Let Fury Have the Hour

by Antonino D'Ambrosio

  Steve Walsh: What was that with the radio at the 100 Club gig?

  Joe Strummer: Well, all that was . . . I’d been lucky and bought a cheap transistor in a junk shop for ten bob and it worked quite well. I’d been goin’ around with it on my ear for a few days just to see what it was like. When someone broke a string I got it out and it just happened to be something about Northern Ireland.

  Mick Jones: A state of emergency . . .

  Steve Walsh: Yeah, bombs . . . I thought it was interesting; I thought maybe it was part of the way you approach your audience.

  Mick Jones: That was part of it, but we’ve tried other things since then, like at the Roundhouse . . . er . . . we “talked” to the audience . . .

  Joe Strummer: But they were half asleep . . .

  Mick Jones: The ones who were awake were pretty clever.

  Joe Strummer: I didn’t think so, I mean you could hear them, I couldn’t. How can I answer smartass jibes when I can’t hear ’em? All I could hear was some girl sayin’, “nyah, nyah, nyah!” and then everyone goes, “aha, ha, ha.” [Bursts out laughing.] If you can’t hear what they’re saying, then you can’t really get out your great wit!

  Mick Jones: Well, I’m sure they were funny ’cause everyone was laughing at ’em but when Joe said something like, you know, “Fuck off, fatso!” there was just complete silence! [More laughter.]

  Steve Walsh: So, what do you wanna do to your audience?

  Joe Strummer: Well, there’s two ways; there’s that confronting thing, right! No . . . three ways. Make ’em feel a bit . . . threaten ’em, startle ’em and second—I know it’s hard when you see rock ’n’ roll bands, to hear what the lyrics are but we’re workin’ on getting the words out and makin’ ’em mean something and the third thing is rhythm. Rhythm is the thing ’cause if it ain’t got rhythm then you can just sling it in the dustbin!

  He’s in love with rock ’n’ roll, wooaghhh!

  He’s in love with getting stoned, woooagh!

  He’s in love with Janie Jones, wooagggh!

  But he don’t like his boring job, no—oo!

  —“JANIE JONES,” BY THE CLASH

  ANY INFLUENCE?

  Joe Strummer: That’s a tricky question . . . Paul’s are the Ethiopians, and what’s that other band?

  Paul Simonon: The Rulers.

  Joe Strummer: I’ve never heard of ’em!

  Mick Jones: Up until now, I thought everything was the cat’s knickers and every group was great. I used to go to all the concerts all the time and that’s all I did. Until, somehow, I stopped believing in it all, I just couldn’t face it. I s’pose the main influences are Mott the Hoople, the Kings, the Stones, but I just stopped believing. Now, what’s out there (points out the window)—that’s my influence!

  Steve Walsh: What changed your way of looking at things?

  Mick Jones: I just found out it weren’t true. I stopped reading all the music papers ’cause I used to believe every word. If they told me to go out and buy this record and that, then, I’d just go out and do it. You know, save up me paper round and go out and buy shit and now I’m in a position where I’m selling the records ’cause I don’t have much money and they’re showing me how much shit’s worth! ’Cause I paid two quid for them albums and they give me ten pence down at the record shop, that’s how much they think you’re worth!

  MICK

  Mick Jones: I’ve played with so many arse ’oles and my whole career has been one long audition. Like, I was the last kid on my block to pick up a guitar ’cause all the others were repressing me and saying, “No, you don’t want to do that, you’re too ugly, too spotty, you stink!” . . . and I believed ’em. I was probably very gullible and then I realized that they weren’t doing too well and I said, ah fuck, I can do just as well!

  London’s burning with boredom,

  London’s burning, dial 999!

  Steve Walsh: What do you think of the scene so far?

  Mick Jones: Well, it’s coming from us, the Pistols, Subway Sect, and maybe the Buzzcocks. That’s it, there are no other bands!

  Mark P.: What do you think of bands that just go out and enjoy themselves?

  Mick Jones: You know what I think? I think they’re a bunch of ostriches; they’re sticking their heads in the fuckin’ sand! They’re enjoying themselves at the audience’s expense. They’re takin’ their audience for a ride, feeding the audience shit!

  Mark P.: What if the audience say they’re enjoying themselves?

  Joe Strummer: Look, the situation is far too serious for enjoyment, man. Maybe when we’re fifty-five we can play tubas in the sun, that’s alright then to enjoy yourselves, but now!

  Mick Jones: I think if you wanna fuckin’ enjoy yourselves you sit in an armchair and watch TV, but if you wanna get actively involved, ’cause rock ’n’ roll’s about rebellion. Look, I had this out with Bryan James of the Damned and we were screamin’ at each other for about three hours ’cause he stands for enjoying himself and I stand for change and creativity.

  Joe Strummer: I’d rather play to an audience and them not enjoy it, if we were doin’ what we thought was honest. Rather than us go up and sing, “Get outta Denver, baby,” and do what we didn’t think was honest.

  Mick Jones: If they enjoy us then they come with us. If you ask me what I think of groups like the Hot Rods, I think they’re a load of bozos and they’re not telling the audience to do anything other than stay as they are. They’re playing old stuff and I don’t think much of their originals. The situation is where the Hod Rod’s audience are bozos and it’s easy to identify with a bozo. I mean, obviously they’re goin’ down. . . . like, people queuing outside the Marquee, they’ve got a great thing goin’ for themselves, but it’s not to do with change, it’s just keeping people as they are!

  Steve Walsh: What do you think the scene needs now?

  Mick Jones: Ten more honest bands!

  Joe Strummer: More venues . . .

  Mick Jones: More events!

  Joe Strummer: . . . Just more people who care; if we could get our hands on the money and get something together . . . immediately. None of the promoters running any of the venues in London care. Ron Watts, the 100 Club bloke, has done something but no one else really cares. They don’t give a shit about the music, not one shit!

  Originally appeared in Sniffin’ Glue and Other Rock ’n’ Roll Habits, September 1976.

  GREATNESS FROM GARAGELAND

  By Peter Silverton

  Unannounced, to say the least, a kid in boots, suspenders, and short-cropped hair clambers through the photographers’ pit and up onto the stage of London’s Rainbow Theatre. Benignly ignored by band, stage crew, and security alike, he wanders around the stage a little drunkenly, uncertain quite what to do now that he’s made it up onto the hallowed, sacrosanct boards and is not making quite the impression he thought. Decision flickers across his face, lit by the giant spots, and he grabs hold of the singer’s mike and prepares to join in on the harmonies. When the singer wants his mike back, the kid’s frozen to the stand in fear-drenched exhilaration so the singer has to shout the lines over the kid’s shoulder while the kid pumps in the response lines on perfect cue.

  The encore over, the band leaves the stage and the kid’s stuck there in front of two and a half thousand people and unsure what to do next. With the merest jerk of his head the bass player motions the kid to join the band backstage and everyone goes home happy.

  Sounds like some fantasy of what rock ’n’ roll should be about or at least a case of a cunning audience plant, doesn’t it? It wasn’t. It was the Clash. And it happened just that way at the first of their three nights at the Rainbow in December.

  That’s the thing about the Clash: they can break rules you didn’t know existed till they trashed ’em. That’s why, in a year, without any kind of Springsteen-like hype—except from zealot journalists like myself—they’ve gone from empty college and club halls to three nights at a major London venue. Like the Pistols, they�
�re so special that they’ve created not only their own style but also their own rule structure. Only the most carping would say that the Clash are like anybody or anything else.

  Because of events like the one just described, the Clash command an awesome respect, even adulatory deification from their fans. Some of them really do expect the Clash to slip ’em the meaning life in a three minute rock ’n’ roll song. Mind you, full-grown rock writers have been known to make the same mistake. And to think, all that achieved with only two national tours of Britain and but one album and three singles (in total seventeen songs, nineteen tracks) in general circulation.

  And I still don’t think the Clash realize themselves what kind of position they’re in. It’s as if they’re (very understandably) scared of facing up to the fact of that worship and its implications.

  Here’s another little scene which might help explain what I’m getting at. A few days before I sat down to tap this through my crappy little Smith-Corona portable I found myself at a gig, competing with Clash meistersinger Joe Strummer for the bartender’s attention. (Incidentally, I won.)

  Having known Strummer for almost two years, I wasn’t too surprised when, after exchanging the usual pleasantries, he turned on me a little drunkenly and demanded to know who my favorite English band was. More than a little embarrassed, I told him: “Your lot.”

  “Nah, come on,” he replied. “Tell me who you really think’s the best.”

  “The Clash,” my voice getting louder. “Honest!”

  Joe didn’t believe. “I bet you’ll tell the Hot Rods the same thing tomorrow.”

  So, here in cold type, let’s set the matter straight with an open letter.

  Dear Joe,

  The Clash are not only the best band in Britain. They’re the best band in the world. (I think that for a magnitude of reasons I’ll explain in good time.) For me, you’re the latest in a straight three-act lineage: Chuck Berry, the Stones, the Clash. No one else comes near. The Beatles may have written better songs but. . . . The Pistols may have been a bigger force of change but . . . Fercrissakes, if I didn’t believe all this stuff, you don’t think you’d catch me spieling out all these cascades of yeeugh-making praise, do you now? There’s a whole lot more becoming things for an adult to do, you know.

  Yours,

  Pete

  P.S. But I still don’t believe that you’re the saint, let alone godhead that some of your more impressionable fans crack you up to be. I know you’re just as big a head-case as the rest of us.

  Good. That out of the way, I can move on to telling you good and patient—you must be if you’ve got this far—readers just how and why the Clash have come to occupy such a prominent place in my—and a lot of other people’s—affections.

  The Clash at core are three people. Mick Jones on lead guitar, vocals, and Keef lookalike. He was in the London SS, about whom the myths outweigh the facts at least tenfold. Paul Simonon plays bass, smiles a lot, lopes around like a grossly underfed gorilla on a vitamin B-and-methedrine cure for malnutrition and catches the fancy of more women than the rest of the band put together—Patti Smith, for example. Joe Strummer sings in a manner that some find so unmusical as to be repulsive (you find those kind of philistines everywhere) and others reckon is compulsive and entrancing. Joe was the leading light in the “world-famed” 101ers and still plays the same tortured, demonic rhythm guitar that was the highlight of that band.

  And then there’s the fourth man, Nicky “Topper” Headon, the drummer. He gets left out of the central three because he’s the last in a long line of skin beaters with the Clash—Terry Chimes (a.k.a. Tory Crimes) plays on the album—and, although Nicky’s occupied the stool longer and deservedly so than anyone else, he’s still relatively unimportant in the overall image of the band. But who knows, a year from now, he might be as important as Ringo was to the Fabs.

  How did they come together? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, the line they usually hand out to gullible journalists is a heap of shit. They claim that Paul and Mick were trotting down Portobello Road one balmy Saturday, already intent on forming their own band, when they chanced upon Joe Strummer and, knowing him from the still-in-existence-at-this-point 101ers, asked him to be their lead singer. After a couple of days to think it over, he junked the 101ers and threw in his lot with Mick and Paul. That’s the fantasy. The reality, as usual, is both more complex and much less romantic.

  To explain for the benefit of future historians of the social mores of the seventies, I must backtrack to the first time I encountered Mr. Strummer.

  I’d been writing for this rag for a bit and I’d decided I wanted to do a short piece on what it was really like for a struggling band in London, supposed Mecca of rock ’n’ roll. On the recommendation of a friend who’d known Joe since schooldays, I went down to a truly scummy college benefit to check out the 101ers.

  At this point (two years ago) I was just emerging from a five-year period where I was so disgusted by the rock ’n’ roll scene that I spent all day in bed listening to Chuck Berry and reading Trotsky. I’d come to like quite a few of the current pub rock bands but however much I enjoyed them, I knew in my heart of hearts, there was something lacking. And, although, if pressed, I’d say it had something to do with lack of stage presence, it wasn’t till I saw Joe that night that I realized just what was lacking—full-blooded desperation to become a star and communicate with your audience and the sense to realize that not only is that a far from easy task but that, if you don’t find your own way of doing it, you might as well junk the idea right there and then.

  The 101ers were an immensely lovable but generally pretty ramshackle bunch who’d rip through Chuck Berry and R&B numbers with not a trace of genuflection at the altar of the greats. What they—or rather what Joe took—was theirs/his.

  I became so enamored with the 101ers that what had started out as a short article ended up as a veritable thesis which Trouser Press has on file (and I hope they don’t dig it out, even if it is the definitive work on the subject). The day I mailed the piece, the band broke up. The rest of the 101ers dropped into the limbo of obscurity but Joe, with much flourish, hair cutting and clothes altering, hooked up with Paul and Mick.

  That something of the kind had been in the offing I’d suspected since I’d been with Joe watching the Pistols (who were at this time supporting the 101ers). As someone else put it, he saw the light and the Sex Pistols simultaneously.

  Meanwhile Mick Jones, Brian James (later of the Damned), and Tony James (now in Generation X) had been sorting out their chops in a basement under the name of the London SS and the tutelage of future Clash manager Bernard Rhodes, a close pal of Sex Pistols’ manager Malcolm McLaren. The London SS, unable to locate a suitable drummer, never actually played a gig but, according to the few who’ve heard them, their tapes were very impressive.

  When Brian James walked off/was pushed off to form the Damned, the rest of London SS faced up to facts, chucked in the towel, and went their separate ways.

  This is when Mick joined forces with Paul—who’d never even touched a bass before (“I used to be an art designer till I discovered the Clash”)—and Keith Levine, who only stayed long enough to do a few early gigs and cop a co-credit for “What’s My Name” on the album. He was a great guitarist but . . . well, just check out “Deny.”

  Masterminded by their hustler-manager with tertiary verbal diarrhea, Bernard Rhodes, the three of them persuaded Strummer over a period of time that he was exactly the vocalist they needed. When Joe was finally convinced, the four of them moved into an enormous (but very cheap) rehearsal studio of their own and began to audition drummers. Getting the name was easy enough. After an initial flirtation with Weak Heart Drops (after a Big Youth song), they plumped for the challenge of the Clash. But getting a drummer wasn’t so easy.

  They searched with an unusual but understandable and probably correct attitude toward drummers. To wit, drummers can’t drum because they all suffer from a Billy Cobham co
mplex and want to play as much as an egocentric lead guitarist. Therefore drummers have to be taught to drum. And drummers, being by and large nutters, don’t take too kindly to such condescension. Also, at this time, while the rest of the band were outwardly convinced they’d be an unqualified success, under the surface they were stone scared that they couldn’t live up to even their own belief in themselves. The tensions in the Clash camp (late summer ’76) were running so high that just sitting around the rehearsal studio could be an exceedingly uncomfortable experience.

  But after rejecting various drummers who were more in tune with the band’s commitment but couldn’t really hack out the relentless trip-trap bottom line, they settled on Terry Chimes, who didn’t give a flying one about the politics (in the widest sense) of the Clash but made up for it by being one of the best drummers this side of Jerry Nolan.

  Anyway, that’s how they’d shaped up to the point of their early gigs, so that’s enough of this hagiography. That’s not nearly as important as why the Clash are the CLASH.

  SCENE ONE

  Bernie Rhodes holds a Clash preview for the press in the studio, subtly paralleling Paris Schmutter previews. Giovanni Dadomo of Sounds is suitably impressed and reports that the Clash are the first band to come along that look like they could really scare the Pistols.

  SCENE TWO

  The reaction sets in. When the Clash support the Pistols at a London cinema gig, Charles Shaar Murray says that they’re a garage band who ought to get back in the garage and leave the car motor running. (This prompts them to write “Garageland.”)

  SCENE THREE

  The sides settled, every Clash gig becomes an event. When Patti Smith comes over, she sees the Clash at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and is so knocked out with them that she jumps up and “jams.” And some kid in the audience does a mockup of biting off someone’s ear (with the aid of a tomato ketchup capsule) and the picture gets in the weekly music press. By the time they play the Royal College of Art (Arty lot, aren’t they? Still, what do you expect? They all went to art college and wear some of the flashiest clothes imaginable), emotions are running way too high. They play a set under the rubric “A Night of Treason.” (It was November 5, the night that honors the burning of Guy Fawkes, the bloke who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament.) Some of the audience, when not lobbing fireworks around, take an extreme dislike to the Clash and start bunging bottles at the stage. The rest of the audience is split between Clash fans who already think their band can do no wrong and the uncommitted whose prevailing attitude is “Well, they are playing violent music and if you play violent, well you know what they say about what you sow . . . ”