February 7 – Dave Was Knocking On #1’s Door

The top of the charts could hear him knockin’… Dave Edmunds had his biggest success with “I Hear You Knocking” which peaked at #4 in the U.S. on this day 52 years ago. Elsewhere it did better, including #3 in Canada, #1 in Ireland and in Britain, where it spent six weeks on top and sold a robust three million copies… earning him a gold record, although with those sales it would seem it could qualify for multi-platinum. John Lennon called the stripped-down rock song from 1971 hit a “great one” .

Edmunds was born in 1944 and grew up listening to, and loving early rock and R&B records and brought that love to his music. This single was a cover of a 1955 single by Louisiana bluesman Smiley Lewis (whom Edmunds gives a shout out to during the song). Edmunds said he wanted to find a relatively-unknown but rocking blues song to re-record, he happened to hear this one on the radio and set about recording it. Although primarily a guitarist, Dave played everything on the single except the bass.

Although he’s not had quite as big a hit since, he was active recording in the ’70s and ’80s, often with bassist Nick Lowe. The pair formed the band Rockpile in 1976 and put out an album under that name in 1980 and collaborated on each other’s solo works, including Lowe’s hit single “Cruel to Be Kind” as well as Edmunds’ own “Girl’s Talk,” a song written by another friend of his, Elvis Costello. Edmunds has also produced a number of artists including Foghat, Status Quo and Stray Cats, always bringing his stripped-down, early rock sound to the records.

February 6 – 50 Years On, Politicians Still Love Those Tin Soldiers

One of the great anti-war anthems of the Vietnam era made itself known to American protestors, a few months after it had been a hit in Canada. “One Tin Soldier” by the Original Caste debuted on Billboard‘s top 40 this day in 1970. It eventually rose to #34 there (after being a #6 hit in Canada and #1 on that country’s then-most popular radio station, CHUM Toronto) . A similar cover of the song by the also gone-and-forgotten band Coven would scrape up to #27 a year later; that was recorded for the Billy Jack movie, but quickly pulled from circulation by that band’s label due to legal wranglings.

Technically, The Original Caste isn’t gone and forgotten; a version of the band, featuring original singer/keyboardist Bruce Innes is still working in their native Canada, but they’ve had little commercial impact since this one, which went gold in the Great White North.

“One Tin Soldier” was the first hit song written by Brian Potter and Dennis Lambert, a California duo who did quite well in the ’70s writing other hits including “Ain’t No Woman LIke The One I Got” for the Four Tops and “Don’t Pull Your Love” by Hamilton, Joe, Frank and Reynolds before moving on to work in the studio and producing Glen Campbell’s Rhinestone Cowboy and Player’s hit “Baby Come Back.” This one didn’t quite sound like those others but was a perfect fit for the times, with its folksy sound, Joan Baez-like vocals and of course, the heavy and timeless moral theme. the song tells of the aggressive valley people who attack the mountain people in order to take their “treasure”… to find after the battle all the “treasure” was a rock saying “Peace on earth.” The title is referenced in another great anti-war anthem of a few months later, “Ohio” by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

February 4 – The Chain Is Now 46 Years Long

One of the great and enduring albums of the Classic Rock era came out this day in 1977. One of the most popular too. Fleetwood Mac‘s Rumours is 46 years old…and has sold the equivalent of about a million copies for each of those years. It’s one of five records from the ’70s to be estimated to have topped 40 million copies worldwide (Dark Side of the Moon, Eagles Greatest Hits, Hotel California and Saturday Night Fever being the others if you’re keeping count) , and anyone with ears and a radio knows its still a staple on many Classic Rock and Oldies Pop stations.

We’ve talked about the album here several times and most everyone knows the difficult circumstances involved in putting the album together. In case you don’t, basically that was that of the five members, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were a couple but were breaking up, Christine McVie (RIP!) and John McVie were getting divorced, Mick Fleetwood was getting divorced, although his wife wasn’t in the band. Christine was having an affair with one of the band’s crew and it was rumored at least that Fleetwood and Nicks had a bit of a fling, much to the added annoyance of usually-perturbed Buckingham. And they did all that while high on cocaine, 24/7 it might seem. It really is a wonder anything at all came of the sessions, let alone a great album.

But while all five played important parts in the band and the album, generally most of the songs could be traced back ot one individual member – “Dreams”, Stevie Nicks, “Go Your Own Way”, Buckingham, etc. Which means one song stands out on Rumours, one song is not quite like the others. “The Chain” is credited to all five members. It’s the only song on Rumours with all five listed as writers. In fact it is the only song, ever, that the quintet shared the credit on.

Mick said of it “’The Chain’ basically came out of a jam. It was very much collectively a band composition.” But it still had its roots in some songs from the individual members. It was essentially a blend of several songs that had been worked on but wouldn’t quite come together. For instance, the opening bars were more or less borrowed from an earlier Buckingham/Nicks song, “Lola” – not to be confused with the Kinks song of same name. The chord progression was from a tune Christine McVie had worked on. Nicks wrote most of the lyrics, basing them on her breakup with Buckingham, but others contributed words or phrases here and there too. Fleetwood and John McVie combined to come up with the bassline. And so on. Somehow it came together as one of the better songs on the record, even if it required a razor at times. Studio engineers Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut finished it off by literally splicing some of the tapes together, cutting them with a blade. It had a few unusual roles too; Lindsey played a Dobro on it and Mick picked up the tambourine.

Though it wasn’t put out as a single, generally (through the years, some countries did see it issued as a 45, but by and large it was not) but it’s still been remarkably popular and well-known. So much so in fact that it made the charts in the UK in 2011, based on downloads and requests generated from a Facebook campaign to get it played. The BBC used part of it as a theme for car racing shows, which helped with that.

It’s also been a mainstray of their concerts through the years, quite often played as the opening song. And even when Lindsey Buckingham got fired (or quit depending on who you ask) from the band, they played on, with Neil Finn taking his part in it. Guess they really never do plan to “break the chain.”

February 3 – Reptile Record Scaled New Heights For Elton

This is the “Day the Music Died”, the anniversary of the 1959 plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Richie Valens. Ironically then, it was also the day that a song essentially about ’50s music topped the chart in 1973. “Crocodile Rock” by Elton John hit #1 in the U.S. 50 years ago today.

Elton’s career had certainly been skyrocketing for the previous couple of years and he’d had a massive hit the year before with “Rocket Man”, which got into the top 10 almost everywhere. But this throwback rocker was his first #1 single. He’d have five more in the ’70s alone in the States. Another first for it, it was the first #1 hit on the MCA Records label. That gave them a pretty good batting average at the time, since it was the very first record released on “MCA”, after the company dissolved its various brands like Decca and merged them all into the one MCA. The Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player, presumably was the first LP issued on MCA, with it following the single by a couple of weeks, and also going straight to #1.

Like almost all Elton’s songs of that era, Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics while EJ himself came up with the music. His regular, top-flight band backed him on it, guitarist Davey Johnstone, bassist Dee Murray and drummer Nigel Olsson, while Elton played piano and the prominent Farfisa organ on it. Elton also did all the vocals, high-pitched falsetto backing ones included. Unlike most of his songs, this one was deliberately retro-feeling and “derivative.” To which he’s replied “of course it’s derivative!…I wanted it to be about all the things I grew up with.” Those included songs like “At the Hop”, “Little Darlin’” and “See You Later Alligator”, which likely inspired his choice of animal in the title. It also was a bit of a nod to “Eagle Rock”, an Australian hit by a band called Daddy Cool that both he and Taupin liked. Despite its incredibly chirpy, upbeat sound, Songfacts picked up on the fact that it was a “really catchy little song with very sad lyrics.” After all, in it Elton’s looking backwards pining for days of sockhops, old Chevys and his girl Susie that “went and left me for another guy.”

Happy or sad, the song caught on in a big way. It spent three weeks at #1 in the U.S., and four weeks to the north in Canada. It also went to the top in New Zealand and made the top 5 in his homeland and Australia. The same week it went to #1 it was certified gold in the U.S., and soon it was platinum, one of an impressive 14 singles of his to reach that summit.

For all that, you might think he’d love the tune. Turns out it’s not the case. Taupin says it was “something fun at the time” but “not something I would listen to” now. And Elton says he doesn’t like it and can’t stand playing it anymore, but will perform it on his lengthy current “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour because “fans enjoy it.” He sums it up as “a huge hit record (that) in the long run became a negative for me.” Fans might disagree.

If you want to see a Crocodile Rock, turns out you can… if you want to go to tropical Asia. There’s a large formation in the Philippines named the Crocodile Rock, because, well, it’s a rock that looks like a big croc!

February 2 – Being Up Late Sounded Better 50 Years Ago

Two things were probably true if you were a cool kid 50 years ago. One, you’d not be up watching TV too late at night. Because most TV stations signed off – simply stopped running any shows – for the night by 1 AM at latest. And two, that if you were lucky, you noticed that changed on this very night in 1973, when the Midnight Special officially began.

The Midnight Special was a pretty revolutionary show therefore, because in most time zones it came on at 1 AM, following Johnny Carson’s late-night Tonight Show on NBC on Fridays. The show’s creator, Burt Sugarman, had the idea that lots of people were up late on Fridays, and Carson drew a huge audience. Why not capitalize on it and run another show afterwards? Especially one that would appeal to teenagers and college kids, most likely to be night owls? He pitched the network the idea of running a music-based show at that time, with various live acts playing. Oddly, despite the seeming soundness of the idea and the idea that they would have no competition at all on air in that timeslot, they didn’t like it. But they ran a one-off special, a sort of pilot, in the fall of ’72 and the reviews of that, coupled with Chevy signing on to sponsor the program, made them willing to give it a try. Tellingly, within months they were so impressed they added another post-Carson late show, Tomorrow, for the other four weeknights.

They got Johnny Rivers song of the same name to be the title theme song, and brought in none other than Wolfman Jack to do the voice-overs. While the idea of a nighttime TV show that had current music had been done before – American Bandstand, Soul Train, Britain’s Top of the Pops, etc – Midnight Special offered up a couple of then-unique things. It had on more rock performers than the competition, and more importantly, it generally had the artists playing live, not lip-synching. It also broke ground by at times running old film footage or early rock videos.

While the ’72 pilot had John Denver as a host and hadn’t quite found its form, the first official episode was hosted by Helen Reddy (who’d be the only full-time host for the show, in 1975-76; typically they had guest hosts changing from week to week.) She did three songs, including her recent #1 hit “I Am Woman”, and she was joined by the likes of Curtis Mayfield, who did “Superfly”, Ike & Tina Turner, the Byrds (who performed “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star”), Don McLean and even George Carlin, who did a standup routine. Throughout its run, it would periodically showcase up-and-coming comedians, including Carlin, Steve Martin, Andy Kaufman and Richard Pryor. The second episode, hosted by Johnny Rivers himself, had Wolfman Jack singing. Now that’s something you don’t see every day.

The show ran for an impressive 450 episodes, finally being canceled in spring 1981. It seemed to have lost some of its focus or edge by then; the last show was hosted by the network’s reality show Real People‘s hosts and had less music and more off-music features like an interview with actor Robert Ulrich. Then-president Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, hosted the penultimate episode. But in between, Midnight Special had some of the best, and most varied, musical performances on TV with a bevy of stars ranging from Dolly Parton (who actually hosted a 1978 episode) to Barry Manilow to Gordon Lightfoot to Kiss to Aerosmith to KC & the Sunshine Band to Elton John to Tom Petty to Marvin Gaye to Abba to the New York Dolls to Blondie to David Bowie in his final “Ziggy Stardust” persona appearance to Steely Dan to ELO, who were on it a record seven times , to… well, you get the idea.

Although doubtless there are bits of it lost to history, much of the show ‘s highlights are available, on several DVD releases including an 11-disc offering in 2014.

February 1 – People Were In The Habit Of Buying Doobies…Records

It was a long train runnin’ up the charts, so to speak. The Doobie Brothers put out their fourth album, What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits on this day in 1974. The California band had been running for about four years by then, and were as allmusic put it successors to CCR as the flag-bearers for “swamp rock.”

Although the album eventually hit #4 in the U.S. – their highest showing to that point – and was the first to crack the British top 30, it wasn’t an overnight success. As was usual for them at that point, guitarist/singers Tom Johnston and Patrick Simmons pretty much split the songwriting duties, and Warner Brothers (their label) decided not to mess with a good thing. Johnston had written pretty much all of their earlier hits like “Listen to the Music” and “China Grove”, so they put out a song of his as the first single: “Another Park, Another Sunday.” Rolling Stone figured it was the standout track on the record, an “engaging ballad.” The yawning public hardly noticed, with it getting only to #32 in the States, and missing charts everywhere else. The next single, “Eyes of Silver” barely made a ripple anywhere.

Luckily for the Doobies, and Warner, a throwaway song from the album written by Patrick Simmons was put on the 7” single of “Another Park, Another Sunday.” “Black Water” was literally “swamp rock”, a song about the backwaters of the deep South written when Simmons was visiting New Orleans. Somehow a DJ in Virginia thought to flip over the “Another Park…” single and give it a listen and began playing it. It was an instant hit in Roanoke in the summer of ’74; someone from Minnesota must’ve heard and soon it made noise in Minneapolis. By year’s end, Warner figured they had better put it out again, this time as the “A-side”. A smart move. Within a few weeks the album jumped up to the #4 position and “Black Water” became their first American #1 hit.

Although “Another Park, Another Sunday” is perhaps under-rated and “Black Water” is undeniably a fine single, not a whole lot more on the LP has stood the test of time terribly well. Rolling Stone assessed the band as “America’s most noteworthy and consistent singles band” and like most albums from singles-bands, “it contains one or two potentially strong singles… and a great deal of mediocre filler.” Years later, allmusic would concur, rating it 3.5-stars, second-weakest of their 1970s catalog, saying the Memphis horns brought in for a few tracks were good, and while they epitomized “the softer side of ‘swamp rock’ popularized by CCR’” it was an “uneven” record and only six of 12 tracks were up to par.

Up to par or not, the album ended up double platinum in the U.S. and put them in good standing with Warner …and the radio listeners. They would put out two more albums in a year which both were top 10 hits and delivered the hit singles “Take Me In your Arms” and “Takin’ It To the Streets.”

The Doobies put out a new album in 2021, Liberte, and are looking towards a busy 2023. They begin a 50^th Anniversary tour in April, in Australia and will be doing extensive North American dates throughout the summer. Three of their key members from the ’70s, Tom Johnston, Patrick Simmons and Michael McDonald are still in the lineup.

January 27 – Van’s Dance Into The Mystic And Acclaim

It’s been called the “blueprint for Blue-eyed soul” as well as the starting point of “soft rock.” Quite a legacy, no matter what your opinion of those two “genres” is (and here, we like both just fine.) There could be debate aplenty as to what record, if any one did, merited such accolades, but definitely Van Morrison‘s Moondance, of which that was said, is a contender. It came out this day in 1970.

Moondance was Van’s third solo album, but second on a big label, Warner Bros., and it came out just over a year after its first, Astral Weeks, to which it seems to always be compared. Astral Weeks had been loved by critics, but generally totally ignored by record buyers, much to both Van and Warner’s dismay. So Van the Man decided to change things up a bit rather than record a direct, folky sequel. He brought in a horn section, wrote some songs that were a bit more upbeat and at times jazz-tinged, and took over producing the record himself. “No one knew what I was looking for except me, so I just did it,” he said about that. “When I go into the studio, I’m a magician. I make things happen.”

He did that with the ten song effort. It was written and recorded in the summer of ’69, a happy time for Van. He was in a state of “domestic bliss” with his first wife Janet. They were living in the Woodstock, New York area (surprisingly he left the area by the record’s release, finding it becoming too busy for him after the famous concert nearby) and taken by the natural beauty of the Appalachians. Many critics have noted how most of the songs seem to touch on the spiritual nature of life and the spirit of nature he was surrounded by.

Of the ten songs, five became “classics”, all of them on Side 1 of the LP version as it happened : “And It Stoned Me”, the title track, “Crazy Love”, “Caravan” and “Into the Mystic.” Curiously, Warner Bros. only put one single out off it, “Come Running”, from Side 2. Years later they’d issue “Moondance” itself out as a 7” when the album’s legacy was growing.

Many “classic” albums are ignored in their own time, but such was not the case with “Moondance.” It was a rare one almost all critics seemed to approve of right away. The Village Voice, for instance, gave it an “A” and told readers to “forget Astral Weeks! This is a brilliant, catchy, poetic and completely successful LP.” Years after that, they’d still think it sucessful, putting it as the seventh best album of the 1970s. Rolling Stone at the time were a bit surprised by its “horn-driven, bass-heavy” sound but still liked it and declared “Caravan” and “Into the Mystic” were songs which “will carry it past many good records we’ll forget in the next few years.”

Perhaps so. To this day, it garners lots of respect and accolades. Rolling Stone, retrospectively, have constantly placed it among the 200 Greatest albums of All-time (most recently #120) applauding its “more structured, less acoustic” sound compared to Astral Weeks and terming it “the blueprint for Blue-eyed Soul.” Time magazine has it listed among its All Time 100 best albums and Ptichfork, giving it 8.5/10 note that “it would solidify Van Morrison as an FM radio mainstay (and) act as a midwife for the burgeoning genre of ‘soft rock’”. British journalist John Tobler, of the NME and other publications declares Van’s singing “charismatic” and adding “the first side of the LP is almost perfect.” Allmusic grade it a perfect 5-stars and suggest “Into the Mystic” is the “quintessential Morrison moment.”

For all those kudos, the public was not as swayed. It did sell much better than Astral Weeks, getting to #29 on the charts in the U.S. and #32 in the UK, but it only made the top 10 in the Netherlands. It sold adequately, but after becoming an FM staple, it kept selling and it’s now his biggest-selling record, being triple platinum in the U.S.

If you want the dance to keep going after its 38 minutes, you have options. Van’s put out 40 studio albums since Moondance.

January 27 – People Couldn’t Bear It If It Really Was Edward’s Last Song

A few years before Rush took flight, another Toronto trio was having a decent, if short, run in the sun. On this day in 1973, Edward Bear had their first song hit the U.S. top 40… oddly enough with a ditty called “Last Song.”

Bear had begun in the Ontario city some six years earlier, playing many of the same cafes and clubs Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot frequented, and got signed by Capitol Records in 1969. It was pretty much the brainchild of Larry Evoy, the band’s main writer, singer and drummer. He got the name from a Winnie the Pooh book; the careful reader of A.A. Milne will find that Pooh’s real name is “Edward Bear.” Evoy’s pop interests were counter-weighted by the original guitarist, bluesy Danny Marks and a jazz-inspired keyboardist, Paul Weldon. Although their early sound was blues-rocky enough to have them open for Led Zeppelin once, Marks left the band early on and the band soon found a niche with soft rock tunes that largely populated their four albums.

they found great success in their native Canada in the early-’70s, where “Last Song” was actually their fifth top 30 hit out of seven eventually. It was however, their only #1 hit in Canada (spending two weeks on top before being bumped out by Elton John’s “Crocodile Rock”) and their only sizable international hit, making it up to #3 in the U.S. and #2 in Australia. Evoy says the inspiration came to him easily: “it was literal. I would go to sleep with my light on, hoping she’d think I was still awake and would drop by.” The next single, the apparent sequel, “Close Your Eyes” was another big hit in Canada but only made it to #37 Stateside, and soon after Edward Bear went into permanent hibernation.

Weldon went on to become a successful architect and graphic artist; Marks a respected blues guitarist and eventually a radio host with a nationwide show playing jazz and blues. He remembers the Bear days. “The real danger of being so big, so young was that it seemed too easy,” he says noting at the time he was surprised that after Bear he was soon “playing every strip joint on Yonge Street” in Toronto and known as “the king of chicken wing bars.”

As for Evoy, he and his wife run a horse farm in Ontario and he also is in charge of the Edward Bear catalog and publishing rights. “In the States, where all those oldie goldies stations keep playing our songs, it’s almost a full-time occupation,” he says, adding “it’s wonderful to know that our songs still have this life so many years after they were recorded.”

January 26 – People Didn’t Need Authority To Board The Chicago Train

Rock is often considered sexy and about sex, but seldom have bands been as “horny” as Chicago in their early days. Of course, we mean that literally – they along with Blood, Sweat and Tears were the leaders in a move to bring horn sections into rock at the end of the ’60s. We hear that clearly on their sophomore album, now nicknamed “Chicago II” which came out on this day in 1970.

we say “nicknamed” because technically the album was simply entitled Chicago. Their debut, released eight months earlier had been called Chicago Transit Authority but they’d dropped the last two words after being threatened with a lawsuit by the Windy City commuter bus and train system of the same name.

If the band lost a couple of words from their name, they gained some strong musical direction… and one of music’s best-known visuals, their curly logo which first showed up on this record. They got the idea for the logo which has appeared on all their albums since, from Coca-Cola’s cursive emblem.

Chicago at the time was a seven-man ensemble many consider the “classic” lineup for the band which has seen members come and go rather regularly through its 55 year run to date. Bassist Peter Cetera and guitarist Terry Kath pretty much split the lead vocals while Robert Lamm played keyboards and added backing vocals and their was James Pankow on trombone (plus lesser-known Walter Parazaine and Lee Loughlaine on more horns plus drummer Danny Seraphine.) Of the seven, the trio of horn players plus Lamm are still in the touring version of the group. The writing was a little more widely-distributed; while Kath and Cetera wrote a large portion of it, Pankow also added significant parts including the album’s standout, “Ballet for A Girl In Buchannon”. That one is hardly a household name, and at 13 minutes, understandably isn’t a mainstay of radio but is typical of the album and contributed two of their best-known songs: “Make Me Smile” and “Color My World.” It is one of three lengthy pieces on the double-album which are sprawling and composed of several different, distinctive parts.

The band put the album together surprisingly quickly, inside of a month during the summer of ’69 under the guidance of their producer of choice, James Guercio. Thanks to the essentially double A-sided single “Make Me Smile” / “Color My World” and the song Billboard pick as their best (albeit not best-selling) of their career, “25 or 6 to 4”, the record shot up the chart and quickly eclipsed the first album’s sales. The album hit #4 in the U.S., #5 in Canada and #6 in the UK and went platinum at home. In Canada, it ended up triple-platinum, making it their best-seller outside of a Greatest Hits package. “Make Me Smile” was their first top 10 hit in the states, going to #9 while the next single, “25 or 6 to 4” rose to #4 (and #2 in Canada.)

And by the way, what of that song? Some thought “25 or 6 to 4” was drug slang, or maybe some weird morse code for a famous person. Writer robert Lamm throws cold water on those conspiracy theories saying he was writing it in the middle of the night and merely jotted down the time as a working title. He began it around 3:34 or 3:35 AM, hence “25 or (twenty) six to four.” The song lives on anytime of the day not only on radio but on parade routes as well. An Omaha newspaper ranked it as the #1 Marching Band Tune of all-time.

Critics were mixed as to how they felt about it. Some saw it as new and progressive. The hometown Chicago Sun-times thought them “one of the most exciting, most original, most accomplished jazz-rocks in existence.” New York’s Village Voice only gave it a “D+”, calling it “sterile and stupid.” Eventually it probably came down to whether you thought rock was a stagnant, narrow genre or a growing sound willing to incorporate elements of other genres. Allmusic definitely goes with the latter, giving it 4.5-stars, best of the ’70s catalog and praising it for “complex jazz charges with heavy electric rock and roll that the band so brazenly forged” to create “some of the best and most effective pop music of that era.” Ultimately, we agree with them. Rock as we know it wouldn’t have gone on to what it was in the ’70s and ’80s if not for innovators willing to expand its boundaries in the early days, from The Beatles to Led Zeppelin to yes, Chicago.

January 25 – Fans Clash-ed Over Band’s Big Payday

Another day, another Clash story. A few days back we looked at The Clash’s top 10 hit “Rock the Casbah.” But there was a lot involved in getting to that level of success.

The punk movement was in overdrive in Britain and on this day in 1977 there was a bit of a sea change in it – it was according to critic Mark Perry, “the day punk died.” Most would disagree with Perry and point to it as the day it broadened its appeal with The Clash signing a large – 100 000 pound (about $600 000 in today’s values) contract with Columbia/CBS Records. It was remarkable for an underground band that had only played a couple dozen gigs (none as headliners), but it paid off handsomely for all involved. And though it was a big amount of cash, it hardly put the band in the lap of luxury as it specified they had to pay all expenses for their album and tour. Frugal Joe Strummer kept the band living in an old warehouse and drew just a 25 pound-a-week salary while putting together their self-titled debut. 

The debut was put together hastily, arriving on the shelves in their homeland in less than three months, adding to its authentic raw punk appeal. Americans would have to wait a couple of years though, until after their second album, Give Em Enough Rope, was out. That was because CBS and the Epic branch didn’t see them selling well here. One of their execs actually wrote to a complaining American fan at the time that “I personally am an avid Clash fan” but “A&R decisions are not based entirely on taste and musical preference.” He told the punker his “presumption that releasing a Clash record would change the complexion of the American music marketplace…is a false one.”

He was perhaps right. It took three albums and as many years for the band to make any sort of impression on the U.S. market, with the exceptionally well-reviewed, platinum-selling London Calling. Then, just as they were getting hot, they essentially broke up. Strummer later explained that. In 1982 they opened for The Who on an American tour, and “I remember looking at them and thinking ‘God, any day now this is going to be us’…no matter how hard I tried not to be, I was going to become a phoney.” He said they broke up after the big-selling Combat Rock (well, the name was used on one more album, Cut the Crap, but Strummer had fired his bandmates and seemed disinterested in it by that point) because “we could’ve been huge (but) on the one hand, there was our dignity, on the other hand, Aerosmith.” CBS might have preferred the latter, but I believe most fans think he picked the right hand!