Then one day, after many a trod through Babylon, I walked into a used (and slightly abused) record store in some anonymous avenue in money making Manhattan, where the clerks were unfriendly poser punx who were trained in special tactics on how to make a browsing Puerto Rican feel unwanted, uncomfortable, unwelcome, but still, I dived (hip-hop) head first into turbulent waters, deep beneath the polluted seas and stale sounds, and came up with Fishbone, Bad Brains, Suicidal Tendencies, Black Flag, and deep at the bottom of the crates and craters was some old worn white boy(?) wax called SANDINISTA! I carefully took it out of the crate, checked for (one too many) scratches, dusted it off, and took it home for the title alone. And, shit, in my interest and excitement, I even forgot to pay for it. I’d heard of the Clash, even read about how these British blokes invited Kurtis Blow to open for them when they played in New York shitty because they dug hip-hop, only to see him pelted with rotten vegetables by a less than appreciative “punk” audience. And I had no illusions about American (and European) history and the reality of Elvis, the Rolling Stones, and a slew of other white boy bands that specialized in cultural theft. Yeah, black folks had created all kinds of amazing sounds, from jazz to rock ’n’ roll, to funk to reggae, to salsa to hip-hop, and been ripped off by ofays wit attitude every time. But I figured if the Clash were cool enough back in 1980, to name an album after a Latino armed rebel organization that the U.S. hated and tried to destroy, then, hey, they couldn’t be all bad, now could they?
I gotta shed this skin I been living in/Gotta shed this skin I been living in
—“SHED THIS SKIN”
Sandinista!, a sprawling three-vinyl release that, back in 1980, was sold for the low low price of one record (due to the band’s taking the monetary loss for the major labels’ refusal to go along with the Clash’s idea that a three-record set could/should be sold at a one-record price as a gift to the consumer/fan), was a revelation wrapped loosely in revolution. I liberated (uh, bought) it mostly for the title, but I got so much more, and I would go on to free their entire anthology from the confines of record stores that insisted on placing them in the cheapie bin, close to the trash bin, or (conveniently for me) close to the exit door. The Clash, Black Market Clash, Give ’Em Enough Rope, London Calling, Combat Rock, shit, even Cut the Crap provided the punk politics I was looking for and even gave me some hope that maybe, just maybe, not all anglos were white supremacist red necked conquistador colonizing crackas who turned off ya mom’s apartment’s heat in the dead of winter, and tossed your dad in a cold jail cell in the heat of summer. Yeah, the Clash knew they were white, and the legacy that entailed, and they knew that the days were racial tension and the nights were racial fear, and that London was burning and Brixton was already ashes. But precisely because (or in spite) of this, they also knew that something had to give, and so they tried to give something in the hopes that perhaps they could play a part. And all they really had to give that was worth a god damn in these troubled days was punk, so they put their punk sensibilities and abilities where it counted. Yeah, the black (market) planet was in revolt, so these white boys asked for a riot of their own.
Kick over the wall, cause governments to fall/How can you refuse it?/Let fury have the hour, anger can be power/If you know that you can use it.
—“CLAMPDOWN”
The Clash were far from the best band on the planet (though one mainstream rag called them “the only band that mattered”), and they were even further from being the best band for the job that they chose to accept. Their musicianship was par for the punk course, really, and their lead singer, Joe Strummer, sang like he had one too many marbles in his mouth after a bout of two too many ales. But I actually enjoyed (and respected) hearing Joe Strummer yelp what was supposed to be a rap, and claw his way through what was supposed to be funk, and all with an ear toward punk as politics. If anyone was “Overpowered by Funk,” it was Strummer. He had to know that he wasn’t gonna be givin’ Melle Mel or George Clinton a run for their money anytime soon, nor was Strummer writing groovilicious hit songs that the record labels and radio stations would greedily latch onto, when he ventured into shallow funk punk polluted waters and uncharted rap rock territory. Most of the Clash hits were the fast, pure poppy punk of songs like “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” “London Calling,” all “Lost in the Supermarket,” and, the somewhat funky in spite of itself, “Rock the Casbah.” So why record the Latin(o) tinged “Washington Bullets,” which beckoned folks to “please remember Victor Jara, es verdad,” or for that matter toss badly mangled Spanish into their tunes, as they did in “Should I Stay or Should I Go.” And what in the world could explain the cornball grooves of “Overpowered by Funk,” which (complete with a bad rap by Graffiti writer Futura 2000) actually copped to the question of cultural thievery when it placed Benny Goodman on a list and sentenced him to a trial by jury. And then knowingly asked whether perhaps the Clash’s name might be on that same list? So hits was never quite the point in spite of the fact that the masters of DIY punk themselves, Crass, stated (very eloquently, I might add) that Epic “signed the Clash, not for revolution, just for cash.” No, the Clash were never “sellouts.” They tried way too hard to be against the grain and the mainstream brain to sell their soul, and knew, maybe better than anybody, that punk meant counter culture, and if it wasn’t counter culture it wasn’t punk.
Yo te quiero infinito/Yo te acuerda oh mi corazon
—“SPANISH BOMBS”
The Clash’s significance musically, culturally, and politically is as important and relevant today as it was back in ’77 (when it really seemed like punk might/could actually “kick over the walls and cause governments to fall”) because we are still dealing with the same isms and skisms that they tried to tackle with their proletariat prose and punk politics. And the fact that they never got back together for the big money reunion (like old Johnny Rotten’s Sex Pistols did), or that Joe Strummer kept right on makin’ socially conscious music until his very last breath, serves as yet another reminder that punk is not dead(!), just maybe on a revolutionary respirator. Yeah, the Clash is a reminder of the battle between “police and thieves,” the clash between capitalism and culture. They weren’t really around that long, but along the way, they got ripped off and taken advantage of by the corporate vampires (just like so many others who chose to swim in that putrid ocean by they lonesome), but they were among the very few bands that were what Bad Brains called “Fearless Vampire Killers” and their stake (and garlic) was in their words, and they really did rage against the machine as best they knew how. That’s what moved and inspired one raging rican would be rockero who knew that brixton was right next door to brooklyn. These cats were trying (real hard) to make music that was honest and honestly political, and that blurred the lines of genre, and trampled down borders (and any border patrol who might be standing in the way) all through a punk principle of raw reality and rebellion and revolution rock, and what they came up with was pure culture clash.
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
How the Clash Inspired Public Enemy
By Chuck D
The first time I heard the Clash was in 1981. I was in college at Adelphi University on Long Island, and one night I went down to this show in Manhattan—one of Kurtis Blow’s hip-hop package shows. The crowd was rough. People from different camps were there—the hip-hop people and the punk rock people. They even started throwing tomatoes at Kurtis, so that’s the type of wild kids who were there. But the Clash completely broke it that night. It was an awakening for a New York cat like myself.
As I delved into the music scene, I started learning about how the kids across the water in England were rebelling against the Queen and the aristocracy. Around the same time, Bill Stepheny, a friend of mine from Adelphi and one of the original members of Public Enemy, started playing the Clash’s records on his hip-hop radio show, which opened up a lot of people’s minds. He would reach into the Clash’s catalogue, as well as the Sex Pistols’, and make those kinds of s
ongs work in the context of a hip-hop show. He was instrumental in exposing a lot of hip-hop cats to what the Clash were doing. I had great respect for Joe Strummer. How he used his music—incorporating a lot of black music like hip-hop and reggae—was very different from the guys who invented rock ’n’ roll: he always paid homage to those who came before him. I admired him for his humility as an artist and for the fact that he dug musical cats, no matter what type of music they played. He was constantly pushing the boundaries of the Clash’s sound and of what music could do on a greater level. And Joe was still rebellious: he was speaking about things he saw in his life—the things right in front of his face that no one wanted to talk about—and taking his message around the world.
Public Enemy is an American group but we address the same issues—political, social, musical—on an international level: we take our conversation worldwide. I learned the importance of that from Joe Strummer. Right now there’s a hunger out there for a musician like that. As a musician, it’s not an easy way to go, but there are people who are doing it in hip-hop right now—politically outspoken groups like Dead Prez and the Coup, who are totally fearless and noncapitulating in their work. That’s Joe Strummer’s legacy—the idea that you need to stand by your word every step of the way.
Chuck D during the filming of Antonino D’Ambrosio’s Let Fury Have the Hour. (Photos by Antonino D’Ambrosio.)
_____________________
Originally published in Interview, December-January 2004.
THE JOE I KNEW
By Billy Bragg
The Clash were the greatest rebel rock band of all time. Their commitment to making political pop culture was the defining mark of the British punk movement.
They were also a self-mythologising, style-obsessed mass of contradictions.
That’s why they were called the Clash.
They wanted desperately to be rock stars but they also wanted to make a difference.
While Paul Simonon flashed his glorious cheekbones and Mick Jones threw guitar hero shapes, no one struggled more manfully with the gap between the myth and the reality of being a spokesman for your generation than Joe Strummer.
All musicians start out with ideals, but hanging onto them in the face of media scrutiny takes real integrity.
Tougher still is to live up to the ideals of your dedicated fans.
Joe opened the back door of the theatre and let us in, he sneaked us back to the hotel for a beer; he too believed in the righteous power of rock ’n’ roll.
And if he didn’t change the world, he changed our perception of it. He crossed the dynamism of punk with Johnny Too Bad and started that punky-reggae party.
Billy Bragg during the filming of Antonino D’Ambrosio’s Let Fury Have the Hour. (Photo by Antoninio D’Ambrosio.)
RADICAL BAND
He drew us, thousands strong, onto the streets of London in support of Rock Against Racism.
He sent us into the garage to crank up our electric guitars. He made me cut my hair.
The ideals that still motivate me as an artist come not from punk, not even from the Clash, but from Joe Strummer.
The first wave of punk bands had a rather ambivalent attitude to the politics of late ’70s Britain. The Sex Pistols, the Damned, the Stranglers, none of them, not even the Jam, came close to the radicalism that informed everything the Clash did and said.
The U.S. punk scene was even less committed. The Ramones, Talking Heads, Heartbreakers, and Blondie all were devoid of politics.
Were it not for the Clash, punk would have been just a sneer, a safety pin, and a pair of bondage trousers.
Instead, the incendiary lyrics of the Clash inspired 1,000 more bands on both sides of the Atlantic to spring up and challenge their elders and the man that we all looked to was Joe Strummer.
INSPIRING FORM
He was the White Man in Hammersmith Palais who influenced the Two Tone Movement. He kept it real and inspired the Manic Street Preachers.
And he never lost our respect. His recent albums with the Mescaleros found him on inspiring form once again, mixing and matching styles and rhythms in celebration of multiculturalism.
At his final gig, in November in London, Mick Jones got up with him and together they played a few old Clash tunes.
It was a benefit concert for the firefighters’ union.
One of the hardest things to do in rock ’n’ roll is walk it like you talk it.
Joe Strummer epitomised that ideal and I will miss him greatly.
_____________________
Originally published by BBC News.
GETTIN’ BACK TO THE BAD SEEDS
The Legend of the “Long Shadow”
By Antonino D’Ambrosio
All’estremità, tuttauna persona ha è illoro honor e dignità—nessuno opossono eliminare quella.
In the end, all a person has is their honor and dignity—no one can take that away.
—LORENZO D’AMBROSIO, 1941–1988
Ever insurgent let me be make me more daring than devout.
—LOUIS UNTERMEYER
One’s truth must add its push to the evolution of public justice and mercy, must transform the spirit of the city whose brainless roar went on and on at both ends of the bridge.
—ARTHUR MILLER
It was sometime around Thanksgiving 2003. I was driving down I-35 making my way through Texas from Austin to San Antonio and I had just picked up Streetcore, Joe Strummer’s posthumous final recording. Unsure of what to expect and a bit reluctant to listen, I experienced the music that poured out of the speakers as nothing short of a revelation. From the opening rift of “Coma Girl” to the closing bluesy ballad “Silver and Gold,” the record is an achievement. Listening to Strummer’s new music on a long, lonely stretch of highway in the middle of the state that boasts both Buddy and Willie as native sons, I could not help but think that this is just how Strummer would have wanted everyone to hear his new music. The record travels back and forth in time, emotionally capturing the essence of Strummer’s music, his timeless optimism and political idealism. Streetcore is anchored spiritually and politically by two subtlety recorded and performed songs: “Redemption Song” and “Long Shadow.” it so well because I don’t intend to ever try to do it again.” Instead, Cash became a powerful voice of hope, a working-class hero who refused to dream someone else’s dream, choosing instead to live his own.
Joe Strummer performing with the Mescaleros at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York, on April 5, 2001. (Photo by Antonino D’Ambrosio.)
During the production of Streetcore, Strummer spent some time in record producer Rick Rubin’s Los Angeles studio. There he met Johnny Cash for the first time. These two performers had much in common. Both were music pioneers and profoundly committed humanists who passed through life with humility and honor. When he met Cash, Strummer was intending to record Bob Marley’s timeless protest anthem “Redemption Song” for his new album. The duet does not appear on Strummer’s album but on a Cash box set released after his death titled Unearthed. The version on Streetcore was recorded with Blue’s great Smokey Hormel and longtime Tom Petty keyboardist Benmont Tench. Johnny Cash, a poor sharecropper’s son who sang to himself as he picked cotton, would die ten months after Strummer on September 12, 2003, in Nashville, Tennessee. “My roots are in the workingman,” Cash told the Music City News in 1987. “I can remember very well how it is to pick cotton ten hours a day, or to plow, or how to cut wood. I remember it so well because I don’t intend to ever try to do it again.” Instead, Cash became a powerful voice of hope, a working-class hero who refused to dream someone else’s dream, choosing instead to live his own.
Strummer told me simply that Cash “is music.” Cash was a tremendous cultural force in music, recording over 1,500 songs in a career that spanned more than four decades. Cash created his own sound that went beyond traditional genres—emotional folk singer, rock ’n’ roll desperado, down-in-the-mouth country crooner. The now famous photo of Cash wit
h Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Ray Perkins (dubbed the Million Dollar Quartet) at Sun Studios tells us that his career began with the birth of rock ’n’ roll. But his rebel posture and straightforward, plain-spoken musical approach told us that his music was something more, his life was something more.
Strummer admired Cash’s ability to forge on throughout a life and career that had more than one dark period. First he recalls listening to Cash’s album, Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian, which challenged the U.S. treatment of Native Americans with such songs “Apache Tears,” “The Ballad of Ira Hayes,” and “Custer.” In the latter, Cash sings “With victories he was swimmin’ he killed children, dogs and women . . . It’s not called an Indian victory but a bloody massacre/and the General he don’t ride well anymore/There might have been more enthusin’ if us Indians had been losin’.”
“That album was filled with the anger and fire that would inspire me from my Clash days onwards,” Strummer said. In his autobiography, Cash wrote, “I dove into primary and secondary sources, immersing myself in the tragic stories of the Cherokee and the Apache, among others, until I was almost as raw as Peter. By the time I actually recorded the album I carried a heavy load of sadness and outrage; I felt every word of those songs, particularly ‘Apache Tears’ and ‘The Ballad of Ira Hayes.’ I meant every word, too. I was long past pulling my punches.”
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