Titans of the Clash

Sipping a Sierra Nevada at a bar near the Waldorf, Mick Jones is far less ambivalent about the Hall of Fame. "We did it representing where we're from, and in honor of Joe's memory," he says. For the record, he also dug the all-star tribute to Strummer at the Grammys in February (a performance of "London Calling" by Costello, Bruce Springsteen, Dave Grohl and Steve Van Zandt). "I saw Tony Bennett having a clap at the end," Jones says. "That was nice. Joe may have chuckled."

In 1976, Jones and Simonon were art-school dropouts looking to start a band when they saw Strummer perform one night with his pub-rock band, the 101ers. A few days later, they spotted him queued up at the welfare office. Strummer grabbed his dole money and made off quick, assuming the thuggish-looking guys staring him down were planning to mug him.

Within weeks, though, they'd persuaded Strummer to join the band — after which the group worked more or less nonstop for the next six years. The Clash's musical achievements are all the more impressive considering the truly anarchic nature of the punk scene at the time — particularly in England, where the shows regularly got violent, and where fans decided dinosaur-rock practices such as "applauding" should be replaced with new-model endearments such as "gobbing," or spitting on the band. "The height of the spitting was, like, '77," Jones says. "We never liked that at any point. I used to carry a towel to wipe myself off. It was disgusting."

"The stage would be covered in broken glass by the end of a show," adds Simonon. "Me and Joe would tend to be the ones jumping into the audience and roughing up the people who were chucking the bottles. We did, at various times, ask Mick why he never got involved, and he said, 'Well, somebody's got to be in tune.' Which was a good point."

Then there was the pigeon incident. One afternoon, waiting for the perennially tardy Jones to arrive at the studio, a bored Simonon, along with the group's second drummer, Nicky "Topper" Headon, climbed onto the roof and began shooting at pigeons with a couple of air rifles. "Where Topper's from, in Dover, the countryside, the pigeons are considered vermin," Simonon says. "But there was a railway station nearby, and someone made a phone call to the police, saying 'the anti-establishment group the Clash' were shooting at a train. It was amazing. Helicopters showed up. Armed police came over the wall, told us to freeze and put our hands on our heads. All we were doing was shooting stupid pigeons! Although one or two of them turned out to be somebody's prized racing pigeons. They looked like regular pigeons to us."

A year after the band finally broke through on the American charts with 1982's Combat Rock, Jones was ejected from the band. (He recalls one show where he and Strummer left the stage at the end of the set, came to blows, then played an encore.) Jones quickly went on to form Big Audio Dynamite, one of the first rock bands to incorporate electronic music and sampling into its sound. "After I finished the first B.A.D. album, I was on holiday in Nassau, and Joe came out and found me," Jones recalls. "I said, 'I've just done this record, listen to it.' So I played it and said, 'What do you think?' He said, 'It's shit! Complete shit! Let's get back together again.' " Strummer, Jones points out, ended up co-producing B.A.D.'s second album.

Jones and Strummer reunited onstage one last time, in late November 2002. Strummer was performing at a union benefit for some firefighters in West London. Jones was in the audience; he had no plans to play with Strummer. But when his former bandmate launched into the opening strains of "Bankrobber," Jones says he couldn't contain himself, jumping onstage and joining in. "I just felt compelled to do it," he says. "The next song was one we used to argue about, 'White Riot.' I always got tired of explaining that song and so didn't like to play it, but Joe really did. That night, he didn't say he was playing 'White Riot.' He just put his fingers in the A position and said, 'This one's in A. You know it!' And before I knew it, we were into it. It was cool. We finished with 'London's Burning,' which was appropriate for the night. It reminded me of the old nights, you know? The show was in an old town hall, with union banners. We didn't prearrange anything. When Joe saw me get onstage, he was delighted. He said, 'So you've come to play guitar?' " Jones pauses, squints, then corrects himself. "No, he didn't. He just said, 'Play guitar.' Which is different."

[From Issue 920 — April 17, 2003]