The move was not entirely ludicrous, as White had been a fervent fan of the band and often in its audience. He no longer dressed “punk,” but that was easy to address. As White later laughed, “When I joined The Clash, I basically reverted to how I had looked a few years before, as a teenage punk!”
This daring choice showed how unbusinesslike The Clash remained in key regards, operating by punk instinct rather than commercial calculation. Yet it was not without danger. Sheppard noted a bit ruefully later, “The problem is, when you choose someone for their attitude, that’s what you get: their attitude.”
There was little time for reflection, for Rhodes was not allowing much time for the new platoon to solidify. His aim was to get back on the road quickly, returning to the vicinity of their embattled last show with a tour of California in late January.
The original idea had been to play a free gig to erase the lingering bad taste of the US Festival. That was now deemed impractical, given legal worries and the need to make money to fuel the retooled Clash machine, so a seven-date tour was planned instead. As White officially joined the band just days before Christmas, this gave them less than a month to get ready.
One further adjustment was needed. “Greg” was deemed an insufficiently punk name, so White was redubbed “Vince” in honor of early rock heroes Gene Vincent and Vince Taylor. White went along with the change grudgingly, seeing it as evidence of a controlling—and superficial—image consciousness. It was not the last time that he would be dissatisfied with life in The Clash.
The new Clash amid the worst joblessness since the Great Depression, early 1984. (Photo by Mike Laye.)
Less irksome to White was a rigid antidrug line, newly instituted within the band. The edict did have some omissions. “Since alcohol was not on the list of banned substances, it was no skin off my nose, really,” White later recalled with a chuckle. Sheppard: “We were set down early on as a group and Joe and Paul made it clear that we weren’t to be doing these things.” Dropping drugs beyond alcohol was also not a big issue for Sheppard: “I had been considering giving [pot] up anyway, for what it does to your short-term memory.”
This stand made sense, given the desire for a new start for the band. Yet the ban was striking because it included marijuana, a longtime Clash staple.
Some were skeptical, suspecting a Rhodes edict or yet another dig at Jones, whose fondness for pot and cocaine was well known. Perhaps these dynamics played a role, but more likely this was a natural evolution out of long-standing concerns.
Early punk had denounced drug-addled hippies and similarly impaired rock stars. Some in the movement like Rhodes and Vinyl saw such stances as serious and self-evident, but many punks simply seemed to disdain “other people’s drugs” while indulging in their own faves.
The Clash had long inhabited this ambivalent space. Strummer critiqued heroin in 1976’s “Deny,” and “Complete Control” took a swipe at “punk rockers controlled by the price / of the first drugs we must find.” Yet the singer referred to himself as a “drug-prowling wolf” in “White Man in Hammersmith Palais.” Speed came up matter-of-factly in “London’s Burning” and “Cheat” had similarly offhand chemical references. Strummer’s relationship with drugs was clearly complicated.
During a spring 1977 interview with NME journalist Tony Parsons, Strummer even defended drug use, claiming he “can’t live without it,” yet admitting, “If I had kept doing what I was, I’d be dead.” This could have been just a bluff; Strummer is noticeably aloof during the interview, and letting down his guard with the media would have been off the Clash party line at the time. Still, there may have been more truth than sullen bravado in Strummer’s admission.
One of the few substances Strummer roused himself to critique to Parsons—who would later slam all drugs save speed in The Boy Looked at Johnny, the 1978 punk broadside cowritten with fellow NME writer Julie Burchill—was glue sniffing, then widespread in Scotland and various lower-income environs.
The new song “Glue Zombie” picked up that thread, reading almost as a belated rejoinder to the Ramones’ “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue” and “Carbona Not Glue.” Its riff mimics the unsteady lurch of a member of the living dead, with words sketching an unsparing portrait of addiction’s deadly grip: “I am the rebel with the stare of the glue bag / I lost my friend to the smell of gasoline . . .”
Headon’s crisis had pushed Strummer along the antidrug path, as had his own addictive tendencies. According to Chris Salewicz, on the same 1982 tour where Strummer confronted Headon over heroin, the singer—and Jones—had burst into tears upon arriving in Japan to discover pot would be nearly impossible to get.
This new Clash antidrug line joined with a “Sex Mad War” critique of the sexual revolution to bluntly challenge the common “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” mantra. This stance came from a deep if unexpected source.
In Strummer’s revealing chat with Mikal Gilmore in June 1982, he grounded his growing opposition to drugs in rock idealism: “Music’s supposed to be the life force of the new consciousness, talking from 1954 to present, right? A lot of rock stars have been responsible for taking that life force and turning it into a death force. What I hate about so much of that sixties and seventies stuff is that it dealt death as style . . . To be cool, you had to be on the point of killing yourself.
“What I’m really talking about,” Strummer continued, “is drugs. If the music’s going to move you, you don’t need drugs. If I see a sharp-looking guy on a street corner, he’s alive and he’s making me feel more alive—he ain’t dying—and that’s the image I’ve decided The Clash has to stand for these days. I think we’ve blown it on the drug scene. It ain’t happening, and I want to make it quite clear that nobody in The Clash thinks heroin or cocaine or any of that crap is cool.”
“I just want to see things change. I don’t want it to be like the sixties or seventies, where we saw our rock stars shambling about out of their minds, and we thought it was cool, even instructive. That was death-style, not lifestyle. Those guys made enough money to go into expensive clinics, get their blood changed—but what about the poor junkie on the street? He’s been led into it by a bunch of rock stylists, and left to die with their style.”
In the end, Strummer sounded humble yet committed: “I guess we each have to work it out in our own way—I had to work it out for myself—but The Clash have to take the responsibility to stand for something better than that.”
Simonon echoed this when Gilmore asked why The Clash had been able to persist: “You’re talking about things like corruption, disintegration, right? I tell you what I’ve seen do it to other groups: drugs. I’ve been through all sorts of drugs. At one time I took them just for curiosity, and I learned—it’s not worth it. It’s like a carrot held in front of you, and it’s the downfall of a lot of bands we’ve known.”
The bassist bluntly stated a new Clash directive: “We just cut it out—we don’t deal with that stuff anymore. I’d much rather use the money to buy a record, or a present for me girlfriend, or phone me mum up from Australia.” Asked if the band would share that position with Clash fans, Simonon was again direct: “Sure. I don’t see why not. I think that’s part of what we’re about, is testing our audience.”
Neither Simonon nor Strummer was addressing drugs here in a facile, practiced way, as if under orders. These parallel insights, shared separately in mid-1982, when Jones was still in the band, suggested why the duo continued on together.
This orientation could help to purify a Clash sullied by drugs and rock-star behavior, and provide solid footing amid the moment’s immense challenges. It suggested deep soul-searching about what The Clash was meant to be, for what it should stand. Of course, the spirit could be willing, but the flesh might yet prove weak.
The test was to begin when the new Clash met its old audience, beginning at the 2,000-seat Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara on January 19, 1984. To some, this California tour made little sense. Sheppard: “I thought
it was ridiculous that we went straight onto big stages. I said, ‘Why don’t we do some small club gigs, unannounced, just to find our feet?’” Rebuffed, Sheppard was nonetheless excited to play live, which tended to wash away his doubts.
His equanimity was not universal. While the band had begun to click in practice, White was nervous about playing out. Sensing this, Strummer took the young guitarist aside. As White wrote later, “Joe began talking about a return to basics . . . a new blistering Clash burning with the fire they’d had at the beginning. A new Clash rising up from the ashes with a bunch of short, sharp songs that would redefine what the band was about and reestablish its credibility.”
This was Strummer’s new gospel, soon to be shared wherever he went, and it was galvanizing. That the singer segued quickly from inspiration to asking the guitarist to get a haircut didn’t matter. “I was convinced,” White later wrote.
Having conviction helped, but playing with The Clash—even in a relatively cozy venue like the Arlington Theatre—was an enormous jump for the twenty-three-year-old guitarist. White winces at the memory, recalling missed chords and blown cues, overwhelmed by the hurricane of sound and humanity, not able to move and jump as he wanted while trying to play the songs.
Sheppard recognized the challenge: “Vince was completely out of his depth . . . I had played in big spaces as a support act in the Cortinas, but those stages are huge. You can just get lost.” White nonetheless found the show amazing, partly for the same reason—everything was so hectic and very nearly out of control. As it happened, “Out of Control” was the name of one of the band’s most rocking new numbers, one that White favored.
While the song had not made the cut for the live set, “Out of Control” became the motto of this tour and the new Clash in general. Its energy appealed to White, and reflected the lack of commercial calculation involved with the ejection of Jones and Headon and the return to raw, unfashionable punk rock.
As Simonon would later explain, “We feed off the reaction we get from the audience, then we send it right back out, and the whole thing just spirals out of control in a good way. The tour is called Out of Control and that’s kind of why. It’s really a bit of a wind-up of the press.”
There was another meaning as well, reflecting the band’s unsettled legal situation. According to Clash graphic artist Eddie King, “The Out of Control logo was simply photocopied from a Commando comic book and was placed next to The Clash in all flyers and posters in case of possible lawsuits over the use of the band name. Bernard wanted the possibility to either have the word are flyposted between The Clash and Out of Control so that they could tour as Out of Control, or simply have The Clash cut from the top of posters rather than have to set up a whole new print run.”
Taking aim at those who saw the new Clash as wrecking its commercial future, Simonon continued: “We’re portrayed as this band that goes about smashing shit up, and for us . . . the music is the only thing that’s out of control. We like it to be. What good would it be if we just stood there like dead men onstage?”
Backstage after the show, Strummer perched uneasily next to Simonon for a TV interview, smoking a cigarette and wearing a military hat with Out of Control emblazoned on it. Despite postgig exhaustion, the singer was bursting with a barely contained energy, seemingly ready to leap out at the interviewers.
Asked how the show went, Strummer took a drag, made a fist, and launched: “This is the first of many, now we begin. We wanted to strip it down to punk-rock roots and see what’s left, see how it progressed from there.” Slicing the air with his hands, Strummer went on: “I looked around over the past year at all the folks doing shows and making records and I realized that they’d all gone overproduced . . . I realized there wasn’t any piece of vinyl I could hold on to and leap out of a space shuttle with yelling, feel satisfied with like some real piece of rhythm and blues, a Bo Diddley record.” The singer grimaced and balled his fists intently. “You could just hold it in your hands forever!”
Asked how fans responded to this new, raw Clash, Strummer responded, “I think they were took aback a bit maybe because they see us rushing, rushing with the nerves showing in our faces. But we want to take that nervous energy and turn it into power . . . We want our music to deal with reality, and not skip around it.”
As the interview progressed, Strummer’s targets were varied—corporations, drugs, Reagan, Thatcher, current pop music, heavy metal, musical imperialism—and the verbal blows didn’t always connect. Still, the passion was palpable, and the central message clear: “People want something real . . . everything is blando, blando, blando—let’s have a revolt from the bottom up!”
After Strummer rattled off a long list of upcoming tour dates, the interviewer innocently asked about vacation plans. Strummer reared back in disgust, while Simonon retorted, “We haven’t got time for vacation, we’re there for working!”
Strummer jumped in: “There is no time for vacation! Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, their fingers are like that over the button”—hands shaking, mocking an orgasmic eagerness to set off nuclear hell—“there is no time for vacation. It’s time to get down to it, to have responsibility, to use your vote!”
When the interviewer commented that both musicians seemed happy with the new Clash, Strummer agreed: “We are excited, because at last we don’t have to waste our energy on internal arguments. We don’t have to waste our time begging someone to play the damn guitar!”
After more whipping of Jones’s ghost by both musicians, Strummer unleashed a storm of words: “Now is the time to cut out everything that has been wasting your time, time to get serious. You should have high standards . . . I wish everyone would run into street and smash all their records and burn every record store down . . . tell the business we don’t want something they invented . . . Our flesh is about to be flayed off our faces by a firestorm, we haven’t got time to listen to white people play fake black music . . . Don’t support stadium dog rock!”
The fervent, jumbled rant leaped from Strummer’s mouth as if a dam were bursting. The singer was desperate to communicate—to justify the new Clash? To address this scary moment? To rally the troops to action? It’s hard to tell.
Yet both Strummer and Simonon—in his gentler way—communicated an urgency that was far too often missing from the popular music of 1984. Indeed, more passion was on display in this interview than many of their contemporaries evidenced onstage. As Simonon curtly noted, “So much music these days is so tame, you might as well just go back to bed!”
If Strummer and Simonon sensed an impending “Armagideon time,” others acted as if 1984 was nonstop party time. Culture Club’s Boy George and bands like Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, and Wham! celebrated jet-set lifestyles and club-land glamour, spinning out lightweight synth-pop dance tunes that were highly profitable but eminently dispensable.
Sheppard later dismissed such music: “It’s like people watching the big musicals in the thirties—it’s escapism, isn’t it? People trying to avoid thinking about the hard times.” Mick Jones had aligned himself on the “dance” side of the “dance vs. riot” polarity, illuminating what helped lead to the break as 1984 approached.
While The Clash disdained the club crowd, the band also had to account for its own misadventures—beginning with a confrontational appearance on America’s pop showcase, Entertainment Tonight (ET), filmed during the California tour.
ET cohost Dixie Whatley laid it out: “The Clash have returned to the concert trail for the first time in two years. In that time the politically outspoken group has lived up to their name both inside and outside the band. Two members left, with one of them embroiling the group in a bitter lawsuit. The Clash has also had to endure severe criticism stemming from . . . last year’s US Festival where they accepted a payment of $500,000 in the face of their stance as revolutionaries.”
A defensive Strummer first responded with a shot at Boy George and the new pop scene, then unleashed a passionate sermonette:
“There are people out there [who] are sick to their souls. They have been at a party too long, they have been taking drugs too long . . . Drugs are over from this minute now!”
A skeptical Whatley shot back: “You don’t take any drugs at all?”
Strummer raised his hands as if to wave the thought away: “I stopped . . . Six months ago I wouldn’t have any more damn pot!”
Whatley: “Is that true for your whole band?”
Strummer: “They’re not into it either. And we’ve come over here and we are telling people if they want to listen.”
Simonon leapt in: “To get sharp, there is no use in taking a spliff or anything like pot, because it just clouds your mind up.”
Whatley shifted gears, but stayed on the attack: “You’ve been a very outspoken group, but some people say it’s a gimmick.”
Strummer: “Look, there is no time for gimmicks . . . There is only one thing that young people are listening to. They aren’t reading Sartre, poetry is a bore, in school they don’t listen . . . They are only listening to one medium, and that is rock and roll.”
The frontman’s vehemence, paired with live footage of the new band doing “Clampdown” and “I Fought the Law,” made a powerful statement, despite the interviewer’s skepticism. As a snarling Strummer said at the outset of the segment, with the rest of the band flanking him: “Something should be started. We are here to bring up reality and push you in the face with it!”
The Clash brought that confrontational attitude to seven thousand people at San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium. The set was not lacking for rough spots—“Safe European Home” opened as a discordant mess, grating feedback marred “Dictator,” guitars repeatedly went out of tune, and a Simonon-led “Police on My Back” came off flat. While Sheppard did a fine job taking lead on “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” the song’s inclusion struck a false note, even to its singer: “To be honest, I didn’t feel comfortable singing it . . . [I felt] a bit stupid, really.” The Jones-linked song would soon largely disappear from the set list.
We Are the Clash Page 9