Mick Jones: Stayin' In Tune - The Unauthorised Biography

by Mick O'Shea

The previous December, Q magazine had polled a cross-section of celebrities, music industry types, DJs, and musicians as to whether The Clash should reform in the coming year. Mick's old mucker Tony James thought they should 'because attitude lasts forever', yet that summer he found himself working with Mick on what would eventually become future project Carbon/Silicon.

  Deciding that 'maybe experience could be edgy too' after watching the Bruce Willis movie Die Hard, Tony had invited Mick round to his place and the two began bouncing ideas off of each other as they had done at the Paddington Kitchen during their London SS days. According to Tony's recollections on www.carbonsilicon.com, the ideas got more left-field as the evening wore on, with the two signing off on the madcap notion that Jack Nicholson was still cool enough to pull off fronting a rock 'n' roll group.

  Mick was still committed to Big Audio, but he and Tony would convene in the latter's garage-cum-studio in Maida Vale to work on a set of Tony's lyrics with nothing more than an acoustic guitar and a Linn 9000 drum machine. It was the first time they'd written songs together in nearly twenty years, and just as he had back in the day Tony found himself marvelling at Mick's seemingly effortless ability to conjure up so perfect a melody for the lyric that anyone hearing the finished song would believe the melody must have come first.

  'That was and is Mick's gift – to look at lyrics and hear the song finished already, finished inside his head with the tune playing along in time to the rhythm of the words,' Tony enthused. 'He always says that the lyric defines the song; that it's already written out there in the ether. You just have to find it and you'll hear it, just like seeing a sculptured head inside a block of stone.'

  Their first composition – perhaps not surprisingly – was called 'Rock and Roll with Jack', while other titles worked up during these ad hoc Garageland get-togethers included 'Expensive Habits', 'Age Up' and 'Experience'. 'We didn't really think about what we would do with the songs,' Tony revealed. 'The fun was just in the writing. One day Mick said he knew Val Kilmer and I should ask him to sing because after all he looked great in The Doors movie!'

  They decided against calling Val, but Mick and Tony continued with their one-song-a-week quota until they had around eight songs in the can – or captured on Tony's Sony V-O-R mono tape recorder.

  With Mick still signed to Sony, the next logical step would have been to submit the 'Rock and Roll with Jack' cassette tape to Muff Winwood – if only to get some critical feedback from the label's longserving A&R chief. Instead, they did nothing, because in Tony's words the moment had passed. 'One day we just stopped,' he explained. 'The idea wasn't fully formed, and more importantly looking back I wasn't ready either because the idea was not yet from the heart, it was from the head because it was just a film and a cartoon, made up. Something I would learn to understand in the future.'

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  On the back of a twelve-inch promo of 'Looking For A Song', Higher Power was given a worldwide release in early November. The critics were less than kind in their appraisals, and rightly so, because while certain tracks such as 'Light Up My Life' (penned in honour of his ten-year-old daughter, Lauren), and 'Harrow Road' (Featuring Ranking Roger on backing vocals), were decent enough, the album as a whole was bordering on monotonous. So much so, that only divine intervention was likely to save it from ignominious failure.

  To those on the outside looking in, it might have appeared that the album's substandard fare was due to too many chefs spoiling the broth, but it later transpired that Mick was merely fulfilling his contractual obligations to Sony. The label had been questioning Mick's creativity levels for some time now, and so when the album failed to chart they agreed to drop BAD from their roster.

  One of the tracks on Higher Power was called 'Lucan', and Mick was probably wishing he could perform a similar disappearing act to that of the disgraced Earl. Indeed, aside from rare sightings such as at the Notting Hill Carnival, Mick spent the early part of 1995 closeted away from public gaze. Of course, with Mick now being a free agent as it were, it was inevitable that his severance from CBS/Sony would set The Clash reformation rumour mill's rusting wheels turning once more.

  The latest reports had us believe The Clash had been offered somewhere in the region of $6 million to headline that year's Lollapalooza Tour, and according to those in the know, the other acts on the package tour had been informed of this fact.

  Needless to say, The Clash didn't dig out their pop star army fatigues, but had the decision been Mick's alone to make then things might have turned out differently. Speaking with the News Of The World in September, Tricia Ronane confirmed the amount tabled, but said that while Mick, albeit via his manager, Gary Kurfirst, had 'thought it a good idea', Paul had sided with Joe in steadfastly refusing to enter negotiations.

  With Mick having publicly stated he wasn't ruling out a Clash reunion at some unspecified point in the future, Tricia's comments didn't cause much of a stir. However, it was a different story when Heidi Robinson, one of Lollapalooza's organisers, gave her version of events to the media. According to Heidi, Joe's reasons for vetoing the proposal had stemmed from Topper's having only just completed yet another rehab course at the time the offer was tabled, and that there'd been insufficient time between the offer and the opening date of the tour for The Clash to get back to their fighting best.

  It was then that Heidi dropped her bombshell. Having cited The Clash not having a new album to promote as another of Joe's reservations, she then claimed that Joe had told her he, Mick, Paul, and Topper would be recording a new album together before the year was out, and that The Clash might therefore be in a position to headline the following year's Lollapalooza.

  The only Clash-related albums to hit the shops that year were Big Audio Dynamite's F-Punk, which the group – having reverted back to its original name – released in August through Kurfirst's independent label, Radioactive, and the BAD compilation album, Planet B.A.D, which Columbia issued in September.

  With its front cover unashamedly copying the green and pink typeface from London Calling (which The Clash had of course borrowed from Elvis Presley), a lead single titled 'I Turned Out A Punk', and a supplementary Sniffin' Glue-esque 'how to tune your guitar' guide, F-Punk can perhaps best be described as a semiautobiographical opus in terms of Mick exploring his punk roots. 'The words were first this time,' Mick revealed to Pulse magazine's Michael Jarrett. 'I had a tape machine. I worked on the rhythm of the words by reading them. Then, I put them down. I put the chords later. I've never done that before.'

  Further nods to his Clash past come with 'Psycho Wing' evoking memories of the 'Can't Explain' riff from 'Clash City Rockers', the gutsy guitar vamp of 'Singapore' being reminiscent of 'Somebody Got Murdered', his dueting with daughter Lauren (who also penned the lyric) on 'I Can't Go On Like This' bringing shades of 'Shepherd's Delight', while the unlisted track 'Suffragette City' (in tribute to Mick Ronson) tagged onto the end of the album was a repeat of 'Train In Vain's clandestine inclusion on London Calling.

  When asked if his approach to making music had changed with the new album, Mick said that they tended to learn a new song in the morning and then record it in the afternoon. 'We record it very basically, with the group all playing together, then we take it to another place; we remix parts of it,' he explained. 'That's how you come to hear the band really playing and, the next minute, it's completely different. It's not like funny time signatures or anything.'1

  F-Punk was the eighth studio album to bear the BAD brand and Mick was well versed in having to explain the dichotomy of playing to the mutually exclusive audiences of pop and rock. 'There are two crowds,' he said. 'One's a dance crowd. They need to be shown that guitars can be cool. Then, there's the rock crowd. They need to know not to be afraid of the dance scene. We like to go and play at dance places, and we like to bring some of that to our gigs. It's important to take stuff that's going on around you and add it to your arsenal.'2

  Mick believed F-Punk proved Big Audio Dynamite still pack
ed an explosive punch, and while Guitar World hailed the album BAD's 'most cohesive work since their debut, 'bridging the gap between rock and underground dance music—this time acid house, ambient and the ultra-fast beats of jungle,' BAM's Tom Lanham offered something of a backhanded compliment by describing the album as 'leaner, meaner, and more ill-tempered than anything this often-forgettable group has done since its sharply inventive '85 debut.'

  The mixed reception, coupled with Radioactive's less-than-searing presence within the music industry, which made the album virtually impossible to get hold of, consigned it to the same fate that befell Higher Power. And of course, with Columbia immune to such distribution problems, any hopes Kurfirst had in rectifying the situation were swept asunder when Planet B.A.D went on sale the following month.

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  Nothing, as they say, sells quite like nostalgia, and with 1996 marking the twentieth anniversary of UK punk, the marketing men who were already set to make a killing received an unexpected bonus in March when the Sex Pistols' founding line-up of John Lydon, Steve Jones, Paul Cook, and Glen Matlock announced they were reforming for a world tour. With the warring Pistols having set aside their petty grievances to get their hands on some filthy lucre (a reported £1 million each), there were many who expected The Clash to finally follow suit – possibly even get together with the Sex Pistols on one of the latter's yet unconfirmed UK dates?

  Owing to his friendship with Glen, Mick would have probably been privy to the cloak-and-dagger negotiations prior to the Sex Pistols taking to the stage at the 100 Club on 18 March to face the world's media.

  In hindsight, every one who'd ever bought Never Mind The Bollocks here's the Sex Pistols should have perhaps agreed to make a donation to stop them from reforming because while the Filthy Lucre tour enabled those who'd either missed the Pistols first time around, or had come of age hearing their own musical heroes citing them as a major influence to see them in the flesh, the sight of four middle-aged men trying to recapture the chaos of yesteryear was ultimately a sad spectacle.

  During the aforementioned Pulse interview Mick had revealed that he 'still [thought] it better to look good and play terrible, than to play good and look terrible.'

  Yet although The Clash having more than one album in their canon meant they could compile a killer set-list without straying beyond London Calling should they reform, with seventeen years having passed since they'd last took to the stage together they still ran the risk of tarnishing their reputation.

  Whether there was any truth in Heidi Robinson's claims about Joe saying The Clash would be ready to headline the '96 Lollapalooza on the back of a brand new album, with the punk's original bad boys set to hog the sepia-tinged limelight for the remainder of the year it's doubtful whether Mick or Joe would have been interested in stepping back into the Sex Pistols' shadow.

  And Mick, of course, had rather more pressing matters to attend to at the time owing to Gary Stonadge and Chris Kavanagh bailing out on BAD after F-Punk's failure to bring about a reversal in the group's recent fortunes.

  A new rhythm section was found in Darryl Fulstow and former Under Two Flags drummer Bob Wond, and Mick also recruited Ranking Roger as a full-time member to add another dynamic. Having broken in the new recruits with a clutch of enthusiastically-received BAD Soundsystem club nights in and around London through the autumn, the group entered the studio in the new year to begin work on what would become Entering A New Ride. The last couple of years had been something of a roller-coaster ride for BAD, but Mick was hoping they'd finally turned a corner.

  As the new album neared completion, Rolling Stone's September issue proclaimed it was time for 'old Clash fans and younger BAD fans [to] join hands' as – according to Radioactive's spokesperson Jimmy Auth – Entering a New Ride promised a return to 'the really early BAD sound,' and that the lead white-label (promo-only) single 'Sunday Best' was already getting airplay in London's hippest nightspots,' before signing off by informing its readership they could check out all the latest BAD info, on the 'band's ultra-cool website, maintained by Mick himself.'

  It must have come as a surprise to Rolling Stone and every other major music magazine, therefore, when Mick handed the finished master tapes to Radioactive and the label refused to release it! Having to kowtow to a corporate giant such as Sony was one thing, but having the independent label owned by your manager questioning your creative talents proved too much to bear and BAD left Radioactive soon thereafter.

  Just because Radioactive had rejected the album out of hand didn't necessarily mean the master tapes would be left to gather dust on the shelf and throughout 1998 Mick drip-fed the album track by track via the aforementioned BAD website. Once again, Mick appeared at the forefront of technology by releasing Entering a New Ride into cyberspace, but finding himself without a label for the second time in three years was still a major cause for concern.

  Mick's worries over what to do about BAD's plight were temporarily sidelined, however, following Sony's announcement that they intended to release a live Clash compilation album. Having also released The Clash's back catalogue on CD, the label commissioned Don Letts to make a Clash documentary using footage from the group's personal archives, coupled with up-to-date interviews.

  As Joe had finally come in out of the cold with the Mescaleros, and was fully occupied with recording his new outfit's debut album, Rock Art And The X-Ray Style, he was happy to allow Mick and Paul to oversee On The Road With The Clash, as the project was initially called before being re-titled From Here To Eternity.

  Instead of releasing a complete show that would capture The Clash in full uninterrupted onstage glory, replete with Joe's inter-song asides and banter with the audience, Mick and Paul surprisingly opted to select nineteen tracks from various shows throughout the group's career; the earliest being 'London's Burning' from the Rock Against Racism festival at Victoria Park in April 1978, to 'Career Opportunities' at Shea Stadium in New York in October 1982. Less surprising, of course, was the blatant absence of any recordings from shows following Mick's departure.

  To coincide with album's release in October 1999, a fifty-minute cut of Westway To The World, was aired on BBC2 that same month. Perhaps because the interviews were conducted separately, Mick, Joe, Paul, and Topper were far more forthright with their recollections and viewpoints than they might have been had they all been in the same room.

  Topper had the grace to apologise for letting the side down whilst admitting he'd probably go off the rails again if given the chance to relive his time in The Clash because that was his nature. Paul also said he wouldn't change anything if given the chance, while Joe reasoned there being something good about coming on, saying your bit, and then taking your leave. Mick was introspective insofar as admitting to the lack of self-control that had brought about his dismissal, and yet his forthrightness didn't extend to acknowledging that The Clash had carried on in his absence by saying how the coda to '1977' had proved prophetic by ending on 1984 as 'it was probably always meant to.'

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  The royalties from the recent spate of Clash products may have eased any financial worries Mick may have had of late, but career wise things were literally going from bad to worse as the dawn of a new millennium dawned. Whilst he'd had been busy collating tracks for From Here To Eternity, Columbia released a second BAD compilation album, the insipidly-titled Super Hits. With nothing to do but sit around twiddling their thumbs Ranking Roger, Darryl Fulstow, and Bob Wond all drifted away without actually serving notice, and this latest mass desertion, coupled with Sony releasing yet another BAD compilation album – the equally tritely titled Big Audio Dynamite I & II (which featured several tracks that had appeared on Super Hits) – appeared to serve as the group's death knell.

  Aside from directing a promo video for 'Oscar', the latest single by the Liverpool-based outfit, Shack, and contributing guitar on Open Mind, the latest album from Glen Matlock's ongoing side project, the Philistines, little was heard from Mic
k until the following May when he took his place beside Joe, Paul, and Topper (who was on crutches having recently suffered a broken leg), at the Grosvenor Hotel on Park Lane where The Clash were honoured with an Ivor Novello Award for their 'Outstanding Contribution to British Music'.

  'I know the Ivors is a bit Establishment,' Mick told the BBC, 'but the reason we came is that it's [in] recognition of our craft – and for the laugh.'

  The award was as long-overdue as The Clash's classic line-up coming together; as it was the first time Mick, Joe, Paul, and Topper had been in the same room together in eighteen years. When subsequently reflecting on the evening with Kris Needs, Topper said how they'd spent the first ten minutes apologising to each other before bursting out laughing.

  With the hatchets having been well and truly buried, a similar gettogether was expected at the launch party for Bob Gruen's Clash photo book exhibition at the Proud Gallery in Camden Town in September. Yet although Mick and Joe were in attendance (along with half of London, or so it seemed), there was no sign of either Topper or Paul.

  Aside from Barry 'Scratchy' Myers serving as DJ for the evening, other attendees from The Clash's inner-circle of old included Johnny Green, Jock Scott, and Pennie Smith. To everyone's astonishment, the hermetic Bernard Rhodes shuffled in clutching a sheaf of papers to his chest.