Originally published in NME, 13 August 2011. Written by Mark Beaumont, with contributions from Barry Miles, Caroline Coon, and others.
The gigs, the punch ups, the legacy
The Clash
How the '76 Punk Explosion changed music forever
13 August 2011
This feature explores the explosive rise of The Clash during the summer of 1976, charting their early gigs, political stance, and influence on punk culture and beyond. Through interviews and reflections, it reveals how the band’s raw energy, anti-establishment ethos, and commitment to social commentary ignited a musical revolution that still resonates today.
Contents
1. The Summer Punk Exploded - Introduction to The Clash and the 1976 punk revolution.
2. First Steps: The Black Swan, Sheffield - The Clash's debut gig supporting the Sex Pistols.
3. Clash Meets Ramones: Dingwalls Showdown - Punk tribes gather for the Ramones’ first London gig.
4. Screen On The Green: Rivalries Ignite - The infamous midnight gig with the Pistols and Buzzcocks.
5. The 100 Club: Swastikas and Final Straws - Punk’s defining festival and Keith Levene's departure.
6. Mobilising the Movement - From "White Riot" to debut album — The Clash galvanise punk.
7. Legacy: The Bands They Inspired - Reflections from modern acts influenced by The Clash.
8. The Clash Manifesto: Politics and Purpose - 1976 NME interview — anti-racism, anti-fascism, and social justice.
9. Creative Violence and Cultural Resistance - How The Clash channelled aggression into art and activism.
10. 1977 and Beyond: The Punk Spirit Lives On - Closing thoughts on The Clash's enduring impact.
"Something was happenning-collective consiousness ot whatever you call it..."
Thirty-five years ago this summer, from the murky melting pot of London came — The Clash, paint-spattered social crusaders high on their own myths and stencilled slogans. Mark Beaumont talks to the band and the main punk players about the summer of ’76 gigs that set in motion a cultural revolution which still burns today.
MAIN PHOTO: STEVE EMBERTON
When The Stranglers’ JJ Burnel talks about throwing a punch at Paul Simonon at a Ramones gig, you can virtually hear the crack of fist on cheekbone. When Mick Jones talks about spattering himself with pink paint for The Clash’s first London gig, you can practically smell the emulsion in the air. And when guitarist Keith Levene talks about storming out of The Clash in a fountain of feedback, the screech slices through the ages. The thrill is of having been there, when modern rock was born.
The earliest days of The Clash were among the most exciting in musical history; 35 years ago this summer, with the Sex Pistols already shocking crowds and the Ramones’ debut galvanising gabba-gabba rock across the globe, The Clash set about combining their anger with a social conscience and reggae rebellion to create the blueprint for everything from the Manics to The Libertines, from Gorillaz to The Vaccines. This was the Big Bang for the great bands of the modern age, so let’s take a tour through that vital garageland with those who lit the spark. To the summer of 1976, when London was burning...
"WE PAINTED THE NOTES IN PINK NAIL VARNISH..."
JULY 4, THE BLACK SWAN, SHEFFIELD
"Primarily," says Clash manager and svengali Bernie Rhodes, "my contribution towards a better world was a revolution in entertainment. I liberated the audience from being passive fans to active participants. I formed The Clash to counter the fascistic policy of treating an audience like shit, particularly women."
Whether you believe the legend that Mick Jones and Paul Simonon met Joe Strummer in a dole office queue ("bollocks," according to Keith Levene) or the less romantic story that Bernie poached Joe from The 101’ers while piecing the band together around Mick Jones, this much is fact: after intense rehearsal of tracks such as "Janie Jones", "I’m So Bored With You" and "Protex Blue", Mick, Paul, Keith, Joe and drummer Terry Chimes found themselves crammed in a van to Sheffield in July 1976 for The Clash’s first gig, supporting the Sex Pistols at the Black Swan.
Mick: "I remember going to the gig in a removals van. We stole Keith's plimsolls and put them on bits of string and they were bouncing behind us along the motorway."
"WE WERE JUST KIDS MAKING IT IN OUR FIRST BAND" — Keith Levene
The band with their notorious manager Bernie Rhodes (second from right) just loved the Ramones.
It was the back room of a pub. Paul was still early on in his learning of the stuff. We’d painted the notes on his bass so I used to shout out to him, 'It’s a G!' or 'E!' It was written on in nail varnish.
Unhappy with the "White Riot" direction, Keith was already feeling dislocated from The Clash:
"I was really at loggerheads with Mick by then," he recalls. "The Pistols were soundchecking and John Lydon was sitting on his own right down the end of the hall. I went up to him and said, ‘You, me, if you ever get out of this fucking band, I’m definitely out of this.’ Anyway, about five months later he’s looking for me!" (The pair would form Public Image Ltd together in 1978.)
"YOUR BASS PLAYER JUST NUTTED OUR BASS PLAYER..."
JULY 5, RAMONES AT DINGWALLS
The following night, the tribe gathered. As the Ramones hit town for their first London gig, all of the bands in awe of their hell-for-leather debut flocked to see them — the Pistols, The Clash, The Stranglers, The Subway Sect and Chrissie Hynde were all eyeing each other cockily across the crowd.
Keith: "When the Ramones album came out it kicked everyone hard in the bollocks. [But] The Clash didn’t change from seeing the Ramones."
Joey Ramone performing in Camden during the NYC group's first London visit in 1976.
This regular opener at the '76 gigs had it all — a chantable chorus, a scandalous snarl, a story of a worker drone telling The Man to stick his tax credit forms up his ’arris.
The title suggests a pogo party gatecrashed by the Luftwaffe (‘Blitzkrieg Jitterbug’? - Dance Ed) and this ’76 rave with riffs like doodlebugs sounds like it.
This seminal calling card was released in November '76 after being played through the summer, setting the tone for the entire punk movement.
Pipping "Anarchy In The UK" to shops by a matter of weeks, The Damned’s debut lays claim to being the first punk single.
Titled "I’m So Bored With You" when played in ’76, this was still one of The Clash’s catchiest early tunes.
Recorded for their "Spiral Scratch" EP that December, "Boredom", with its cracking chorus and two-note solo, still stands up today.
A sci-fi surf number with major glam hints of Bowie and Bolan, this was a favourite at the 100 Club festival in September ’76.
A celebration and condemnation of dead-eyed (anti-)glamour, this deceptively sophisticated tune was a high point of the Pistols ’76 shows.
Decried on its first performances in ’76 for its perceived sexist content, "Peaches" was nonetheless one of the biggest hits of the summer of '77.
The song that launched a thousand gormless nosebleeds with its appearance on the Ramones’ debut.
Faces of '76; above, Joe Strummer looking moody, and below, the band ripping it up onstage.
Joe, Mick and Paul in 1976 posing for the cover of "White Riot", released the following year.
If John Rotten at the 100 Club...
"HE WANTED US DEAD BY ASPHYXIATION..."
AUGUST 29, ISLINGTON SCREEN ON THE GREEN
With the rivalry between the Sex Pistols and The Clash stoked to bursting point in the press, their joint midnight gig (with Buzzcocks) at Islington’s Screen On The Green later that month was always going to be something of a gob-off at dawn.
Keith: "We were in competition with the Pistols, but the Pistols were the best thing for us and we were the best thing for the Pistols. It gave it that Stones/Beatles thing. I guess The Clash have to be The Beatles if the Pistols are gonna be the Stones."
Mick: "As the second band, we had to build the stage. We watched [Clint Eastwood western] The Outlaw Josey Wales three times, and then when the film was finished we had to build. So by the time we played we were knackered. There were also rumours of sound fixing. We didn’t sound so great, then the Pistols came on and they sounded great. By that time they were a bit worried about us."
Robin Banks, Clash associate: "The Pistols screwed up the sound for The Clash, that’s the story. Both bands came together and thrashed it out in the pub. Sort of a summit — a summit in the public bar!"
At the Screen On The Green, The Clash roared through 14 songs, from the scabrous "Deny" to the psychopathic "All Day And All Of The Night" that was "1977".
"I thought after every fucking note I might die," says Keith. "I put everything into every fucking note. A cock hard gig."
Mick: "That one started at 12 o'clock at night and went all morning. We didn’t get a very good review... [NME critic] Charles Shaar Murray said we should be returned to the garage with the ignition left on. That’s what made us write 'Garageland'. The next time we saw Charles Shaar Murray we wanted to fight with him, then we made amends and we became friends. But at first we were all antagonistic because he wanted us dead by asphyxiation."
Caroline: "You could actually see how that generation of teenagers were going to use the inspiration of the music to create their own culture."
"THE SWASTIKA WAS A BIG PROBLEM"
SEPTEMBER 21, 100 CLUB
"It wasn’t even the gig," remembers Vic Godard of the now-legendary punk festival at the 100 Club — a gig of a couple of hundred capacity but which two-thirds of the country’s middle-aged population claim to have seen.
Inside, having notched up another Sex Pistols support at the 100 Club on August 31, and a Patti Smith support slot at The Roundhouse on September 5, The Clash were confident enough to start nailing their politics to the wall.
Caroline: "Malcolm McLaren had decided to create his pseudo-shock by getting Sex Pistols fans to wear swastikas. So Siouxsie Sioux and the Bromley Contingent [Sex Pistols fans] had turned up for the rehearsal wearing swastikas. It was going to be The Clash's equipment used by all the other bands and The Clash and Bernie said to Malcolm that using swastikas was a stupidly glib way of trying to create shock. It was The Clash standing up that stopped punks using swastikas as a shock tactic."
Mick: "When that swastika stuff came out, then there was a big problem with us."
The Clash gig was typically explosive.
"We got up and played our fucking arses off," Keith says. "I wasn’t that impressed — ‘Ooh, the 100 Club, big fucking deal."
Mick: "There’s a lovely 100 Club poster I got off the wall, it had Ken Collier’s Jazz Band, Acker Bilk, then it said 'Sex Pistols and The Clash' and then it went back to trad jazz!"
The 100 Club would be Keith’s last gig with the band.
"I was at a rehearsal," he recalls, "sat being a miserable git. Suddenly we're having this team talk and there’s a vote going on. I went, ‘Do you want me in the band?’ Mick was no, Terry Chimes didn’t get a vote but he was yes, Joe was ‘I don’t know’ and Paul was ‘If Joe’s yes then I’m yes and if Joe’s no then I’m no.’ And it was, ‘No.’ I turned my guitar and left it against the amp, so I left in a hail of feedback. It was really difficult — we were making it and I had to leave."
Nonetheless, Keith can see the significance of the few fucked-up but volcanically righteous gigs he played with The Clash in the summer of 1976. From here they rocketed; after the tabloid-scuppered Anarchy Tour, banned from venues after the Pistols’ Grundy TV outrage, they fired off the opening volley of "White Riot" in early 1977 and their debut album that April, a Kalashnikov of intent that rattled palace gates and, while the Pistols disintegrated, mobilised the punk scene.
"THE PISTOLS WERE WORRIED ABOUT US"
— Mick Jones
The 100 Club Punk Special, September 1976 (clockwise from top): The Clash onstage; The Banshees’ Steve Severin and Siouxsie Sioux, and the Bromley Contingent; Paul Simonon; the early punk crowd.
While the Pistols disintegrated, The Clash fired off the opening volley of "White Riot" in early 1977 and released their debut album that April — a Kalashnikov of intent that rattled palace gates and mobilised the punk scene.
Within two years they'd grow into The Clash of "London Calling" — chart-busting genre-hoppers with integrity, originators of guitar music with depth and message, open to diverse cultural influence. Without The Clash’s attitude at the root of modern music, there’d be no "Ghost Town", no "Girlfriend In A Coma", no "Out Of Space", no "Wrote For Luck", no "Screamadelica", no "Song 2", no "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor", no "Plastic Beach".
"There’s no doubt that in that period of time between ’76 and ’79," says Keith, "no mobile phones, no nothing, how the fuck was everybody always in the right place at the right time? Something was happening, collective consciousness or whatever you want to call it."
We called it punk, and it pierced the septum of history.
Check out 50 things you never knew about The Clash at NME.COM/photos now, listen to the essential punk playlist at NME.COM/blogs and watch bands explain what The Clash mean to them at NME.COM/video.
If The Clash were London’s urban poets of the '70s, Jamie T is the 21st-century equivalent.
"I love their diversity — they’re not a one-trick pony band," he’s said in the past. It helps his association, too, having a colourful cast of nicknamed delinquents barreling through his tunes flicking Vs at The Establishment.
Borrowing from the Ramones’ song-sheet, it’s The Clash’s vigour that makes The Vaccines’ music so incendiary.
"The Clash are the perfect example of, ‘It’s not what you play, but how you play it’," says Justin Young. "We've tried not to use other bands as blueprints, but often The Clash’s influence on us is unavoidable."
The spray-on slogans. The combat stance and military fatigues. The anti-corporate songs that ironically shifted shedloads. When the Manics first emerged, they looked like the ghosts of Strummer future, and garnered a similarly slavering critical following as a result. The same hatred Strummer had for guns and government, the Manics had for banks, Slowdive, and lyrics that scan.
"Apart from The Clash and some Skids singles, no music has made any impact in my life," Richey Edwards once wrote.
Though The Clash would have baulked at their early material’s sexist connotations, the rebellious punch of "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!)" was like a Clash from another dimension.
Ad-Rock: "We used to hang out with The Clash a lot in the UK. Suddenly we were hanging out with these people we had grown up on."
The left-wing political stance of The Clash set the tone for a lot of alternative culture in the late ’70s and early ’80s, both in music and comedy. And as Thatcher’s claw closed on the country’s knackers, Billy Bragg was one of the foremost exponents of this ethos.
Geoff Travis wanted a copy group," says Bernie Rhodes. "If you go back to the early days of The Smiths, the way they present themselves is a carbon copy." Fact or fiction, the frenzy and ferocity of "The Queen Is Dead" or "Panic", for instance, undoubtedly take scratchy influence from "London Calling".
They've always been the Day-Glo gonk Clash. But of late, they’ve also tackled lengthy, politically charged albums attempting to wrap massive raga rock riffs around the throats of the capitalist scumpigs.
When NME’s Barry Miles met The Clash in late ’76, he found a young band fired up by the wrongs of the world — and threatening to slice his face up.
Barry Miles, 2011: "I remember there were a load of jukeboxes in the room, Bernie [Rhodes, Clash manager] had a line in jukeboxes — as well as used cars and other stuff! They were slightly suspicious, they didn’t know how to behave, they hadn’t got used to the media yet. I’m not sure how much they knew about me. Caroline [Coon] probably told them I was friends with The Beatles or something.
"Joe Strummer kept saying, ‘Why are you talking like that?’ [poshly]. But really, he was the one with the middle-class accent and pretending to slum it. It was kind of funny — he claimed he was squatting, but he was squatting with [famed designer and writer] Terence Conran’s son in Regent’s Park!"
"I thought Mick was the most charismatic one, he genuinely wanted to be a rock star, you could tell that. But overall I was more impressed than I was with the other punk bands I’d met. The official line was that the punks hated the hippies — so they did quite a good job, I think."
NME, December 11, 1976
NME: What do you think people ought to know about you?
Joe Strummer: "I think people ought to know that we're anti-fascist, we're anti-violence, we're anti-racist and we're pro-creative. We're against ignorance."
Mick Jones: "We urge people to learn fast."
We are in The Clash’s huge, bare rehearsal studio in the railway yard near London’s Roundhouse. Singer and guitarist Joe Strummer does most of the talking but Mick Jones, also on guitar, throws in some well-thought-out opinions. Paul Simonon, the bass player, says less. Drummer Terry Chimes isn’t there.
Strummer paces the room nervously. He wears boots and a boiler suit painted with abstract expressionist slashes of colour. The group make their own clothes since they are too poor to buy any, transforming jumble sale shirts by painting on words and colours.
Joe directs total attention to each question and I can see the boredom return to his face if I wait too long before asking another — like the shadows of clouds passing over a mountain, always changing. Mick and Paul seem more relaxed but are equally uncompromising in their answers, caring little for social niceties.
They talk of the boredom of living in council high-rise blocks, of living at home with parents, of dole queues and the mind-destroying jobs offered to unemployed school-leavers. They talk about there being no clubs that stay open late, how Britain has no rock‘n’roll radio stations, of how there is nothing to do. They speak of how kids who like The Clash will get beaten up because of how they look. Joe has even been thrown out of a pub full of hippies because he has short hair.
I asked how their music was a solution to all this. Joe leapt at the question:
"Our music is a solution to this, because it’s a solution for us, number one. Because I don’t have to get drunk every night and go around kicking people and smashing up phone boxes, which is what Paul used to do. I get my frustrations out onstage."
"Number two is for our audiences, because we're dealing with subjects we really believe to matter. We're hoping to educate any kid who comes to listen to us, right, just to keep ’em from joining the National Front. I mean, we just really don’t want the National Front stepping in and saying, ‘Things are bad — it’s the blacks...’ We want to prevent that, you know?"
It was their lyrics which first attracted me to the group — they seemed to be the only people coming right out and singing about how things really are in Britain today for young people. One song in particular summed it up: it’s called "Career Opportunities".
"Career opportunities / The ones that never knock / Every job they offer you / Is to keep you out the dock / Career opportunities / They offered me the office / They offered me the shop / They said I’d do better take anything they got / Do you wanna make tea at the BBC? / Do you wanna be, do you wanna be — a cop?"
As Mick says, "These songs couldn't be written in any other year."
Mick: "We want to bring these things to the attention of other people to help them learn faster."
Paul: "This group is the pulse of the movement."
Mick is from Brixton: "I ain’t never lived under five floors. Now I’m in Paddington. I’m on the 18th now." He still lives at home.
Joe: "We got a song called 'London’s Burning With Boredom' and we wrote it on the 18th floor, didn’t we?"
Mick: "You can see the Westway. It’s a celebration of the Westway..."
"Up and down the Westway / In and out the lights / What a great traffic system / It’s so bright / I can’t think of a better way to spend the night / Than speeding around / Underneath the yellow lights / London's burning with boredom, baby."
Mick explained how he sees the difference between punk and reggae. The music of The Clash has the emphasis on rhythm, just like reggae:
"They come from a Caribbean island. They're laidback. But our speed is the Westway speed."
"The speed of a car going down the Westway..." adds Joe.
Mick: "...ours is like, the only thing that’s speaking for young white kids."
Joe: "We listen to reggae, we get a lot of blacks, right."
Mick: "We know they've got their thing sewn up. They got their own culture but the young white kids don’t have nothing. That’s why so many of them are living in ignorance and they’ve just gotta wise up."
I told Joe some people had thought that the lyrics to "White Riot" were racialist. Joe lunged at the remark like a Doberman:
"They're not racist! They're not racist at all! I’ll tell you the verses, right? It goes:
"Black people got a load of problems / But they don't mind throwing a brick / But white men go to school / Where they teach you how to be thick / So everybody does what they're told to / And everybody eats supermarket soul food."
"The only thing we're saying about the blacks is that they've got their problems and they’re prepared to deal with them. But white men, they just ain’t prepared to deal with them. They've got stereos, drugs, cars..."
Mick: "We're completely anti-racist. We want to bridge the gap. They used to blame everything on the Jews, now they're saying it about the blacks and Asians... everybody’s a scapegoat, right?"
Joe: "The poor blacks and the poor whites are in the same boat... They don’t want us in their culture, but we just happen to dig Tapper Zukie, Big Youth, Dillinger, Aswad and Delroy Washington. We'd just like to bridge the gap between the two things, but primarily we gotta be concerned with young white kids because that’s what we are. But we ain't nothing like racist, NO WAY."
On stage, The Clash are dynamite — a continuous buzz of pure energy. They play for 45 minutes but it seems like 30.
Joe: "We don’t want to be indulgent. We take a certain song and we do the subject for what it’s worth and then we get on with the next one. We don’t hang about."
Some people have made the connection between the high-energy output of punk rock groups and violence. The Clash rise up united. The kids, they say, just feel really bored and frustrated, get really drunk and then become violent.
Mick: "But we ain’t advocating it. We're trying to understand it... We definitely think it ain’t hip. We think it’s disgusting to be violent."
He recalled their recent gig at the ICA where Jane Crockford (later of The Mo-dettes) cut up Shane MacGowan’s earlobe:
"On that gig, it put me an’ you off, didn’t it? I mean, when I came off stage I didn’t feel good."
Joe: "But it’s energy, right? And we wanna channel it in the right direction."
Paul Simonon had the words ‘Creative Violence’ stencilled on his painted boiler suit. Since I wanted to know about violence, Joe explained further:
"Suppose I smash your face in and slit your nostrils with this, right?"
Joe had been opening and closing his flick-knife throughout the interview. He holds it close for me to see.
"Well, if you don’t learn anything from it, then it’s not worth it, right? And if I smash his face up and he learns something from it — well, that’s in a sense creative violence. And this sort of paintwork is creative violence too, right?" He points to Paul's stencils and clashing colours.
Coming from the concrete jungle, they see society disintegrating. But instead of sitting back like Bowie and waiting for fascism to arrive and “save” them, they are fighting back. When Paul Simonon named the band The Clash, he meant it.
"In 1977 / There’s knives in West 11 / Ain't so lucky to be rich / Sten guns in Knightsbridge / Danger, stranger, you’d better paint your face / No Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones in 1977."
www.blackmarketclash.co.uk
email blackmarketclash.co.uk@gmail.com
STRUMMER, BAD, Pogues, films + : THE SOLO YEARS STRUMMER & THE LATINO ROCKABILLY WAR BOOKS, NEWSPAPERS & FEATURE MAGAZINES Sex Pistols / The Jam / The Libertines / Others
|
