and Mick’s attention to production.

In April, Robin called to say that he’d been nabbed, along with Topper and Paul, for shooting a couple of prize racing pigeons from the Rehearsals roof with an air pistol. Mick bailed them out and the case eventually went to court on June 16, the duo beating terrorism charges and receiving fines for the bird shootings. It added to the tension of the time, again released by high jinks; very high in the case of the first day of album sessions at Camden’s Utopia studio, where Pearlman’s engineer produced some lethal weed and it all went off. Paul overturned some plant pots to make a dirt track for Topper’s motorbike in the foyer. Instantly ejected, they dug in at Basing Street Studios, off Portobello Road for the long haul. While Topper distinguished himself as the “human drum machine”, and Mick relished learning further studio techniques, Joe got frustrated at the laborious process and Paul played pranks to relieve the boredom.

On April 30, The Clash played the Victoria Park Rock Against Racism gig, which we marched to and hooted support for. Mick was now into his long-haired, black-clad guitar hero phase, with coke to match. He was getting a bit aloof, pulling prima donna moves on the long-suffering Johnny, but countered by Joe emerging from hospital radiating positive energy and on top form, having binned the speed-and-Brew diet in favour of buoying up his immune system and spirit, embarking on the path which would produce so many eloquent lyrics and volcanic stage performances over the next few years.

‘White Man (In Hammersmith Palais)’ was released in June, for many the band’s finest four minutes. Much to my delight, that summer’s Out On Parole tour opened at Friars Aylesbury, the local club which I’d been involved in since 1969, renowned as the best crowd in the country by anyone from Mott to Bowie. The Clash didn’t disappoint with the best sound I’d heard them get, but the difference in Joe was striking. Apart from taking ‘Police And Thieves’ into ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, he had replaced his old frothing fervour with classic rock ’n’ roll showmanship, still in-your-face and energised, but now referencing anyone from Elvis to James Brown with the ten-foot-tall charisma of Hollywood legends.

However, Mick seemed bent on living out his rock ’n’ roll fantasies with his poodle image and bugle consumption. He was no longer the bright-eyed new mate of two years earlier, turning into the kind of pampered rock star The Clash had opposed. At one point, Bernie was lining up Steve Jones to replace him, starting with encores on the tour. It was inevitable that, as The Clash evolved, the four individuals would pursue their own agendas. As Topper puts it now, “We were all nightmares in our own way. We had the music in common, but we all had different personalities.” There were problems in the Clash camp at that time; the prolonged creation of the new album, the pigeon-shooting bust, being followed by the ‘Rude Boy’ film crew and increasing conflicts with Bernie. Not that any of the group’s newfound gob-lobbing following knew or cared. When confronted by support band Suicide, the pioneering electronic duo who had laid down punk’s confrontational template in New York years before, the masses showered them with missiles and abuse; too blinkered to see the future which The Clash weren’t afraid to showcase when they picked them as support act, along with Coventry ska band The Automatics (soon to be renamed The Specials).

The tour climaxed with four nights at London’s Music Machine. Despite the inter-band problems, these were stellar gigs, their attack never fiercer or better executed. These may have been troubled, turbulent times, but the excitement was infectious and life-affirming in a way it’s impossible to convey in these times when everything’s nice and safe, even by Johnny Green: “It was relentless and full of action and incident. It’s hard to remember those times sometimes. How wild and how violent and how trouble-strewn. It wasn’t smooth and nor did anybody try and make it smooth. In fact, we loved it like that.”

By now, Barry ‘Scratchy’ Myers had become the tour DJ. “It was great being in their company and also great to see a band that many times and not get bored,” he recalls: “I had to drive the band a few times, which got a bit scary when Topper and Paul put their hands over my eyes! I just remember a lot of moments with Joe away from the stage. It was always tough, but Joe was very personal. That was his job. He always found time for the fans.”

The band closed ranks against Bernie bringing Steve Jones in to replace Mick in the band he’d started, which gave him the impetus to come out of the coke cloud, cut his hair and, within 12 months, cut loose Rhodes too. Maybe the biggest turning point in The Clash story came that August when Pearlman suggested Joe and Mick spend three weeks at San Francisco’s Automat studio doing overdubs. The trip saved the band as the pair bonded again, diligently working on the new songs while immersing themselves in the culture of the country which had been such a major influence in their formative years. The Automat jukebox opened their antennae to rock ’n’ roll and soul, Bobby Fuller’s ‘I Fought The Law’ shouting to be covered. After three weeks recording, they were given some time off. Joe pursued his Kerouac fantasies undertaking a road trip via New Orleans across country in a ’56 Chevy pickup truck, while Mick hung out on the west coast. They reconvened in New York for final overdubs and mixing, joined by Topper and Paul. The Clash became a gang again, collectively heading out to buy motorcycle boots at Hudson’s at Johnny Thunders’ recommendation.

Apart from rescuing the band, the experience further honed Mick’s studio chops, as Robin Banks observed: “Mick learnt all the technicalities, 'The A to Z of how to do this'. It was a conscious thing and it was brilliant. That meant he could go on to produce 'London Calling'. They bounced back.” With delicious irony, Robin adds: “It couldn’t have happened without Sandy Pearlman!”

“I like to think The Clash wouldn’t have got as big if I hadn’t been in them: obviously it could have been even bigger if I hadn’t fucked up.” — Topper Headon

‘Give ’Em Enough Rope’ divided opinion but it has its classics. The most poignantly enduring now is Mick’s ‘Stay Free’ — at that point the most sensitive Clash song yet as he recalled childhood and teenage years with school friend Robin Banks, who remembers the day he first heard it: “Mick came round to Sebastian’s with his guitar in a case and said, ‘I’ve written a song about you’. He sat me down and played ‘Stay Free’. It was amazing. Exceedingly nice of him!”

The album was launched at a piss-up in a Soho porn theatre, after which Topper, Robin and yours truly shamefully took a box of promos down to Cheapos on Rupert Street to convert into beer money. “That was so funny!” laughs Mick:

“The record was in Cheapos on the Thursday and wasn’t released until Monday.”

I first encountered the new Mick when The Clash played two nights at Harlesden Roxy in October, firing on all four essential cylinders again. By the time I caught them again in Bournemouth, the mood was ebullient and the show even better than the Music Machine as new songs like ‘Safe European Home’ came into their own. In another magic night of white-hot onstage pyrotechnics and chaos, Joe finished up with an a cappella ‘London’s Burning’, surrounded by most of the audience while Mick wrestled like an octopus with a dud lead before a bouncer wouldn’t let him back on. Topper had already walked through his drum kit with an equally-as-confused Paul.

Afterwards, Mick got depressed at yet more music press sniping. “I’m going to be a drunken idiot tonight,” he declared as we plotted up in a Greek restaurant, but got serious for a lengthy heart-to-heart in which he told me that the cocaine “black cloud” had lifted. It was good to see him sparkling again, bad to see him brought down by flightily self-important writers (some who have since appeared eulogising The Clash). Joe never showed any emotion on this, preferring to channel any rage through the stage act.

The end of the tour was a great pre-Christmas stretch of Friars Aylesbury’s Christmas party and three nights at the Lyceum Ballroom (where the famous ‘I Fought The Law’ footage was filmed). Around this time, the group tried recording at Wessex Studios in North London with former Mott producer Bill Price; ostensibly ‘Rude Boy’ overdubs while sneaking in what became ‘The Cost Of Living’ EP (where we whacked toilet pipes for the chain gang on ‘I Fought The Law’).

Once again, America intervened to change The Clash. If they now had the perfect studio and knob-twiddler for their next album, the February 1979 Pearl Harbor tour provided the influences and motivation as, with rock ’n’ roll legend Bo Diddley being paid most of the tour funds to support, The Clash commenced the campaign which would see them become the hottest band in the US.

That first tour opened their minds to the primal roots of rock ’n’ roll (with no better guide than Uncle Squiddly Daddy, as Paul called Bo Diddley). “I got so much inspiration from America, I can’t describe it,” enthused Joe when I asked what it was like.

Reflecting on it more recently, Mick told me, “That happened with Mott The Hoople as well. They came back from America all full of it, with guitars, records you couldn’t get here and stuff. When we visited America we made sure we plugged into the heart of the city when we visited places like Motown’s Hitsville in Detroit.”

The visit changed the group look again too, hand-sewn Vietnamese jackets, dark suits and hats coming in. My first encounter with the newly-energised Clash came when Mick kindly agreed to produce a single for my band, The Vice Creems, that March. Choosing the legendary Olympic as studio, he didn’t let the band splitting the week before the session get in the way. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you a band,” he assured me, turning up with Generation X’s Tony James and Topper, lending out guitarist his Les Paul. It was one of the greatest days of my life, even if I was shit-scared doing my vocals in the booth previously used by Jagger and Hendrix. ‘Danger Love’ remains the long-lost Clash single, despite my tight-trousered vocal. Somewhat incredibly, Robin says it influenced Joe on ‘London Calling’.

“That’s where he got the idea for the wildebeest noise.” Johnny reiterated: “That all came from you and Crocker. Paul and Topper were always doing it. That Vice Creems record started it.”

Mick in the studio was a far cry from the first album, seeming to have the finished track already in his head as he methodically constructed pyramids of guitars, vocals and other instruments. All the pieces were in place, the band (now free of Bernie) closer than at any time before or since as they set up in the back room of an anonymous garage in Pimlico to rehearse the new songs pouring out since the US. Every day they played football before starting rehearsing.

“I just think we really found ourselves at that time and it was a lot to do with the football, because it made us play together,” says Mick. Recalls Johnny: “Paul was hard and enthusiastic, Topper was skilled and nimble. Joe would be well meaning and try hard but wasn’t very good, and Jonesy was really flash, but we all laughed at his style, because he wasn’t as good as he thought he was. As soon as they were back inside they’d roll a joint.

Rather than sedate them it had the opposite effect. It would fire them up. “That was a great place. Nobody came in because it was so hard to find. No one was allowed up when they were playing, but they loved it when people like you and Robin came down for the football. They were really pleased to see you but they often say ‘Go and have a drink and we'll be with you in an hour’. That takes quite a lot of determination. They were so hard at it.”

They were sowing the seeds for what Mick describes as the “natural, organic” creation of ‘London Calling’, their acknowledged masterpiece, produced when they were skint with their backs to the wall but with creativity crackling in the air. By June, they were demoing the new songs, playing two secret gigs at London’s Notre Dame Hall in July to road-test them. Songs including ‘Rudi Can’t Fail’, ‘Hateful’ and ‘Jimmy Jazz’ were already perfectly formed but next came the masterstroke which lit the blue touch-paper for actual recording in August: Guy Stevens.

Guy was the notorious madcap producer who’d smashed studios in his quest to spur Mott The Hoople to wilder heights, also a renowned pioneer of pushing rock ’n’ roll and soul in the UK with his Sue label. As the anti-Pearlman, he would be perfect to deal with the creative sparks flying around the band at that time, telling Joe, ‘I deal with emotions’; igniting those once-in-a-lifetime magic moments. Mick now sees Guy as a towering conduit for all music: “Guy Stevens brought a lot of R&B into this country. Before Mott he was doing the Sue label and responsible for bringing in a lot of R&B. Then he did Mott. It’s all connected, turning people on and then the bands he was working with. It all connects.”

This was the one Clash album I witnessed being created from start to finish. Guy was something to behold — invariably roaring drunk, smashing chairs against the wall, swinging a ladder at Mick, pouring beer in the piano and upending the TV in his quest to spur the band into that elusive zone of hyper-mania which elevates a track (witness their version of Vince Taylor’s ‘Brand New Cadillac’). When CBS honcho Maurice Oberstein visited, Guy lay down in front of his Rolls until he admitted the new songs were amazing.

He was also a handful, spraying the listener with spittle as he ranted. “Guy would be talking and spitting and Joe’d put a bit of cardboard up with his eyes poking over the top — the Spittle Guard!” laughs Mick. Once the initial buzz had spawned the tracks, proper work was often hindered by Guy wrestling with Bill Price until he fell asleep in the corner. One night I was sharing a cab to the studio with Joe, Johnny and Robin when, rounding the bend to Wessex, we spotted Guy running frantically with a look of absolute panic on his face. “Got to make the off-licence before it shuts!” he panted, and sprinted on, appearing later at the studio, triumphantly glugging a large bottle of cheap cider, before zonking out. September saw the Take the Fifth US tour blaze a fierce trail, Pennie Smith getting her once-in-a-lifetime cover shot of Paul smashing his bass while Ray Lowry drew cartoons as he prepared to design the cover. The support act was Texas hellcat country rocker Joe Ely, who developed a close relationship with the band. Further buoyed by the success of the tour, The Clash returned to Wessex to finish the album, Joe writing in his burgeoning spliff bunker, Mick overdubbing.

Topper was already happy with his finished contribution, now reflecting: “When I joined I had to play the first album, which I wasn’t on. By ‘London Calling’ I felt like an integral member of the band. It wasn’t a decision to go against anything we’d done before. We just progressed because we were able to. It’s what happened when we started playing together as a proper band. ‘London Calling’ was the last album we actually wrote, rehearsed and recorded. That was the time I was happiest with the band and I felt we were at our peak, musically. It was the four of us playing together, really loving what we were doing. It was an amazing thing then. I do think I allowed them to play other styles of music, like funk and jazz. I like to think The Clash wouldn’t have got as big if I hadn’t been in them; obviously, it could have been even bigger if I hadn’t fucked up.”

“We were hardly speaking. We’d just bump into each other occasionally in the studio. Mick and Joe rowed about everything.” — Topper Headon

With Mick calling shots to counter Bernie’s reinstatement, new album sessions took place at Electric Lady, following their first Far East tour, where attempts at mixing had failed and Pennie Smith shot the next album’s significantly moody cover photo. By now it was a fragmented band, Mick sculpting another double album (entitled ‘Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg’), while Joe was in favour of taking the whole thing from the rehearsal sessions at EAR Studios, amidst the car-wrecking lots of Latimer Road, West London. Mick’s original blueprint for the album (which became ‘Combat Rock’ after being edited down by veteran producer Glyn Jones) more spaciously explored the panoramic soul-dub of tracks like ‘Ghetto Defendant’ (for which Allen Ginsberg came in) and ‘Straight To Hell’ (although his ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’ would later become a rock smash). Paradoxically, Joe was pushing a return to rockabilly roots but writing complex, emotionally-charged lyrics inspired by the plight of Vietnam veterans who, at that time, littered the streets of New York, having been criminally ignored and discarded by the government. Still writing about what was going on around him, but the inner city collapse of ‘Ghetto Defendant’ could now be an anthem for any drug-beleaguered metropolis.

According to Topper, “We were hardly speaking. We’d just bump into each other occasionally in the studio. Mick and Joe rowed about everything. Mick was always late or stoned. I was right out of my head, fucked up on heroin. All four of us were fucked up.”

Ironically, Topper came up with ‘Rock The Casbah’, which became a major US hit after he’d been given the shove. “I had the idea for the piano riff at Electric Lady. No one was there one afternoon so I thought ‘I’ve got an idea’, so I put down the drums, piano, bassline and percussion one by one. Then Joe wrote the words. Not a bad afternoon’s work.”

It was a righteous final spark from the master drummer, whose heroin addiction now ruled his life in its singularly inexorable way: “I took anything to stop me feeling how I really feel. On ‘Sandinista’ I was smacked out but by ‘Combat Rock’ it was all over. For a long time, I was going, ‘Joe, sack me!’ Imagine how they must have felt. It must have been so difficult for them. They were one of the best bands in the world and one bloke was fucking it all up. You can play anything else and be fucked up but if you’re the drummer then it just can’t work because it throws everyone else out.”

“It was great being in their company and also great to see a band that many times and not get bored.” — Barry ‘Scratchy’ Myers

One night in November, Mick invited me to the studio because they would be sequencing tracks into the finished album later. But when I walked in he was in the vocal booth, laying down vocals for a new relationship breakup song he’d written called ‘Train In Vain’. It was too late to list the song on the sleeve as it was originally planned for an NME giveaway single before the band decided to keep it. Just as well as it would be their first US Top 40 hit (the ‘London Calling’ single did well in the UK, hitting number 11). Somewhere along the line I have this memory of Mick overdubbing electric sitar on the flip’s epic version of Jackie Mittoo’s ‘Armagideon Time’ made famous by Willie Williams. Some of the recollections are like that — it’s hard to make notes in the middle of a tornado.

The following night the sequencing and final playback did happen, after most of the night spent drinking, getting stoned, playing Space Invaders and making barosooma animal noises. It was definitely one of the happiest nights I ever spent with the band and Joe, who said he’d finally realised his lifelong rock ’n’ roll dream with this album. In fact, his high spirits became too evident when the playback was finally ready and he led the others in wrapping me from head to foot in gaffer-tape, topping things off by taping a cue ball in the centre of my trouser-seat before I was dumped on top of the pool table with Topper’s motorcycle helmet stuck on my head. (Maybe a subconscious riposte to all the journalists they despised). As the sun came up, ‘London Calling’ was played for the first time all the way through. By ‘Train In Vain’, I’d bust out of my gaffer prison, joining the band in cavorting, congratulating and celebrating making this stone beautiful classic, before high-tailing it home to hand-scrawl a world exclusive Zigzag review. I knew The Clash had made their masterpiece under severe duress but none of us realised how the album’s legend would swell over the decades, except perhaps for the man with the gaffer tape.

The trials by fire didn’t stop there. The official warmup for the 16 Tons UK tour was at Friars Aylesbury, support bands Ian Dury and the Blockheads and my (now defunct) Vice Creems, with a deadline of three days to reform. Mick was no help: “I already got you one band.” Me and guitarist Colin roped together a local bassist and drummer, practiced twice in a shed and faced The Clash’s opening night crowd. It now seems surreal, Joe busting into the dressing room, where the band were warming up with ‘Career Opportunities’. “You’re not fucking doing that!” he declared. Once assured it was only a bit of fun, he told them to go on and “whack it, boys”, while giving me hints on gob-ducking. I ended up singing Art Garfunkel’s ‘Bright Eyes’ with a pair of Bay City Rollers knickers on my head while hopping about like a rabbit. Maybe this behaviour had something to do with the backstage presence of potent herbsman Mikey Dread, who would be supporting and mixing on the tour. On tour, the night commenced with Scratchy’s DJing then Mikey’s solo spot, which saw him singing and toasting over a backing tape of weighty dubs. On ‘Rockers Delight’ he would be joined by a posse from the touring party, skanking around behind sporting trilby hats, long coats and shades, red bandanas hiding their faces. ‘The Mystery Skankers’ included Joe, Johnny, Robin, Jock, Kosmo and Mick, but usually nobody had a clue who those masked men were. After Stafford Leisure Centre I got roped in, as Joe was going down with flu, so I borrowed his hat, coat, bandana and skanked about with the others for the next few nights.

The less well-behaved contingent (Johnny, Robin, poet Jock Scott, and frequently Topper) travelled in a much-abused rabble-van, the drummer firing his air pistol out of the window while Robin tried to throw one of the seats out of the window on the motorway and set the curtains on fire to flap out of the window, Viking funeral-style.

The band still helped punters who couldn’t get in to gain admittance, by guest list or through backstage doors or dressing room windows. As we were using the centrally located Leeds’ Dragonara Hotel as base for four or five days, word got around that The Clash were there, huge numbers congregating in the bar as sandwich hurling escalated. The night after a storming gig at Leeds University, Joe took the sandwich cult to new levels after first trying to calm proceedings by suggesting that the sandwich was too good to waste. “You should appreciate that sandwich,” he declared. This got mutated into worship, Joe becoming high priest, presiding over a weird ritual which found assorted Clashers and road crew dancing around a tray of refreshments chanting, “Sandwich! Sandwich! All hail the sandwich!” in high voices. It was like a gospel service with Joe the Reverend Sandwich leading the genuflecting ceremony until his knife speared the sandwich; much to the confusion of fans and hotel staff.

The bar was subsequently closed, me and Robin adjourning to our room. Robin kicked a door down, rousing the unclothed businessman whose room we’d accidentally crashed. I came around next morning lying in the wreckage, with the Clash party about to be ejected from the hotel until we opted to relocate, ending up crashing with some fans. Silly and irresponsible but this was a gang of mates having the best time of their lives with free booze stoking the kind of rock ’n’ roll shenanigans that have always gone on.

But from now on, the post-gig hi-jinks were scaled down to talking bollocks, mainly because of how much it was costing the band in damages. “That’s why I got shit,” says Topper: “I was always hanging out with Robin, Johnny and you and when anything got trashed it was like, Topper was there so it’s a band expense. If I’d been in my room like Mick or Joe it would’ve saved a lot of money!”

Around then, Robin and me put together the second edition of Armagideon Times, The Clash’s own magazine. Given a day’s notice, we did it at the Zigzag office all night, same way I did the magazine, using cowgum and felt tip pens. We got the band to fill in lifelines-style questionnaires, glueing their responses over comics we bought from the next-door newsagent. Mick said his biggest influence was “my home life” (!), liked zebras and his grandmother. Joe’s favourite animal was the lion, “concentration” his biggest influence. Topper gave his influences as Gene Krupa and Bruce Lee, while Paul’s were Bo Diddley, Jimmy Greaves and reggae.

Johnny recalls Mick’s increasing self-imposed isolation. “Mick lived a separate existence to the rest of the band. People always saw Joe as this tough, hard man but there were many times when he bottled it within the band’s dynamics. He was a very accommodating man, a diplomat, a listener. Mick never bottled it. He was tough as old boots. He was always uncompromising and always stood his ground. That sometimes meant he was on his own... The band were starting to drift apart.”

Apart from that, Topper’s self-destructive streak was starting to kick in as harder drugs entered his intake. His drumming could not be faulted but away from the kit he was getting into scrapes, cracking his pelvis messing about, then was stabbed in the hand with a pair of scissors during a drug-stoked party at his flat. “I’ve got no idea!” says Topper. “I was completely out of my head. By then, I was using, drinking excessively and making up stories. When you lie, you end up wondering what are lies and what are the truth.”

March saw another US tour, after which Johnny unexpectedly quit to join Joe Ely. For him, the original thrill had gone. “Above everything else, I was always a fan. It was never just a job. I had to be fan-minded and quit when I thought it was getting too safe. When they got sucked into the mainstream, there was so much going on for them, but they couldn’t keep their eye on the detail. It was getting a little too predictable.” Something had to be wrong if Johnny was going (by the following year he had joined me looking after punky-reggae outfit Basement 5). Anyway, his place in Clash history was cemented by him and The Baker in the marvellous ‘Bankrobber’ video and his central role in ‘Rude Boy’.

By now, it was time to think about the next album. Mikey Dread’s luminescent presence initially pointed at following their reggae side but sessions at Jamaica’s fabled Channel One were prematurely curtailed by local gangster demands (although Mikey deflated that war story before he died in 2008). The Clash ended up back in New York embarking on ‘Sandinista!’, their much-maligned epic triple-album monster; first at the Power Station, then Electric Lady, Hendrix’s dream studio on Eighth Street. Here Blockheads bassist Norman Watt-Roy added the immortal bassline to ‘The Magnificent Seven’, Joe’s take on the rapping phenomena which had gripped the city since the Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’ bust hip-hop out of its South Bronx ghetto origins as the black urban youth’s answer to punk’s DIY revolution. Mick was smitten: “I was so gone with the hip-hop that they called me ‘Wack Attack’. I’d walk around with a beatbox and my hat on backwards. They used to take the mickey out of me. I was always like that about whatever came along; sort of got excited for a while.”

The groundbreaking innovations which the group brought into music are sometimes overlooked, from recognising dance floors with the 12” single to telling the world about the new movement happening in New York City.

“We never thought we were being groundbreaking, at any time,” says Mick; “We were just sort of knocking out some numbers. That’s all we wanted to do. We didn’t necessarily wanna be part of this big happening thing that was so cool. We just did what we wanted to do. We were so open to other things, and we attracted it so well. We were open to meet other artists in other fields. I think The Clash’s involvement in that whole thing was by luck really, if anything. We were in the right place at the right time. If you travel with a group like that, it’s like a fast track to what’s culturally happening in whatever place you go to. We were fortuitous in the fact that we had to be there. We met all these graffiti artists and stuff. It was a new thing, but clubs always interested us. We attracted all the sort of creative people to what we did.

“What started as a punk group turned into a multi-national. We took on international, different concepts of what people were doing and tried to make it part of it, but still retaining our own thing. We didn’t do it by slavishly following fashions. You said yourself it helped some people find a way into these things. You wouldn’t have known that, even when hip-hop was in its genesis, it would become one of the major forces in music later.”

By these sessions, Joe had turned his spliff bunker into a work of art, piling flight cases and various bits to create, “somewhere you could think up your next thing while they were fiddling with your last thing.” Although the relationship with Mikey Dread would dissolve with the usual acrimony over money, which Mikey was still bitter about when I last spoke to him four years before his death, his admiration for Joe was unblemished: “Joe was a philosopher, a messenger. He didn’t go for the glitz and the glamour. He had a humble image. Every time I saw him he was reading ‘The Prophecies Of Nostradamus’. We smoked a lot; he was a hard smoker!”

The differing trajectories of the Strummer/Jones axis drove wedges into their relationship. “Mick and Joe were growing apart,” explains Robin: “It was just natural, they progressed in different directions. That added to the problem, plus everybody was worried about Topper.” By now, Topper was addicted to smack — “After I’d done my drum parts I had nothing to do but get in trouble,” he recalls: “They were mad days. The four of us were pretty mad at the time. We were four conflicting personalities. There was me using smack, Paul didn’t give a toss, Mick and Joe were at loggerheads.”

It was a band in name only by then. The only thing we had in common was The Clash.”

Sandinista! grew into a triple album as a world of music gushed out. Mick and Joe were both on personal rolls, the former with his newfound sonic science, the latter coming up with some of his best words yet, such as the time-stopping ‘Broadway’, one of the perfect New York songs (inspired by the homeless who Joe always had time and a dime for). Joe defended the move by saying, “We recorded all this music at one spot at one moment.” In the Jamaican dub tradition, they were banging it down and putting it out. “That was an idea that they always did with 12-inches,” says Mick: “They do the version of the song first, then a toast. That was quite fun to put together but, again, we didn’t think anything more of it. We just tried anything we wanted. We always take on the music that’s going on around us on board and make it our own.”

Later, Joe remarked on how much he grew to like the album, for its audacity and out-there sense of uncompromising indulgence. “It’s mad as hell! It’s outrageous!” But at the time, treading in the triple-album prog domain laid them open for more vicious jibes, even though they battled and sacrificed royalties to make sure it was released at a cheaper price. The set also kickstarted Joe’s global music fixation.

It was Joe’s turn to assert himself in January 1981, when he declared that, unless Bernie be reinstated as manager, he’d quit. Bernie had hyped up The Clash in their earliest days and fuelled Joe’s Year Zero punk persona. Cruelly, Mick was designated to go and ask Bernie (who still had all their earnings frozen) to return. As the year progressed, this infrastructure adjustment (which would lead to his sacking from the group he formed) was overshadowed by the huge buzz Mick got when ‘The Magnificent Seven’, The Clash’s first rap outing, caused a major commotion in New York’s clubs; its 12" dub hammered on radio stations such as KISS FM and WBLS.

“At least we’ve been interesting. We ain’t been boring in a suit.” — Mick Jones

In a surprise move, The Clash took up The Who’s invitation to support them on some 50,000-plus capacity stadium gigs. Mick was honest about it when I interviewed him that December. “I’m not that into the big ones, but when we went out and played with The Who it was really good for us. We (big grin) sold lots of records and probably picked up a lot of their fans. So we shouldn’t complain. We went out there and did a job really. No big deal. We’re matter of fact about it.”

This interview was the first cover feature I wrote after fleeing the sinking Zigzag and taking editorship of depraved teenie-mag Flexipop!. It was the first time I’d seen Mick since Stoke Mandeville. I didn’t see the band like before because they were abroad so much, but sitting in Mike’s Café off Portobello Road, in buoyant pre-Christmas mood, he was like the Mick I’d met six years before, declaring 1982 the Year of the Goat and ’83 the Year of the Amoeba. He laid into the current music scene: “It’s pathetic here! At least we’ve been interesting. We ain’t been boring in a suit. The state of music in this country is dreadful. It’s also a see-through plastic bag and so much washing powder really... I just don’t see it as a creative contemporary scene.”

Mick seemed genuinely happy that the group he’d started was finally a massive success. “Yeah, it’s really nice. It makes a change at the end of the year to be able to look back and not feel like you’ve wasted 365 days. Some of the things that have happened this year have balanced it out, you know what I mean? I think that losing Topper really had a great effect on us.” Asked if he and the band now actually felt big, meaning in terms of success, Mick came back with, “No, I’m my normal size,” adding, “I know Joe feels funny he has to do things. He’s got to get a flat now. We were going to go (on a US tour) but after a while you just look in the mirror one day and steam’s coming out of your ears. You know you’ve got to stop for a couple of days.”

At one point, Paul Simonon wandered up to the café window with his dad and peered in. Mick waved but Paul walked off. “He saw me and ran away!” laughed Mick. I thought he was joking, but in retrospect, it seemed like a grim omen, along with reading between some of these comments. He recounted an anecdote which took on additional symbolism when viewed with hindsight: “We went down to San Antone, pretending we were at the Alamo. We all played! Paul was Colonel Travis ... Joe was Jim Bowie and I was the wall! Bernie was a cannonball.”

“It was quite inspiring because there was a whole new thing,” recalls Mick. “They did things like put little bits of movies and Bugs Bunny characters on top. For us it was amazing because they’d picked up on this record and didn’t know what kind of group we were. Everyone was playing that record, and it was really funny because we were like punk rockers! And we’d come all this way. That’s why it was just so lucky, really, and so right. We did the first proper 12” dance mixes too, but it wasn’t planned that way. It just happened.”

‘The Magnificent Dance’ transcended the hip-hop scene, also tearing the roof off dance music clubs like Larry Levan’s Paradise Garage and underground parties. In the early 1980s, anyone from Mick to Killing Joke’s Youth recognized these sonic ructions and crossovers as the new punk in terms of excitement and newness. Both Mick and Joe were sick to the gills of formulaic punk thrashes, but only Mick saw the infinite potential of electronic dance music, his obsession driving Strummer back to rock ’n’ roll’s primal origins.

In April, Joe did his famous runner, Bernie’s scheme to boost ticket sales for the upcoming UK tour backfiring when he vanished, turning up in Paris having shown he couldn’t be controlled and the group needed him, declaring “I want to shake The Clash up, to shake the Clash fans up, to shake the Clash haters up and to shake myself up too.”

June saw another Clash milestone when their residency at Bond’s Casino on Times Square stopped the traffic, incurred the intervention of the Fire Department, made the TV news and resulted in a 15-night stretch to accommodate demand. Incredibly, The Clash took New York City! 1981 saw much touring, although I had my hands full with Basement 5, so just caught London stints such as two nights at Hammersmith Palais in June and the Radio Clash tour’s seven nights at the Lyceum. This was a different Clash now as the piledriving catharsis of 1979 gave way to longer sets straddling their ever-growing songbook.

Mick also found time to produce albums by his girlfriend Ellen Foley (The Spirit Of St Louis, boasting Strummer–Jones songs and full Clash complement) and old hero Ian Hunter’s Short Back ’n’ Sides (with Mick Ronson). Hunter now recalls: “He was just going through that thing that you do when you’re not brilliantly educated and you get into a situation where you’re going at 100 miles per hour. Everybody in the world’s at your doorstep and you’re not mentally or physically equipped to handle the pressure. I remember sitting with him and Paul one night. He’d come up with one of his demands and Paul looked at me like... You know how it is before you’re gonna have a fight? I was like, ‘Stop right here or you’re going through the mirror.’ I had to tell him a couple of times.”

“Mick’s a lovely bloke, but in those days he believed in miracles. Later on he obviously got over it, but he was pretty obnoxious. But he had the energy and was working wonderfully at the studio. The radiator... anything would do. He opened my eyes to a lot of stuff. Bill Price was working with us and set a whole load of different echoes up. It was like, ‘You can’t do that!’ Why can’t you? And he was right. When Topper came in, they worked really well together. It was an interesting album. I liked it.”

Joe’s Parisian runner cleared his head on what should be done with Topper and told him he had the power to do it, with backing from Paul and Bernie, but Mick stood up for his mate, feeling he should be given a chance and offered help. Topper didn’t know it at the time, but the Lochem Festival in Holland on 20 May was his last chance to see if he could hold it together. He didn’t pass. “I blew it. I was nodding out in my breakfast at Heathrow. When we got back to London, they called a group meeting at Paul’s flat. So I went round and Joe said, ‘You’re sacked.’ First of all I burst out laughing. Then they told me again and I burst out crying. It was horrible. Mick was crying. He was really sensitive.”

“Bernie was behind it. He was sitting beside Joe when he said it. Bernie was such an idiot. I never got on with him from the start. I was always kind of like the new kid on the block. It was Bernie that killed The Clash. He played a big part in my sacking. Joe didn’t have a lot of choice but to get rid of me. I had lots of warnings. I know I fucked it all up. Mick didn’t want me to go, but if I’d stayed I’d have just let Mick down, like I did when in BAD.”

The Clash spouted reasons ranging from political to musical differences, fooling nobody. If Topper had seriously cleaned up, they would have let him back, but there weren’t the rehab techniques, counsellors and rock star holiday camps there are now. Joe later said he wished The Clash had tried to help Topper instead of sacking him, also declaring that The Clash may never have split if they’d been given some time off. When I spoke to Mick a few months later he said temporary replacement Terry Chimes wasn’t a full-time member “and I don’t know what’s happening with Topper.”

Topper tried forming a band with ex-retenders bass player Pete Farndon, also a heroin addict (who overdosed in April 1983), before embarking on a short-lived solo career. But he couldn’t stay away from the dope, eventually selling his drum kit and gold discs, graduating to mainlining after a pissed Joe leaked he was a junkie in an interview. Today, Topper can celebrate being clean for over eight years, living happily in Dover, giving talks to local school kids about drugs.

“I was one lucky bastard,” he says now. “It was an incredible experience; the best years of my life, living the dream. It was a total privilege to have met Joe, Mick and Paul, being around greatness. Just to come across three people like that in your lifetime. We all played a part in it being great. Even today, people are going on about The Clash, with London Calling getting in the top ten downloads after the BA advert.

If Joe was still here now it wouldn’t be like it is today. Interest in The Clash went through the roof after Joe died. People realised it was never going to happen again now.”

Joe later described Topper’s departure as “the beginning of the end” for The Clash. With Guy Stevens’ fatal overdosing on pills to combat his alcoholism in August, it seemed a magical era was closing and a tougher one coming in. With Johnny, Topper and faithful drum roadie The Baker gone from the ranks and the ongoing internal conflicts, the days of the band being like a family seemed over. Even the clue Hooray Henry who’d taken over Zigzag banned me and Robin from the office so those years acting as The Clash’s fanzine mouthpiece were also at an end.

“He knew he’d been involved in the most profound mistake, he never came to terms with it. Every time I came across him after that he would always say, ‘That was one of the dumbest things I ever did.’” — Robin Banks

Combat Rock was released the same month, becoming The Clash’s most successful album, making Number Two, also going Top Ten in the US. With more touring inevitable, Terry Chimes came in as hired hand. After they’d done a month in the US, the UK got the Casbah Club Tour, including Brixton’s Fair Deal and a Friars charitable promotion at Stoke Mandeville Hospital’s 3,000 capacity Sports Stadium.

That afternoon, Joe toured the wards and met patients at the world’s top spinal injuries centre, humbled by the experience. By now, I was living in Ladbroke Grove and Johnny Green was working at the Fifth Column t-shirt shop on Portobello Road. We decided to run a mini-bus to Aylesbury and embarked upon the evening with gusto, but the gig was not The Clash’s best as the inadequate power supply from the stadium generator emitted a loud hum throughout, rattling the group, as did the wearisome gobbing.

After a somewhat bad-tempered gig, the dressing room atmosphere was decidedly different, with posing roadies-in-black and no interplay between the group. It was the first time I ever came away from a Clash gig feeling down and disturbed. As it turned out, it was also the last time I saw them play.

The Clash finally took some time off in early 1983, Joe finding a permanent place to live after securing a mortgage on a house in Lancaster Road, near Portobello Road, moving in with girlfriend Gaby. He was determined to keep busy, writing and directing his silent movie-style Notting Hill gangster movie Hell W10. On 28 May, they played Apple computer tycoon Steve Wozniak’s three-day Us Festival at Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, getting $500,000 to headline the opening New Music Day. Accompanied by bad tempers and tensions inside and outside the band, it was far from brilliant and, more significantly, proved to be Mick’s last gig with The Clash.

On 1 September 1983, a ‘Clash Communique’ from Bernie declared, “Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon have decided that Mick Jones should leave the group. It is felt that Jones has drifted apart from the original idea of The Clash. In future it will allow Joe and Paul to get on with the job that The Clash set out to do from the beginning.” I still couldn’t believe it, even though I’d heard about it on the Clash grapevine. I phoned Mick and, although obviously shocked, he shrugged it off. “I don’t feel nothing. Don’t worry, I’ll be alright. Got to keep going.”

The NME story carried a statement from Mick issued through the CBS press office. “Mick Jones would like to state that he feels the official press statement is untrue. He would like it made clear that there was no discussion with Strummer and Simonon prior to his sacking. Jones does not feel that he has drifted apart from the original idea of The Clash and in future he will be carrying on with the same dedication as in the beginning.”

Tony James said it was like throwing Keith Richards out of The Stones. Although that nearly happened in the mid-seventies when Keith was smacked out, The Stones were smart enough to realise this would be unthinkable. Like Mick ’n’ Keef, Joe and Mick were chalk and cheese, but if they’d both been the same there wouldn’t have been the gritty edge of brilliance which elevated The Clash. Now, after sacking one of the best drummers in the world, they’d ejected the genius behind the group’s sound. At the time, Joe simply couldn’t take Mick any more, and fell to Bernie’s final grand power play. “Mick was intolerable to work with by this time,” he later said. “I mean no fun at all. He wouldn’t show up, then when he did it was like Elizabeth Taylor in a filthy mood.”

“I didn’t know personally about self-control,” admitted Mick: “I didn’t know about that stuff until later. We lost communication with each other. I was just carried away really. You wish you knew then what you know now.”

The reinstated Baker told Johnny Green about the sacking, conducted at their rehearsal room in similar fashion to Topper’s dismissal; Joe lowering the axe, backed up by Paul and Bernie. “Baker went along to pick some money up. When he arrived he saw Mick sitting outside with his guitar case. He asked him what he was doing. He just said, ‘I’ve been sacked. I don’t really know but they just sacked me.’ He had tears in his eyes. Barry was just sitting there with Mick in this hotel foyer. He said he felt angry and really sad. He was just... lost.”

Adding insult to injury, Bernie presented Mick with a cheque, like a gold watch (which he took), before appointing himself a fully-fledged member of The Clash, songwriting credits now reading Strummer–Rhodes. At last he’d got complete control, so can be blamed for the post-Mick Cut The Crap album which turned the band into a travesty, far removed from the genuine Clash. By 1985, when I bumped into Joe on Portobello Road, he was already bemoaning his ghastly error of judgement.

“That’s one thing that Joe had to live with for the rest of his life,” says Robin Banks: “He knew he’d been involved in the most profound mistake. He never came to terms with it. Every time I came across him after that he would always say, ‘That was one of the dumbest things I ever did.’ He had ten years in the wilderness because I think he felt so guilty about being conned by Bernie. Ultimately he did come to terms with it, but it haunted him. It really haunted him.”

Personally, I feel privileged to have witnessed The Clash’s peak seven years from the eye of what Mick now describes as the “whirlwind”. These incredible memories live with me forever and nothing can touch that. When I raise a glass in Joe’s memory on December 22, some will inevitably come spewing back as they just did here. But celebrate Joe Strummer for the way he touched you, which can stretch all the way to that last gig for the firemen. Whatever you do, celebrate him, because we won’t see his like again.

Christmas, boots & all

As it's the season, Robin Banks reminisces on a Christmas in the company of Joe Strummer...

“One of my most poignant memories of Joe was when it was Christmas morning at Albany Street. I went downstairs because I had to go to my mum’s for Christmas dinner. I opened the front door and suddenly heard the top window open upstairs. Joe was leaning out, waving a bottle of brandy, shouting, ‘Where are you going? Come up and have a drink before you go!’ He was almost begging me. I was already panicking I was going to miss the bus, but later realised he was on his own up there. I’ve always regretted that. That shows the other side of the coin. It was Christmas morning and Joe had no one to have a drink with.

“He gave me his blue Doc Martens, which he’d dyed himself for the Music Machine. He just noticed I had holes in my shoes and said, ‘I’m going to give you these boots’ and left them outside my door. I do miss him. You do have these moments...”

Reworking traditional Jamaican reggae into vibrant new forms, British reggae remains as influential and inventive today as it did in the early seventies. Reggae expert and one half of the Bristol Archive/Reggae Archive team Martin Langford provides a brief history.

Jamaican musicians had been travelling to Britain and contributing to the UK music scene since at least the 1930s. However, it wasn't until rocksteady gave way to reggae that a generation who had either been born in Britain or arrived as children took up instruments and started forming the first distinctly British reggae bands. These new bands wouldn't be the first to record reggae in Britain; Jamaican musicians such as Dandy Livingstone, Laurel Aitken and Rico Rodriguez had already made the transition from recording ska and rocksteady sides in the UK to reggae, often self-produced or recorded for other West Indian producers such as Joe Mansano. These sides were UK recorded for a British market, but still very Jamaican, a hybrid form of British reggae.

Although there were many aspiring vocalists battling it out in talent contests up and down the country, the key product of this newly emerging British scene was to be the self-contained band. Uncommon in Jamaica, it would come to symbolise British reggae. It takes time to form a band, acquire instruments, learn to play them proficiently, write some original songs and get gigs, but quick off the mark were the Cimarons who had actually formed in 1967 and Matumbi who formed in 1971. In these early years both bands found themselves backing visiting Jamaican singers as well as recording numerous sessions for Trojan Records. Having both left Trojan, it would be the Cimarons’ 1976 album On The Rock and Matumbi’s 1978 Seventh Seal that showed how far British reggae had developed its own distinct sound.

By the late seventies reggae was the black British music of choice and in cities and towns throughout the country those for whom sound systems weren't quite enough of a musical expression had followed in the pioneering footsteps of those first bands and were starting to make themselves heard. London-based Aswad were signed by Island and, starting with 1976's Aswad, released a series of essential albums that perfectly captured the British sound with its focus on the issues that mattered to and affected their British peers. Island would also sign Birmingham’s Steel Pulse whose 1978 debut Handsworth Revolution pushed the band into the mainstream, alongside the Island duo Black Slate, Capital Letters, Misty In Roots, Merger, UB40 and Reggae Regular who would also find deals and release strong roots albums.

For these bands overt racism, lack of employment and opportunity, heavy-handed policing, life on inner city estates and identity were their subjects rather than the themes that featured in Jamaican songs, although a shared Rastafarian influence meant repatriation was a common theme in both. The rebel image and genuine social messages of their songs found a new audience beyond the West Indian community with exposure from radio deejays like John Peel and the embracing of reggae songs and producers by bands such as The Clash, The Ruts and The Slits. British reggae suddenly found a new and large audience amongst a disaffected generation of white youth. This coming together of the communities saw its greatest expression with the Rock Against Racism movement and a series of memorable gigs where bands such as Steel Pulse and Misty In Roots often stole the show from the better-known white acts.

At the start of the eighties things looked good for roots reggae bands, a strong live scene ranging from small black-owned clubs to the university circuit. Festivals and support slots at major venues kept numerous bands employed, the major labels had filled their quota and small specialist labels and self-financing meant bands like Bristol’s Black Roots and Talisman, Birmingham’s Eclipse, London’s Tribesman and Manchester’s Sword Of Jah Mouth were able to record and release albums. This golden age was soon to end. By the mid-eighties Jamaica had embraced the new digital sound of dancehall and roots was out of fashion. Meanwhile, the lifeblood of bands was being drained as the younger generation abandoned reggae for hip hop, house music and the distinctly British forms of dance music that would eventually evolve into hardcore, trip hop, jungle, drum and bass, grime, dubstep and other forms all infused with reggae DNA. The final straw was a decline in live music coupled with increasing costs and by 1990 most of the country’s bands were no more.

Fortunately, British reggae had a lot more to offer than roots bands. In 1975 Louisa Marks backed by Matumbi recorded her reggae version of Caught You In A Lie and the soon-to-be named lovers rock genre was born. Appealing to both women and the men who wanted to dance with those women, lovers rock was an almost instant success. Unlike any other type of reggae, it allowed women to take an active role as writers, performers and even producers. In typical reggae fashion the music was mainly focused on the singles market. Carroll Thompson, Ginger Williams, TT Ross, Brown Sugar (featuring future Soul II Soul singer Caron Wheeler), 15, 16, 17, Deborahe Glasgow, Joy Mack and numerous others including a few leading Jamaican artists fed a huge market almost entirely ignored by the mainstream press. Lovers rock would finally gain some mainstream exposure with Janet Kay performing Silly Games on Top Of The Pops. Produced by Matumbi’s Dennis Bovell, the record reached No. 2 and gained the music much wider exposure.

Lovers rock has remained popular, finding an especially big fan base in Japan. It has continued to evolve and has gained a new impetus with the establishment of two key labels: Fashion, founded in 1980 by John MacGillivray and Chris Lane, and Ariwa, founded by Neil Fraser (aka The Mad Professor) who had started a recording studio in 1979 and by 1982 was releasing records. Both labels treated lovers rock with respect, releasing strong albums from singers such as Janet Lee Davis, Michael Gordon, Sandra Cross and Kofi (another former member of Brown Sugar), as well as a steady stream of well-received singles from Dee Sharp, Keith Douglas, Winsome and Paulette Tajah.

Being London-based, the two labels were at the centre of the UK scene as well as attracting many big-name Jamaican artists. There was a lot more to each than lovers rock. Both labels turned out strong roots, documenting the emerging UK style of toasting with Fashion’s Great British MCs and recordings from Asher Senator, General Levy and Starkey Banton, who would also record for Ariwa, who had already featured Birmingham’s Macka B and Pato Banton as well as Papa Levi.

They also crossed over into jungle and recorded strong dub, with The Mad Professor in particular keeping the dub album alive with regular releases in his Dub Me Crazy series. Both kept pace with the evolution of the music, at home and abroad.

Another label without whom this story would be incomplete is Adrian Sherwood’s On-U Sound. Although many of the artists and musicians were Jamaican and American, with Sherwood in the producer's chair the label achieved a uniquely British and sometimes eccentric take on the music and, like The Mad Professor, he continued to produce dub albums regardless of their perceived popularity.

With Jamaica changing direction and most UK roots bands either packing up or, in the case of Steel Pulse and Aswad, evolving a much more commercial sound, a strong market for traditional roots and dub wasn't getting what it wanted. However, by the late 1980s increasingly affordable sequencers, samplers and other digital technology made recording more affordable than ever and the UK digi-roots/dub scene was born. Finding like-minded artists via pirate radio shows, club nights and especially Jah Shaka’s sound system, the scene was pioneered by artists and producers including Nick Manasseh, Sound Iration, Dred and Fred, The Disciples, Tenastelin, Keety Roots, Danny Red, Martin Campbell, Dougie Wardrop, Alpha & Omega and Iration Steppas. Primarily singles-based, this new wave inspired numerous nights and sound systems and would also find a wider audience in Europe. Twenty-five years on, the digi scene is still going strong, with many of the original artists still making music alongside newer acts they inspired such as Dubkasm.

Before I conclude this very brief overview of British reggae I have to mention Linton Kwesi Johnson who, in conjunction with the music of Dennis Bovell and the Dub Band, made dub poetry one of the UK’s most popular styles and took reggae far beyond its traditional audience.

After years of neglect British reggae is finally being taken seriously and getting the sort of comprehensive reissues previously reserved for leading Jamaican artists. Makasound, Pressure Sounds and Soul Jazz have dipped their toes in the water while Bristol Archive Records and sister label Reggae Archive Records are taking things to the next level, not only producing high-quality reissues, but also tracking down forgotten artists and finding long-lost tapes to tell the full story of the music. With bands reforming and a hectic schedule of reissues and new releases, 2013 looks like being a vintage year for all things UK reggae-related.

Ten top British reggae albums

Rather than attempting the impossible of a definitive British reggae top ten, this is more ten top British reggae albums. It includes some of the obvious choices that everybody knows, but also attempts to represent the areas where British bands led the way, often influencing what happened in Kingston. The first half are the more traditional roots bands. Taking their lead from Jamaica and often Bob Marley and the Wailers, these bands were well-rehearsed live acts whose music dealt with the realities of growing up and living in late seventies and early eighties Britain; as such many of the messages in their music appealed equally to the white audience.

The second half of the list includes dub poetry, a field Linton Kwesi Johnson made his own, and a dub album from The Mad Professor, someone who has always kept faith with dub even when others had moved on. If toasting over songs is one of Jamaica’s great musical gifts to the world, then by the early eighties the style was feeling somewhat tired. It took a new generation of British MCs to reinvigorate it and in many ways the Fashion LP signalled their arrival. Lovers rock is a British creation that was and still remains hugely popular, if all but ignored by mainstream media and even reggae writers. Finally, the Tenastelin album reflects a truly British style that harked back to the sounds of the seventies, but utilised the latest recording equipment to make creating music more accessible than ever.

Rather than attempting the impossible of a definitive British reggae top ten this is more ten top British reggae albums. It includes some of the obvious choices that everybody knows, but also attempts to represent the areas where British bands led the way, often influencing what happened in Kingston. The first half are the more traditional roots bands. Taking their lead from Jamaica and often Bob Marley and the Wailers, these bands were well-rehearsed live acts whose music dealt with the realities of growing up and living in late seventies and early eighties Britain; as such many of the messages in their music appealed equally to the white audience.

The second half of the list includes dub poetry, a field Linton Kwesi Johnson made his own, a dub album from The Mad Professor, someone who has always kept faith with dub even when others had moved on. If toasting over songs is one of Jamaica's great musical gifts to the world then by the early eighties the style was feeling somewhat tired. It took a new generation of British MCs to reinvigorate it and in many ways the Fashion LP signalled their arrival. Lovers rock is a British creation that was and still remains hugely popular if all but ignored by mainstream media and even reggae writers. Finally, the Tenastelin album reflects a truly British style that harked back to the sounds of the seventies, but utilised the latest recording equipment to make creating music more accessible than ever.

1978's stand out debut that, with heavy marketing from Island, propelled Steel Pulse into the mainstream with an essential album that, like Marley, reached far beyond the reggae market. A cornerstone of the British roots sound, every track dealt with the realities of the black British experience growing up in Britain's second city. It sounds just as powerful and accomplished a statement thirty four years later.

Their first two albums are equally worthy of inclusion, but 1981's Showcase captures a band at their peak, including a full horn section used to devastating effect on the sublime Warrior Charge. Extended mixes and not a weak song included, this album lives up to its title, this is UK roots at its best.

Misty In Roots were a fantastic live band and this much-sampled 1979 album comes as close to capturing their energy and vibes as any recording could. It remains the high point of their catalogue and, coupled with heavy touring including strong support for Rock Against Racism, saw Misty embraced by a largely white audience.

Dennis Bovell could fill a top ten on his own (and appears again with LKJ). Here he features as a member of Matumbi, one of the UK's first reggae bands. This classic album is from 1978 and is perhaps best remembered for the theme to the BBC's Empire Road. However, the whole record is British reggae of the highest quality.

Although London and Birmingham got the attention during the seventies and eighties, almost every British city had a vibrant live reggae scene. Ignored by the majors, Black Roots financed their own recordings and started their own label. Their first album, released in 1983, was packed with great songs polished over numerous live shows. An overlooked gem, with a limited repress planned in 2013.

Dub poetry started in Jamaica, but one man really put it on the musical map and made it synonymous with Britain: LKJ. With musical accompaniment from Dennis Bovell and the Dub Band, Johnson recorded a stream of heavily political albums reflecting life in the UK that found a ready audience. I've chosen his second outing from 1979 but could easily have included any of his first four albums on this list.

Lovers rock is arguably the UK's greatest contribution to reggae as well as being the one area of the music where women get to play a full role. This 1995 album is a worthy inclusion being a particularly consistent collection and on that most British of reggae labels Fashion. Hopefully there will be an extended CD reissue next year.

(Ariwa) Alongside Fashion, Ariwa are the quintessential British reggae label putting out a stream of quality roots, lovers and dub. When dub fell out of fashion in Jamaica it found a safe haven at Ariwa and this, the fifth in the Dub Me Crazy series, dates from 1985. A fine example of The Mad Professor’s sound.

Another release from 1985 and, according to Fashion's Chris Lane, this was a concept album rather than a compilation with only three tracks having been previously released. It captured the moment when British MCs reinvented toasting and Jamaica followed a British lead. This British style would go on to influence many later styles of British dance music.

The late 1980s saw a new wave of UK producers and artists utilising new cheaper recording equipment to record their own updated take on the classic roots and dub sounds of the seventies. Twenty-five years later the UK digi roots/dub sound is still going strong and this 1993 outing from Tenastelin and Keety Roots is a good representation of the movement's early years.