The Clash

The Clash took the raw anger of British punk and worked it into a political and aesthetic agenda. Outstripping all of their peers in terms of length and depth of career, the Clash were rebels with a cause - with many causes, from anti-Thatcherism to racial unity to the Sandinistas. Their music was roots-based but future-visionary; their experiments with funk, reggae, and rap never took them far from a three-minute pop song. Hyped as “the only band that matters,” the Clash fell apart just as it broke through to an American audience. By then it had shown that punk was not just a flash-in-the-pan explosion and had delivered an arsenal of unforgettable rock songs.

The Clash was very much dependent on the band chemistry between its four longest-time members: Strummer, Jones, Simonon, and Headon. Primary songwriter Strummer, the son of a British diplomat, grew up in a boarding school. He quit school while still in his teens and in 1974 formed the 101ers, a pub-rock band named either for the address of the building where they squatted or the number of the torture room in the George Orwell novel 1984.

Jones and Simonon are both from working-class Brixton. The gangling, handsome Simonon was attending art school when he met Jones. He had never played an instrument until he heard the Sex Pistols; he then acquired a bass and joined Jones’ band, the London SS, which in its 11-month existence included Tory Crimes and Topper Headon (as well as future Generation X/Sigue Sigue Sputnik bassist Tony James). Seeing the Pistols induced Strummer (a name he got when he strummed “Johnny B. Goode” on a ukulele as a busker in London subway stations) to leave the 101ers, which included guitarist Keith Levene, soon after they recorded the single “Keys to Your Heart.” Strummer and Levene then joined Jones, Simonon, and Crimes in their new group, named the Clash by Jones because it was the word that seemed to appear most often in newspaper headlines.

The Clash played its first, unannounced gig opening for the Sex Pistols in summer 1976 as a quintet. They opened for the Pistols on their Anarchy in the U.K. Tour after Levene quit. (He eventually joined Public Image Ltd.) The Clash was managed by Malcolm McLaren associate Bernard Rhodes, who helped the band articulate its political mission. Where the Sex Pistols were nihilists, the Clash were protesters, with songs about racism, police brutality, and disenfranchisement. They mixed rock with reggae, the music of Britain’s oppressed Jamaicans; one of their early singles was a cover of Junior Murvin’s “Police and Thieves.” Throughout its career, the Clash was active in several political causes and performed benefit concerts for Rock Against Racism.

In February 1977 British CBS Records signed the Clash for a reported $200,000 advance. Their debut album was released that spring and entered the British charts at #12. Columbia considered the album too crude for American release (although the import sold 100,000 copies, making it the biggest-selling import album of that time). In response, the Clash recorded “Complete Control” with Jamaican producer Lee “Scratch” Perry.

Crimes quit the group in late 1976. Headon, who had been drumming with Pat Travers in Europe since his stint in the London SS, accompanied the group on its first national headlining tour. The White Riot Tour, named after the current Clash single, ended at a London concert where the audience ripped the seats out of the floor. It was the first in a series of confrontations between the Clash and the police, especially in Britain, where the group members were arrested on charges ranging from petty theft to illegal possession of firearms (for shooting prize pigeons).

In October 1978 the Clash’s stormy relationship with Rhodes took a turn for the worse and the band fired the manager, only to rehire him years later. They worked with journalist Caroline Coon and Kosmo Vinyl, among others, in between times.

One of the four songs on an EP entitled Cost of Living, a cover of the Bobby Fuller–Sonny Curtis “I Fought the Law,” was the first Clash record released in the U.S. At Columbia’s behest, American producer Sandy Pearlman, best known for his work with Blue Öyster Cult, produced Give ’Em Enough Rope, which reached #2 on the British charts but failed to crack the American Top 200.

The Clash launched its Pearl Harbour Tour of America in February 1979. They also persuaded Columbia to release their first album, which in its American version contained only 10 of the original 14 tracks. A bonus 45 and EP selections dating as far back as two years made up the rest. The album eventually went gold. The Clash toured the U.S. again that fall, with Mickey Gallagher, of Ian Dury’s Blockheads, on keyboards.

London Calling (#27, 1980), with its eclectic collection of pop styles, was both an artistic and commercial breakthrough. Produced by Guy Stevens (who had worked with Mott the Hoople) and supplemented by a brass section and Gallagher, the album went gold thanks to a hit single penned by Jones, “Train in Vain (Stand by Me)” (#23, 1980). Beginning with London Calling, the Clash insisted that its records sell at lower than standard prices, a laudable position, considering that London Calling is a double LP and album prices were rising sharply then due in part to the oil crisis.

In 1980 the semidocumentary film Rude Boy was released. It wove a fictional story about a fan (played by Ray Gange) around actual footage of Clash shows and backstage scenes, filmed during the previous 18 months. That year Jones also produced an album by his then-girlfriend, singer Ellen Foley.

The Clash recorded Sandinista! in New York, producing it themselves. The triple-LP package was a deliberately anticommercial gesture. It sold for less than most double albums, and Columbia took the lost profits out of the group’s royalties and tour support funds. The sprawling, often-experimental album was chosen by a poll of Village Voice critics as album of the year, and Sandinista! (#24, 1981) was the first Clash album to sell more copies in the U.S. than in the U.K.

In December 1981, as the band was beginning to record their next album, Headon was arrested for heroin possession. In April 1982, just as Combat Rock was about to be released, Strummer disappeared, to be found a month later in Paris. (Some accounts say the vanishing act was a publicity stunt engineered by Rhodes.) Upon Strummer’s return, Headon left the group, reputedly because of “political differences,” although Strummer later revealed that the problem was the drummer’s drug use; he was replaced by Crimes for the Clash’s U.K. tour. Ironically, Headon wrote “Rock the Casbah” (#8, 1982), which became an early MTV staple, the Clash’s biggest hit, and in 1999 provided the distinctive sample for Will Smith’s “Will2K.” In July 1982 Headon was arrested in London for receiving stolen property.

Combat Rock (#7, 1982), produced by Glyn Johns, continued the Clash’s forays into funk and rap. One song featured Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. The album went platinum; the single “Should I Stay or Should I Go” was a Top 50 hit that summer. In fall 1982 the Clash toured the U.S. with the Who, playing for its biggest audiences yet. In spring 1983 they headlined at the US Festival in California, with Pete Howard on drums.

That fall Simonon and Strummer kicked Jones out of the band, replacing him with two guitarists, Vince White and Nick Sheppard. Jones went on to form Big Audio Dynamite [see entry]. Cut the Crap was poorly received by critics and fans; the new Clash was a feeble imitation of its old self, and the band soon called it quits.

Strummer briefly reunited with Jones to work on B.A.D.’s second album. He pursued film work with director Alex Cox, writing “Love Kills,” the theme song for Sid & Nancy; starring in Straight to Hell and contributing to the soundtrack; and scoring Walker. Forming the short-lived combo Latino Rockabilly War (including ex–Circle Jerk guitarist Zander Schloss), Strummer recorded the B side of the soundtrack for Permanent Record, a 1988 film about teen suicide. In 1988 Strummer toured as the rhythm guitarist for the Pogues [see entry]; he later produced their 1990 album, Hell’s Ditch, and filled in for erstwhile frontman Shane MacGowan following its release. In 1989 he appeared in Jim Jarmusch’s film Mystery Train and released the poorly received solo album Earthquake Weather.

Strummer was something of a recluse during the ’90s but became somewhat more active as the decade wore on - and as ska-punk bands like Rancid and Sublime refocused attention on the Clash. In 1996 Strummer and Rat Scabies of the Damned formed Electric Dog House and contributed a track to the benefit album, Generations I: A Punk Look at Human Rights. Strummer also scored the music for the movie Grosse Pointe Blank and appeared on the animated TV show South Park and its Chef Aid soundtrack. In 1999 Strummer formed the Mescaleros and released Rock Art and the X-Ray Style, an album that fused hip-hop, dub, punk, and rockabilly and featured reggae star Horace Andy on one track. The follow-up, Global A Go-Go, continued in the same vein.

Simonon formed the roots-oriented Havana 3 A.M. with longtime L.A. scenester Gary Myrick; they recorded one album. He has mostly pursued his painting since the band’s demise. Headon released a solo album in England in 1987 but later that year was sentenced by a London court to 15 months in jail for supplying heroin to a friend who died of an overdose.

The Story of the Clash, vol. 1 and Clash on Broadway compiled Clash songs. In 1991 the Clash had their biggest British hit ever when “Should I Stay or Should I Go” was rereleased, after being featured in a Levi’s commercial. It went to #1 in the U.K. In 1998 Strummer oversaw the creation of Burning London, a Clash tribute album featuring covers of the band’s songs by Rancid, Afghan Whigs, Ice Cube, Moby, and others. A much-anticipated live album drawn from the Clash’s punk heyday surfaced the following year. On June 16, 2000, the band’s best-known lineup - Strummer, Jones, Simonon, and Headon - were scheduled to reunite for the first time since 1985 to perform as part of a tribute to the late Ian Dury at London’s Brixton Academy. However, Strummer withdrew less than two weeks before the tribute. On December 22, 2002 Joe Strummer died of an undiagnosed congenital heart defect at age fifty. The album Streetcore, which he had been working on before his sudden, unexpected death, was released posthumously in October, 2003.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)