We Are the Clash

by Mark Andersen

  Thatcher adamantly opposed any resolution short of outright Argentinian surrender. This tested her relationship with Reagan, who was torn between their alliance and his support for the anticommunist Argentinian military dictators.

  When Reagan sided with Thatcher, the outcome was certain. After ten weeks, and with nearly one thousand dead, the Union Jack once again flew over the Falklands. Thatcher emerged victorious, with dramatically increased popularity not only at home but abroad as well. The Argentinian dictatorship was soon deposed in a return to democracy, but for Thatcher the message was chilling: War works.

  Among the many repercussions from this episode was a small one involving The Clash. At the last possible moment, Strummer decided to call the new album Combat Rock, intended as an oblique comment against the war then raging. It was a sign that Strummer’s artistic gaze—largely diverted to Central America, Vietnam, and New York City—might soon come to rest back home.

  For now, there was little time for reflection. Combat Rock was released on May 14, 1982, and the reunited original version of The Clash hit the road two weeks later. The shows tended to downplay Sandinista! in favor of the new record, the London Calling LP, and early nuggets like “Career Opportunities” now containing a revised line: “I don’t want to go fighting in a Falklands street.” “Charlie Don’t Surf” was a key Sandinista! track aired from time to time, with Strummer explaining, “We thought this song was about Vietnam, until we discovered it was about the Falklands.”

  The band played virtually every night for two months. Although Chimes was not Headon’s equal as a drummer, he was skilled and tireless, providing a hard-hitting foundation for the songs. One seasoned observer, Rolling Stone critic Mikal Gilmore, complimented the band on “some of the best shows in years.”

  Any doubts about the Clash trajectory were quickly overwhelmed by the imperatives of touring. After the US tour, The Clash had only two weeks off before making up the UK dates dropped when Strummer went AWOL. After three weeks and eighteen gigs, The Clash went back to America for another three months.

  Combat Rock itself could be seen as a more concentrated version of the musical formula debuted on Sandinista!, largely eschewing straight-ahead rock numbers for more angular and open compositions. When Rhodes critiqued the new material he heard in rehearsal as long meandering “ragas,” Strummer slyly incorporated the remark in the opening line of a new song, “Rock the Casbah.”

  The album also echoed Sandinista!’s themes. That record had been given the catalog number “FSLN 1,” another nod to the Nicaraguan revolutionaries; Combat Rock now took “FMLN 2” as its number, a reference to the Salvadoran guerrilla coalition, the Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (FMLN).

  The group was named after Salvadoran Communist leader Farabundo Martí, an ally of Nicaraguan revolutionary Augusto César Sandino, for whom the Sandinistas were named. Martí had led a peasant uprising against the military and oligarchy in 1932. It ended in “La Matanza” (The Massacre), with perhaps thirty thousand killed—including Martí—in less than a month in retaliation for the rebellion.

  This slaughter found an echo in the mounting atrocities committed by the Salvadoran military, armed by the Reagan administration. In just one example, the Atlacatl Battalion—trained and advised by the US military—killed as many as one thousand men, women, and children suspected of supporting the guerrillas in the northern village of El Mozote on December 11, 1981. This single massacre equaled the entire death toll of the Falklands War.

  When New York Times reporter Raymond Bonner helped expose these killings in January 1982, Reagan officials viciously attacked his objectivity, denying the atrocity had taken place. Amid intense pressure from the administration, Bonner was transferred to another post, and the slaughter went on.

  If most of the US populace looked away, The Clash was paying attention, with sixties icon Allen Ginsberg adding references to Salvadoran death squads to Combat Rock’s “Ghetto Defendant.” As with Sandinista!, the ghost of the Vietnam War hovered over the record, even as El Salvador was in danger of becoming another such quagmire, with the US drawn again into defending a corrupt and brutal ally in the name of “fighting communism.”

  Behind the scenes, the CIA was working to unify fractious anti-Sandinista counterrevolutionaries—known as “contras”—into a fighting force to harry and ultimately overthrow that regime. Using clandestine allies like Israel and Argentina, Reagan extended his backyard offensive throughout the Central American and Caribbean region.

  As The Clash pressed its own campaign on the concert trail, a seismic shift was occurring. Combat Rock was garnering strong reviews, but even greater sales. First, “Should I Stay or Should I Go” ascended the charts, replicating the success of “Train in Vain” three years earlier. Then a new video music channel, MTV, sent a second single, “Rock the Casbah,” into the Top 10. The endless gigging was exhausting, but The Clash was breaking big in the largest market in the world, headlining larger and larger venues.

  Then The Clash got an unusual offer: the Who wanted the upstart unit to join a “farewell” American tour. Commercially, this was a no-brainer, exposing The Clash to an audience far beyond their existing one. Artistically, the appeal was less certain. The Who represented the “dinosaur rock” The Clash had set out to displace, and the band would be on enemy turf, playing huge stadiums.

  The Baker knew where he stood: “We were packing up the gear after a show and [Clash guitar tech] Digby said to me, ‘What’s going on in the dressing room? The door is locked and there’s no fans in there.’ I ran back to the dressing room and found the band in heated discussion with Bernie and Kosmo about the prospect of supporting the Who. At the time it seemed to me that Mick was for it, Paul was on the fence, and Joe seemed to be just listening, undecided. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and resolved—against my better judgment—to offer my own protest even though I knew I was in danger of being told it was band business.”

  The Baker cited all the obvious drawbacks, but to no avail: “The Bernie/Kosmo force majeure was pounding the table about ‘taking it to the next level’ and ‘competing with the music business on its own playing field.’ Tempers flared—I couldn’t believe we had come this far holding onto some of the most precious tenets of the early days, only to give in to big business. I was accused of being ‘unrealistic’ and trying to live in the past.”

  When Rhodes shouted, “This ain’t fucking 1976!” The Baker gave up and stormed out of the dressing room. If beaten in the argument, he remained skeptical: “I felt Joe knew they were making a mistake but that there was nothing else to do. His unshakable trust in Bernie’s instincts once again won the day.”

  In the end, the band decided it couldn’t turn down the money or the challenge. But it was one thing to decide to do it, and another to actually play on gigantic stages to a distant audience, many of whom had not come to see The Clash, and who were impatient to see the headliners.

  The Clash had played to big crowds before, including some 80,000-plus in London’s Victoria Park for Rock Against Racism on April 30, 1978. That gig, however, had a political urgency and purpose, helping to defeat a rising neo-Nazi threat in the form of the National Front, amid acts of racist violence.

  One of those in attendance was a teenage Clash fan named Billy Bragg. Years later, Bragg would recall, “That was the first political activism I ever took part in, and I went because The Clash were playing. It totally changed my perspective. There were 100,000 kids just like me. And I realized that I wasn’t the only person who felt this way. It was that gig—and that audience, really—that gave me the courage of my convictions, to start speaking out.”

  Bragg was not alone in feeling the day was a transformative experience. In 2008, leading UK newspaper the Guardian wrote, “For those who attended the concert in 1978 it was a show that changed their lives and helped change Britain. Rock Against Racism radicalized a generation, it showed that music could do more than just entertain: it could ma
ke a difference.”

  Victoria Park carried an extraordinary resonance—but Strummer found that stadium shows rarely had such a vibe. They were engineered to include as many fans, and make as much money, as possible, with little thought to the quality of the experience. Bands would generally be visible only on gigantic video screens, blurring the line between experiencing live music and watching TV.

  This meant hard work for any group serious about connecting with its audience, often resulting in an exhaustion that was more psychic than physical. The Clash was a band that fed off its fans, enjoying the chaos and spontaneity. The businesslike tick-tock of these huge shows was alien to them, and the immense distance from the audience took its toll.

  At New York’s Shea Stadium, Strummer chided the crowd for chatting during the songs. After another gig, a visibly exhausted Strummer—sitting slouched over and hiding behind sunglasses—was asked about the band’s responsibility to the fans. He responded curtly, “I’m not strong enough to carry anything like that right now.” When the interviewer followed up with Jones, asking how he felt about the music industry, he replied, “It’s not any worse than any other prostitution business.”

  That Jones would say this is striking because, of the band’s original cohort, he was perhaps the one most open to this level of success. It did not mean, however, that he handled the breakthrough well.

  Jones had never been known for punctuality—in the movie Rude Boy he is scolded on camera by road manager Johnny Green—but after Combat Rock broke big, it got worse. Whether this was due to his late-night lifestyle or a power play is not clear. Whatever the cause, Jones regularly left the band waiting. Added to existing musical and ideological differences, a chasm was growing.

  When the seemingly endless tour finally concluded just before Halloween 1982, The Clash was on top commercially, but battered spiritually. Moreover, Chimes did not wish to continue as drummer—nor did the band want to record new material with him, according to Vinyl.

  After one last show in Jamaica on November 27, 1982, the band settled in for a lengthy break. Before recording Sandinista! the band had come off the road energized, eager to go to work writing new material, and even Combat Rock songs had come swiftly. Now everything felt different. There was no move to replace Chimes, and no plans were made even for rehearsals.

  Ever eager for the stage, Strummer played a series of gigs with old friends—including Mole and Richard Dudanski from the 101ers—in an impromptu combo called the Soul Vendors. Both the band’s name and the raw roots-rock it played suggested the deep ambivalence Strummer felt about the commercial status and musical direction of The Clash, increasingly driven by Jones, whose interest in hip-hop and electronic music was growing.

  Jones had begun using a guitar-synthesizer hybrid that Vinyl derisively dubbed “the dalek’s handbag,” referencing evil extraterrestrials in the Doctor Who TV series. Jones’s adventurous spirit had catapulted The Clash past most of its peers, asserting punk as far more than a static set of chords, hairstyles, and clothes. Now, it was not clear whether Strummer or Simonon wished to continue on that journey, at least in the direction Jones proposed.

  When Strummer suddenly decided to make a ragged but engaging film noir, Hell W10, in early 1983, he enlisted friends and bandmates for the DIY endeavor. Strikingly, Jones was cast as the villain. For some participants like The Baker, the clues were too obvious to miss: “It was as if Joe knew that the only way they could keep working together was by not playing music.”

  In the midst of editing the film, a call came with an astonishing offer: The Clash had been offered $500,000 to headline the first night of something called the US Festival, to be held near San Bernardino in Southern California.

  The US Festival, which aspired to be “the Woodstock of the 1980s,” was the brainchild of American entrepreneur Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple Computers. The mountains of money being made in this emerging sector was contributing to fundamental shifts in the US and global economies—and allowed Wozniak to bankroll a huge festival costing untold millions of dollars.

  Could that cash buy The Clash? The band had made a reputation by not being overly impressed by money and its temptations, even rebuffing the UK hit maker Top of the Pops because it required lip-synching. But if stadium shows were difficult, playing such a festival was a whole other animal.

  In the sixties, the rock festival represented a “gathering of the tribes,” a communal celebration of the counterculture transcending a simple commercial transaction. Many were free, exemplifying a belief that music is for the people more than profit, for communion more than commerce.

  But the intimate context that fed punk—with audience and band on essentially the same level—was worlds apart from the mass scale of rock festivals. Vinyl later noted, “Festivals are a hippie’s dream, but a punk’s nightmare.”

  In 1989, Strummer articulated the punk ethic in praising the original 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, which had a legal capacity of 199: “I like tight spaces like this one where the crowd can feel the sweat splashing off the stage and you can look one another dead in the eye, take each other’s measure. It makes it all real, you know? Whatever it is, we’re doing something together, right in this spot, right now. It ain’t luxury, but it has some soul, like it was made for people, not cattle.”

  The US Festival was going to be the sort of massive rock spectacle that made powerful communion difficult at best. But perhaps this was the moment for The Clash to take on the music biz on its own turf, a chance to stand up for “revolution rock.” Or maybe the money and momentum propelling them into the mass arena was too great to resist. Whatever the mix of motives, The Clash signed on.

  Immediately the band faced a problem: there was no band. Seeing “the row brewing between Mick and the other two,” Chimes had definitively stepped back. Headon was still lost in his addiction. As a result, The Baker—none too excited about the show in the first place—was tasked with finding a skilled, relatively unknown replacement that could fit The Clash’s music, look, and mission.

  The Baker knew there was no time for lengthy auditions. (The Clash had tried out perhaps one hundred drummers after Chimes left the first time, before settling on Headon in April 1977). He placed an ad in the April 23 issue of Melody Maker, and Peter Howard was one of those who answered the call. As The Baker remembers, “From the moment Pete walked into rehearsal he was so right for the Clash that it was an open-and-shut case . . . Musically, stylistically, and culturally, he was perfect for them.”

  Howard was young, just twenty-three, but skilled. Although a casual fan of The Clash, he was not a devoted follower. “I’d seen The Clash, and I liked them, but I was not overawed. Headon was great, but my drum heroes were mostly prog-rock guys like Bill Bruford or Alan White, so I wasn’t intimidated.”

  It was a high-pressure moment to be joining The Clash, and the managerial team of Rhodes and Vinyl were scarcely warm and fuzzy. Yet Howard seemed to hit it off with his rhythm-section mate Simonon, as well as The Baker who recalls, “With Pete’s arrival, it appeared possible that the dynamism, energy, and creativity could once again be ignited with the introduction of another element into the mix.”

  As the Clash machinery revved up again, Strummer got some life-changing news: his partner Gaby Salter was pregnant. As Strummer’s relationship with his own parents was strained—having been consigned to boarding school, and losing his older brother to suicide—the immensity of becoming a father hit home.

  Other members of The Clash were also experiencing massive changes in their personal lives. According to The Baker, “Paul had flown out to the US after we’d got Pete Howard and married his girlfriend, Pearl Harbour. Joe was now a father-to-be and was obviously feeling all the tensions that go along with that. Mick was fully ensconced at home with [his girlfriend] Daisy exploring new ground with his own alternative set of friends and their ‘creatures of the night’ scene which obviously flew in the face of the Bernie/Kosmo/Joe/Paul axis.”

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  As Strummer absorbed the big news, and The Clash hurried to break in the new drummer, another momentous change had taken place. On March 28, Thatcher’s new National Coal Board director was announced: Ian MacGregor.

  MacGregor had headed British Steel since 1980, presiding over a radical restructuring: 166,000 people had jobs when MacGregor arrived; by the time he left for the Coal Board, only 71,000 were still there. More than 60 percent of the jobs in this British industry had just . . . disappeared.

  Enterprises sheltered by government subsidy could run deficits eternally, bleeding the coffers dry. But not everything worth having showed up in the bottom line, of course, and there was serious social value to the jobs created.

  For Thatcher, it was not worth the trade-off. In the long run, all would be best for the most, as the market made its magic happen—or so went the creed of the neoliberal faith. The choice of MacGregor to head the Coal Board meant the same medicine that had been given to steel was now to be administered to another pillar of the British economy. Arthur Scargill—now union president, having won election in 1981 with over 70 percent of the votes—declared, “The policies of this government are clear: to destroy the coal industry and the NUM.”

  Meanwhile, Reagan had taken his rhetorical confrontation with the Soviet Union to an ominous new level. Speaking on March 8 to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, Reagan extolled the power of prayer, and religion’s role in the founding of America. These paeans to the faith-based “greatness and the genius of America” were delivered while the administration was underwriting savage repression in El Salvador and beyond.

  After denouncing abortion and supposed infringements on religious freedom by government bureaucrats, Reagan shifted to a new topic: the nuclear freeze movement trying to arrest the escalating arms race between the US and USSR.

  Reagan claimed, “As good Marxist-Leninists, the Soviet leaders have openly declared that the only morality they recognize is that which will further their cause, which is world revolution.” He then asked the crowd to oppose a nuclear freeze that would only serve “the aggressive impulses of an evil empire . . . and remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.”