We Are the Clash

by Mark Andersen

  As unemployment rolls stretched toward four million, with youth joblessness at a scandalous level, this was no idle question. The song was perhaps Strummer’s apology for six months of paralysis, and a vow that it was ending: “Now I know / that time can march / on its charging feet / And now I know / words are only cheap.”

  The song showed Strummer was well aware of the desperation growing in the mining communities. Admittedly, playing a benefit concert was of limited use. As such events had multiplied over the past few months, constituting a significant form of support for the strike, skeptical voices like Callincos and Simons asked how “a few rock concerts would cow a government which respects only power, and which had shown itself absolutely determined to crush the miners?”

  In part, they were correct—music alone could not hope to stop Thatcher. But to agree that concerts alone are insufficient is not the same as conceding they have no value. At this moment, just when everything seemed to be turning against the miners, having the single most popular punk band in the country take their side was no small matter. Beyond the financial boost—“Having The Clash play for you could raise something like a small country’s GDP!” argued King—there was the power of moral support, a precious bit of light amid the growing darkness.

  Would it have made a difference if the band had engaged six months earlier, had toured the UK then, supporting the strike? Vinyl would later argue, “Tours take time to set up . . . Remember, this is a big band, everything will be under the microscope, you can’t just play.” Yet The Clash had rarely been stopped by such calculations—part of why the band meant so much to so many.

  Even a fan as demanding as Billy Bragg would later concede, “It wouldn’t have made the difference.” But as The Clash took to the stage on December 6, 1984, it came bearing the frustration, anger, and pain built up over months of agonizing inaction amid the UK’s ugliest, most consequential political face-off in decades.

  Diverging from past set lists, White and Sheppard kicked it off with a rarely heard Sandinista! chestnut, “One More Time,” standing on their own before five thousand roaring fans. White: “I opened the song with something original I invented and let it howl out with feedback. It was moody and heavy and different. I had my own style now and was going to let it show.”

  As White released his jagged guitar pattern, Sheppard met it with his own attack. Prowling the stage, the guitarists staked their claim to the song. Sheppard’s guitar dropped away, leaving space for White’s short interlude of reggae “chop” chords. This reverie ended suddenly, the duo generating a dissonant maelstrom.

  When the guitars pulled back again, first Howard and then Simonon entered the fray, drums and bass punctuating the guitar squall. Finally, Strummer strode onstage, dressed all in white, with a black leather jacket and shades, and the crowd erupted. Hanging back as crisp reggae “chucks” bounced off crashing punk power chords, he let the tension build, as with the extended versions of “London Calling” in Italy.

  Finally, Strummer stepped forward. Grabbing the mic, he chanted, “Outright outright dynamite / this is the one for the miners’ strike,” over and over. The song was a blistering denunciation of poverty and racism, channeling echoes from the American civil right movement and urban riots. As the tune settled into its familiar groove, the Clash frontman ripped out the song’s opening lines, adjusted to fit the moment: “Must I get a witness / for all this brutality? / Yeah, there is a need, brother / you don’t see it on TV!”

  As in Italy, few would have guessed that both guitarists had largely crafted this radical rearrangement of the song, with Strummer working out his ad libs during the sound check. All the hours of work as a trio were paying off now. Sheppard: “We just took it and ran with it, basically. We’d been playing a lot together, and we had got very tight. We knew each other’s vibe.”

  The reworked song demonstrated the power of the new Clash. While Strummer exhorted the crowd, “All together now / push!” the music dropped away, leaving only Simonon’s bass. Then Strummer leaped back in, quoting Lee Dorsey’s R&B hit “Working in the Coal Mine” over the spare pulse. After one final “down, down / working in the coal mine,” both guitars reignited, followed by the rhythm section, launching the song toward its climax.

  As the music slowed, everyone dropped away, leaving White’s clipped chords on their own, walking the tune to its end—only to have Strummer slash through the lull, screaming, “London’s burning!” Shifting effortlessly from dub to full-throated punk roar, the band was off into a Clash classic not played live in years.

  Strummer ranted over tightly wound chaos as the band drove the song to its clamorous conclusion. With feedback still hanging in the air, Howard tapped out the intro to “Complete Control.” Again the band was off, seamlessly going from one tune to the next. No recent Clash set had begun with such kinetic energy.

  When the band finally paused, a delighted Strummer came to the stage’s edge. Shading his eyes to survey the crowd, he called, “I forgot to say good evening!” The audience roared, and the singer went on: “We all know why we’re here so I ain’t going to go on about it. However, without meaning to disappoint, we asked Arthur to do ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ with us . . . However, he said he forgot the words and his wig doesn’t go into a quiff anyway!”

  His good-humored shout-out to the miners’ leader completed, Strummer turned to the band and announced, “This is Radio Clash!” The song’s spring-tight rebel funk was a breather from the breakneck pace, and the message underlined the band’s mission tonight: to be an alternative source of information, helping to build a community of resistance to Tory rule.

  A tip of the hat to Strummer’s recent sojourns might be seen in the subsequent song, “Spanish Bombs.” A sharp new guitar line opened the tune and then reappeared near the end, again showing that the band remained able to shape the older material to good effect. A spirited Strummer then paused to tout the American hip-hop group Run-DMC, as a parable of hope and despair in 1984.

  “The other side of the coin is appearing,” the singer asserted. “Look out the window and you have got Duran Duran and Wham! and Margaret Thatcher . . . the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph . . .” As his soliloquy faded, the singer grabbed his head and moaned: “Sometimes I can’t see the light . . .”

  Perhaps this was an indirect comment on the darkness of his past months. If so, the cloud was wiped away in an instant: “But when I hear Run-DMC can draw forty thousand people in Detroit, then I seem to think: ‘Have no fear, señor!’” The singer’s buoyant mood lifted “Rock the Casbah,” “North and South,” and “Are You Ready for War?” A substandard new song, “Fingerpoppin’,” then slowed the momentum. A clumsy comment on club mating rituals, the tune sounded flat and unfinished.

  This would be the evening’s last misstep. Strummer switched to bass to allow Simomon to lead the band in another rarely heard number, “What’s My Name.” While Simonon’s limited voice had not suited “Police on My Back,” it meshed well with this relentless tale of urban anonymity and gutter-punk grit. “The Dictator” followed, with lyrics rewritten to indict Thatcher and her “shock troops.”

  The song was played fast and hard, leading powerfully into yet another back-catalog barn burner, “Capitol Radio,” decrying a media monopoly meant to “keep you in your place.” Next the band downshifted to a moody “Broadway,” whose introspection quickly gave way to the guitar explosions of “Tommy Gun,” punctuated by Howard’s double-time drum “machine gun” fire.

  When the band paused, Strummer returned to a founding theme, introducing a revived “We Are The Clash” by pointedly noting, “When I say, ‘We are The Clash,’ I am talking about considerably more than five people.” Tonight’s version restored the “we can strike a match / if you spill the gasoline” couplet to the chorus.

  As if to underline this idea, the band next crashed into a version of “Career Opportunities” that pitted the usual roar of its chorus with a spare dub take on the verses, opening space fo
r a massive sing-along. As the crowd picked up this challenge, someone mounted the stage, grabbed a mic, and screamed, “Revolution, revolution!” before melting away into the masses.

  “Revolution” was surely a lofty aim, especially at this moment in British history. Nonetheless, the cry communicated the mood at the Brixton Academy as the musicians exited, audience adulation ringing in their ears.

  The band returned for two encores, the final one consisting of potent new number “Dirty Punk,” “Jericho,” and a slam-bang “This Is England,” further developed and sped up from its Italian version and—inexplicably—missing its last verse. Strummer then introduced “an English folk ballad”—“White Riot”—that gained resonance from the fact that miners brutalized in the bloody Orgreave ambush now awaited trial on charges of “riot” that might mean life in prison.

  Then the night was done. Despite the agonizing delays, the internal chaos, and Strummer’s depression-verging-on-collapse, The Clash had risen up to give a performance for the ages. Moreover, nearly half of the set—nine songs in all—were unreleased, and included two sharp new ones. Even Chris Salewicz—no easy sell—had to admit the show was “fantastic.”

  The next evening was again packed. Simon Proudman, who had seen the new Clash in Bristol in February, later recalled the night’s spirit: “There was huge excitement in the streets outside the Academy, this was the gig everyone wanted to see, and [we felt] The Clash were not going to disappoint us.”

  If some of the festive decorations had gone missing—“The punters stole them!” says an amused King—energy crackled in the air. UK reggae star Smiley Culture stepped to the mic to introduce the band: “For those of you who were here last night, it was wicked . . . Show them how much you love them . . . The Clash!” With that, White and Sheppard strode onstage.

  This show was not as charmed as the previous evening. As White went to ignite “One More Time,” his guitar malfunctioned. Frustrated, he stalked offstage, leaving a startled Sheppard to improvise. “I started playing a bit of the James Bond theme,” the guitarist laughs. “Joe looked at me like I was crazy.”

  Despite the tricky start, Sheppard deftly brought the song around. White’s instrument was fixed swiftly and he rejoined the storm of guitars, bass, and drums. Then Strummer lunged forward, even more emphatic than the night before: “I GOT TO GET A WITNESS / FOR ALL THIS BRUTALITY,” he howled as the band accelerated. “YOU KNOW WE GOT A NEED TO, BROTHER / WE DON’T SEE IT ON THE TV!” Featuring a looser, spacier feel, this version of “One More Time” was almost as powerful as the previous night’s rendition.

  The downs and ups of the opening song foreshadowed the evening. While the band followed the earlier night’s set list closely—excising only “Fingerpoppin’,” replaced by a chaotic take on “Brand New Cadillac”—technical glitches popped up here and there, and the band appeared a bit off at times. Regardless, the show was still powerful, and the crowd response fervent.

  Standing still was rarely an option at Clash gigs, and this night was no exception. Proudman recalled the thrill of being “in the middle of a crush of a crowd moving backward and forward in excitement to the songs they loved. The band seemed to be enjoying it as much as the crowd. There was no Mick Jones, but no one in the audience cared as [we] shouted [our]selves hoarse.”

  Strummer paused during the show to acknowledge the question on many minds. After thanking opening acts Restless and Smiley Culture for “putting your money where your mouth is,” Strummer had “another word as to the future: it’s been two years since we made a record. Has anybody noticed that?”

  When the crowd roared, the singer continued: “Yeah, me too. The fact is, we were waiting to see what was going to happen, we have to wait for things to go by. We’ve got a record, we’re going to put it out in the new year, and we’re going to be back.” As the audience cheered again, Strummer raised his voice—and the stakes—even higher, yelling out, “We’re going to make a comeback!” as the band launched into “Spanish Bombs.”

  While the words were passionate, they hardly reflected what had transpired over the past six months. Nor did they exactly speak the truth about the as-yet-unrecorded new album. As the band would soon discover, there can be a world of difference between having the songs for a new record and actually making it.

  Yet picking up The Clash’s fallen banner was clearly on Strummer’s mind. After a surprise third encore sprang “Safe European Home” and “London Calling” on a startled audience already exiting the hall, Strummer called out one last time: “Great to see you here—we’re coming back and better! Take a note, lads . . .”

  While “London Calling” faded into the night, Strummer’s words sent the crowd home with a promise and a mission. For two nights, this new Clash had gone back to war, a righteous burst of passion and artistry as 1984 drew to a close.

  Now a powerful new album seemed within their grasp. Here was a chance to redeem the resurrected Clash; such art could touch hearts and minds, and maybe even help turn the world.

  “I want you to show them how much you love them, because they are not going to be here tomorrow night, or the night after, here again,” Smiley Culture had proclaimed on that second night at Brixton Academy, urging the crowd to “keep on calling them, man—The Clash, The Clash!”

  This intro held more truth than Culture knew. In 1985, there would be a new record and live shows . . . but never again would The Clash play its hometown.

  chapter seven

  gonna be a killing

  Kosmo Vinyl and Joe Strummer with Bernard Rhodes taking the lead. (Photo by Bob Gruen.)

  Bernie wanted to reinvent The Clash. He had made up his mind that he was going to produce the record, hands down, and he wasn’t going take, actually, much advice, or listen to anybody else.

  —Michael Fayne

  The trade union movement of Britain with a few notable exceptions has left this union isolated. We face not an employer but a government aided and abetted by the judiciary, the police, and the media. And, at this time, our people are suffering tremendous hardship.

  —Arthur Scargill, March 3, 1985

  Nick Sheppard found it hard to believe either his eyes or his ears.

  A session band stood before him, a makeshift version of “The Clash”: Joe Strummer on guitar, Peter Howard on drums, and longtime Clash allies Mickey Gallagher and Norman Watt-Roy on keyboards and bass respectively.

  While each musician was gifted in his own way, together they were anything but impressive. Sheppard recalls, “They were trying to arrange songs for the record, but it just sounded appalling . . . like bad pub rock.”

  With the triumphant miners’ strike benefits over, the Clash camp had turned with laser focus to preparations for recording the long-awaited new album. Earlier plans of swiftly knocking out a raw punk record had been abandoned in favor of a far more amorphous process that veiled an immense—perhaps lunatic—ambition.

  It seemed the height of insanity to bench Sheppard and White—as well as Simonon—for the duration of the sessions. Strummer had broken the bad news, but Sheppard had no doubt of its author: “I’m sure it was Bernie who decided that this group that he’d put together—me, Vince, Pete, Paul, and Joe—wasn’t good enough to make a record live in the studio. So that was taken out off the table, and that void had to be filled. The record had to be made some other way.”

  The consequences of this development were staggering. After a solid year of work, of Sheppard, White, Simonon, and Howard playing together, honing the songs and their collective power as a platoon, a new outfit had to be suddenly fashioned from the pieces at hand. This “Clash” had to somehow revamp the songs and the sound for what needed to be a landmark musical advance.

  Gallagher and Watt-Roy were obvious choices, given that they were skilled musicians who had worked together for years, including in past sessions with The Clash. Sheppard suspected that this gambit was Strummer’s doing, a last-ditch attempt to salvage something of a live band sound and
feel. The idea, however, stank of desperation—and sounded much the same.

  Rhodes shared Sheppard’s assessment, if for starkly different reasons. The manager had his own idea for the sessions, one that left little space for romantic notions of the “old-fashioned human and wood stuff” as Strummer had described his musical aspirations only months before. Not satisfied with control over the business, Rhodes seemed determined to insert himself into the creative process.

  Strummer had tried to dodge the implications of benching his band by hastily assembling the new unit. But when Rhodes decided to—without asking—adjust the phasing on Gallagher’s organ in pursuit of a less conventional, more “modern” sound, he short-circuited the whole idea. Once Gallagher realized what the unrepentant Rhodes had done, the keyboardist walked out, never to return.

  Gallagher’s exit served Rhodes’s interests. With Strummer’s ploy dispelled, the manager began to pursue his hyperambitious plan: nothing less than to painstakingly assemble a landmark record from components chosen by himself. Such an album would crown The Clash as one of rock’s great bands with a breakthrough that strapped a punk engine onto a modern electronic chassis.

  A skeptical Strummer had long been the main audience for Rhodes’s brainstorming. His assent, however, could advance the project only so far. As such, the manager had struck upon Lucky Eight engineer Michael Fayne—with whom he had a warm, almost familial relationship—to be a key confederate.

  Fayne would later wince at the recollection: “What Bernie was doing was flying to America, taping WBLS and all these radio shows playing hip-hop, and he was bringing it back. Bernie would make you listen to it for ten hours straight, man—seriously! He was trying to program me, ’cause that’s what he would do, he would get in your head, and he’d get the message in. Then, he’d go: ‘Right, now let’s go buy a drum machine, let’s try and bring that kind of flavor to The Clash.’”