The Clash: The Clash - 1977
"I was in my flat in the suburbs of London before I was a professional musician, and I'd been up for thirty-six hours. I was actually listening to another inductee's record, The Clash's first album. When I first put it on, I thought it was just terrible. Then I played it again and I liked it better. By the end, I stayed up all night listening to it on headphones, and I thought it was great. Then I wrote Watching the Detectives'" - Elvis Costello
Police And Thieves forms what is definitely the album’s oddity - a six minute cover of Junior Murvin’s reggae classic, but here given an almost rock, slowed down approach, with a great riffy intro. The reggae rhythms are guitar-based and clunky, almost not reggae at all, apart from the fact that they are choppy. Either way, it gave a firm hint as to directions the band would take in late years. They were certainly not prepared to be tethered down to the punk "two minute thrash" ethic. Stiff Little Fingers put a similar extended punky reggae cover on their debut album, their cover was of Bob Marley's Johnny Was, in very much the same style as this track. Incidentally, Junior Murvin is said to have hated the version.
"The only band that matters" - so the often-used cliché goes whenever The Clash are being discussed. While this was somewhat hyperbolic (and one suspects, self-perpetuated), the mythology around this seminal UK punk group always had a certain amount of truth in it - guitarist Mick Jones' West London high-rise tower block upbringing, bassist Paul Simonon's initial lack of ability, drummer Topper Headon's unpredictable temper, Joe Strummer's middle-class upbringing and so on.
Well, you know what they said - well some of it was true.
Whether singer Joe Strummer's pseudo-political rants meant anything much at all didn't really matter. They sounded as if they were of world-shattering importance, and that suited me fine as an angry, cause-driven eighteen year-old desperate to get some fist-pumping in. The night of Friday 22 December 1978 at Aylesbury Friars when the lights went out and four shadowy figures loped on to the stage and suddenly burst, lights flashing all over the place, into Safe European Home was simply one of the most exciting moments of my life. For details of the gig, check out the excellent Friars, Aylesbury website.
Whether The Clash were the real thing or whether they were a bunch of contrived sloganeers is missing the point regarding their cultural importance to music between 1977-82. Their influence goes way beyond those five great years and five diverse albums (only the first and parts of the second were genuinely punk). The number of subsequent artists influenced and inspired by them is endless. Were there three better albums to come out of the punk explosion than the first three from The Clash? Arguably not. Initially here I cover those three great albums that remain very much part of my life - the ground-breaking, visceral debut in its essential UK release format; the underrated Give 'Em Enough Rope; and the critics' favourite in London Calling - yes, I was there too. The only three albums that matter.
Some people question The Clash’s punk credentials because Strummer was the middle class son of a diplomat and was slightly older and Mick Jones had been a Mott The Hoople fan and a Stones fan too (although they claimed not to be in their single release “1977”). Basically, this was irrelevant. Did The Clash blow a huge hole in the ceiling of contemporary pop music in 1977? Were they perceived by the youth of the time as politically and musically relevant? The answer is a firm “yes, not half” to both questions, at least for those who were receptive. Many at the time, it has to be said, though, were disco or prog rock fans for whom The Clash meant absolutely nothing. Thankfully, I was one of the receptive. The group were manna from Heaven for angry young men like me. For all the praise showered on the eclectic London Calling, from two years hence, it will always be this remarkable debut album that epitomises The Clash for me.
That said, there were no doubt many people in the same period who carried on listening to prog rock, Led Zeppelin or disco as if The Clash never mattered at all.
Joe Strummer had this to say, retrospectively -
"I knew something was up, so I went out in the crowd which was fairly sparse. And I saw the future right in front of me. It was immediately clear. Pub rock was, 'Hello, you bunch of drunks, I'm gonna play these boogies and I hope you like them.' The Pistols came out that Tuesday evening and their attitude was, 'Here's our tunes, and we couldn't give a flying fuck whether you like them or not. In fact, we're gonna play them even if you fucking hate them".
For me, the first Clash album was one of my first prolonged experiences of punk (after The Sex Pistols and The Ramones). I vividly remember a friend of mine getting his first car and we drove from Buckinghamshire to Manchester for the sake of it, just because we could and slept the night in the car in a backstreet in the city’s warehouse district. We had one cassette to play - this album. We played it over and over, there and back. Its effect was that remarkable. We loved every minute - the buzzsaw guitar, the frantic drums, the rumbling basic bass and Joe Strummer’s barked, often incomprehensible vocals.
On to the first album in more detail, then (finally!). Let's speed around under the yellow lights....
One of the genuine cornerstones of the UK punk explosion, this absolutely seminal breakneck ride through thirteen two minute or so songs - plus Police And Thieves - is so vital to understanding the seismic shock that punk was to the music scene in 1977.
Terry Chimes’ upbeat drum riff heralds the start of this great album on Janie Jones, Mick Jones’ guitar chops in, Paul Simonon’s bass rumbles and Joe Strummer’s rasping vocal enters the fray in this catchy song about a notorious 70s London madam who made the news for some reason that I cannot remember. Running a bawdy house, no doubt.
At three minutes long, Remote Control is almost a “rock” track as opposed to a “punk” one, introducing us for the first time to that riff from Mick Jones - unique and always musical. On Complete Control, a non-album single, the band began with the line “they said release “Remote Control”, but we didn’t want it on the label...” indicating that CBS wanted this track released as a single but the band did not. Already we had a band here making waves with their record company - rebels from the outset.
I'm So Bored With The USA sees a buzzsaw guitar crackle in the aggressive intro to this militant attack on the USA and its seemingly omnipresent culture, complete with fist punching, singalong chorus.
Jones and Strummer were caught up in some of the Brixton riots of the time, and felt somewhat detached from the protesting black youth all around them. The iconic breakneck classic punk rant, White Riot was the result. The punk riff intro has rarely been bettered. The single version of the track was superior, more abrasive, however, in comparison to the one which appeared on this album.
On Hate And War, the racist mentality of contemporary neo-fascist groups were confronted on this slightly slower pace track - “hate and war, it is the currency”. After such a fine quartet before it, however, it sounds comparatively unremarkable. What's My Name was another wired, frenetic, fast paced punker. “What the hell is wrong with me” barks Strummer, questioning his own behaviour and identity. It is in the same vein of Hate And War and indeed the next one.... "Deny - you're such a liar!” moans Strummer to an unreliable girlfriend on Deny. Even punks had girlfriend problems in between all that griping about society. Again, it is a bit of a comparatively ordinary one.
London's Burning is a true Clash classic. Jones’ guitar chops stab in to a wonderful intro and then some angry lyrics about driving around London’s Westway elevated flyover “speeding around underneath the yellow lights”. London was burning with boredom, they exclaimed. Such an anthem of urban youth protest. Glorious stuff when you’re eighteen. There is a great moment, just a short while in, when Mick Jones' guitar slashes furiously straight to one of your speakers. Marvellous.
© John Halley
Career Opportunities is another great track, about unemployment and the lack of decent job opportunities - “they offered me the office, offered me the shop, they said I’d better take any job they got”. Finger on the pulse in a sub-two minute punk song. Great guitar and drum intro too. It featured in the scene in the film Rude Boy when lead character Ray put the album on in his grubby bedsit room.
An angry tub-thumper about cheating if you can’t win, Cheat is narrated in the first person but written as an observation of a nihilistic, selfish person - "I get violent when I'm fucked up, I get silent when I'm drugged up".
Protex Blue is a short, sharp, furious-paced song about a brand of condoms, apparently. Never heard of them. I was always a regular "Durex" man myself - 50p for three from the railway station toilet vending machine. I recall running up there one night to get some, leaving my girl waiting impatiently in bed. It took about twenty minutes or so of fast pace running - then I was expected to perform upon my knackered return. The things we do for love.
48 Hours is the shortest track on the album, and maybe the most forgettable. Fast and furious, but that’s about it.
With the closer, Garageland, though, we saw pointer to the future in another semi-rock song to finish off - the story of the band’s progression to be a “garage band”. “I don’t want to hear about what the rich are doing” gargled Strummer. None of us did, Joe.
A quick word on that iconic green and monochrome cover and its orange type face. It was just perfect. The three band members pictured on the front (minus original drummer Terry Chimes) looked hard, uncompromising and scruffy-cool - no long hair, medallions or exposed chests here. This was your classic anti-hero cover. The rear image of police dealing with urban rioting left one in no doubt as to the group's political concerns. No Tolkein-esque images, no tubular bells, no guitarists in make-up, no corkscrew curls to be found within a hundred miles of this.
Another quick mention has to be given to the subsequently-released US version of the album. It was issued two years later, in 1979, thus missing the impact that the original album and tracks had in the music scene. It omits Deny, Cheat, Protex Blue and 48 Hours, replacing them with Complete Control, Clash City Rockers, (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais, I Fought The Law and Jail Guitar Doors. While I fully accept that these are better tracks, by far, it just simply isn't the original album that we were all knocked sideways by, is it? Anyone who was there in 1977 will simply not accept this as The Clash's debut album. The one correct decision, however, was to use the original single version of White Riot. Good old Remote Control is still there too!
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