Redemption Song

by Chris Salewicz

  ‘“London’s Burning” was one that I wrote, in the top room at Orsett Terrace, after walking around London,’ Joe told Mal Peachey. ‘There was nothing to do. Television stopped at 11.00 p.m., all bars stopped at 11.00 p.m., and that was it. There was only walking around the street to amuse yourself after that. I was walking around a lot in West London, and it suddenly came to me all at once.’ In fact, Joe had been walking around the streets with Paul when the idea for the song came to him. ‘I wrote “London’s Burning” in the back room and I wrote it very quiet, whispering it, because Paloma was in the same room asleep.’ It was unusual, said Joe, to write a song on his own without Mick’s input. ‘The best bit I like about “London’s Burning” is the intro, the guitar bit, because it’s so insane,’ he said to Mal Peachey. ‘Mick was living overlooking the Westway in his gran’s flat, and the very next morning I got up and I could still remember it from writing it the night before, and I took it over to him, and between him and me we sort of licked it into shape. But we ruined that number by auditioning drummers to it, and after 200 drummers we were sick to death of that number.’ Joe gave credit to Mick Jones for having come up with the line about television being the new religion – later Mick would talk to me about how his generation had been almost literally brought up by television, learning much of what it knew from the medium.

  On 31 August the Clash supported the Pistols again, at the 100 Club. Early in the set, during a break occasioned by the need to replace a broken string on Keith Levene’s guitar, Joe held up a transistor radio to his microphone and switched it on: a BBC news broadcast sailed out of the set, a report about an IRA bomb scare. Dave Goodman, the Pistols’ sound engineer, added dub-echo effects: ‘It sounded like a Radio 4 discussion at the end of the world,’ Joe said. ‘I’d been lucky and bought a cheap transistor in a junk shop for ten bob and it worked quite well,’ he told Sniffin’ Glue. ‘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.’

  The next Sunday, 5 September, the Clash played their fifth show, one of the regular Sunday evening performances at the Roundhouse. Available as a bootleg, this performance by the Clash stands as a testament to the extraordinary amount of work the group had done in just three months, in terms of both rehearsal and songwriting. As a rock’n’roll performance so early in the career of an act it is remarkable, the group rising to the occasion of their biggest venue with fire, power, dynamic tension and fantastic songs, several of which were soon dropped from the group’s set; these include the first live performance of ‘1-2 Crush on You’, ‘Mark Me Absent’, another Mick Jones tune, and ‘How Can I Understand the Flies’, hardly a conventional notion for a pop song: it had been written by Joe that oppressively hot summer as insects buzzed around his mattress in the distinctly unhygienic surroundings of Orsett Terrace – Joe introduces it as ‘a summer song’. ‘Protex Blue’, the Mick Jones ode to condoms written before Joe had joined them from the 101’ers, concludes with a pair of bellowed words from the singer – ‘Johnny-Johnny’ – that turn the song on its head with their humour, an example of the kind of verbal non-sequiturs with which Joe would often shift Clash songs into the realm of surrealism.

  After ‘Mark Me Absent’, Joe rants at the audience. ‘Where did you get those denims?’ he demands of one poor punter whom he has singled out as a relic from a non-punk world. ‘What’s that? The Jean Machine?’ he sneers the name of a then-ubiquitous chain of clothing stores (started, incidentally, by an acquaintance of Bernie) whose flared product was far removed from the sleek, aggressive look of the Clash. Then he attempts to suggest some self-determination on the part of the crowd, an early exhortation to what would become known as the punk do-it-yourself philosophy: ‘I’ve been wanting to go out and see some groups or something. But I’ve seen it all before. So I had to sit at home watching a TV that had no sound so I had to lip-read my way through. I’d just like to protest about the state of affairs, so any of you in the audience who aren’t past it should get out and do something, instead of lying around.’ Although evidently acting the part of proselytizer, Joe’s words are simultaneously believable and heartfelt.

  The Roundhouse set finishes with a song that Joe dedicates to ‘the future’: ‘1977’, with its pay-off lines ‘No Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones / In 1977’. (‘I had the lyric and Mick had the tune, and we were piecing it together. I had written in my notebook, “No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones in 1977”, but I thought it was too silly, just to lay it on the table straight off. We were singing it through and we kept getting to a bit where we didn’t have any lyrics and Mick said, “We need something here.” I told him I had something, but that it was a bit silly. He said, “Oh yeah, what’s that?” So I went, “No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones,” and he said, “Great, that’s really great!”’) At the end of the Roundhouse set Jeff Dexter, the venue’s DJ, summarized the Clash’s set by sitting on the fence: ‘I think that’s a band that you either love or loathe, and I’m a bit non-committal.’

  There might be no Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones in 1977, but there would be no Clash for Keith Levene any longer. This was Keith’s final show. ‘He had gone offstage to change a string at the Roundhouse, and didn’t come back for ages,’ said Mick. The next day Terry Chimes arrived at Rehearsal Rehearsals. ‘We were sitting there having a cup of tea, me and Mick and Paul. Joe and Keith weren’t there yet. Joe came in saying, “I woke up this morning, feeling we’ve got this phantom guitar player in the band. He just kind of comes in from nowhere and he disappears again – he’s not really a part of what we are doing.” To which I said, “Well, he’s here every day. What do you mean?” He said, “Yeah, but he doesn’t feel part of it.” Paul was never very talkative – he kind of nodded in agreement. Then Mick said, “Do you think he should leave then?” And Joe said, “Yeah.” I was a bit outraged, saying, “What do you mean? One minute you’ve got a feeling, next minute he’s leaving the band – what?!? This is ridiculous. We can’t make decisions like this just on a whim.” But the three of them had been thinking about it, and then they all voiced it, so it was a fait accompli. I was a bit stunned. Then Keith arrived before we had finished arguing about it, and Joe said, “We think you should leave.” Keith was angry, and he walked off in a huff. That was the end of that.

  ‘When he left the room we all looked at each other blankly. Then Mick said, “I’d better learn to play the guitar,” meaning that Keith was doing the solos up until then – it was funny the way he said it. After he’d gone we rehearsed, and we concluded that you don’t need three guitars: you can do what you need to do with two guitars.’

  Such ruthlessness on Joe’s part had been seen in his sudden departure from the 101’ers only months previously. It was behaviour that would begin to be clearly seen as part of his pattern: Something’s not working? Something’s standing in my way? Dump it. Both in his professional and his personal life Joe Strummer would come to be seen as operating by the same yardstick. ‘Joe was the one who sacked people in the 101’ers,’ said Paul. ‘He was the one who got rid of Keith Levene. He said, “I was the hatchet-man in the 101’ers: I’ll do this.”’

  ‘So now I was playing all the lead guitar,’ said Mick, ‘but Joe was rhythm guitar. And fantastic at it: the reason why is that he was really left-handed, and he played it as a right-hander. So all his dexterity was gone to waste: it was all the wrong way round. But that’s why he was such a great rhythm guitarist, because of the energy he was using for fingering the chords. Both in his playing and in life, he already seemed to know what you know when you’re older, as though he’d always had that in him – that older person’s wise capacity. And it wasn’t just that he was a few years older than us – he seemed to always have had that. We all used to learn off it.’

  Shows still did not come too readily for the Clash. On 20 September they played at the two-day punk festival at the 100 C
lub; after an out-of-town gig in Leighton Buzzard they celebrated their first headlining gig in London, A Night of Pure Energy, on 23 October at the ICA on the Mall. There, as proof of their sharply rising status, punk high priestess Patti Smith danced onstage with the group; Paul Simonon had no idea who she was. The show was overshadowed by a punk called Shane McGowan allegedly having his ear bitten off.

  On 29 October, a Friday night, the Clash played at Fulham Town Hall. There were only about 100 people there, fifteen or twenty of them in assorted variants on the new punk uniforms. They were supported by another new group, the Vibrators, who were pretty mediocre. The Clash were themselves supporting Roogalator, a guitar-based group with a small underground reputation. By the time the evening concluded it was as though Roogalator’s career was over. This was the first time I had seen the Clash. I was left breathless, stunned by their power and energy, astonished at the visual spectacle. Years later, when I mentioned this show to him, Mick Jones told me, ‘At first we weren’t really bothered with what it sounded like. We just knew we’d be satisfied if it looked amazing to the audience, if they couldn’t take their eyes off us.’ They succeeded more than amply. Jon Savage, the author of England’s Dreaming, also went to the show, seeing The Clash for the first time. He recorded the performance on his cassette-player, and you can hear what was going on. For example, when The Clash performed ‘I’m So Bored with the USA’ it was as though they hadn’t quite got used to the transition to the new lyrics, Joe having to blurt out an added ‘S A’ after they almost reverted to ‘I’m so bored with you’. Of course, at the time I had no idea what any of the songs were called, though I certainly noted ‘London’s Burning’, which began with its title bellowed out by Joe, and something that I thought was called ‘Why Riot’. I really couldn’t believe how great they were. For me the show was a life-changing moment, no question.

  Sniffin’ Glue, edited by Mark Perry (known as Mark P), was a photostatted publication that introduced the word ‘fanzine’ to the punk vocabulary, inspiring hundreds of imitators across the country. Its seemingly thrown-together graphic style was a yardstick for punk visuals, and for the fifteen months of its existence Sniffin’ Glue’s unimpeachable street credentials made it the conscience and soul of the British punk movement. Issue 4, published in October 1976, with a picture of Joe and Paul on the cover, ran a four-page question-and-answer interview with the Clash, carried out by Steve Walsh only days after the 100 Club Punk Festival. More than anything, more than any stories in the weekly music press, it was this article in Sniffin’ Glue that set the direction for the group’s social stance and position. Here, for example, Joe delivered his famous anti-flares aphorism, ‘like trousers, like brain’, and declared righteously that this was one group in which the vocals would not be delivered in a cod-American accent, the affectation of many English singers.

  He also made it clear that he had digested Pat Nother’s book about anarchy, and come out as a non-believer in the philosophy allegedly adhered to by the Sex Pistols: ‘I don’t believe in all that anarchy bollocks!’ Mick Jones agreed. ‘The important thing is to encourage people to do things for themselves, think for themselves and stand up for what their rights are … All our songs are about being honest, right? The situation as we see it, right?’

  Joe Strummer also marked himself as being as much in touch with the cultural Zeitgeist as Mick Jones – who in the interview often appears more as the spokesman of the group than Joe – when he dismisses almost every piece of modern popular music as ‘rubbish’. ‘It’s all shit!’ underlined Mick Jones. Both of them agreed that the only good recent record was the Ramones’ album.

  ‘How much change do you want? D’you want a revolution?’ asked Steve Walsh.

  ‘Well … yeah!’ said Joe, railing against government secrecy and corruption. ‘I just feel like no one’s telling me anything, even if I read every paper, watch TV and listen to the radio!’

  Joe and Mick discussed their tactics at the Roundhouse gig, where they had attempted – as Mick put it – to ‘talk’ to the audience; it is apparent therefore that Joe’s haranguing of the Roundhouse crowd was deliberate, a laying out of the group’s cards. When asked what effect they wanted on their audience, Joe outlined three things: to give them meaningful and discernible lyrics; to ‘threaten ’em, startle ’em’, and to give them ‘rhythm’. ‘Rhythm is the thing ’cause if it ain’t got rhythm then you can just sling it in the dustbin!’

  By the time you had read this interview it was apparent that although The Clash aligned politically with some indeterminate strand of the left, the politics of this supposedly ‘political’ group actually were those of the human condition. In Joe’s opinion it was about the need to be aware – as he said, ‘I’d just like to make loads of people realise what’s goin’ on.’ There it was, set in type, as early as October 1976, before they even had a record deal. Though that was being worked on.

  Through the intelligent and ‘conscious’ statements of intent articulated in the Sniffin’ Glue interview the Clash were irrefutably established as the only serious rivals to the Sex Pistols; and Joe – in the inevitable manner in which it is always the lead singer who becomes most deified – was elevated to being the only serious contender for the crown of punk king that John ‘Johnny Rotten’ Lydon so far had been unopposed in wearing. Moreover, the ability of both Joe and – often even more so – Mick Jones to articulate the beliefs and purpose of the Clash showed them in positive contrast to the often mindboggling nihilism of the Sex Pistols, especially following the imminent arrival of Sid Vicious.

  Indeed, Sid was to make his presence felt very soon at a Clash show. On 5 November they played A Night of Pure Treason at the Royal College of Art, on Kensington Gore. In between ‘London’s Burning’ and ‘Protex Blue’ something erupted in the audience: Sid, recently out of a brief spell in Ashford Remand Home, was in a fight with some of the rest of the crowd. Joe was up for mucking in: ‘Hey, you! I’m only about 5 foot 8, but if you’ve got something then come and stand against me and we’ll do it, right.’ With Paul Simonon he stepped down into the audience. (Years later, Joe told the artist Damien Hirst about this moment, complaining that Paul had left him to it: ‘I realized only me and Sid Vicious were attacking the audience, so I hit quite a big guy – he went down! Then a guy came up to me and afterwards I realized he was saying, “Calm down, calm down,” but at that precise moment I thought he was attacking me so I hit him as hard as I could. Immediately I saw my mistake, but too late.’)

  Pennie Smith, like Joe Stevens a photographer for the NME, had been commissioned to take pictures of the gig. ‘Backstage at the Royal College of Art Joe had toothache so he wasn’t saying anything.’ But she discovered almost immediately that the entire group had an alternative means of communication, something I too quickly experienced; they would think nothing of sitting with their knees touching yours, or putting an arm on your shoulder or hand to emphasize a point. This naturally led to a greater closeness of feeling. ‘If you ever see a picture of me with Joe,’ said Pennie, ‘there’d always be a little finger on my arm or something, just saying there’s a link. There was always a subtle, tactile bit. They were always feely-touchy, a hug if something is wrong, a sock to the arm if something has gone right.

  ‘At the RCA I took some shots, and after they’d seen them in the NME they rang up and said would I do some more pictures. It just went from there. I did a shoot in Caroline’s flat, just after the Royal College of Art gig.’

  By now Paul Simonon had moved out of Orsett Terrace and was living in Earl’s Court with Caroline Coon, the Melody Maker journalist and former political activist who was championing punk. Nearby lived Iain Gillies, with his then wife. At the RCA show Simonon had tried to stop him taking photographs backstage. ‘I’m Joe’s cousin,’ he protested. ‘Oh, that’s all right then,’ acquiesced the bass-player. Joe would come over to see Iain; on one occasion he remembers Joe ‘jumping into bed with our flatmate’: ‘One time Joe was visiting me a
t my flat in Earl’s Court and he mentioned that Paul was living nearby, and provided a satirical account of Paul’s domestic life. I don’t know where Joe got these insights but he’d certainly surprise you from time to time. He would be silent with you for a while and then suddenly out of the pale blue yonder he’d say something revelatory. Uncle Ron had a bit of this quality, and Aunt Anna also seemed to me to be quite intuitive. I suppose that Joe’s parents were a very interesting mix: the tail-end of thoughtful British Empire and folksy but insightful Scottish Highlanders. Joe would quietly take in a lot of stuff that interested him and use this information later to good effect. Joe had the ability to get tremendously excited about some things and would act on his enthusiasms. I’d say that this energy and enthusiasm was definitely innate.’