Let Fury Have the Hour
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Mikal Gilmore is a journalist and music aficionado who has written for Rolling Stone since the 1970s. Gilmore’s first book, Shot in the Heart, is a National Book Critics Circle and L.A. Times Book Prize–winning memoir about his older brother Gary, the first man to be executed in Utah after pleading guilty to murder, whose life was chronicled in The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer.
Wayne Kramer is a songwriter whose reputation for writing music for film and television risks supplanting his legend as one of the world’s stellar guitarists. Rolling Stone lists him as one of the top hundred guitarists of all time. Recent playing can be heard on Marianne Faithfull’s album Horses and High Heels. Teenage leader of Detroit’s ultimate incendiary rock band of the 1960s, the MC5, Kramer formed the White Panther Party in solidarity with other organizations working for racial and economic equality during the Vietnam War. He and manager John Sinclair’s resulting dubious position at the center of the target for the FBI’s counterintelligence program between 1968 and 1971 is well documented. After the breakup of MC5, Kramer suffered from drug addiction, culminating in a federal prison sentence at Lexington Federal Correctional Institution. Afterward, Kramer returned to his musical career and even greater acclaim. He has since put out ten solo albums and is considered a pioneer of both punk rock and heavy metal. Long a respected film and television composer with strong involvement in social action causes, he scored Sony Pictures’ comedy feature Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (directed by Adam McKay); the controversial HBO documentary Hacking Democracy (about the 2004 U.S. presidential election voting machine scandal); and the PBS film The Narcotic Farm (about Lexington Federal Correctional Institution and America’s decades-long failed drug war), as well as three seasons of the hit HBO series East Bound & Down. With Billy Bragg, he created Jail Guitar Doors USA, the Los Angeles–based 501(c)3 nonprofit organization whose mission is to help rehabilitate prison inmates. Kramer recently joined Tom Morello on Axis of Justice music and activism tours and made a special appearance at an antiwar protest concert for ten thousand fans at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver with Rage Against the Machine. He regularly writes with and produces upstart rock bands. See www.jailguitardoors.org and www.waynekramer.com.
Margaret Saadi Kramer is the co-owner of Antic Inc. (www.anticinc.com), a successful Los Angeles—based music licensing company that provides and represents carefully selected music and images for television, video game, and feature film campaigns. Her clients include major and independent studios, networks, and postproduction houses worldwide for such high-profile film campaigns as The Matrix series, the Harry Potter series, the Spiderman series, the Pirates of the Caribbean series, the Batman series, Iron Man, The Mummy series, Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Wall-E, and literally hundreds of others, as well as commercials, new media, demos, and home video. Margaret is currently music-supervising the Danny McBride–created comedy series East Bound & Down (Gary Sanchez Productions) for HBO and its accompanying soundtracks. Recent projects include music supervision on the Shira Piven-directed feature Fully Loaded (Adam McKay, executive producer), PBS’s controversial historical documentary Narcotic Farm, and the documentary film Let Fury Have the Hour. Over the last five years, Kramer has executive-produced Sonic Revolution: A Celebration of the MC5 and its accompanying DVD. Both ran as broadcast staples for Channel 4 in the UK and Trio Networks respectively; music consulted on the feature-length HBO documentary Hacking Democracy as well as the feature film Court Jesters; and the Noggin Networks series South of Nowhere, music supervised by Margaret, was nominated for a GLAAD award. With legendary singers/songwriters Wayne Kramer and Billy Bragg, Margaret Kramer is a cofounder of the nonprofit group Jail Guitar Doors USA.
Greil Marcus was born in San Francisco and now lives in Oakland. He is the author of Mystery Train, The Dustbin of History, Lipstick Traces, In the Fascist Bathroom, The Shape of Things to Come, Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus, The Old, Weird America, and most recently, When That Rough God Goes Riding and The Doors. He is the editor, with Sean Wilentz, of The Rose & the Briar and, with Werner Sollors, of A New Literary History of America, published by Harvard in 2009. In recent years he has taught at Berkeley, Princeton, Minnesota, New York University, and the New School.
Kristine McKenna is a widely published critic and journalist who wrote for the Los Angeles Times from 1977 through 1998. Her profiles and criticism have appeared in many different publications, including Artforum, the New York Times, Artnews, Vanity Fair, the Washington Post, and Rolling Stone. Since 1998 she’s devoted most of her time to organizing exhibitions and editing books on fine art. In 2010, along with two partners, she launched Foggy Notion Books, a publishing imprint that specializes in volumes on art and popular culture of the twentieth century. She recently edited Richard Prince: Collected Writings for Foggy Notion Books.
Tom Morello is an original member of the rock bands Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, two groups responsible for multiple Grammy Awards and a combined 30 million albums sold worldwide. His first solo album, The Nightwatchman: World Wide Rebel Songs, was released in 2007. In 2009, Morello formed the band Street Sweeper Social Club with Boots Riley of the Coup. He has also been recognized by Rolling Stone as one of the “100 Greatest Guitar Players of All Time” at #26. Since graduating from Harvard University with honors, with a major in political science, he has become a widely recognized political activist. In 2006, he received the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award. His family has been a constant source of political and social inspiration: his great-uncle, Jomo Kenyatta, was the first president of Kenya; his mother, Mary Morello, founded Parents for Rock and Rap, an anti censorship counterweight to Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center. With System of A Down’s Serj Tankian, Morello formed Axis of Justice, a social justice organization that brings together musicians, music fans, and grassroots political. In spring 2008, Morello launched The Justice Tour, a recurring nationwide concert tour featuring members of Guns N’ Roses, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Jane’s Addiction, MC5, Alice in Chains, Cypress Hill, and many more, whose daylong visits to cities are dedicated to a local charity with a rock show to benefit that charity at each stop.
(not4)Prophet was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and raised in the South Bronx and East Harlem in New York City. He is the MC for the political hip-hop group X-Vandals and the former lead singer of the punk rock/Latin Fusion-band Ricanstruction (and founder of the art and agitation collective, Ricanstruction Netwerk), as well as a graffiti writer and “AgitHop” activist. Though not recognized in mainstream and commercial pop music circles, in the alternative DIY movement N4P is considered to be an underground icon and anti-corporate hero (both on- and offstage) for his staunch independent music and antisystem politics.
Amy Phillips is a senior editor at Pitchfork Media, where she has run the news section since 2005. She has also written for the Village Voice, Spin, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Seventeen, and many more. A native of Philadelphia, she currently lives in Chicago.
Ann Scanlon is the author of The Pogues: The Lost Decade and Those Tourists Are Money: The Rock ’n’ Roll Guide to Camden. She was features editor of the legendary music paper Sounds and has written for a number of newspapers and magazines, including The Times and The Guardian (both UK), Mojo, and Vogue Italia. She is also an award-winning travel writer.
Joel Schalit is the author of several books, including the critically acclaimed Israel vs. Utopia and Jerusalem Calling. He has edited some of America’s most influential independent magazines, including Punk Planet and Tikkun, and has contributed to such news outlets as France 24, The Guardian, and open Democracy. A founding editor of one of the world’s first online magazines, Bad Subjects, Schalit began his publishing career as an intern at Mother Jones. Based in Berlin, he is working on a book about Muslims and Jews in contemporary Europe. During daylight hours, he is coeditor-in-chief of Souciant.
Peter Silverton is a writer. His most recent book is Filthy English: The How, What and
Why of Everyday Swearing, published by Portobello.
Sylvie Simmons is a music journalist and author. Born in London, she moved to LA in the late 1970s as U.S. correspondent for the UK magazines Sounds and Kerrang! Now living in San Francisco, she is Mojo Magazine’s contributing editor and a ukulele-playing singer-songwriter. She recently finished a biography of Leonard Cohen to be published in 2012. Simmons’s previous books include a biography of Serge Gainsbourg, A Fistful of Gitanes, and a collection of rock-related short stories, Too Weird for Ziggy.
Carter Van Pelt has been documenting Jamaican popular music as a writer, radio broadcaster, and archivist since the early 1990s. He has a master’s degree in arts administration from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Nebraska. In addition to his master’s thesis on collective rights management in Jamaica, he has published articles that were included in Reggae, Rasta, Revolution (edited by Chris Potash, from Simon & Schuster, 1997) and Let The Fury Have the Hour and in The Beat Magazine. In the late 1990s, he published the fanzine 400 Years. Van Pelt produced the DVD documentary for Burning Spear’s album Our Music in 2005 and compiled the Thompson Sound release Linval Thompson: The Early Sessions, including the accompanying DVD, in 2006. He hosted “400 Years: Radio Free Mondo” on KZUM in Lincoln, Nebraska, for eight years and was cohost of “All Star Reggae Thursdays” on WKCR in New York from 2005 to 2007. Now the host of WKCR’s “Eastern Standard Time,” which airs on Saturday morning, he has also been a guest commentator for National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.”
Steve Walsh was an art student in 1975, and like many of his contemporaries, was frustrated with the stagnation and “corporatization” of the ’70s music scene. He became involved in punk after happening on the Sex Pistols’ first gig at St. Martin’s Art College. He fell into journalism after meeting Mark P (editor of Sniffin’ Glue) at a Ramones gig. An acquaintance with manager Bernie Rhodes led to an offer to interview a new band named the Clash. This was their first interview, and it spawned such unforgettable and quotable punk aphorisms as “like trousers, like brain.” Recruited by Mr. Vicious himself, Walsh later became a member of the semi-legendary Flowers of Romance. Although the group rehearsed in every squat in West London, they never performed live and had only one song, “Belsen Was a Gas,” later developed by the Sex Pistols. Walsh went on to write articles on other punk and post-punk acts such as Subway Sect, Adam and the Ants, the Banshees, This Heat, and the Pop Group for papers like ZigZag and NME. Later, disillusioned with punk’s evolution, he moved on to play guitar with the very angular post-punk group Manicured Noise, which released two singles: “Metronome” and “Faith.” In 1979, back in London, he began a solo career. After various deals and collaborations, he stopped working in music around 1990 and reverted to his default career as graphic designer. He still works in design and dabbles in music for pleasure and has DJ’d at various clubs. In 2007 he produced a compilation album of previously undiscovered tracks by Manicured Noise titled Northern Stories.
PERMISSIONS
We gratefully acknowledge all those who gave permission for the written material that appears in this book. We have made every effort to trace and contact copyright holders. If an error or omission is brought to our notice, we will be pleased to remedy the situation in future editions of this book. For further information, please contact the publisher.
“Strange Bedfellows: How the Clash Influenced Public Enemy” by Chuck D copyright © Chuck D. Reprinted by permission of the author. Excerpt originally published as “Revolution Rock” in the December/January 2004 issue of Interview magazine. All rights reserved. • “Let Fury Have the Hour: The Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer” by Antonino D’Ambrosio copyright © Antonino D’Ambrosio. Reprinted by permission of Antonino D’Ambrosio. Adapted from an essay originally published in Monthly Review, June 2003. All rights reserved. • “The Very Angry Clash” by Steve Walsh copyright © Sanctuary Group. Reprinted by permission of the Sanctuary Group. Originally published in Sniffin’ Glue, Issue 3½, September 28, 1976. All rights reserved. • “Greatness from Garageland” by Peter Silverton copyright © Peter Silverton. Reprinted by permission of the author. Originally published in Trouser Press, February 1978. All rights reserved. • “Anger on the Left” by Mikal Gilmore from Rolling Stone. Reprinted by permission of Rolling Stone, March 8, 1979 copyright © Rolling Stone LLC. All rights reserved. • “The Clash in America” by Sylvie Simmons copyright © Sylvie Simmons. Reprinted by permission of the author. Originally published in Sounds, February 1979. All rights reserved. • “The Last Broadcast” by Greil Marcus copyright © Greil Marcus. Reprinted by permission of the author. Originally published in In the Fascist Bathroom (aka Ranters and Crowd Pleasers). All rights reserved. • “Be Bop A Lula Here’s Joe Strummer” by Ann Scanlon copyright © Ann Scanlon. Reprinted by permission of the author. Originally published in Sounds, April 2, 1988. All rights reserved. • “Clash of the Titan” by Joel Schalit copyright © Joel Schlait. Reprinted by permission of the author. Originally published in Punk Planet, January/February 2000. All rights reserved. • “A Man That Mattered” by Kristine McKenna © Kristine McKenna. Reprinted by permission of the author. Originally published in Arthur, March 2003. • “When the Two Sevens Clashed” by Carter Van Pelt copyright © Carter Van Pelt. Reprinted by permission of the author. Originally published in Arthur, March 2003. • “The Joe I Knew” by Billy Bragg copyright © Billy Bragg. Reprinted by permission of the author. Originally published by BBC News, January 2, 2003. • All photos by Hank O’Neal published here courtesy of Hank O’Neal. • All photos from Mystery Train by Sukita published here courtesy of Sukita/Jim Jarmusch/Mystery Train Inc. • All Shepard Fairey artwork published courtesy of Shepard Fairey. • Photo by Yrthya Dinzey-Flores published courtesy of Yrthya Dinzey-Flores. • All photos by Antonino D’Ambrosio © Antonino D’Ambrosio/La Lotta Inc./A Bricklayers Union Productions.
INDEX
Abbott, Bernice, 273
Adam and the Ants, 127
Adolescence, 42
Aerosmith, 50
Aesthetics, 45, 50, 101, 202
Africa, 14, 15, 140
African-Americans, 105, 127–128
Albertine, Viv, 109
Alexis, Jacques Stephen, 257
“Algeria, Algeria” (Veloso), 144–145
“All in a Day” (Joe Strummer), 225
Allende, Salvador, 5, 142, 143
Amampondo, 176
Anarchism, anarchy, 22, 61, 150, 292, 300
Andy, Horace, 130
Anger, 46, 61, 107
Anouk, 140
Anti-Nazi League, 124, 130, 142
Anti-Paki League, 126
Antiracism. See Racism
Aristide, Jean-Bertrand, 257
“Arms Aloft” (Joe Strummer), 147
Armstrong, Tim, 120, 153
Arpaio, Joe, 241
Axis of Justice, 189
Bad Brains, 188, 211
Bad Religion, 131
Baez, Joan, 197
Baldwin, James, 128–130, 197, 258
Bangs, Lester, 117, 130–131
“Bank Robber” (The Clash), 185, 198
Barger, Sonny, 275
Bartók, Béla, 231, 232, 233, 240, 242, 289–290
Basquiat, Jean Michel, 210, 303–305
Battle of Algiers (film), 74
Bay City Rollers, 43
BBC. See British Broadcasting Corporation
BDP, 209
Beach Boys, 167
Beastie Boys, 159
Beat poets, 128, 162–163
The Beatles, 61, 65, 98–99, 117, 118
Beatnigs, 198
Beatniks, 163
Bebop, 119
Beefheart, Captain, 167
Berkeley Community Theater, San Francisco, 53, 63
Berlusconi, Silvio, 203, 232, 233
Berry, Chuck, 35, 36, 37, 42
Bertulucci, Bernardo, 81
Bessy, Claude, 165
“Bhindi Bhagee” (Strummer and the Mescaleros), 14, 249, 252
Bickle, Travis, 76, 267–268
Big Audio Dynamite, 152, 153
“Big Country” (The Clash), 67
Big Youth, 38
Billbard Top Ten, 118
Billboard’s Top 200, 51
Biskind, Peter, 76
The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy (Baldwin), 129
Black, Jack, 241
Black Ark recording studio, 102
Black Flag, 110, 118, 211
Black Grape, 153
Black Market Clash (The Clash), 184, 185, 212
Blair, Tony, 155–157, 169–170
Blink 182, 121
Blondie, 218
Blow, Kurtis, 211, 215
Blue Oyster Cult, 48, 103
Bogie, Stewart, 295–297
“Bomb the World” (Spearhead), 200
Bono, 15
Bop Message, 92–93
Bordello, Gogol, 231, 238, 241, 242
Boredom, 21, 61
Bossi, Umberto, 233
Boston, 50, 60
Bowie, David, 269
Bragg, Billy, 4, 15, 123, 150, 188, 190, 218fig, 247, 264, 294
“Brand New Cadillac” (The Clash), 112
Brando, Marlon, 74, 279
Brazil, 141–142, 144–145
Brecht, Bertolt, 202, 293
Brigade Rosse (Brigade Rosse), 74, 75, 157
Brighton Beach youth culture riots (1960s), 65
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 149, 155, 236, 247, 248, 263
Broadway, 6, 76
Brown, Clarence “Gatemouth,” 41
Brown, Roy, 142
Buarque, Chico, 144
Bukowski, Charles, 258
Bulldog (magazine), 127
Bunuel, Luis, 286
Burn (film), 74
Burning London tribute album, 107