by Mick O'Shea
The most famous reworking of one of Mick's compositions came that first session as Mick explained: 'One of the first ones we did was "I'm So Bored with the USA". We just played a couple of each other's numbers, and Joe made that famous addition from "I'm So Bored With You" to "I'm So Bored With The USA." He took the "You" and put the "S" and the "A" in there, and that changed everything!'10
Mick says that Bernard also played a part in the songwriting process by making them realise they should write about the things that affected them directly. 'I don't know if we were aware of punk being an outlet for our anger. There were a lot of things that needed saying and they hadn't been said in that way before. We were just picking things out of the paper to write about.'11
Of course, it wasn't only song ideas that came courtesy of their perusing the papers. With the songs taking an aggressive edge they were wanted a group name that was representative of how they felt and sounded.
Having noticed how many times the word tended to feature in the headlines; Paul suggested they call themselves 'The Clash'.
* * *
* Now the Famous Three Kings pub. (BACK)
* 'Every Little Bit Hurts' was a 1964 hit for Motown singer Brenda Holloway. (BACK)
* David Mellor would commit suicide in August 1970. (BACK)
– CHAPTER FIVE –
CLASH CITY ROCKER
'I used to follow bands around, and Rod Stewart kind of let us down 'cos he never had any kind of relationship with the fans. I kind of felt betrayed by him, 'cos he sold out. I always thought that if you find yourself in that situation then it's not like, "I'm the greatest." Always remember what it's like to be a fan.'
– Mick Jones
ON SUNDAY, 4 JULY 1976, while The Ramones were in London marking their homeland's bicentennial year with their debut UK showing at The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, The newly-incorporated Clash were making their own live debut at The Black Swan* in Sheffield supporting the Sex Pistols. A 'spit and sawdust' south Yorkshire pub – known by the local populace as the 'Dirty Duck' – wasn't perhaps the most prestigious of settings to mark one's debut, but having tried and failed to get the Sex Pistols onto the Roundhouse bill (and getting unceremoniously thrown down the stairs by the promoter John Curd in the process) Malcolm had no intention of being in the capital when The Ramones road-show hit town.
Mick, Joe, and Paul had all latched onto the Blitzkrieg boppers following the eponymous debut album release back in April, and would have been at the Roundhouse that night had Bernard not elected to side with Malcolm in what was the first of several misguided shows of solidarity over the coming months.
Solidarity aside, another reason for The Clash accepting Malcolm's offer was to pip The Damned in the punk pecking order. In two days time, the Croydon quartet were set to support the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club; the subterranean Oxford Street jazz club having become the nascent scene's home owing to the Pistols' ongoing Tuesday night residency.
Bernard's having re-established a working relationship with Malcolm meant the latter would allow The Clash to bask in the Pistols' reflected glory, but the few music journalists championing punk rock – notably Melody Maker's Caroline Coon and Jonh Ingham from Sounds – were unlikely to pass up on the chance to see The Ramones in favour of schlepping up the M1 to the wilds of South Riding.
Having recruited Terry Chimes, who'd bizarrely been turned down when auditioning for the London SS drum stool a couple of months earlier, The Clash had retreated behind closed doors and rehearsed feverishly in order to knock a thirty-minute set into shape for the Sheffield date. Another priority to be addressed in the short time available was what the group might wear for their first foray on to a stage. For despite Bernard's involvement with the risqué T-shirts on sale at 430 King's Road, copying the Sex Pistols' look would have left The Clash open to ridicule.
'We were dressed in black and white,' Mick subsequently revealed. 'A couple of us had ties on, black and white shirts with suity bits. Not good suits, a bit ripped, slightly different. We were dressed fairly straight and well-behaved in a way – maybe a rip here and a little splash of colour there; a couple of pin-type things – not safety pins. The look was still formulating.'1
By Mick's estimation the punters gathered in the pub's back room numbered about fifty, out of which only two appeared as though they were there for the music rather than the mead. 'There were a couple of punks, it was interesting,' he said. 'Wherever you went you would see a couple of them in the early times. Then you would see them getting more all the time – they would tell their friends. It was a big thing.'2
Unfortunately for The Clash, however, while the 'couple of punks' in attendance might well have rushed off to tell their mates, neither thought to put pen to paper and fire off a favourable review to the NME's Carnaby Street offices. As the NME at that juncture was curious rather than committed to the cause – which all the music industry's bigwigs thought would have imploded by Christmas – the paper was happy to run with an anonymous missive sent in by one of the Black Swan's less-than-impressed regulars.
Citing The Clash's performance as a 'cacophonous barrage of noise', and belittling Paul's rudimentary style and glaring inability to tune his own instrument, the caustic correspondent continued his attack by saying how The Clash had 'failed dismally' in their attempt to play early Sixties R&B, before signing off by dismissing them as a secondrate Dr. Feelgood.
That the Sex Pistols' own performance suffered a similar mauling suggests the reviewer's musical tastes were too pure for punk's sonic assault on the senses, but given that Joe had left The 101'ers – who, it has to be said, were more than capable of holding their own against the Feelgoods, and had trod the Black Swan stage with the 101'ers – such a stinging critique would have been hard to ignore.
The Sex Pistols' much-vaunted first visit to Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall the previous month has since become part of Mancunian folklore owing to it having proved the catalyst for many of those in the audience to go away and form bands, which in turn laid the foundations for the Madchester music scene of the late-eighties and early-nineties, and yet conversely the Black Swan date failed to spark a similar reaction in Sheffield. What's perhaps even more surprising is that the show also escaped acquiring urban myth status in every Yorkshireman alive swearing they'd been there to witness the birth of The Clash.
♪♪♪
It was undoubtedly Mick's dissatisfaction at things going awry in Sheffield that lay behind The Clash's decision to retreat into Rehearsal Rehearsals to iron out the glitches. They also penned several new songs such as 'Deny', 48 Hours', Janie Jones', 'What's My Name?', and the apocryphal '1977', all of which were incorporated into the set. When The Clash finally deemed themselves ready for another crack at the stage, rather than cajole Malcolm into giving them another support slot Bernard opted for an invite-only show within the familiar settings of their rehearsal room.
The majority of the booking agents Bernard had invited dutifully came along, if only to gauge whether The Clash were indeed worthy of having their name added to the poster.
Only three of the music journalists on his list appeared willing to give up their Friday night, but Bernard was far from displeased as the three in question – Caroline Coon, Jonh Ingham and John's colleague, Giovanni Dadomo – were already proving sympathetic to the cause.
Being something of a perfectionist, Bernard made sure everything was just right – including the décor – and in doing so, he inadvertently gave The Clash an identity. 'By the second gig we had skinny ties and semi-smart jackets,' Mick recalled. 'We'd gone through the painting thing. Paul made the connection between Jackson Pollock, and our spritzing the paint on ourselves while giving the rehearsal room a lick of paint.'3
Glen Matlock has always contested that The Clash nicked the paintspritzing idea from him as he'd purposely given a pair of SEX trousers the Jackson Pollock effect by flecking them with white gloss. And given that Glen had been enrolled at St. Martin's before swapping his
brushes for a bass, his claim isn't without merit.
Comfortable within their paint-spritzed surroundings, and free from the nerves of playing to a paying crowd, The Clash put on a display that left those in the room in little doubt that here was a group to be reckoned with. Indeed, while penning his critique of their Rehearsals roustabout, Giovanni Dadomo described watching The Clash as akin to being repeatedly hit by a runaway fire engine, and declared them the first band to come along 'who'll really frighten the Sex Pistols shitless.'
Dadomo had signed off his review by saying he how couldn't wait to see them play in a real hall, in front of a real audience. He wouldn't have long to wait because Malcolm – as part of his ongoing determination to land the Sex Pistols a recording contract – invited The Clash (along with Buzzcocks) on to the bill for the Pistols' 'Midnight Special' showcase at the Screen On The Green cinema in Islington on Saturday, 29 August.
Malcolm, of course, wasn't known for his altruism, and the offer came at a price. Aside from being given the task of posting the flyers, The Clash were also charged with providing the material needed for a stage, as well as erecting it on the night. Another sleight came with Buzzcocks and The Clash both being beset with sound problems throughout their respective sets; problems which were curiously rectified in time for the headliners.
Sabotaging your competitors' sound is one of the oldest tricks in the book, but one has to wonder why – especially when the general consensus within the Sex Pistols camp in regard to The Clash was that they 'weren't very good' – Malcolm felt threatened enough that he had to resort to such underhand measures?
Dadomo, who was in the audience that night, rightly suspected underhand play, and when writing his review, cited the sound problems as having 'pole-axed The Clash's nuclear potential'.
One journalist unwilling to look beyond the malfunctioning PA, however, was the NME's Charles Shaar Murray who uncharitably opined that The Clash were 'the kind of garage band who should be speedily returned to their garage, preferably with the motor running, which would undoubtedly be more of a loss to their friends and family than rock 'n' roll.'
The Clash were understandably hurt by Murray's put-down, for while Melody Maker's Allan Jones had opined that the Sex Pistols 'do as much for music as World War II did for the cause of peace', he hadn't suggested a bomb be dropped on their Denmark Street domicile.
The Midnight Special may have proved an illusory dawn, but little could Mick, Joe, and Paul have known as they trudged away from the Screen On The Green that the events of the coming Bank Holiday Monday would provide one of the keystones to The Clash legend.
♪♪♪
London's inaugural Caribbean Carnival was staged at St. Pancras Town Hall in January 1959; the idea being to improve the morale of the West Indian Community of Notting Hill following the race riots of the previous year. With the carnival proving a resounding success, it was decided to make it an annual event and it alternated between the Seymour Hall at Marble Arch and the Lyceum on the Strand before relocating to Notting Hill in 1966.
As the carnival's starting point was the Emslie Horniman's Pleasance Park in Ladbroke Grove; Joe, Paul, Bernard, together with Joe's squat mate Pat Nother*, decided to partake in the festivities. As usual, there was a heavy police presence at the carnival, and with the black community having long since tired of what they considered unfair discrimination and harassment by the boys in blue, it wasn't long before tensions began to climb with the soaring temperature (the summer of 1976 was the hottest of the twentieth century).
The spark that lit the riotous flame of rebellion that balmy Bank Holiday afternoon came when a black youth was arrested near Portobello Road on suspicion of pick-pocketing. The youth's friends tried to intervene by pelting the arresting officers with bricks, and the ensuing scuffle quickly escalated to the point where riot police – armed with shields and batons – mounted a charge and within a matter of seconds the peaceful carnival descended into carnage.
Amid the melee, which Joe would later liken to a scene from Zulu, he and Paul forlornly – and rather foolishly, it has to be said – tried to set an upturned car alight with a box of matches.
As dusk fell, some 350 police officers had been injured, 68 overzealous revellers had been arrested, and scores of buildings and cars had been looted or destroyed. Paul and Joe somehow managed to survive the melee with nary a scratch between them. Indeed, the only anxious moment came when they found themselves surrounded by a gang of black youths who demanded they turn out their pockets. Neither of them had any money, but Joe had a recently purchased second-hand transistor radio which he was refusing to give up and they could have ended up in hospital or worse had a dread whom Paul subsequently described as a 'Rasta General' not intervened.
On returning to the Davis Road squat the duo regaled Mick, Keith, and their other friends with what they'd witnessed – no doubt embellishing their involvement with each telling. With football hooliganism endemic in mid-Seventies Britain, London had seen its fair share of gang-related street brawls, but this was the first time a section of the community had risen up against the Establishment, and the experience taught them that while the blacks were prepared to stand on the barricades and shake a fist in the face of oppression, their more docile white counterparts had seemingly been schooled to accept their lot in life.
Unable to shake the thought of the Englishman's subservience to the state, Joe committed his musings to paper. The following afternoon at Rehearsals, Mick came up with an incendiary riff to match the lyric, and 'White Riot' received its first public airing on Tuesday, 31 August when The Clash supported the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club.
♪♪♪
Six days later, Mick fulfilled one of his ambitions when The Clash played the Roundhouse where he'd regularly seen Mott The Hoople. Headlining that particular weekend's 'Sundae Outing' were pub-rock stalwarts Kursaal Flyers, with rockabilly revivalists Crazy Cavan 'N' The Rhythm Rockers (featuring a pre-lip quivering Shakin' Stevens) second on the bill. This show would prove another footnote in The Clash's history as it was the last to feature Keith Levene in the line-up.
'Keith left the band because he couldn't be bothered to come to rehearsals,' Mick explained. 'As I recall, he actually said, "I can't be bothered to come to rehearsals," so Joe said, "Well, don't bloody bother to come again!"'5
Keith may well have voiced his disinterest in rehearsing, but Terry remembers how it was Mick's playing devil's advocate which set Keith up for the fall. 'Mick was putting forward the idea in a very roundabout way that they didn't need three guitar players in the band,' he revealed. 'I wasn't listening very much, but Joe said, "Shall we get rid of him then?" I jumped then, and thought, "You can't get rid of someone just on a whim." I thought it was Joe and his crazy behaviour, but Paul, who didn't really say very much, said, "I think you're right."'6
Terry may have been shocked, but in hindsight it's easy to understand why the others had all been secretly imagining a Keith-less Clash. With Keith out of the way Mick could take the lead on guitar, Paul could make the left-hand side of the stage his own, while serving notice on Keith provided Joe with an opportunity to put the Stalinistic ruthlessness Bernard had instilled into him into practice.
Bernard, however, was left somewhat piqued, if only because the decision to get rid of Keith had been made behind his back. He also feared that Mick wasn't yet up to the job of leading the line, and in an attempt to reaffirm his authority he briefly contemplated bringing Eunan Brady in as Keith's replacement until discovering the former Hollywood Brat was twenty-seven years old.
On Monday, 20 September 1976, The Clash returned to Oxford Street to play the opening night of the '100 Club Punk Festival'; the two-day event, which, though billed as a festival, was in fact simply another grandstanding vehicle for Malcolm to showcase the Sex Pistols' talents.
Another reason for Malcolm's decision to stage a punk festival in London came in response to the Sex Pistols having been excluded from the recent 'First European Punk
Festival' – staged within a bullring in Mont de Marsan in southern France – owing to their reputation. The Clash and The Damned had been invited to appear at the French festival, but while The Clash promptly withdrew in another show of solidarity to the Pistols, The Damned had no such compunction and readily accompanied Nick Lowe, The Pink Fairies, Roogalator, and Eddie and the Hot Rods to Dover.
The problem facing Malcolm, of course, was that whilst the London scene was gathering a-pace, there weren't enough bona fide punk bands to merit the term 'festival'. However, unlike the Goldsmiths Free Festival debacle of several years earlier when Malcolm had incurred the wrath of the college's faculty and his fellow students when King Crimson, The Pretty Things, and none of the other named acts he'd supposedly booked showed up, he could at least guarantee the Sex Pistols' and The Clash's participation.
With The Damned headlining the Tuesday night bill, which also featured Buzzcocks, and The Vibrators (with Chris Spedding guesting), Malcolm shored up Monday night's fare by inviting Parisian punk outfit, Stinky Toys, as well as giving Susan 'Siouxsie Sioux' Ballion's Banshees, and the equally untested Subway Sect their respective stage débuts.