January 25 – Signing With A Conglomerate Didn’t Clash With Joe’s Ideals

On this day in 1977, “punk died”, if you believe British critic of the day Mark Perry. But we probably shouldn’t  believe him, because the thing he thought destroyed punk’s credibility in fact probably did more than anything else to actually elevate the movement. On this day 42 years back, newbie London band The Clash signed a contract with CBS Records. While Perry, and some others, accused The Clash of selling out and figured it was the end of the legitimacy of angry, protest music, time has shown that in fact it may have been the turning point to make it the soundtrack to a generation.

The contract was remarkable. It paid the band a cool £100 000 up front (equivalent to about $500 000 in today’s money); flabbergasting considering that punk hadn’t yet had any mainstream commercial success and The Clash had only performed a couple dozen shows. However, it didn’t really drop them into the lap of luxury. The contract made them pay for all their own expenses recording their albums, creating artwork for it and touring to promote it. Singer Joe Strummer voiced his consternation at being compared to Rod Stewart back then when he was drawing a salary of just £25 a week and the band was living in the old warehouse they used to rehearse in.

So how did a relatively untried band come to garner the attention, and money, of a major multinational company? Well, both by being good and capturing the zeitgeist of the times. Britain was floundering economically and emotionally, unemployment was high and Margaret Thatcher was soon to become the iron-fisted Prime Minister. Racial tensions were running high in many cities, as they had in the States a decade prior and most youth weren’t too optimistic about the future. It was a perfect breeding ground for protest music and the punk scene was exploding with new bands showing up in the pubs almost nightly.

The Clash were essentially the offspring of two notable early punk bands in London: the London SS and the 101ers. The London SS were a well-known band on the scene, and generated musicians who’d go on to be in a number of other better-received groups, but they didn’t accomplish much other than rehearse a lot, record one demo tape and act as a veritable introduction service for punkers. Guitarist Mick Jones and bassist Paul Simonon were part of it and in time, when the band wanted a new singer, they approached Joe Strummer. Strummer had been in the 101ers, but was growing tired of them, so over the spring and summer of 1976, the trio weaned themselves off their old bands, added a drummer (Terry Chimes) and formed a new one. They took up residence in an old warehouse on Davis Road, cleaned it up a little and named it “Rehearsal Rehearsals” . The politically-charged Strummer wrote lyrics frenetically, Jones came up with music for them and the band practiced, practiced, practiced. After trying out names like The Phones and Weak Heartdrops, Paul Simonon had an inspiration and coined the name The Clash. This might have been his single biggest contribution to the group; it perfectly summed up the band’s anti-establishment views and their blending of differing musical genres.

On July 4, 1976, while Americans were celebrating their Bicentennial with a party of a lifetime, British punks were partying too, with The Ramones, hot on the heels of their debut album’s release, made their inaugaral European appearance in London and at the Black Swan pub in Sheffield, The Clash opened for another trendy band: The Sex Pistols. Rumor had it the Clash didn’t really feel they were quite ready yet, but took the gig to keep The Damned from getting it first. The following night, they and the Pistols headed into London to see another Ramones show, at which Simonon got into a “scuffle” with J.J. Burnel of The Stranglers. The early British punk scene was rather like a big extended family- but not necessarily a happy one!

The Clash didn’t play publicly again til the end of summer and opened for the Sex Pistols at a number of gigs that fall. This was massive, as the Pistols were the “it” band in the media and drew tons of attention (both positive and negative) wherever they went. What’s more, it didn’t take long for the Clash to clearly steal the show from the less capable and less stable Pistols. If not for that short tour of the UK, it’s doubtful that they would have caught the eye, let alone the wallets of CBS.

The band, and label, wanted to strike while the iron was hot and wasted no time in putting out a record. By Feb. 10, barely two weeks after signing on, The Clash had taken to CBS Studios in London (and at times an old schoolhouse in Beaconsfield) and set out to record their first album; seventeen days and about £4000 later they had it ready to roll. Days later, “White Riot”, the lead single was out and in April the eponymously-titled album hit the stores (in Britain at least). While other punk acts had already built a following, none were revered. The Ramones were seen as being a bit goofy and limited in scope, the Pistols scared the middle-class but were seen as being a bit gimmicky by many serious anarchists and the Stranglers were often seen as being old poseurs. The Clash changed the image of punk forever.

It showcased a band nearly as adept at playing their instruments as the Stranglers, as angry as the Pistols and more socially-aware than any of their contemporaries. Manager Bernie Rhodes had suggested Strummer find “an issue- write about what’s affecting you, what’s important” and he rose to the challenge. Strummer seemed perfectly tuned in to the frustrations of the youth. The previous summer he and Simonon had joined in a riot in the Notting Hill neighborhood which in turn inspired the lead single. “Black people gotta lot of problems/ They don’t mind throwing a brick/ White people go to school/ Where they teach you how to be thick” he sang, explaining later that he wanted to inspire White youth to find a cause and rally around it as the Blacks already had . “I’m So Bored With the USA” rails against American imperialism; the reggae-tinged “Police and Thieves” documents the class struggle in their own country. As music historian Alan Cross noted, they wanted not to “destroy the system indiscriminately” but rebuild it into something better and fairer.

Although receiving little airplay (Strummer cursed about how “the only person who plays ‘White Riot’ on radio was John Peel… and it just knocks the spots off other records”) the single hit #38 on the British charts and the album sold well, coming close to hitting the top ten. Its impact however, was much more than the sum of its chart positions. The intelligently worded anti-establishment lyrics, fast, wall-of-sound guitar approach subtly spiced with World Music influences dazzled fellow artists and the critics. Several influential publications including Q and Rolling Stone gave it perfect five-star ratings in their reviews. Robert Christgau of the Village Voice declared it “the greatest rock and roll album ever” while the New Music Express would rank it as the 13th greatest album of all-time in a ’93 issue. More recently Mojo called it “the ultimate punk protest album.”

A couple of interesting notes about The Clash. One might come across different color borders on the front cover, and slightly different track listings. That’s because even though CBS coined the catchphrase “The Only Band That Matters” for their punk centerpiece, they figured the debut was “too raw and abrasive” for American ears. Only after two years and an astonishing 100 000 import copies sold in the U.S. did they decide to release it there, this time with a few additional tracks (such as “I Fought the Law” added). In between, they’d released yet another slightly different version in Canada. And if you read the liner notes, where’s drummer Terry Chimes?

Well, the drummer is credited – sorta. He had never gotten along well with Strummer and had already left the band for a second time when the album came out. The band thus insultingly listed him in the notes as “Tory Crimes”, a shot at his decidedly more right-wing beliefs than the others. No surprise then that only Strummer, Simonon and Jones appear on the cover picture!

The Clash of course went on to greater success worldwide over the following few years and went on to influence bands of even greater fame and fortune. As Bono once said, “The Clash was the greatest rock band. They wrote the rule book for U2.”