— 1978 is framed as The Clash’s most decisive year: the stormy On Parole UK tour, writing/recording of Give ’Em Enough Rope with producer Sandy Pearlman, and the first push toward the US. Sessions span Marquee Studios and Basing Street; Jamaica yields Safe European Home and Drug Stabbing Time. Flashpoints include the air-rifle “Guns on the Roof” incident and the Victoria Park anti-racism rally. Openers Suicide and The Coventry Automatics (later The Specials) shape the bill; set lists road-test Tommy Gun, English Civil War, and Stay Free. A sidebar Q&A, “Rude Boy Can’t Fail,” has Ray Gange recalling tour chaos, celebrity cameos, and label gatecrashing.

– “Aces & Eights” — Kris Needs; “Rude Boy Can’t Fail” (Q&A) — Ray Gange interview feature within the same spread.

— Victoria Park (Rock Against Racism/ANL, Hackney); Friars Aylesbury (Maxwell Hall); Dunstable Queensway Hall; Birmingham Barbarella’s; Manchester Elizabethan Ballroom (Belle Vue); Glasgow Apollo; Dunfermline Kinema; tour warm-up at Manticore, Fulham.

Time seems to fly when you’re rocking and rolling and this month we celebrate four years and thirty one issues of this thing called Vive Le Rock. It only seems like five minutes since we took a chance and launched, but every issue has been a complete and utter blast.

We have met so many of you and made so many friendships along the way, and that really is what it’s all about.

Another sadder anniversary upon us is the passing of Joe Strummer in December 2002. Of course, the great man’s flame still burns bright and this issue we take a look at possibly Joe and The Clash’s most important year as a band, 1978, when the Clash City Rockers stormed the UK and set the world alight. Kris Needs was on the tour, right there in the thick of the action, and you can read all about it on page 46. Elsewhere we get down and get stomping with the glamtastic Giuda, try to get a word in with Jello Biafra, Danzig tells us he plainly doesn’t give a fuck, and we may just have got the last ever interview with the Pink Fairies.

Main photo: Joe Strummer painting by Knox
Cover photo: Joe Strummer from the archives of Paul Slattery

Vive Le Rock’s Kris Needs revisits 1978 and the eye of the hurricane that was the stormy On Parole tour, the writing of Give 'Em Enough Rope and perhaps The Clash’s most vital year.

For the last forty years, the one band I seem to have spent more time expounding about in print or on film is The Clash. In recent times, it seems to have been the band’s needless rag destruction in 1983 and, quite understandably, Strummer’s last triumphant rebirth, but these will not be on today’s agenda (even if everything I’ve written about them since December 2002 has been in Joe’s memory). Instead, I’m here to remember the peak glory stretch and global turning point of 1978, which their tour manager Johnny Green describes as the band’s most vital year. We’ll be particularly charting the cataclysmic On Parole tour and creation of the often maligned second album they battled to complete for most of that year, before Give ‘Em Enough Rope opened the door to the band’s future destiny by bringing them to the US for the first time.

Thankfully, at least The Clash haven’t become an arcane novelty curio associated with a particular period, like glam or even the Pistols, whose tabloid notoriety now seems more famous than the dozen great songs they recorded. With some kind of subconscious instinct born from looking to older heroes (and yes, the US) rather than last week’s punk sensations for inspiration, The Clash were the next logical – and even the ultimate, perfect and final – step in the evolution of the rock ‘n’ roll legacy which inspired Elvis, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones before them (and which their support band Suicide gave its final rude and filthy full stop before the future started). Of course, with their crucial reggae infusions and, later, New York hip hop and disco influences, The Clash also became the culturally cross-panning vehicle for individual expression which, particularly on London Calling, allowed them to strike on a much deeper level than any of their contemporaries because they allowed their roots to show on a highly personalised level.

So 1978 was the last year we had The Clash all to ourselves before they were irrevocably embraced by the US although, in return, America resuscitated and even saved the teetering band by rekindling the relationship between Joe and Mick, who was jerked out of the rock star cokehead phase which even threatened his position in the group.

This October marked the 39th anniversary of my first Clash gig, where they supported a long forgotten pub band in front of 60 suburban pissheads in a Leighton Buzzard leisure centre with a full-bore energy and passion I had never before encountered in any rock ‘n’ roll band (and, if the truth be told, never would again). It resulted in a lifelong friendship with the band and The Clash getting their first coverage in a US music publication when I raved about them in the recently launched New York Rocker, for whom I had just become UK correspondent. Within only 15 months, with punk’s initial flames sagging into soggy embers, flaccid power pop looming in the desperate music press and even the Pistols freshly dissolved after most had never seen them, The Clash found themselves the number one band from the 1976 explosion. Their next album was going to be absolutely crucial in keeping their momentum and whatever crown they’d just been handed. The Clash had spent 1977 touring and cooking up singles, including the incandescent Complete Control and forthcoming Clash City Rockers. Record a whole new album? “We just weren’t ready,” confessed Joe when faced with the harsh reality of having to top an already acknowledged classic debut.

1977 had ended with the Get Out Of Control tour climaxing with three nights at London’s Rainbow Theatre. “We’re going to do some new ones tonight,” said Mick in the dressing room before. As ever, soundchecks throughout the tour had provided a good opportunity to hone new songs and Tommy Gun was ready to be road-tested, along with Joe’s new rumination on the tribal systems ruling music (over an Eddie Cochran twang) called Last Gang In Town. The title alone invited dimmer factions to think it was about The Clash. “I never for one minute imagined we were the last gang in town,” explained Joe. “Every day I was hearing about new groups... I just wanted to take the piss, you know? So we invented this mythical gang.”

The new songs sounded stirringly volatile and boded well but there was going to be a lot of pressure to get it right. It might seem inconceivable now but in those days when there were four regular music weeklies, The Clash were far from the untouchable heroes of today and often seemed like targets to be shot down by those insisting they stick to the same formula. Relentlessly pilloried since they signed to CBS, Joe would even be forced by gossip column outrage to downgrade his living quarters from the pokey attic room in Sebastian Conran’s so-called “White Mansion” at Regents Park (which was anything but). The Clash were regularly accused of “selling out” the punk ideal, although they were the only one of the bands to stand fast on refusing to do Top Of The Pops. When US producer Sandy Pearlman, Blue Öyster Cult’s mentor and producer (who had also helmed the Dictators’ Go Girl Crazy), was engaged to produce the next album it was like red rag to a bull, even within the group’s inner circle and the band itself! To fan the flames of outrage amidst punk’s more conservative elements, Give ‘Em Enough Rope would take almost a year to complete, compared to the three speed-driven weekends spent whacking down the debut.

To clue him in, Sandy Pearlman had been taken to a Clash show at the Elizabethan Ballroom at Manchester’s Belle Vue the previous November; a chaotic rampage filmed by the So It Goes TV show, which saw punters smashing in through the plate glass doors. Pearlman was blown away by the band, despite Joe, knowing the producer was in the audience, announcing I’m So Bored With The USA with a barbed “We’d like to dedicate this next song to Ted Nugent... Aerosmith... Journey... and most of all, Blue Öyster Cult!” Pearlman had originally been sent a list of recent CBS signings by A&R man Dan Loggins; The Only Ones, The Vibrators, The Cortinas and The Clash, recalling “I went to see The Clash in Manchester and realised they were the greatest rock ‘n’ band in the world! There was no point in going any further.”

As Joe had said on Something Else, “We don’t worry about how popular we are; we worry about what we sound like.” With the hope they would retain a significant chunk, if not complete control, of the sessions, The Clash went along with Bernie when he approved Pearlman. CBS still hadn’t released the first Clash album in the US (and wouldn’t until July 1979 with a radically different track listing). Epic, its US company, demanded a more US radio-friendly production for the second album, which would be the band’s American debut. When I asked Mick about it, he sounded cautiously optimistic but, having developed a keen interest in studio science, reckoned he was more than up for taking on the US kingpin and keeping his band’s essence. (If he’d had his way, he would have produced it himself, having rapidly and voraciously started learning the studio ropes while recording the first album and ensuing singles).

“There’s this big myth about a list of ten producers, and we had to have one,” said Joe in 1979. “All this could be true, but the only guy I considered was Pearlman, because he was the only guy that we’d met... The reason we got anyone in at all was because we needed a third corner in an argument... I’m always ‘Turn the vocals up’ and Mick’s always ‘Turn the guitars up’. It’s irresponsible, kind of like we’re kids. The idea with Pearlman was to have someone who was a bit older... We obviously got him first and foremost because of his technical expertise, because we wanted to try and get a sound.”

“Every day I was hearing about new groups... I just wanted to take the piss, you know? So we invented this mythical gang.” — Joe Strummer

Joe and Mick joked to manager Bernie Rhodes that they should be sent to Jamaica to write songs, which had already been suggested by Lee Perry when he produced Complete Control. The pair were shocked but delighted when told they could go to Kingston in December, although Paul was less than happy and taken to Moscow by then-girlfriend Caroline Coon, the Melody Maker singles columnist and pioneering punk journalist who was also known as one of London’s counterculture mainstays, running the Release organisation.

On arrival in Kingston and unable to locate Lee Perry, Joe and Mick tried to score some ganja near the docks, striding out of the Pegasus Hotel in their punky-military threads and managing to escape hassle from potentially dangerous locals by being mistaken for merchant seamen. They still got ripped off but managed to score some lambs-breath weed, holing up in their hotel and not venturing out for the next ten days. Instead they wrote furiously, coming up with Safe European Home, Drug Stabbing Time and several more.

Three gigs were arranged for late January to give Pearlman a further idea of what he was letting himself in for and to road-test new songs, although the set steamed in with an opening salvo of Complete Control, London’s Burning, Jail Guitar Doors and Clash City Rockers before uncorking Last Gang In Town and Tommy Gun, which was already a scorching warhead of unfettered Clash dynamics with Topper’s machine-gun fills and ringing power chords. After Birmingham Barbarella’s, The Clash hit Dunstable’s Queensway Hall, which ended with a near-riot and half the audience on stage with Mick and Joe flanking Topper on his drum riser. Even now it’s impossible to adequately convey the overwhelming rush of standing on the side of the stage witnessing The Clash at their dazzling peak. Nothing has ever come close. That show, which saw a welter of broken strings, smashed drums and deep facial cuts, still ranks as one of the wildest, nearly out-of-control Clash gigs I saw out of around a hundred. If Joe had directed the mob out of the venue and into the town to smash it up, they would have done so, without any question.

The following night at Lanchester was when Robin Crocker, Mick’s old school friend who’d got out of nick the previous year and was now providing front-line reports for Zigzag as Robin Banks, famously whacked Pearlman on the nose when he tried to gain access to the dressing room before the show, which you didn’t do if they didn’t know you. Popular myth has been that Robin mistook the producer for an over-zealous fan but “I knew exactly who he was and I’m glad I hit him!” he maintains today, adding that he feared the worst for the album by letting the producer near the band. “And anyway, he looked like a dork!”

Rude Boy Can’t Fail

Vive Le Rock talks to Ray Gange about acting, the On Parole tour and more....

How did you end up getting the role of Clash roadie in the film Rude Boy?

“I’d met and become friends with Joe Strummer at the tail end of ’77 and the way I recall it is that I was working in a Soho record shop and was chatting to one of our customers that said he was a filmmaker and he mentioned that they were going to make a movie about The Clash. I told him that I knew them and was friends with Strummer and a few weeks later he, David Mingay, came back and said they were looking for someone to play opposite the band and was I interested. I said I’d think about it and mentioned it to Strummer the next time we were hanging out and he suggested I do it as it would be a fun thing to do. So I agreed, quit my job at the record shop and away we went in a light blue Ford Transit minibus.”

Being around The Clash at the time, was there a feeling that you were witnessing a band that was to become truly legendary?

“You have to remember that the band were then living a hand-to-mouth existence up at draughty old Rehearsal Rehearsals in Camden so there was no hint of things to come. The feeling wasn’t so much that they would or even might become legendary but definitely that they should and that they were iconoclasts, though I didn’t know that word at the time. You knew they were also by far the best live band around at the time.”

What are your memories of the On Parole tour in 1978. What was the Victoria Park Anti-Racism show like?

“Obviously seeing The Clash up close and personal for so many gigs is a top memory but the other memories of that tour are varied. Some great, some not so great and some downright awful. On the plus side, getting to hang out with the likes of Suicide (check out their song Mr. Ray) and the equally impressive The Coventry Automatics who were just in the process of changing their name to The Specials, both of whom were refreshingly brilliant. Steve Jones and Paul Cook joining in for some encores at a couple of the gigs made for an exciting close of proceedings at Birmingham and London I believe. Another highlight was the friendliest stage invasion ever by what also seemed like the youngest audience of any gig I’ve been to at the Kinema in Dunfermline. The unpleasantness of the violent moronic skinheads at the Crawley gig which really killed the good vibes we’d been having on the road and, of course, poor old Alan Vega getting hit in the face quite badly. The true horrors of the maniacal and unhinged security staff at Glasgow Apollo where things got very nasty indeed and were on the verge of getting nastier.

“The morning after the last show on the tour at Bury St Edmunds someone mentioned Bob Dylan was playing at an airfield somewhere, so Strummer, being a big Dylan fan, wanted to go. A few of us piled into a car and off we went. As we arrive Joe suddenly says ‘Hold on a minute, we haven’t got any tickets’. I looked at him and said ‘But Joe, Dylan’s on CBS as well, it won’t be a problem, we just get the security to find someone from the label’. ‘Go on then,’ he said and so I walk up and talk to the friendly security guys – well, friendly after Glasgow anyway – and one of them goes off and returns with a woman that worked at CBS. I told her we had Joe Strummer in the car and instantly she told the security guys to open the gates and let us in.”

“Victoria Park was hectic and chaotic, an electric vibe buzzing across the place. So many more people than we’d expected to see completely filling the place up. I didn’t really see much of the march as me and the film guys just drove straight from Brixton, where most of us seemed to live, to the park and hung out in the shambolic backstage area waiting for The Clash to go on, popping out to watch another band or two until it was time for them to go on. Their set was, as is well recorded, incendiary, although the overall sound quality was dire. Watching and hearing the noise of those tens of thousands of people moving like the waves of the ocean to the pounding of the band’s songs was truly amazing. Then, of course, the hippie roadies pulled the plug on the band and all hell broke loose. When the band finished, I think it was David Mingay, gave me a nudge and pointed at Joe’s now-vacant microphone at the front of the stage telling me to grab it and try to incite the crowd to get the band back on. I was merely an innocent bystander, honest guv! Then when it all calmed down it was drinks all round, a couple more bands and then in the van and back to south London.”

Who did you get along best with out of the band?

“Joe by a long way. We used to hang out a lot together going to different pubs, clubs and venues. One of my favourite, among many, memories of Joe was being at his place after a night out and him showing me the unfinished lyrics to Clash City Rockers and telling me his ideas for finishing it. Topper and Paul I’d always get on well with up at Camden and then on the road while making the movie. Topper and me would often go into CBS HQ in Soho Square and blag a bunch of promo albums from the girls in the storeroom which we’d then go and flog for some pocket money at Cheapo Cheapo in Rupert Street. Mick back then, unlike today, was quite difficult to get on with although we also had some great laughs too. Mick and I would ham up the animosity in front of the filmmakers to let them think there was a tension that didn’t really exist.”

Why didn’t you follow up your acting role in Rude Boy?

“It didn’t occur to me that it might be a career opportunity and to be honest I wasn’t that enamoured of the film experience although, of course, I’m glad I did it. The London punk scene felt like it was dying. I was jobless but I had some money for the first time and it was winter so I went to Los Angeles in January ’79 which, it turned out, had a punk scene of its own which was just about to erupt and I stayed there for four years. While I was in LA I received a phone call one afternoon and was asked to audition in London for another film project but as it meant paying for my own plane ticket and as my funds had dried up by then I let it go. In retrospect I’d have done things differently but hey ho, that’s how it goes, right?”

What are you up to now?

“Trying to survive in blissful semi-retirement, splitting my time between London and the south coast and where possible helping people overcome drug and alcohol problems. Work-wise I’m doing the odd DJ gig at various places, making pop art paintings, designing prints and doing quite a lot of photography. Occasionally I’m involved in renovating houses for people – it’s always nice to help someone improve their surroundings.”

Recording was due to start in February but sessions were postponed when Joe was hospitalised for three weeks at St Stephens in Fulham Road with hepatitis B. The common story is that he caught it by swallowing some of the nightly rain of gob which greeted The Clash back then but Chris Salewicz’s Redemption Song suggested it was caused by a dirty needle. While Joe recovered, Mick, Paul and Topper continued working up new songs at their Rehearsals HQ. On leaving hospital, Joe moved out of the “white mansion” into the squat on Daventry Street, Marylebone.

First time I saw Joe after he got out of hospital was in March at the old Marquee Studios behind the Wardour Street club, a former garage studio upgraded into a funky recording enclave after the Moody Blues recorded their number one hit Go Now there the previous decade. While they waited to start the actual album with Pearlman, they had gone in to Marquee to record demos and B-sides. When me and Robin walked in, Mick was trying out some deliberately amateurish sounding harmonica on a loping reggae beat for a new song called [White Man] In Hammersmith Palais. Sensitive and melodic, it was unlike anything I’d heard them do before and had the makings of a future classic. They were also working on a rousing version of Toots and the Maytals’ Pressure Drop, Mick’s The Prisoner, which was about Bernie with lines such as “The prisoner lives in Camden Town planning revolution” and had reworked early set stalwart 1-2 Crush On You. Their pumping version of Booker T and the MGs’ Time Is Tight, which would eventually appear on the Black Market Clash album, had graduated from soundcheck to studio.

As mentioned, Clash City Rockers had been released as a single in February, reaching number 35. Cheekily built on the riff from The Who’s I Can’t Explain, the song was slower than usual and more complex, continuing the self-titling tradition, originally favoured by Bo Diddley and which Mott had used on outings such as The Ballad Of Mott The Hoople. While Mick laid his most pronounced template for multi-tracking guitars into pyramids of sound and Brian Jones-style exotic toppings deep in the mix, Joe’s maturing lyrics threw in lines derived from TV shows, current pop stars and items in the news.

Then, on the afternoon of March 30th, Paul, Topper, Banksy and brothers Steve and Paul Barnacle were sitting on the Rehearsals roof waiting for Mick, trying out Topper’s new air rifle on circling pigeons, which they didn’t know were prized racing specimens belonging to a workman from the nearby warehouses. After the incensed pigeon fancier chased Topper with a monkey wrench, the British Transport Police turned up because their offices were over the road and they just saw the guns on the roof. An invasion of CID officers, armed cops and even a helicopter descended and carted them off. Bail was set at £1,500 per person, which Mick stumped up as Bernie didn’t want to know. They had to spend the night in Brixton nick and sign in every day at Kentish Town police station. “It was nothing really,” says Topper. “Just four kids shooting at pigeons and someone pressed the red alert button. That’s all. It was totally insane. When they realised it was just four kids with air guns they went nuts on us.” Pennie Smith summed the group up perfectly when she described them as like “the Bash Street Kids attempting a commando raid”.

Another, rather intrusive, element thrown into this hectic time came with the film being made about The Clash by producer Jack Hazan and director David Mingay, who poked their camera into recording sessions and gigs. The first gig they filmed was April 30th’s appearance at the Carnival Against the Nazis in Hackney’s Victoria Park, organized by Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League as a show of strength against the rampant racists, whose dim skinhead factions were ripe for National Front indoctrination. Fifty thousand punters, including many who had marched from Trafalgar Square, were treated to X-Ray Spex, Steel Pulse, the Tom Robinson Band and the year’s first UK Clash show. Joe sported his Brigade Rosse t-shirt, while Mick’s man-in-black look was topped with a cap he’d nicked from a TV show. The Clash tore through favourites and newer songs at breakneck pace. During White Riot, Jimmy Pursey cavorted on to join in, before the plug got pulled, scuffles broke out between Johnny Green and the stage crew, finishing with a pissed-up Ray Gange, the young punk who was to become the film’s central character, bellowing over the mic.

All attention then focused on the new album. I was invited along to the first night of recording with Pearlman and went along to the old Utopia Studios off Primrose Hill’s main drag (which Ian Hunter had used for his last album, Overnight Angels). The studio, set up by glam producer Phil Wainman, was nice and wooden-panelled, with large potted plants. Everything got quite silly after Pearlman’s right-hand man Corky Staciak broke out the kind of killer weed London didn’t see often. Paul upended plant pots and made a dirt track in the foyer for Topper to ride his motorbike on. The band now had to relocate to Island Records’ Basing Street Studios, off Portobello Road. This was a lovely studio, steeped in history such as the Bob Marley and Mott classics which had been recorded there.

It was immediately obvious that this was not going to be the kind of album where they knocked out the live set and adjusted a few levels. Pearlman was painstakingly meticulous and rigorous, demanding endless takes until arriving at the right one. This didn’t sit well with the group, especially Joe and his “first take, best take” ethos, and Paul, who got bored easily and saw 20 bass takes as unnecessary purgatory. Topper, however, rose to the occasion and nailed his drum parts on the first go, earning the nickname “the human drum machine” from an impressed Pearlman, who couldn’t believe how he nailed the snare drum parts on Tommy Gun in two takes – backwards. Mick was transfixed watching Pearlman at work, learning about the mixing desk, mapping out overdubs and visualising the overall picture for each track. According to Robin,

Mick “learnt all the technicalities off Pearlman. It was a conscious thing, which meant he could go on to produce London Calling. The songs transcended the production, which still neutered them to some extent, but I’m so glad that experience happened. It’s probably the main reason for the dynamism of London Calling. They bounced back.”

I went along to these sessions a few times, but Robin, who’d made up with Pearlman, was there every day, and reported in Zigzag, “The end result is not only going to come as a major surprise to many of the band’s detractors, but to some of their fans as well... At night the studio takes on an eerie dream-like quality, the tiredness and strain of getting everything as right as possible evident in all the faces present.” While Joe lay on the couch watching Scotland blow the World Cup, Paul projected World War Two movies such as Battle of the Bulge on the studio wall in an attempt to alleviate the stultifying boredom.

The pigeon court case still loomed, with Paul and Topper facing possible prison sentences. The night before the final appearance, I went to the Speakeasy club with Mick, Robin and Tony James, who Mick shared a Notting Hill flat with. There was an air of impending doom as we sat in the restaurant downing cocktails. After we got thrown out, we adjourned to the flat, staying up all night so we could make the court in the morning. Normally, the mood would have been party-oriented but Mick, who was not happy about being roped into the consequences of his old friend’s mischief, was in an unsmiling frame of mind. We’d all noticed recently that he was getting further into coke and spent much of that night licking his finger and dabbing the mirror in case there might be a crumb embedded somewhere. He seemed to be living out his long-time Keef fantasy, which extended into the marathon studio sessions, the only place he wanted to be.

“I don’t think we realised at the time how much we complemented each other, but we did. If any one of the four of us would have gone it would have collapsed, but we didn’t realise it at the time.” — Topper Headon

There we all are in Rude Boy, spilling out of a cab (which I end up paying for) to join Paul in his blue Johnson’s suit, Caroline Coon bringing in her legal expertise from Release, Topper and the others. Thankfully, no terrorism charges were brought as the police failed to make the necessary ballistic tests. The Camden Five elected not to go to Crown Court and were each fined £30, while ordered to pay the pigeon-fancier £700 and £30 legal costs between them. It was with some relief that we hit the nearest pub and this time a celebratory mood was back for several hours. They got a new song out of it called Guns On The Roof which, like this episode, wasn’t the most spectacular thing the band ever did.

June also saw the release of that song I’d heard them start at the Marquee Studios. (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais had gained Joe’s lyrics inspired by a night at the venue, where the roots reggae he’d hoped for turned out to be softy lovers rock. His disappointment became a launch-pad for his address on the state of punk and the nation, assumed to be talking about The Jam with the Burton suits line but really attacking power pop.

The song still sounds like a magical, one-off encapsulation of the band at that pivotal time; quite innocent and poignant but also rip-roaringly defiant. They tried re-recording it at Pearlman’s request, but it was never the same. “We weren’t supposed to come up with something like that,” crowed Joe with a snigger, delighted to be confounding the more pork-brained factions. At shows, he suggested the pogoers stop impersonating Sooty and Sweep on speed for a moment and fall into this much sexier groove; “move your arse sideways instead of up and down.”

That summer I decided to hold a poll among Zigzag readers to find their favourite Clash track. White Man came in third (after Complete Control and White Riot). I also held the mag’s first readers’ poll, spending hours counting votes from the filled-in forms. The Clash swept Best Group and Best Live Act, while Complete Control was Best Single. It was obvious from these reactions that the music press, who often seemed bent on sniping, panning and piss-taking every move The Clash made, was just not as powerful with the fans on the street as it liked to think. Even Zigzag, their main mouthpiece, got accused of being a Clash fanzine, but that, as the polls showed, was who the readers wanted, without any cheap jibes about white mansions and hair length. Only John Peel played them on the radio, and now not as much. No wonder they would make it a mission to take the US on their own terms, where the Pistols had failed. “I can’t see anybody playing Clash records on the radio,” declared Joe, then made an album with that very purpose. From the stage or the page, Joe always said his ambition was to keep the saccharine AOR sludge off the radio and replace it with music with soul, whether from Memphis, Jamaica or Camden Town. This would have to be done The Clash way though, with no arse-licking or bending over backwards. At a Blue Öyster Cult party thrown by CBS, Topper stuck a sizeable cake on the head of one of their guitarists’ girlfriends, which swiftly collapsed and turned messy. The roadies wanted to kill him.

At the end of June, The Clash had to put recording the new album on hold for the On Parole tour. Many assume that the name referred to the court case but it was actually derived from Mott The Hoople’s All The Way From Memphis. The warmup gig was held at Manticore, a former cinema on Fulham’s North End Road now run as a sound stage by, possibly ironically, Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Many bands used it to rehearse their full stage act (the last time I’d gone there was to see Mott The Hoople work in Mick Ronson three years earlier). Appearing against Paul’s newly designed Messerschmidt backdrop, a crowd of mates, press who weren’t on Clash-bashing missions and fans were treated to the set which would strafe the UK through July; a mixture of brave new album songs, the recent singles then favourites near the end.

Complete Control was the ideal opener, now starting with Mick’s lone chords before it all went off. Then Tommy Gun, already a live favourite and sounding even more seismic in this crucial set position. Cheapskates was the first brand new track, which embodied the band’s latest form of melody-infused rouser with dark undertones as Joe defended himself against the detractors. “Just because we’re in a group, you think we’re stinking rich, and you think we got model girls shedding every stitch, and you think the cocaine’s flowing up our noses.” In some cases, this was actually happening, which made it more biting in its sense of resigned defiance. Mick’s barnstorming romp through the 101’ers’ old Jail Guitar Doors was always a crowd-pleaser and Drug Stabbing Time had the dynamic makings of a major killer. All The Young Punks (New Boots And Contracts) was another new one, its title obviously derived from Mott (although mistakenly listed as That’s No Way To Spend Your Youth on early album sleeves). Rather than the disparaging anthem Bowie wrote for Mott, it became a sad reflection on the current scene. Talking about Mott’s abiding influence, Mick would always stress that he didn’t see The Clash simply taking over their mission, although I had first met him in a Hoople dressing room in 1972, when they had given him a reason to live, which wasn’t far off how a lot of kids saw his band now. “Ian Hunter has definitely blessed our band,” he reflected. “He was there when we did Police And Thieves; he was in London for the making of the second album and we conferred. He’s always been there; one of my great spiritual guidances... You can call that number anything; it’s kind of a statement, like Garageland. It’s our message of what’s happening with us.”

Next came (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais, which had been in the set since the previous year but still sent shivers, Capitol Radio, and Stay Free, Mick’s new song, which he described then as “like our ballad”. The Mott influence again (and The Stones’ Sweet Black Angel nodded at in the fadeout) as he reflected on his teenage years, inspired by old school friend and running buddy Robin Crocker, who recalls Mick coming round with his acoustic guitar and announcing ‘I’ve written a song about you’ before sitting down and playing Stay Free. “Somebody once said to me it’s the most outstanding heterosexual male-on-male love song, and there is a lot of truth in it,” Robin later told an interviewer. “It’s a memento of a glorious band, a glorious time and a glorious friendship.” When Robin celebrated his 60th birthday in the Portobello Gold pub, Mick got up and sang the song again to his oldest friend and there really was hardly a dry eye in the house. Few appreciated the balls it took to play such a sensitive missive for crowds who, as it would soon transpire, would have been happy with a whole set of White Riots. Police And Thieves was actually one of the few to survive from the first album, now segueing into Blitzkrieg Bop near the end.

The new English Civil War was Joe’s new comment on the state of the nation, reworking American Civil War song When Johnny Comes Marching Home, which he’d learned in singing lessons at school. Declared Joe darkly at the time, “War is just around the corner. Johnny hasn’t got far to march. That’s why he’s coming by bus or underground.” Safe European Home sounded torrentially bombastic. Such vitality, invention and complex interaction going on which really did sound like the next step forward for punk-fuelled rock. Somehow they got the skank in the engine room, largely thanks to Topper, as Joe sang about the perils of going to “a place where every white face is an invitation to robbery.” All the vital ingredients, such as Mick’s harmonies and the tapestry of rhino-rectum guitar flatulence forged into a tight surge had been in place by demo stage, but this would be the track Pearlman’s expertise would most benefit and provided a guaranteed opener for the album.

With the new album suitably trailered and tried out, it was time to give the hordes the familiar hits they’d been baying for with a home stretch consisting of London’s Burning and Garageland, before the encores of I’m So Bored With The USA, Janie Jones and White Riot.

Happily, the opening night took place at Friars Aylesbury, my local club which had opened in 1969 and was the favourite, and often breakthrough, gig for names including Mott, Bowie and, more recently, the Ramones and Blondie. This was The Clash’s first appearance there and something of a miracle as, since the Dunstable riot, they were banned from practically every venue in the Home Counties. Friars was now held in the thousand-capacity Maxwell Hall and there’d been a buzz building for months. I turned up in the afternoon to catch a soundcheck which saw Time Is Tight joined by a howling version of Johnny Burnette’s Train Kept A-Rollin’. Joe even checked out the nearby Green Man pub; the only local drinking establishment which welcomed punk rockers and whose jukebox was so legendary I printed its top 20 in Zigzag every month.

“If you’re a messenger of change, it’s a really nice feeling, and we were watching it grow. 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.” — Johnny Green

While Barry ‘Scratchy’ Miles made his debut spinning records, opening were a multi-racial five-piece called The Coventry Automatics until they changed their name to The Specials. Playing songs such as It’s Up To You, Dawning Of A New Era and Concrete Jungle, plus a version of Liquidator which got the rude boys jumping, this lot were obviously destined for great things and had already been added to the management stable Bernie was trying to build. He had already snarfed up French female outfit The Lous, jazz-punk band The Black Arabs and a new group called Dexy’s Midnight Runners (one night around then I was sitting on the last train home to Leighton Buzzard when Mickey Foote got on with this intense bloke in black leather called Kevin Rowland, who was convinced he was going to take the rock ‘n’ roll world by storm; later he would, dressed up as a pantomime bum).

This was the first time many had heard the new songs and, Aylesbury being a comparatively tolerant, encouraging crowd, The Clash went down a storm after benefitting from the hall’s fantastic acoustics and coming out with the impact of heat-seeking missiles trained at the gut and gonads. “This song is for punk rock, which is the only thing that’s happened in this country in living memory,” declared Joe before The English Civil War, while White Man crackled with almost supernatural power and Police And Thieves caught the whole hall in one special, skanking, wailing magic moment which would be frozen in my memory forever. The Clash had never sounded better than that night and this was only the first gig.

There were noticeable changes in the Clash dynamic since Dunstable, with a fully recovered Joe ditching the gruff snarl and unapproachable aura to start mixing with the audience and back to being the friendly bloke I’d first met two years earlier. He had become a master showman in the classic fashion, combining his vibrating leg intensity and electric eel wrestling contortions with old school rock ‘n’ roll showmanship, recalling anyone from Elvis to James Brown as he poured every ounce of energy into manic or dramatic stage displays, often diving into the crowd. And as Johnny Green says, “Joe was a natural for a quiff.”

Meanwhile, Mick seemed to have gone further down the guitar hero-rock star route. He wasn’t the same bloke I’d met. Offstage he was coke-diva aloof and terse, the old sparkle dulled while his image was now a collision between Clash paramilitary and early seventies Keef, topped with what the Clash camp called his “poodle” hairdo. He was obviously, and quite understandably, living out every rock ‘n’ roll fantasy he’d nurtured since childhood, but had also changed and, for a few months, became hard to approach. This wasn’t supposed to happen with this band, but then nothing was and everything was permitted, I soon learned.

Maybe the newly invigorated Joe was rebelling against Mick, taking the pure-punk stance to an extreme, like he did with everything and would for the rest of his life.

I went to as many tour gigs as I could get to but that year seems fairly unbelievable looking back now as I tried to juggle jaunts with Siouxsie And The Banshees, Blondie, The Ramones, Generation X and many others along with the responsibility of writing, editing, designing and cowgumming a magazine together every month. Being on the road with The Clash, in their modest little minibus, could be quite mundane. The day still started, if you had made it to bed, by converging on the hotel breakfast room, or bar, around late morning or lunchtime, then driving to the next show, whiling away the journey by listening to music on a boom-box or acting the goat (or wildebeest). Essential road crew stalwarts Johnny Green and Barry ‘The Baker’ Auguste would be already there, if Johnny wasn’t driving us, setting up the stage after the PA crew and humpers had done their stuff. First they had to clean the previous night’s gob off anything from mic stands to Topper’s drum fittings, re-solder jack plugs, replace amp valves and all that maintenance stuff. There were pranks, like Baker’s speciality of filling Topper’s stick bag with warped drumsticks that instantly broke when he started the soundcheck. It felt like we were in a bubble, bouncing between towns and venues and hotels on whatever day it happened to be.

Along with The Specials, supporting on the tour from Sheffield was the amazing Suicide from New York City (see next piece). Mick loved the self-titled and seismic debut album they’d released earlier that year but probably wasn’t aware at that point that Alan Vega and Marty Rev were the first New York band to use the word ‘punk’ on their flyers after they started instilling fear, loathing and utter hatred in the downtown clubs seven years earlier. Suicide would be the most punky outfit many of the audience would ever see, and were rewarded with the most untold abuse a band has ever seen.

After Suicide had braved whatever the redneck mobs could hurl at them, The Clash got themselves psyched up in the dressing room. Paul with his Remy and spliff, still inventing new mutant animal combinations, usually involving Bernie with a moose’s foreskin instead of ears. “All that was all so surreal, it was like Dali or something,” laughed Paul when I ran into him in the bar at Mott The Hoople’s reunion gigs in 2009. Mick would be doing whatever he was doing at the time, while Joe quietly steeled himself up for showtime as he wrapped his arm in his ‘strum guard’ and Topper got taped up like a boxer by The Baker, invoking martial arts techniques to prepare for his nightly drumming onslaught. One night, looking at the four of them getting ready, it hit me how this could be the perfect rock group, with each an irreplaceable part of the jigsaw. As Topper now says, “I don’t think we realised at the time how much we complemented each other, but we did. If any one of the four of us would have gone it would have collapsed, but we didn’t realise it at the time.”

When the time was right, the gear was ready and the crowd was going apeshit, there was a moment like dawn’s early light at the Somme as the band waited in the dark to go over the top. Then it started and, for the next hour or so, everything rational went out of the window as The Clash flamed on and unleashed the set I just described. Despite internal problems, the arduous recording and conflicts with Bernie, when The Clash took the stage it was monumental, incendiary and all-consuming. “If you’re a messenger of change, it’s a really nice feeling, and we were watching it grow,” recalls 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.”

The tour wove its way through Leicester and Manchester, where they played a ‘secret’ gig at its Rafters club, then up to Glasgow for the single most infamous gig in their whole story. See the Suicide account for the extraordinary reception that Alan and Marty got but, suffice to say, somebody could have got killed that night. The Apollo bouncers went on a rampage of laying into the crowd, dragging kids off to give them a kicking then throwing them out. Joe, sporting a t-shirt saying ‘Get Tae Fuck’, was incensed by this mindless psychotic slaughter, crying out at one point “I’m sick of fuckin’ blood.” Even when the band left the stage, the whiskey-fuelled bouncers were threatening to have them. Harangued by beaten-up fans after the show, Joe got so frustrated by this surreal situation he smashed a lemonade bottle in frustration outside the stage door and got hauled in by the police who suddenly appeared. Paul tried to intervene and got arrested too, after being whacked by a plain-clothes cop wielding a chain-weighted truncheon. Mick, in a state of shock, was sneaked away by some fans and got back to the hotel, while Topper also managed to escape the chasing cops.

Joe and Paul spent the night in the cells, where arrested fans sang The Prisoner all night, and decided to plead guilty to avoid disrupting the tour. Facing an old-fashioned stern but smug judge, Joe was fined 25 quid for breach of the peace, while Paul was fined 45 for the same plus “attempting to free a prisoner.” “That’s what we get for calling it the Out On Parole tour,” laughed Joe afterwards.

The tour then proceeded to Dunfermline, before heading back to Crawley, which was besieged by self-aggrandising Sham 69-loving skinheads (see Suicide piece), Bristol, Torquay, Cardiff, Birmingham, Blackburn, Liverpool, Bury St Edmonds and finally ended up with four nights at London’s Music Machine at the end of the month. I went every night, some of the Clash crew holed up at the palatial West End flat belonging to Des O’Connor’s daughter, then converging on the Music Machine in the afternoon. Right by Mornington Crescent tube, this was the best venue back then; big enough to take a crowd and still feel quite intimate, with no seats downstairs. The band made a point of letting ticketless fans in through the fire doors.

Ex-Pistol Steve Jones was getting up to “jam” in the encores at some gigs, which was later revealed to be part of a plot between Bernie and Malcolm McLaren to deal with the difficult and “not punk enough” Mick and find a home for the ex-Pistol. The other three members had even played with Jones at rehearsals while waiting for the always-late Mick. Mick was now the main rebel against the manager, which would eventually cost him his post, but not yet. There was a showdown and the band unified to become set against the manager’s ploys (apart from maybe Joe...).

Throughout the tour, Mick had the new album uppermost in his mind as he charged through the sets. In fact, part of his coke aloofness seemed to harbour an “I don’t wanna be here” demeanour which, if you’d seen him at work in the studio, might be easier to understand. The studio had become a major obsession. After the tour wound up, August saw Pearlman invite Mick and Joe to San Francisco’s Automat Studios on downtown Folsom Street for final overdubs on the album now called All The Peacemakers [after a line in Police And Thieves]. Staying at a hotel in Chinatown, Joe and Mick became close again, experiencing for the first time the country they’d both worshipped from afar since childhood. It also served to remind Mick how much The Clash meant to him, as they talked about Bernie’s recent power grabs, which Mick’s recent behaviour could also have been his way of rebelling against.

The pair were awestruck and reinvigorated simply by being in America; at that time the untouchable land of their dreams. Both had been besotted with the US from an early age; Joe through his love of Captain Beefheart, Woody Guthrie and Chuck Berry, Mick as the result of a prolonged quest to glean an almost intangible spirit from the records he’d been buying since the ’60s, starting with The Stones then their spiritual forefathers Chuck and Bo Diddley, before all the happening bands as they appeared, from the MC5 to San Francisco’s Stoneground. He coveted The Stooges and the first New York Dolls album and was standing a few feet away checking out The Ramones when we both went to see them make their UK debut with The Flamin’ Groovies. By then, Mick had The Clash and, for a few months, the UK had its turn in his obsessions. But he could never see the future as accelerated pub rock and now started making deeper inroads into rock and soul in its purest forms, straight from the wellspring.

Joe was just happy to be in the land which spawned rock ‘n’ roll and the roots music he was getting further into. While assuaging his fears about being turned into Fleetwood Mac, the trip gave The Clash a new classic to cover in the form of The Bobby Fuller Four’s I Fought The Law, which they discovered on the well-stocked Automat jukebox. Three weeks of 12-hour days saw vocals and guitars overdubbed. While Joe reported the “blood in my mouth” which resulted from singing Guns On The Roof, Pearlman trumpeted that, thanks to Mick, “There are more guitars per square inch on this record than in anything in the history of western civilization.”

As reward for their graft, Joe and Mick were given a week off. While Mick hung out with Pearlman in L.A., meeting local punk bands such as The Dils and going to see Blue Öyster Cult, Joe took off in a 1956 Chevy pick-up truck to see America on a Kerouac-style road trip, driving to New York via New Orleans. The Clash pair met up again in New York, ready to finish the album at the Record Plant at 321 West 44th Street. One of the city’s top studios, it had played host to the likes of Springsteen, Bowie and was almost Jimi Hendrix’s second home after opening in 1967. First, Mick put the final blocks into his walls of guitar, favouring the 1954 Les Paul he’d acquired in California. It seemed like only he knew where the pieces fit but they shone when the tracks emerged as a dazzling whole.

On September 21st at Max’s Kansas City on Park Avenue South, Mick took part in a “welcome” gig for Sid Vicious, who’d just made his doomed move to the city with girlfriend Nancy Spungen. With a band composed of Johnny Thunders and assorted Heartbreakers, they played around five songs in 20 minutes. Mick was shocked at the heroin use and state of his old friend Sid, who used to live at the Davis Road squat he had often stayed at with then girlfriend Viv Albertine. Now Max’s booking agent Peter Crowley says, “The only thing I’m really ashamed of in my career is the shows with Sid. It was a crass commercial move by (club owner) Tommy Dean and I went along with it. Sid was half dead and had a fever of 102. Good band, but he was totally ill and could hardly stand up. Before and after the shows he would be lying on Tommy Dean’s couch unable to get up. We know now he had all kinds of diseases. He’d shot up with water out of the toilet bowl. He believed all his hype.” (The first time the legendary booking agent met Sid was when he was in London in 1977 and went looking for Heartbreakers manager Leee Childers at the offices of Track Records. “This gangly looking kid was sitting on this window sill, quite high off the ground with his legs dangling. He looked at me and said ‘Nice leather jacket, give it to me.’ I replied ‘Which side of your head would you like it on?’ ‘Only kidding,’ said Sid.”)

With CBS dead set on the album cracking the US market, A&R bigwigs Dan Loggins and Muff Winwood fretted that Strummer’s voice would confuse American listeners. Press reports mentioned tension between band members and producer, describing Joe as being “derisive” to Pearlman. Joe maintained “You want someone there who doesn’t hear what you hear all the time.” Another time, he said, “I can’t see anybody playing Clash records on the radio,” then made an album with that very purpose. The US market opened up through a surge of interest from key writers, fellow musicians in various underground scenes and radio DJs with their finger on the pulse. While UK journalists were slagging The Clash at every opportunity, America was waiting to welcome them and they became the only band which rose above the dirt of the UK to live out their dreams in the country which invented rock ‘n’ roll. Of course that got them further stick back home but, as Barry The Baker says in Randal Doane’s excellent book Stealing All Transmissions: A Secret History Of The Clash, “With the benefit of hindsight it is clear to see that the band had transcended their own cultural reference point, rising far above their own punk rock beginnings. They were free enough inside themselves to recognise their collective uniqueness, to live within their own reference system and at a level above and beyond the culture they were raised in.”

In late September, Topper and Paul were flown over to hear final mixes. The whole group investigated the joys of New York City and lived out their Taxi Driver fantasies. While Joe cultivated his quiff, Mick had his hair cut for the first time in two years. He came back laden with records, cool clobber and his Les Paul, on a new kind of buzz, telling me, “That first trip had a definite effect on me. I’d been gearing up to go there my whole life.” Mick had his sparkle back.

Between Give ‘Em Enough Rope being finished and released, The Clash sacked Bernie. The relationship had deteriorated to Paul painting a Rehearsals wall with a mural titled ‘Bernie is Odd’, depicting the naked manager being shat on by pigeons. With Mick back in the saddle, the implications of the Steve Jones power play filled the whole band with resentment. The longer the album process had dragged on, the less Bernie was present and Johnny Green’s role increased, recalling, “As that relationship faded, the less they had to do with [Bernie] and the more I did. I was acting as an intermediary.”

The final break came over a gig at Harlesden Roxy, booked by Bernie for September 9, when Joe and Mick were in the US. With the show cancelled, Rhodes put out a story about The Clash being “on strike” over not getting radio play. They didn’t honour the rescheduled date on the 25th either. The Roxy was rebooked on October 14, but cancelled at the last minute because the venue had sold 1,600 tickets, while its capacity had been reduced to 900 after 500 seats were taken out to make a dancefloor. The venue took ads on Capital Radio to warn the potential audience to stay away. Although they had just got back from Dublin, The Clash turned up to explain to punters, staying for two hours and managing to speak to about 400 disappointed fans. By the time the gigs finally took place on the 25th and 26th, Bernie was gone, Mick and Paul outvoting Joe, who still rated his revolutionary disruptions. Rhodes instigated legal proceedings against the band to recover money he claimed they owed him, asking the High Court to freeze their earnings (while taking a £25,000 payoff). For now, Caroline Coon took over while accountants and lawyers looked over the books. Other candidates for the management post included ’60s underground journalist Miles, NME writer Chris Salewicz and CBS press officer Ellie Smith. Caroline found a new agent in Ian Flukes at Derek Block’s agency; the first time they would have a professional road crew with tour managers, along with Johnny and Baker.

Meanwhile, Give ‘Em Enough Rope was finished. It had cost around £150,000 to make (against the first album’s four). The cover art, designed by Gene Grief, was derived from a Chinese government postcard showing a dead cowboy being picked by vultures as the Red Army rides in. The album, housed in a luscious press kit which is now a collector’s item, was unveiled to the media at an old-school lunchtime lig in a Soho porn cinema, lubricated by flowing booze. I’m ashamed to admit that Robin, Topper, Johnny and me took a few boxes around the corner to Cheapo Cheapo, the used record emporium on Rupert Street which kept many journalists alive back then, then hit the pub. Luckily, Mick now sees the funny side. “That was so funny! The record was in Cheapos on the Thursday and it wasn’t released until the Monday.”

The old phrase “Give him enough rope, and he’ll hang himself” is dictionary-defined as “giving a bad person enough time and freedom to do as he pleases, and he may make a bad mistake and get into trouble.” It was perfect for the album, foretelling the scorn they expected from press and punk’s more reactionary elements, who found it inconceivable to see “their group” making a roaring, incisive rock ‘n’ roll masterwork. Give ‘Em Enough Rope still entered the charts at number two when released on November 10 and 124 in the US the following April. Tommy Gun was the first single, providing their first top 20 hit when it reached number 19 (they still turned down Top Of The Pops, in favour of Don Letts’ video and an appearance on ruling Saturday morning TV show Tiswas).

From my view in the Clash camp, the album was a robust progression from the first album’s stark intensity while showing signs of embracing wider musical styles such as the New Orleans swing of Julie’s Been Working For The Drug Squad (about Operation Julie, the massive bust which had nabbed one of the world’s biggest LSD factories in Wales).

Of course, Last Gang In Town incurred the expected flak and so did the change in style and obviously maturity. But as blues veteran Willie Dixon once said, “Every time you change the news, you got to change the blues because the news ain’t always the same. The blues changes just like everything else changes.” The Clash had changed and, by creating a new stepping stone and launch-pad, would change even more — for the better.

The cryptically named Sort It Out tour ran from October 13 to London’s Lyceum on January 3rd, 1979, supported by a dynamic new Slits unveiling new drummer Budgie to embark on the first giant steps in their own career. I went on this one too and the atmosphere was noticeably different with Bernie gone and Mick back to his funny, friendly old self. The atmosphere was looser and more positive while the band was on fire every night as the new songs continued to explode into life. Next stops: The Cost Of Living EP, the first US tour in February and London Calling. The Clash had just spent a year weathering storms and obstacles which could have derailed the group, but had come out the other end stronger than ever. If they could survive all that, they could survive anything. Or could they? VLB.

“First amid foremost I was a huge Clash fan”

Eugene Butcher talks to master selector Scratchy about his Clash memories.

How did you first meet up with The Clash and how did you end up being their tour DJ?

“I was resident DJ at the original Dingwalls Dancehall in London throughout ’76 & ’77 and started doing concerts at all the major venues like The Roundhouse, The Lyceum, Hammersmith Odeon and The Rainbow, as well as touring twice with Dr. Feelgood. I was building a reputation for the music I played and I was asked by Rock Against Racism to MC the gig in Victoria Park when Johnny Rotten couldn’t. Front row seat for all the Clash action. Exhilarating, including the backstage altercation documented in Rude Boy. I then did two of the four nights at The Music Machine, during which Johnny Green came and told me that he and Joe really dug my selections. After playing their Roxy Harlesden shows, the band’s agent contacted me and asked if I’d like to tour with them. Twist my arm, why don’t ya! I clocked up five tours alongside them, including the first three Stateside.”

What do you remember about the On Parole tour?

“The Music Machine gigs were the only shows I did for On Parole. Sort It Out was my first full tour. But, as first and foremost a huge Clash fan, I’d already ensured I’d be at all four nights in London, by covering it for Sounds, even before I snared the DJ gigs. I also drove down to Crawley where Alan Vega got nutted by some disgruntled skinhead.”

Did you have ‘Complete Control’ over what you played or was it what the band wanted? What sort of stuff were you playing back then?

“Both. They had total trust in my selections of punk, rock ’n’ roll, rhythm ’n’ blues, roots reggae, ska, sixties soul, beat and garage, rockabilly and what they now call proto-punk. It’s always been roots ’n’ culture for me, the old and the new. It was pretty radical for a DJ to be bringing all that together in the mid 1970s. It all took shape the night I did my first punk show alongside the mind-blowin’ Ramones at Dingwalls, July 5th 1976, and still forms the core of what I do today.”

Was there any particular songs you used to play to get the crowd pumped up?

“I fell in love with The Cramps when their first singles on Vengeance arrived in Rough Trade. I’d play them a lot. The Ramones and The Pistols of course.

Junior Parker’s ‘Feelin’ Good’ and Johnnie Allan’s cajun version of ‘Promised Land’ were big tour favourites.

The Feelgoods, Kinks, Stooges and Sonics were always rousing, as was the Coasters’ ‘Riot In Cell Block No.9’ which became one of the band’s intros. I’d spin everyone from Big Youth and Toots, The Skatalites & Culture to Gene Vincent, The Animals and Howlin’ Wolf. But I’ve always believed in digging wide and deep, and not just relying on the same tunes.”

What are you up to now?

“Since hooking up with Strummer again with The Mescaleros throughout 2002, I’ve toured with The Pogues, Gogol Bordello and The Dead Brothers.

I gigged a fair bit with The Urban Voodoo Machine too. I recently did a ‘Vic’n’Scratchy Show’ tour in Canada with Vic Ruggiero of The Slackers. Mainly now, I play clubs and festivals across the globe with sets of The Rock and The Roll of The World, which is how I’ve expanded, not replaced, the music I always favoured, adding sounds and flavours of a similar spirit from all over the planet. In December I’m back in Japan for a fourth time to start celebrating The Spirit of 76: 40 Years of Scratchy Sounds, four decades since my first gigs at The Speakeasy in late ’75 and that rather eventful year of 1976 that followed.”

Photo: Peter Stevens