Mick Jones: Stayin' In Tune - The Unauthorised Biography

by Mick O'Shea

  Demos were freely available for download on their recently-incorporated www.carbonsilicon.com website, but there was no new album to promote (or indeed record label support to call on), and with the media paying scant regard to what they were doing, their only hope of avoiding potential embarrassment was in attracting Clash/BAD fans through the door. The paradox there, of course, was that those same fans would know not to expect to hear anything from Mick's (or indeed, Tony's) back catalogue.

  Such was Mick and Tony's determination to further break down the barriers – not to mention thwart any bootleggers in the audience – Carbon/Silicon openly encouraged those coming to the shows to bring along their MP3 players and DVD cameras to record or film the proceedings and then upload their efforts onto the website so that anyone else with an interest in the group could log on and share the experience, as well as hopefully spread the word.

  Perhaps not surprisingly, given Mick's relationship with the British music media in recent years, Carbon/Silicon was dismissed as 'two ageing punks throwing a retirement party'. Yet those with a more discerning eye were quick to recognise that unlike the Rolling Stones or The Who, Mick and Tony were striving to give rock 'n' roll a modern age twist rather than simply go through the motions. Indeed, it was their use of pre-programmed rhythms that prompted Creation Records founder Alan McGee – who was managing The Libertines at the time – to liken a Carbon/Silicon show to watching 'the Stones jamming with laptops.'9

  Seeing as they were being heralded as elder statesmen of punk, Mick and Tony were happy to poke fun at themselves. 'Our fans were all slap-heads,' Mick joked. 'We'd go down into the front rows, slapping their bald heads, da-da-da, like The Benny Hill Show.'10

  He also revealed that when he and Tony first hooked up as teenagers they used to amuse themselves by pondering what they'd be like in later years. 'We saw ourselves looking like Winston Churchill,' he chuckled. 'We thought we'd be artists, guys sitting in big straw hats, painting by a riverbank. I started as a painter; Tony did computer science, back when you punched cards into computers. He should be Bill Gates and I should be Picasso.'11

  After appearing in the Strummerville/Leftfield tent at Glastonbury, Mick was forced to put his Carbon/Silicon period on temporary hold whilst producing the Libertines' follow-up eponymous album (which topped the UK album chart in the first week of release), but he and Tony were soon holed up again in their tiny west London studio writing new material.

  Possibly as a result of Mick's working with Messrs Borât, Doherty, Hassall, and Powell again, Carbon/Silicon began moving away from sequel-sampling to a more conventional rock 'n' roll sound; the first sign of which came with their abandoning programmed drum beats in favour of real drums.

  After compiling a fourth six-track demo album available for download, The Homecoming, Carbon Silicon once again went into hibernation for the winter due toe the studio lacking any form of heating.

  ♪♪♪

  On 25 April 2005, Carbon/Silicon headed into the BBC's legendary Maida Vale Studios – where The Clash and Generation X had both recorded sessions – to record a session for Andy Kershaw's Radio 3 Sunday evening show.

  In keeping with the group's 'free music for all' policy, the BBC agreed to stream three of the four songs recorded during the session – 'The Gangs of England, 'Soylent Green' and 'Tell it Like It Is', and the accompanying video from the session. The songs would also be made available on the internet via the Carbon/Silicon website.

  Carbon/Silicon's 'word of mouth' following was such that within an hour of the show being broadcast on Sunday, 15 May, the songs and video had been downloaded an incredible 2000 times in the first twelve hours alone. The remaining track, a cover-version of Mott The Hoople's 'Original Mixed-Up Kid' was broadcast on the following week's show.

  Since making their home studio debut the previous March, Carbon/ Silicon had played around fifty shows to date, and that same month Mojo Club offered them a mini-tour of Barfly UK dates in Glasgow, York, Liverpool, London, and Cardiff. Despite the burgeoning interest in Carbon/Silicon, however, they had yet to ping a publicist or record label's radar.

  They followed up the Barfly dates with an appearance at the openair Evolution Festival in Gateshead on the late May Bank Holiday weekend, and further exposure came in June when Patti Smith was invited to curate that year's Meltdown festival at the Festival Hall on the South Bank. Patti not only invited Carbon/Silicon as one of her guest acts, she joined them on stage midway through their encore rendition of Jimi Hendrix's 'Hey Joe'.

  The fans came away from the Festival Hall happy enough, but The Independent proved less than kind in its review. After dismissing Carbon/Silicon as 'a guitar-driven quartet dressed in the mandatory middle-aged rockers' dark suits and open-necked shirts, it proceeded to attack the sound system as being 'so awful [that] not a single sung word was decipherable.'

  Though a sensitive soul at heart, Mick had been around the block enough times to know he couldn't please everybody, but getting bad reviews in the broadsheets was nothing compared to the Daily Mirror's exposé of Kate Moss' cocaine shenanigans with her badboy lover Pete Doherty – replete with photographs showing the supermodel hunched over the console at the Metropolis Studios in Chiswick, west London where Babyshambles were recording their debut album, Down In Albion – with a rolled-up £20 shoved up her nostril. Kate had been dating Doherty since the turn of the year, and although the Mirror's undercover agent was solely interested in capturing La Belle et la Bête* en flagrante, the photo accompanying the front-page story revealed a silhouetted Mick Jones hovering in the background. According to the Daily Mail's account, the Mirror had other photos catching him in the act, he was also facing the possibility of being charged with being in possession of a Class A drug. Fortunately for Mick, however, he was let off the hook when the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was insufficient evidence to bring charges against Kate.

  'I thought it was going to be the last record I ever made', Mick chuckled when recounting what was undoubtedly one of the more ;awkward moments of his career. 'I don't completely think that anymore.'12

  With the Babyshambles album in the can, Mick returned to Carbon/ Silicon duty to begin work on the group's first sample-free album, A.T.O.M (A Twist Of Modern).

  Being creatures of habit, Mick and Tony retired to their west London studio and spent the winter months writing, recording and producing. Rather than wait until they'd finished the album as a whole, however, they opted to release it piecemeal by making each of the twelve tracks – complete with hi-res artwork – available as free downloadable MP3s from the website to allow the fans to compile their own version of the album.

  * * *

  * Streetcore was released in December 2003. (BACK)

  * The Essential Clash was released in March 2003. (BACK)

  * Those invited to attend the showcase were given a six-track promo CD, The Grand Delusion, as a memento. (BACK)

  * 'La Belle et la Bête (The Beauty and the Beast), on which Kate provides backing vocals, is the opening track on Down In Albion. (BACK)

  – CHAPTER NINETEEN –

  A TWIST OF MODERN

  'I'm always thinking that tomorrow is going to be the day. I want to be in the moment… always cautiously optimistic about the future but with no expectations. It's only chasing an illusion. I try to be fresh by ignoring everything I've done up 'til now. I don't find it hard to be original; I just do what I do instinctively and don't even think about it.'

  – Mick Jones

  NO SOONER HAD THE FINAL A.T.O.M track, 'Grow Up', been despatched into cyberspace than Carbon/Silicon set to work on a new album, which they called Western Front, and consisted of re-recorded versions of the best of their early material such as 'Why Do Men Fight', 'National Anthem', and 'I Loved You'. Once again, the songs were made available for free download from the website. Figuring their fans had more than enough new tunes to savour, as well as deliberate over on the group's forum page, Carbon/Silicon retreated into their Acton e
nclave and spent the remainder of the year either rehearsing or writing and recording new material in preparation for a spring offensive.

  Aside from recording a couple of songs with former Spandau Ballet boy turned actor, Gary Kemp*, Carbon/Silicon emerged into daylight with six brand-new compositions earmarked for a new mini album. To keep things fresh and exciting, prior to releasing The Crack-up Suite as the new download album was called, Mick and Tony took the decision to remove all previously free MP3 tracks from the website – giving those fans who hadn't yet availed themselves of the downloads a thirty-hour window in which to do so.

  Fans were still debating the Carbon/Silicon spring-clean clear out when it was announced that Danny the Red and William Blake were leaving the group to be replaced by Mick's old BAD compadre, Leo Williams and former Reef drummer Dominic Greensmith.

  Mick's first return to the live arena since the previous year came not with Carbon/Silicon, however, but rather with a guest appearance with Primal Scream (who were being honoured with the 'Godlike Genius Award') at the NME Shockwave Awards ceremony at the Hammersmith Palais performing (appropriately enough) '(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais'. And of course, with Rolling Stone having recently hailed the Strummer/Jones songwriting partnership to be the third greatest behind Lennon/McCartney and Jagger/Richards, it was perhaps only fitting that he marked his first public appearance of the year with a Clash track.

  Since their coming together five years earlier Mick and Tony had given away some twenty-odd songs with nary a thought for recompense, yet June 2007 saw them make their first 'hardware' release, a four-track CD EP called The News, on their own Carbon Silicon Records label. That same month, having played a warm-up show of sorts at the Bush Hall in west London on 31 May, the new Carbon/Silicon lineup played the second day of the Isle of Wight Festival, alongside Amy Winehouse, Muse, and Kasabian.

  Speaking with the NME after their six-song set Mick made light of their lowly afternoon billing. 'We're really happy with the performance,' he said. 'To use a footballing analogy, we used the space well, packed the box, and everyone did what they had to do. It was all about keeping your composure and standing tall. It was the biggest gig we've played and it was great. I think this band can play on any stage.'

  Despite their featuring way down on the festival's pecking order, however, Mick was in element as the following night's bill saw the headlining Rolling Stones giving their first British festival appearance since Knebworth back in 1976.

  September brought the release of a second commercial CD EP, The Magic Suitcase, which served as a lead single for Carbon/Silicon's debut conventional album, The Last Post the following month. With the exception of 'Acton Zulus', the remaining eleven tracks were Bill Price remixes of tracks from A.T.O.M and Western Front. It was the first time Mick had worked with Bill since Megatop Phoenix.

  To promote the album Carbon/Silicon embarked on a UK tour, and in December they embarked on their first US venture with two sellout shows in New York and Los Angeles. 'I want to go everywhere, obviously, if we can manage it,' Mick said at the time. 'But it's just a couple of dates; then hopefully we'll come back and do some more in the new year. It's just a first taste. We're looking forward to it. I haven't been in the States for over twelve years.'

  Mick may have been excited about the prospect of returning to the states, but when speaking with CNN's Peter Wilkinson prior to going over to America he and Tony offered a caveat to those ticket holders expecting to hear some Clash, BAD, or Generation X songs in the set. 'If we played the old stuff, people just wouldn't be interested in anything new,' Mick shrugged, while Tony added that if all they'd wanted to do was get played on the radio they could have simply called themselves 'Clash X'.

  Wilkinson would liken Carbon/Silicon's sound on The Last Post to 'a garage sound tinged with electronica and glam.' When he'd asked why they'd done away with sampled sequencing on the album, Mick said: 'We used samples at the start of Carbon/Silicon so we had a full canvas but our music ain't about that. It's about an emotional connection so we've taken most of that stuff out 'cos it's not us.

  'We found that the samples became a constraint 'cos you always knew where you were going to go, so you were never free. It somehow took the heart away. The important thing is to have a contemporary rhythm section that informs the music but without slavishly using other people's stuff. Now we've seen the light.'

  ♪♪♪

  Throughout January and February 2008, the Inn On The Green was the place to be, as Carbon/Silicon served as hosts for seven dates over consecutive Fridays at the tiny Ladbroke Grove venue (built into the concrete piles propping up the Westway) under the 'Carbon Casino' banner. Tony had hit upon the idea for the residency after watching the Martin Scorsese film Casino on DVD, while Mick chose the venue.

  'Our rough plan [was that] there wouldn't be a set list,' Tony explained on the Carbon/Silicon website. 'We'd just make it up on the night with no pressure, have a chance to try out songs we rarely played rather on big shows where you felt you must play the professional set. Then we'd have support groups getting to play a couple of numbers and then maybe in the encore we'd have a friend or two to play with us.'

  The bijou venue, which was a cross betwixt a student union bar and a youth club, could hold around two hundred at a push, but with said 'friends' including Glen Matlock and Paul Cook, Pete Wylie, and James Dean Bradfield there were so many punters crammed inside that condensation dripped down from the ceiling like rain.

  While the plethora of support groups – The Dirty Curtains, British Voodoo, Usual Suspects, Hello Kitty, Taurus Trakker, and Rotten Hill Gang – were worthy of the £10 admission price alone, the highlight of each show was undoubtedly the 'special guests' encore segment.

  The first night proved an emotional affair for Mick in particular as Topper joined Carbon/Silicon on stage to provide the beat on 'Train In Vain', and 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go', while the following weeks saw the Sex Pistols' rhythm section, Glen and Paul; Tymon Dogg; James Dean Bradfield; the Fun Lovin' Criminals, and Alabama 3 all joining in the fun.

  Another 'special guest' was Hard-Fi's Richard Archer whom Mick had befriended the previous year when his name was mooted as a possible producer for their next album. 'I guess I can have a lot of fun at this stage in my career and I like working with young people such as Rich because they're full of new ideas,' Mick said of his relationship with Archer. 'I wouldn't say I'm a mentor to him, though. I just like to try to have some fun and play a few tunes.'2

  One of the tunes Mick and Rich played together came during HardFi's performance at the NME Awards show at Koko in Camden Town at the beginning of February, when Mick joined the group on stage for a brilliant rendition of 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go.'

  Carbon/Silicon would go on stage each week without a preferred set-list, but for the final show they had twenty songs painted on a huge multicoloured wheel and invited celebrity guests such as Sienna Miller and Rhys Ifans to come up on stage and give the wheel a spin for the next song played. The final night's performance would be released as a limited-edition CD the following year.

  The Carbon Casino dates have not only gone down in West London folklore, they have proved the only occasion to date where Carbon/ Silicon have dipped into the Clash goody bag. Aside from playing 'Train In Vain' and 'Should I Stay or Should I Go' with Topper on the opening night, the latter song received a second airing when Rhys Ifans gave the Wheel of Fortune a spin, while Lauren Jones had also joined the group on stage earlier in the residency to duet 'Hitsville UK' with her old man.

  To commemorate the Carbon Casino shenanigans, photographer Pete Stevens put together a limited edition book – with each of the 200 copies personally signed by Mick and Tony – featuring 280 photos from the seven shows.

  Following the final residency date on 29 February, Carbon/Silicon bid a fond farewell to the claustrophobic confines of the Inn On The Green and embarked on a full US tour, taking in major cities on both seaboards. They also made three appear
ances at the SXSW (South by Southwest) in Austin, Texas, as well as the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, southern California on 26 April.

  Mick, of course, had visited the Sunshine State many times in the past, both with The Clash and BAD, but this was the first time he'd experienced the harshness of the Colorado Desert. 'We've heard it's very hot in the desert,' he dead-panned during a pre-festival interview. 'I'm going to have one of those hats on that has a fan in the middle of it.'

  Three days prior to the festival Carbon/Silicon performed at the inaugural NME Awards USA at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles where Mick was also honoured with the Inspiration Award. Presenting the award was the delectable Sienna Miller, who had, of course, been in attendance at the final Carbon Casino date. 'He's helped all of you lot make the music you're making,' she declared after presenting Mick with the award. 'He is my most inspiring friend.'