“All me favorite tracks,” says Mick with a broad smile. “No, I know what you mean. A lot of critics are saying this album reflects our death fascination, or the group’s own depression or confusion, but I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s clear that we know exactly where we’re at—we’re not confused at all. The problem is, a lot of people equate depression with reality, so they find the record depressing. I think it just touches on what’s real. I wouldn’t say it’s exactly optimistic, but I wouldn’t call it pessimistic either.”
But some critics, I tell him, have found the Clash’s brand of political rhetoric and realism just as naive as that jaunty romanticism of the pop bands.
Mick takes a sip of his coffee and regards me with a bemused expression. “You mean like the Village Voice calling us ’naive,’ and Sandinista! a ’pink elephant’? Well, we are, and it is. It doesn’t particularly discourage us, that kind of talk. It’s important we stick to getting our point across. Not just because people will try to discredit us, but because somebody has to counteract all the madness out there, like the bloody war fever that hit England over this Falklands fiasco. It’s important that somebody’s there to tell them that there aren’t any winners where there aren’t any real causes. It may appear that Maggie Thatcher’s won for the time being, but not because she’s made the British winners. Instead, she’s made them victims, and they can’t even see it.
“What’s interesting,” Jones continues, “is that the American critics don’t seem to like Combat Rock much and the English do, whereas with London Calling and Sandinista!, it was just the opposite: Americans loved them and the British critics really got down on us. But I think what they like about Combat Rock is that it’s one of the few things in English pop right now that bothers to be real. Most of the new pop doesn’t try to engage reality at all—which isn’t necessarily bad, because I like a lot of the new stuff too, like Human League. But sometimes you just have to get down to facing what the world’s about—and that’s not something all those party bands want to do.
“I don’t know,” says Mick, his voice soft and museful. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, we have our share of fun too, but these days . . . it’s just that all the parties seem so far away.”
I ask him: Do you think your audience understands that? Some of the people I’ve seen at the band’s shows—both the punk contingent, plus the mainstream crowd that have adopted them as the new Rolling Stones—seem to miss the Clash’s point by a mile. Slam dancing, not to mention spitting on and pelting opening acts like Joe Ely and Grandmaster Flash, doesn’t seem much different to me than any other mindless party ritual.
Mick bristles mildly. “They’re not really assholes, are they? They just don’t know how to act. I mean, at Bond’s it wasn’t actually racism. At first, we sat around backstage thinking, ’What jerks!’ But when we made it clear that we were having a rough time with the idea of them adoring us but hating the opening acts, it seemed to stop. I think it was just initial overexcitement.”
Still, aren’t there times when you wonder just who your audience really is, and if you’re really reaching them?
“All the time, all the time,” says Jones. “For every example you get of people who you think are really into it, who have really got the message, you also run up against the people who are completely misinformed. We just do the best we can to contain those contradictions, and hope enough of our meaning rubs off here and there.”
Mick glances at the wall clock. It’s nearly time to head out to the afternoon’s sound check. I pose one last question: “When Joe disappeared, did you think it might be the end of the Clash?”
Mick smiles wryly. “That Joe—what a bastard, eh? If he ever does that again . . . um, yeah, for about ten minutes I sat down and died. I thought the group might be ending, and I thought it was a shame, but I wasn’t about to let it stop me from getting on with living.
“It was bad timing on Joe’s part, but it was also an admirable thing. It’s very difficult to put your own needs first like that, but the only problem is, once you start doing it, it’s easier to do again. Still, it made us ask ourselves what we were going to do. It certainly made Topper ask himself what was happening with him. I even thought about getting into something else myself, but it will have to wait now.
“We all decided we could start over with this band—Joe, Paul, me—and now, some nights, it’s almost like we’re a new group out there onstage.
“We should change our name, don’t you think? How about Clash Two?” Mick mulls the idea over a bit more, then bursts into a titter. “No, wait, I’ve got it: How about Clash Now?”
HOW had THE CLASH managed to hold together? After all, punk never offered itself as a breeding place for enduring comradeship.
Paul Simonon, the group’s craggily handsome bass player (recently elected to Playgirl’s “The Year’s Ten Best Looking Men” list), ponders that question as he picks his way through a bowl of guacamole and chips (all the band’s members are vegetarians) shortly before leaving the hotel for that night’s show.
“You’re talking about things like corruption, disintegration, right?” he says in his thick Brixton accent. “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 curiousity, 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.
“We just cut it out—we don’t deal with that stuff anymore. I’d much rather use the money to go out and buy a record, or a present for me girlfriend, or phone me mum up from Australia.”
Does Simonon feel comfortable sharing that anti-drug concern with the Clash’s audience?
Simonon shrugs and gnaws another chip. “Sure. I don’t see why not. I think that’s part of what we’re about, is testing our audience.”
Does he ever worry, though, about leaving the audience behind—worry that the band might be growing in different directions?
“Well, I think it’s this band’s natural course to grow. When we did London Calling we got a lot of flak, but that was just a warm-up. I think the real turning point for us came when we recorded ’The Magnificent Seven’; it was the start of a whole new music for us. I thought, ’This is going to wake people up, especially the ones who keep expecting us to do the same old thing; maybe it’ll even make them chuck the bloody album out the window.’
“But we knew that’s what we wanted: to test the people who’d been listening to us. We didn’t want to be dictated by anybody else’s interests. That could’ve happened very easily after the first album, either way—we could’ve gone off in a more commercial style, because of what the record company people wanted, or gotten deadlocked into a hard punk thing, because of what the fans wanted. We didn’t do either one, and I suspect that’s hurt us as much as it’s helped. We certainly had an easy formula that would’ve carried us for a while.”
Does Simonon think the Clash still attracts much of a punk audience in America or England—the hardcore and Oi types?
“Yeah, a little, but by and large the music of those bands doesn’t interest me. I’ve listened to it, but so much of it is just noise for its own sake. Plus the things they deal with, things like racism and getting drunk and slapping your girlfriend around the face—I don’t have any use for supporting that kind of thing.
“You know, people ask me all the time if we’re still punk, and I always say, ’Yeah, we’re punk,’ because punk meant not having to stick to anybody else’s rules. Then you look around and see all these bands that are afraid to break the rules of what they think punk is. We’re punk because we still have our own version of what it means. That’s what it is: an attitude. And we’ll stay punk as long as we can keep the blindfolds off.”
“IS IT TRUE THAT Bob Dylan was in the audience last night?” Joe Strummer asks, as we settle down at the bar at the Clash’s hideaway hotel, a couple of hours after the next-to-last of their five-night engagements at
the Hollywood Palladium. “Somebody told me that Sinatra came to one of the Bond’s shows, but I thought that was a bit far-fetched. But Dylan. . . . ”
I tell him that yes, Dylan did come out to see the Clash, and from all accounts, seemed to like what he saw.
Strummer just shakes his head, muttering in incredulity.
Would that have intimidated you, I ask, knowing that Dylan was out there?
“Well, yeah. I mean, somebody told us he was up in the balcony, watching us, but you always hear those kinds of rumors. But if I’d known it was true, I’m not sure how I would’ve felt. Playing for Dylan, you know, that’s a bit like playing for . . . God, ain’t it?” Strummer orders us a round of drinks—a Bloody Mary for himself; a rum and Coke for me—and continues his musings on Dylan.
“You know, me and Kosmo (Vinyl, the band’s road manager and press liaison), we’re the only real Dylan diehards around the Clash. In fact, when Kosmo came down to Paris to take me back to London after I’d split, we went out celebrating one night at a French bar, with me playing piano, pounding out Dylan songs, howling stuff like, ’When you’re lost in Juarez/And it’s summertime too . . . ’
“I realize it’s almost a cliché to say it,” he continues, “but we probably wouldn’t have done the kind of music we have if it hadn’t been for Bob Dylan. It’s easy for all these cynics just to write him off, but they don’t realize what he did—I mean, he spoke up, he showed that music could take on society, could actually make people want to save the world.”
There are many of us, I say, who have put the Clash in that same league as Dylan, or for that matter, as the Rolling Stones. We see you as spokespersons, as idealists and heroes, as a band who are living out rock & roll’s best possibilities. In fact, we’ve even called you, time and time again, the World’s Greatest Rock & Roll Band. Did those kinds of claims ever confuse the band’s purpose—after all, you’d set out to play havoc with rock & roll—or did they instead help you secure the kind of mass audience you now enjoy in America?
“No to both questions,” says Strummer. “First of all, we never took that ’World’s Greatest’ crap seriously. That’s just a laugh. What does it matter to be the greatest rock & roll band if radio won’t even touch you? I mean, let’s face it: We don’t have the sort of mass audience in America that you mentioned, and it’s because radio won’t play our music. If you listen to the airwaves in this country, we don’t matter—we haven’t even made a dent, outside ’Train in Vain.’
“The last time I talked to you,” he continues, “that time in London, just before our first tour here, I think I pissed off the idea that America might really matter to us. But now I understand just how important it is: You can reach more people here than anywhere else in the world, and I don’t mean just record buyers. I mean reaching real people, making them wake up and see what’s happening around them, making them want to go out and do something about it.”
But does Strummer think that’s what’s really happening? What about all the time-warped punks who merely want to act out the surface images of revolt? Or that broader mainstream audience that’s taken to the Clash as the new Rolling Stones, and want little more than the commodity of vicarious sedition, or bombastic euphoria, for their money? Aren’t there times when Strummer looks out there and wonders who the band’s audience actually is at this point, if their ideals are really the same as the Clash’s?
“Every night we play,” Strummer says, “I wonder who our audience is. But you have to figure you’re reaching some of them. Maybe we’re only entertaining most of them, but that’s not really so bad when you think about it—look what it is that we entertain them with. I reckon each show we reach some new ones, really reach them. It’s like fighting a big war with few victories, but each of those victories is better than none.”
Joe tosses back the rest of his drink and signals for a fresh round. The liquor’s starting to do its work. We’re both feeling voluble. “Let me tell you,” he continues, “if you can’t find cause for hope, then go get some somewhere. I mean, I’ve had some bad times, dark moments when I came close to putting a pistol to my head and blowing my brains out, but . . . ” Strummer lapses into a private silence, staring fixedly at the remains of the drink before him. “But screw that,” he says after a few moments. “I think if you ain’t got anything optimistic to say, then you should shut up—final. I mean, we ain’t dead yet, for Christ’s sake. I know nuclear doom is prophesied for the world, but I don’t think you should give up fighting until the flesh burns off your face.”
But Combat Rock, I note, sounds like the Clash’s least optimistic record.
“Combat Rock ain’t anything except some songs. Songs are meant to move people, and if they don’t, they fail. Anyway, we took too long with that record, worried it too much.”
Still, it does have sort of a gloomy, deathly outlook, I tell him. All those songs like “Death Is a Star,” “Straight to Hell.”
“I’ll tell you why that record’s so grim,” says Strummer. “Those things just have to be faced, and we knew it was our time. Traditionally, that’s not the way to sell records—by telling an audience to sober up, to face up. The audience wants to get high, enjoy themselves, not feel preached to. Fair enough, there ain’t much hope in the world, I don’t want to kill the fun but still . . . ”
Strummer hesitates in thought for a few moments, then leans closer. “Music’s supposed to be the life force of the new consciousness, talking from 1954 to present, right? But I think a lot of rock & roll stars have been responsible for taking that life force and turning it into a death force. What I hate about so much of that ’60s and ’70s stuff is that it dealt death as style, when it was pretending to deal it as life. To be cool, you had to be on the point of killing yourself.
“What I’m really talking about,” he continues, “is drugs. I mean, I think drugs ain’t happening, because 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,” he continues, hitting a nice stride. “I don’t want it to be like the ’60s or ’70s, 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 life-style. Those guys made enough money to go into expensive clinics and 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. 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.
“Like I say,” Strummer continues, “I don’t want to kill anybody’s fun. But certainly there’s a better way of having fun than slow suicide.” Strummer takes a long sip at his drink, and an uneasy expression colors his face. “Suicide is something I know about. It’s funny how when you feel really depressed, all your thoughts run in bad circles and you can’t break them circles. They just keep running around themselves, and you can’t think of one good thing, even though you try your hardest. But the next day it can all be different.”
I’m not sure what to say, so I let the mood hang in the air, as palpable as the liquor. Finally, I ask if Joe’s sudden disappearance to Paris was a way of working himself out of a depression.
“It sure was,” he says quickly. “It’s very depressing in England these days—at least it can get that way, it can get on top of you. But I had a personal reason for going to Paris: I just remembered how it was when I was a bum, how I’d once learned the truth from playing songs on the street corner. If I played good, I’d eat, and that direct connection between having something to eat and somewhere to stay and
the music I played—I just remembered that.
“So I went to Paris and I only got recognized once, but I conned my way out of it. I’d grown a beard and looked a bit like Fidel Castro, so I simply told them I was my hero. I didn’t want to be recognized.”
While he was gone, I ask, was he worried it might mean the end of the Clash?
“I felt a bit guilty, but . . . ” Joe pauses and looks toward the bartender for one more round. It’s already well past closing hour, Strummer and I are the last customers in the bar, but the barkeep obliges. “I felt guilty,” Strummer resumes, “but I was also excited, feeling I was bringing everything to a head. I just contrasted all those pressing business commitments with that idea that I used to be a bum—that’s why I’d started to play music, because I was a bum—and I decided to blow, maybe just for a day or two.
“But once I was in Paris, I was excited by the feeling that I could just walk down the street, go in a bar and play pinball, or sit in a park by myself, unrecognized. It was a way of proving that I existed—that I really existed for once for me. This was one trip for me. We make a lot of trips, but that one was for me.
“I’ll tell you this,” Joe adds as a parting thought, “I really enjoyed being a bum again. I wish I could do it every day, really. But I can’t disappear anymore. Time to face up to what we’re on about.”
And what is that?
“Well, if I wanted to sound naive, I guess I’d say it’s something like trying to make a universal music for a world without governments. Or a better way of putting it is to say for a world under One World Government. All this nationalism, these border wars, they’re going to erupt into the death of us.”
It does sound a bit naive, given the state of things.
“Let me tell you,” he says, “I’d rather talk to a naive person than a cynic. Sure, there are a lot of young naive people out there, but at least they can be moved, their ideals can be inspired. That’s why, even though a lot of the critics have been very kind to us and love us, we never aim our music at them. We’re writing for the young ones, the audience, because they carry the hope of the world a lot more than a few critics or cynics. Those young ones can go away from our show with a better idea of a better world. At least they haven’t written it all off yet. Their ideals can still be inspired.”
Night Beat Page 24