We Are the Clash

by Mark Andersen

  Other tracks were nearly crippled. “We Are The Clash” was more impressive as a demo two years before. The collective rallying cry so forcefully driven home in countless concerts was nowhere to be found. This polished version added new lyrics that lost the sweep and urgency of the original, muffled guitars that hummed along far too pleasantly, a disjointed multitracked solo, and rinky-dink electro-drums.

  Even worse, the song now sounded derivative, its new opening evoking a tepid “Anarchy in the UK.” Elsewhere the massed backing vocals worked, but here they recalled second-string British punk band Sham 69. This was hardly the breakthrough Rhodes had sought, and surely not the paean to communal power Strummer had first envisioned.

  Such missed chances abounded. “Life Is Wild” begged to be a raw punk rave-up, but was yoked to boppy synth-drums and keyboards. “Cool Under Heat” struggled to breathe, burdened by an oddly unbalanced mix and splotches of gratuituous synth dribblings. While the choruses were rousing, the verses dragged, trading its live soul swing for a clumsy shuffle.

  Some songs were simply misbegotten. While “Fingerpoppin’” sounded decent, the lyrically slight song ranked as average new-wave disco. “Play to Win” had actually regressed from its unfinished demo; while the chorus remained, the verses were gone, replaced by cheesy sound effects and uninspired repartee between Strummer and Michael Fayne.

  The engineer later fondly remembered the “live in the studio” interplay as perhaps the only spontaneous moment in the entire process. Nonetheless, like “Fingerpoppin’,” “Play to Win” should have been relegated to a B side, replaced by a neo-Clash gem like “In the Pouring Rain,” “Jericho,” or “Sex Mad Roar.”

  The record was indeed unique, if also sometimes a bit of a car wreck. Rhodes’s ambition was energizing; success at realizing it more problematic. “Bernie needed something earth-moving, ground-shaking, monumentally amazing,” Sheppard sighs. “And so, what the world has been given is Bernie’s idea of a monumentally earth-shaking, amazingly modern, genius record.”

  The guitarist quickly admits, “A lot of the ideas on the album are good ideas. They’re just not arranged musically.” Calling Rhodes’s approach “chucking shit against the wall, seeing if it sticks,” Sheppard contrasts this with the work of Mick Jones: “You could call Jones a genius, someone who can arrange brilliantly. And so, his arrangements of various samples are incredibly musical.”

  This critique is poignant. Moreover, at the time, Sheppard, White, and Howard knew the record did not represent what was possible with the new material and musical prowess that the neo-Clash had amassed, had the band been allowed to engage the challenge itself with appropriate production support.

  “The record is not at all representative of the people that were in the band,” Sheppard argues, while also granting this was not unprecedented: “You could probably level the same comment at most of Sandinista! and Combat Rock too, if you think of the other people that played there. For instance, the bass player that was on [the new record] is on ‘Magnificent Seven’ and most of Sandinista!”

  Sheppard feels a critical difference lies in who was in charge: “It’s also about the creative control. On both of those records, Mick is pretty much in control of the creative process, at least until you get to the Glyn Johns mix of Combat Rock.”

  Yet Jones, despite his artistry, had increasingly lost the plot. And Rhodes’s bold effort was not the “unmitigated disaster” some would later claim. Even Sheppard and Howard later agreed there was value in having a nonmusician involved. “That’s why punk worked, isn’t it?” grants the drummer.

  Rhodes’s vision, however imperfectly executed, could be exciting. Strummer’s critique of past records as going in too many directions at once had also been taken to heart. In this sense, the record was arguably an advance on Combat Rock, more conceptually unified and politically direct, and nowhere near as self-indulgent as Sandinista!. Other than a couple of inexplicable choices, the songs were strong, something the production sometimes obscured, but could not destroy.

  The new record was not the raw punk return-to-form that Strummer had promised and fans expected. And this was not all bad. Did The Clash exist simply to fulfill such expectations? Moreover, Strummer had agreed to this new direction, since trying to recapture a hallowed past might not be the noble course.

  Regardless, Strummer was now horrified by the results. In a stunning reversal, he threatened to take action to stop the record from being released. An acrimonious divorce ensued, for Rhodes refused to waver and Strummer would not be mollified, choosing to let the house fall down rather than relent. Even though contracts existed compelling Strummer to promote the album, he simply walked away. Rhodes would have his album, but he would not have his lead singer.

  Strummer later told Jon Savage, “I fell out with Bernie after we returned from Munich where we recorded the tracks—somewhere between that and when he began to mix it.” Savage: “So the LP’s release was something you had no control over?” Strummer: “Absolutely none.”

  This account is a bit off, as various band members recall Strummer as hearing early mixes and—in White’s case—even defending them. The essence, however, seems true enough.

  “Maybe the busking tour put Joe in a different reality,” Sheppard muses. “It put us all in a very, very different reality for a while there. ’Cause let’s face it, that’s what Joe is. He’s Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, a minstrel, a troubadour. Imagine going back—after doing the tour—and listening to that record. Joe Strummer is not a guy that you associate with drum machines and synthesizers.”

  One might ask why the singer hadn’t seen this before. The erratic swings suggest he was worn down by years of struggle in The Clash, by personal grief, by the pressures of family, art, and addiction. So he put his trust in Rhodes, who was more than a manager, or even a mentor, almost a surrogate father. If that trust proved to be misplaced, Strummer’s blindness was a very human one.

  This turn of events had enormous consequences for Strummer and the band. Sheppard: “Joe pretty much disappeared off the scene very quickly after the end of that relationship [with Rhodes]. I was at sessions where the record started to get finished in England, sessions that Joe had nothing to do with. He had disappeared, we didn’t know where he was—turns out, he was in Spain.”

  In Granada, Jesús Arias found Strummer drinking heavily, shrouded in darkness: “He had nothing good to say about The Clash, about the new record . . . He didn’t want to talk about any of it.” The two went to find Federico García Lorca’s final resting place in the middle of one drunken night. “Let’s dig him up,” Arias recalls Strummer insisting. But the area was a spacious plain where perhaps hundreds of victims of Franco’s fascist forces were buried in a mass grave. Recognizing the futility of this quest, Strummer dissolved into tears.

  Arias used their time together to revisit a past topic of conversation: Mick Jones. Arias: “Joe was very down about his personal situation—his father dead, his mother dying, Mick Jones gone . . . I told him. ‘Paul McCartney and John Lennon on their own, good—but together they were the Beatles! Mick Jagger and Keith Richards alone, okay, but together they are the Stones! You and Mick are the same . . .’ I said this over and over.”

  Outwardly, the singer still resisted this notion, but inside something was shifting. Jones and Rhodes had cofounded The Clash more than anyone else; a soul-weary Strummer couldn’t imagine the band without at least one at his side. If Rhodes was out . . . then Jones was back in. How this could work legally, personally, or artistically was unclear, but he began to try to make it so.

  In Strummer’s absence, band matters began to unravel swiftly, first resulting in blown tour dates. The Swedish daily Expressen reported in September, “The Clash has been forced to cancel their whole tour of Europe including three shows in Sweden. Only half of the band’s original members are part of today’s band—two years ago they sacked guitar player Mick Jones who has now teamed up with former drummer Topper Headon to cla
im equal right to the name Clash.”

  According to Thomas Johansson of EMA Telstar, the promoter for the Swedish shows, “They’ve worked all weekend in England trying to solve the conflict, [but] if Strummer and his band go on tour under the name ‘Clash’ there’s risk of Jones and Headon being able to stop them from collecting the money from the gigs.”

  This seemed odd, as the new Clash had already played Scandinavia numerous times, including at Roskilde less than three months before. However, Johansson said, “It’s not until now that the former members have put their threat of suing into action and contacted a lawyer.” Expressen reported that even the “This Is England” 45 and forthcoming album might be abandoned: “Currently the band’s label CBS don’t know if they will be able to release the records or not.”

  The story was convincingly told, but it was not true. Sheppard later called it “a smoke screen” meant to cover for the fact that “there was no band to play the shows” because The Clash’s singer was nowhere to be found.

  Strummer now believed he had made a catastrophic error, and was trying to make it right—but it was too late. The steel wheels were rolling, and the train couldn’t be turned around. On September 22, a single of “This Is England” appeared with “Do It Now” as the B side of the 45, and “Sex Mad Roar” added to the 12-inch.

  Eddie King had parted ways with the band after a dispute with Strummer a few months before. Nonetheless, his striking images graced the single’s cover, put into final form by Julian Balme, who had been recruited by Vinyl to step into the breach.

  Two Mohawked punks—one female, one male—were pictured in front of a revised Piccadilly Circus, bursting with Clash commentary: Mohawk Revenge, Cool Under Heat, Club Left, Discussion Disco, Sex Style Subversion. Mixed in were an advertisement promising “eternal sunshine,” as well as one for a strip club and a casino—with a skull and crossbones next to it—and a sign saying, PARTY PLANNED. Looming over all of this, as if in judgment, was a video-screen version of the Lady Justice statue from the London courthouse. Balme: “Eddie was really forward-looking, and his work has been terribly overlooked . . . The Clash was always visually aware, and, to my mind, Eddie’s graphics were brilliant, always breaking boundaries,” all while tipping his hat to punk’s past.

  The visuals packed a punch, and the song hit even harder, with the hastily recorded but potent B sides worthy additions. As the first shot in a vinyl neo-Clash offensive, it startled those not expecting to hear synthesizer and drum machine contending with punk guitar. Nonetheless, it was well worth the lengthy wait, seeming to promise a similarly accomplished album soon to come.

  CBS hoped that this brash electro-punk Molotov cocktail would find favor with the record-buying public. A promotional onesheet prepared at the time proclaimed, “In light of the band’s three-year absence from recording and performing, it is certainly no understatement to say that radio, retail, and most important of all—the legions of dedicated CLASH fans and fanatics who buy the records and concert tickets—are all literally dying for this record.”

  “This Is England” sleeve, designed by Eddie King and Julian Balme.

  This ignored the nearly six months of touring the band had done in 1984, as well as numerous shows in 1985. Still, it suggested CBS was ready to pull out all the stops. There would be yellow and orange versions of the cover art, an extensive advertising campaign, and selected dance remixes. A UK video of “This Is England” was to become available in time for the American release, with plans for additional videos. The onesheet concluded: “All these elements are coming together to herald the return of one of the premiere punk bands of the 1980s, and the release of one of our most important records for 1985.”

  But as “This Is England” rose to #24 on the UK charts, warning signs were flashing. When Sheppard, Howard, and White went out with Vinyl to film footage for a video, neither Strummer nor Simonon appeared. No videos or live shows would ultimately materialize to support the single. It sank off the charts just before the new album, Cut the Crap, appeared a bit over a month later.

  The name was apparently drawn from a snatch of dialogue in the dystopian film Road Warrior. While it was intended to bluntly communicate the new Clash’s initial mission—to vanquish both the weak-kneed pop music and the ugly right-wing politics of the moment—to the demoralized White, Howard, and Sheppard, it seemed as clumsy as some of the synth-and-drum-machine-saddled songs. They had no say in the choice, just as they had no control over the music.

  Cut the Crap cover, designed by Eddie King and Julian Balme, with photo help from Mike Laye.

  They were still needed, however, to flog the record with live performances, a mission made considerably more difficult by the fact that their singer was missing. White later recalled Rhodes as convening a band meeting to announce that Strummer had gone “mad . . . He’s lost touch with reality.” Yet the never-say-die agitator would not be deterred: “The Clash has always been an idea . . . Now, how to take that idea to the next level!”

  “[Bernie] was saying, ‘We’ll find another singer and carry on—seriously!” White says with a shudder. “He certainly had that intention.” This seemed insane. The skeptical trio were still drawing their wages, however, so had little to lose from lingering around to watch the ensuing chaos. White, for one, still hoped their erstwhile leader would return, somehow, some way.

  Any hope they had of Strummer riding to the rescue like the cavalry in his beloved western movies was soon dashed. The singer did eventually convene them to officially announce he had split from Rhodes, but informed them at the same time that he intended to try to reform the original band with Jones, even though this utterly betrayed the entire rationale for the past two years.

  Their services were no longer needed, with a small severance payment offered as a consolation prize. The trio who had suddenly been made redundant might have been excused if they felt treated a little bit like trash. Sheppard recalls Howard as floating the possibility of rerecording the album without Rhodes, but Strummer’s reaction made it clear he had closed that chapter and moved on.

  Strummer then asked that they not join in any effort by Rhodes to continue on, and all three agreed. It was short but hardly sweet, as Sheppard explains: “We had the meeting at his house, he said, ‘I’m not going to go on, and I’d ask you not to’—and that was it. ‘That’s the end, here’s a grand, sorry—see you later.’”

  Shortly thereafter, Strummer was in hot pursuit of Jones to try to get him to rejoin The Clash. As Jones had gone to the Caribbean on vacation, a hilarious quest involving Strummer pedaling around an island on a borrowed bicycle ensued.

  While Strummer succeeded in tracking down his former best friend and creative partner, Jones was unwilling to abandon Big Audio Dynamite. Not surprisingly, he enjoyed having complete artistic control, and the unit had its own album coming out soon. The spurned Strummer took a listen to the results of Jones’s efforts and swiftly dubbed it “the worst shit I ever heard.”

  This reaction was to be expected, given the duo’s vast musical differences. What Strummer heard was a more artful, but far less political or guitar-driven version of the hybrid Rhodes was attempting. The encounter scarcely repaired the relationship between Strummer and Jones, and it suggested how misbegotten the whole reunion idea had been in the first place.

  While this last-ditch idea was dying, another idea was in similar straits. First, Rhodes tried to convince Simonon to take over the vocal spot. When that predictably failed, he got Vinyl to arrange open auditions for a new singer. The whole business unfolded at the Electric Ballroom, where Sheppard, White, and countless other aspirants had strutted their stuff two years earlier, when the possibilities of a retooled Clash seemed limitless.

  Sheppard joined in, not really intending to continue on but simply getting leads on possible personnel for a new band: “It was truly surreal—Bernie and Kosmo had somehow convinced themselves it could be done.” It could not, but Rhodes’s desperation was understandable. T
he album was about to launch, and it would be nearly impossible to promote it, as the band that made it could not perform. Like Strummer, Rhodes likely recognized the bitter taste in his mouth: defeat.

  * * *

  There were, of course, matters far weightier than the fate of a record or a band. While The Clash was in its death throes, so too was the Cortonwood colliery, the cradle of the miners’ strike. After the stoppage officially ended, the local union had kept the fight alive in its pit by refusing to collaborate in the mine’s closure.

  The truth was unavoidable, however: if the union kept fighting the closure, it would lose sooner or later. If later, its members—already stretched beyond reasonable bounds by the suffering of the strike—would forfeit even the token severance payments that might mildly cushion their looming joblessness.

  A Sheffield daily, the Star, later reported, “Early in October 1985 the Cortonwood men took a heartbreaking decision to abandon their fight to save their colliery. Faced with the prospect of depriving [those who retired voluntarily] of up to £30,000 each if they prolonged the closure battle, the Cortonwood NUM branch withdrew its objections.”

  As a result, “miners’ leaders at the NUM’s Sheffield headquarters, the Yorkshire NUM’s Barnsley headquarters, and at Cortonwood were silent about the votes to give up the fight, which won with a three-to-one majority at the doomed pit.” Three hundred and twenty miners lost their jobs right away; another three hundred and seventy transferred to other mines, with unemployment delayed for some months, or at most a few years.

  For these workers and tens of thousands of others like them in what was once the industrial heartland of Britain, a particularly resonant metaphor from “This Is England” might have come to mind: “this knife of Sheffield steel.”

  Sheffield made the best steel in the world, so it had been said, when the future seemed bright. But that moment had passed, taking lives, dreams, communities with it. Once the toast of the industrial world, towns in Britain’s beleaguered north, like those in America’s Rust Belt, faced the bleakest of prospects. “The wrong side of a scissor blade” they surely were, and the knife was in Thatcher’s—and, across the sea, Reagan’s—hands.