La Lutta DJ spins the Clash’s London Calling during the special performance event “This Is a Movement.” (Photo by Antonino D’Ambrosio.)
As I read this book, I found myself in a reflective mood. I first met Joe Strummer—or actually ran into him—moments before he was going on stage at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn in April 2002. I was there to discuss a documentary film project with him. His people had given me the go-ahead to take some photographs from the stage. I found myself roaming the backstage area, looking for the best spot to jump on stage and snap my photos of Strummer and his current band, the Mescaleros. But here we were, nearly knocking each other over. We spoke for a moment. “Are you Italian, mate? I love the Italians.” These were Strummer’s first words to me.
The show found Strummer in classic form playing a mix of new and old songs. He ended the show with a tear-the-roof-off version of the Clash song “Police on My Back.” Strummer, always sharply ironic, dedicated the song to former New York City mayor Rudolph Guiliani’s quality-of-life policing, which helped transform the city into “Disneyland” and “a giant mall.” After the show, a bunch of people crowded into Strummer’s dressing room. Strummer called me over to sit next to him in the corner. We started to talk. “Well, I gotta say George Bush is making old Maggie [Thatcher] and Ronnie [Reagan] look more and more like Castro and Guevara,” Strummer said as he gave me a wink and nod. Everyone in the room, which now included Steve Buscemi, Matt Dillon, Jim Jarmusch, and a thick cloud of smoke, chuckled.
I spent the next few days hanging out with Strummer, discussing everything from the great Jamaican ska/reggae singer Desmond Dekker to England’s upcoming World Cup hopes (none, I told him) to the looming Iraq War to the suit jacket Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols gave him after one of their first shows together in 1976. Nearly eight months later, Strummer died of a rare heart ailment. It was undiagnosed and could have taken his life at any moment. The BBC News reported “he died peacefully in his sleep.” Just didn’t seem right. Strummer was only fifty years old when he died, but in his short life he left behind a now legendary legacy. And it all began with the Clash. As the U.K. weekly Sounds wrote in 1977, “If you don’t like the Clash, you don’t like rock ’n’ roll.”
The Clash presents a unique glimpse into the hearts and minds of the musicians behind the music. It captures all the musicians in a refreshingly new and unpretentious mood. Here’s Strummer: “I called myself Joe Strummer because I can only play all six strings at once, or none at all.” The Clash combined revolutionary ideas with revolutionary music. For all their efforts, they touched millions of people around the world. Just as the Clash were thrilling to listen to and watch, the book is loads of fun to look at and read. The ability to create music with a message that is entertaining and fun remains the group’s enduring legacy. Bassist Paul Simonon, a onetime abstract expressionist painter, explains the Clash “were brothers in arms trying to get their message across.” It didn’t matter if they succeeded or failed in what they were trying to do. “At least we tried,” was Strummer’s philosophical attitude. Thankfully for us they did.
Twelve reasons make the Clash, as Billy Bragg told me, “the greatest rebel rock band of all time,” supporting the band’s daring claim that they were (and still are) the “only band that mattered:”
1. The first release: The Clash. The self-titled album is the greatest punk record ever made, full of all the necessary ingredients—pure in its passion and determined in its demand for social change. It moves from straight-ahead rock (“London’s Burning”) to reggae (a cover of Junior Murvin’s “Police and Thieves”) to punk antiwar anthem (“Hate and War”) to the band’s call for racial unity (“White Riot”) to the now classic Bobby Fuller Four cover (“I Fought the Law”) to condemning the corporate takeover of music (“Complete Control”). “[(White Man)] In Hammersmith Palais,” with its mix of reggae, ska, punk, roots music, and social commentary, is the album’s highlight.
2. The alliance. The Clash was one of the first bands to recognize the natural alliance between Jamaican music and punk, with the shared ascendant theme of a spiritual battle catalyzed by music. When Bob Marley was in London and saw them perform in 1978, he was deeply moved. He later explained that he admired the Clash’s angry attack on race and class oppression and decided to pay homage to them and the affinities between punks and rastas with the now classic anthem “Punky Reggae Party.”
3. The world citizenship movement. The Clash infused all their work with a sense of humanity not commonly found in rock or punk. They saw themselves as part of a larger community, and as a result their underlying rallying cry was to encourage their audience to become engaged in the movement of world citizenship. On their first tour of America, the Clash placed flags of different nations behind them on stage to make it clear where they stood.
4. The performance: Rock Against Racism. On Sunday, April 30, 1978, in London’s Victoria Park, the Clash took the stage as headliners for Rock Against Racism before a crowd of 100,000. Jack Healey, former North American head of Amnesty International, who later worked with Strummer on Free Nelson Mandela, described the Clash’s work with Rock Against Racism as the model for all the human rights concerts that followed.
5. The vision: positive thinking, the future is ours. While much of punk wallowed in self-defeating nihilism, the Clash stridently traveled a different path. They spoke boldly and directly in terms framed in hopefulness and the exciting opportunity the future offers to those who are willing to “grab the future by the face” as Strummer sang. Acclaimed director Jim Jarmusch, who directed Strummer in Mystery Train, described it best when he told me the Clash were about producing, “not reducing,” unlike other punk bands including the Sex Pistols.
6. The disciple: Public Enemy. The Clash inspired thousands of listeners to become musicians committed to creating a new “I” in hopes of discovering an old “we.” No one group is more emblematic of the Clash’s influence than hip-hop pioneers Public Enemy. Chuck D said it best when he told me: “There would be no Public Enemy if the Clash hadn’t existed.”
7. A record’s record: London Calling. The album remains one of the most important records produced over the past three decades. If you haven’t listened to it by now, you’d better.
8. The song: “Clampdown.” This is the best rock song I’ve ever heard. With its sharp critique of the modern shift toward technocracy (this was late 1970s England; high employment, lack of opportunity, and ultraconservative Thatcher were a few years away) and the dehumanizing effect it was having on workers and the poor, the song offers an alternative view of how to respond, calling for unity and working class rebellion.
9. The Pearl Harbor tour. The Clash’s first U.S. tour was a thrilling event for a group enamored with American music culture. The group’s label was unhappy with their choice of supporting act: Bo Diddley. “I opened the door for a lot of people, and they just ran through and left me holding the knob,” Diddley said. The Clash hoped to make amends for this gross ignorance. The band believed Diddley to be the true father of rock and eventually got their wish to include him. The tour was a success, further validating the band’s inclusive musical approach.
10. The band. These four musicians harmonized in a way that, with sincerity and a sense of mission, created genreless music. Strummer, with his rough, warbled singing, offered thoughtful songwriting. Mick Jones, a great composer, was a rock star guitarist. Paul Simonon was simply cool. Topper Headon, a slight man, played drums in a way that was hard, loud, and ferocious.
11. The new folk music. Strummer at one time called himself “Woody” in tribute to Woody Guthrie. As all music should, it reflects the concerns and feelings of that particular time but also transcends it. The Clash’s punk sound remains a popular sound, a new folk. Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter, said it best when she told me that if her father were alive today, he would certainly be a rock musician with a punk spirit.
12. Humility. Not common among rock stars. But as Strummer point
ed out to me more than once, “Mistakes were made. None of us were saints. But in life you gotta have some regrets. We were seeking, groping in the dark, to do something better and to try to be part of making this world better.” Maybe that’s the most important thing they continue to teach us—that the world is worth fighting for.
_____________________
A version of this piece previously appeared in The Rumpus.
EVOLUTIONARY STREET POETRY
By Antonino D’Ambrosio
Head pounding. Sick. Standing on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street in Greenwich Village. So sick that it was all he could do to find the strength to walk the few blocks to the studio. If only the pain in his head allowed him a moment to think about the notes, the chords, the words that still needed to fit together. Washington Square Park was a few blocks away. Maybe I should just go and lie down on a bench. Drift a minute. Sleep might help him get through the long night ahead. He was still walking through the New York streets when he had a curious thought. You get a job. You become the job. He laughed to himself thinking about the lines spoken by the Wizard (played by Peter Boyle) in Martin Scorsese’s film Taxi Driver, a recent obsession. He was the job now. Still the job was special, offering a rare opportunity, an intense responsibility. Certified gold. Certified platinum. There was a human quality more important to certify. It was unnamable but he knew we all share it.
Standing on a corner in downtown New York, the city that offered him so much to dream about as a young boy, he thought of Woody: “Anyone who uses more than two chords is just showing off.” Before he stopped at 52 West 8th Street, his thoughts strayed once more to the film Taxi Driver and its main character, the aberrant and alienated Travis Bickle, brought to life by Robert De Niro. The character was oddly fascinating, and he was going to adopt Bickle’s Mohawk hairstyle. Shaved bald, clean on both sides, with a curly strip on top, that’s the way he felt and he wanted to show it. Remember: “You get a job. You become the job.” He recalled another exchange from the film that fit his mood:
Poet Allen Ginsberg with Joe Strummer meeting for the first time after “Ghetto Defendant” was recorded in New York City, September 1982. (Photo by Hank O’Neal.)
Betsy: You know what you remind me of?
Travis Bickle: What?
Betsy: That song by Kris Kristofferson.
Travis Bickle: Who’s that?
Betsy: A songwriter. He’s a prophet . . . he’s a prophet and a pusher, partly truth, partly fiction. A walking contradiction.
Travis Bickle: [uneasily] You sayin’ that about me?
Betsy: Who else would I be talkin’ about?
Travis Bickle: I’m no pusher. I never have pushed.
Betsy: No, no. Just the part about the contradictions. You are that.
We are all that: a mix of stark pragmatism and heady dreams manifesting in a jumble of contradictions: part prophet, part pusher. This is what I envisioned Joe Strummer was thinking and feeling as he headed into Electric Lady Studios in December 1981 to finish the album Combat Rock. Over a decade before, studio founder Jimi Hendrix recorded the instrumental tune “Slow Blues” in that studio before vanishing from this world. You could hear his Fender Stratocaster echo as the Clash walked into Studio A. The walls reverberated with the sounds of Stevie Wonder’s Music of My Mind (1972), Richard Hell’s Blank Generation (1977), and their own record Sandinista! Extraordinary partnerships sprang to life: David Bowie and John Lennon on Bowie’s Young Americans (1975) and Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson on It’s Your World (1976). After adding their own boom to the studio sound, the Clash were followed by Run-DMC’s Tougher Than Leather (1988), the Roots’ Things Fall Apart (1999), and Steve Earle’s Washington Square Serenade (2007), each blasting through to new paths of expression. Electric Lady Studios was the only place for the Clash to achieve a popular global rhythm that could sway the world. Not sure but okay with the uncertainty of it all as the band stood in the shadow of its previous effort, the monumental Sandinista! (In a nod to that record as well as a statement declaring their refusal to retreat in the face of criticism, the Clash eventually numbered Combat Rock “FMLN2,” borrowing the abbreviation from El Salvador’s FLMN (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional). “I try to use my music to move people to act,” Hendrix said. “I wish they’d had electric guitars in cotton fields back in the good old days. A whole lot of things would’ve been straightened out.” Stirring up some action and maybe straightening some things out felt just fine to the Clash. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Know your rights
These are your rights
All three of ’em
Allen Ginsberg with Joe Strummer and Mick Jones scanning books that Ginsberg gave the musicians while recording “Ghetto Defendant,” New York City, December 19, 1981. (Photo by Hank O’Neal.)
It has been suggested
In some quarters that this is not enough!
Well . . .
Steven Taylor, longtime Ginsberg guitarist, and record producer Hank O’Neal, Ginsburg’s friend, provided me with lively details that allowed me to sketch the above scene in my mind. Strummer was on his way to the studio to join his band mates and the protest poet laureate to record “Ghetto Defendant,” a sound and language experiment that is even more poignant today than when it was released on May 14, 1982. Ironically, it was also the twenty-first anniversary of the time when a group of civil rights activists known as Freedom Riders were severely beaten by an angry mob after their bus was fire-bombed near Anniston, Alabama. The two events serve as a remarkable confluence; the latter emblematic of an unsettled, violent history reaching out to change the course of human events that the former yearned to speak to. This is what the Clash and Ginsberg attempted to create with their song: understanding that the “then” and the “now” are one.
Stephen Taylor explains that the Clash and Ginsberg coming together was natural. “Ginsberg was an avatar of democracy,” Taylor tells me. “He went to see the Clash at Bonds in June 10, 1981, and loved their sense of vaudeville. He was drawn to that. They were offering an alternative to where we are now, coming from the edge, the dark end of the street.” The poet saw the Clash’s music as a mirror held up to the culture asking everyone to reconsider what condition society was in. “Ginsberg invented the notion of interconnectedness,” Taylor tells me. “He understood that the poet was a historian, a keeper of the culture and the language. He saw the Clash filling a similar role. They were speaking to the human condition.” Ginsberg also believed that if the art is good, it’s already revolutionary and inherently democratic because it includes many voices. “I was listening to a lot of punk, and I’d heard about the Clash from Steven Taylor,” Ginsberg later explained to music journalist Harvey Kubernik. “I went backstage once at their seventeen-night gig at Bonds Club on Times Square.” When Strummer met Ginsberg, he asked the poet to address the crowd. “We’ve had somebody say a few words about Nicaragua and Salvador and Central America,” Strummer told Ginsberg. “But the kids are throwing eggs and tomatoes at ’im. Would you like to try?” Ginsberg didn’t want to make a speech but offered to perform a punk song of his own. “I don’t know about making a speech but I’ve got a punk song about that,” Ginsberg said. “Simple chords, we rehearsed it five minutes and got it together. I gave them the chord changes.”
“Yeah, we have something, ah, something never before seen and never likely to be seen again either,” Strummer told the crowd. “May I welcome President [Mick Jones strums his guitar], President Ginsberg. “C’mon Ginsberg!” As Ginsberg makes his way to the stage, the crowd waits in quiet anticipation and then Strummer says “Let it rip, give me an A.”
“I don’t like the government where I live,” Ginsberg starts to recite. “I don’t like dictatorship of the rich.” As the Clash backs him, Ginsberg recites “Capitol Air,” a blazing wail lamenting the state of the world. “‘Capitol Air’ is based on “‘I Fought the Law,’” Taylor tells me. “Ginsberg felt that it had an anth
em-like quality like the good Clash music.” Ginsberg told Kubernik, “The guy, who was my friend in the soundboard, mixed my voice real loud so the kids could hear, and so there was a nice reaction, because they could hear common sense being said in the song.” The moment was stirring. “You can hear the cheers on the record,” Ginsberg remembered. He wrote “Capitol Air” in 1980 on the way back from Yugoslavia and a tour of Eastern Europe. “I realized that the police bureaucracies in America and in Eastern Europe were the same, mirror images of each other finally,” Ginsberg explained to Kubernik. “The climactic stanza ‘No Hope Communism, No Hope Capitalism.’ Yeah, ‘everybody is lying on both sides.’ We didn’t play the whole cut because we didn’t have enough time, but they built up to a kind of crescendo, which was nice when the whole band came in.”
The whole night was a wonderful accident. “I wandered into a place called Bonds, which at that time was a big club in New York,” Ginsberg told Kubernik. “The Clash at the time had a seventeen-night run, and I knew the sound engineer, who brought me backstage to introduce me and Joe Strummer.” And that’s how it started for Ginsberg, from the stage to the studio. A punk poet born, part pusher and part prophet. “The Sandinista record really impressed us, especially Allen,” Hank O’Neal says. It displayed a unique sensibility that emphasized “the relationship of music to the larger society.” That record went high and wide, looking out like a lighthouse bringing everyone lost at sea inland. This new record was going to be long and deep. “There are always cracks and that’s where the vitality and the renewal comes in,” Taylor says. “With the music on Combat Rock we’re just learning to decipher things that it’s saying that we couldn’t when it came out.”
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