long live the clash

1979
by SASHA FRERE-JONES
The year punk died, and was reborn.
Issue of 2004-11-01
Posted 2004-10-25


In 1979, The Clash were experiencing some pressure. Whether they wanted it or not, punk rock had become their responsibility. In New York, the Ramones had come up with the musical idea of reducing rock to three chords, doubling the volume, and accelerating songs until they sounded like Morse code. In London, the Sex Pistols had turned disgust into an ideology and made punk a historical moment, inspiring teen-agers across England to start bands. But by March of 1979 the Ramones had become more interested in being themselves than in changing the world, the Sex Pistols had disbanded, and The Clash, feeling burned out, had fired the manager who helped put the band together, in 1976. Yet they still owed CBS a record.

The Clash were able to fit more music and faith through the keyhole of punk than anyone else. Their dŽbut album, ÒThe Clash,Ó was a brick in flight, fourteen songs, half of them under two minutes long. The lyrics talk about the riots the band members want to start, the American imperialism they want to stop, and EnglandÕs general lack of Òcareer opportunities.Ó It is an act of political resistance and pure pleasure. Their second album, ÒGive ÕEm Enough Rope,Ó was criticized for having an allegedly American sheen, but youÕd have trouble hearing that now. The music is hard and echoey, barking but sweetly melodic. Actually, noÑthe hierarchy is more specific than that. Someone is singing sweetly way in the back, behind the loud guitars, and thereÕs a very loud singer in the front who sounds like heÕs going to die if he doesnÕt get to sing right now. The one in the back is Mick Jones, the guitarist, who wrote most of The ClashÕs music, and the one in the front is Joe Strummer, who wrote and sang most of the lyrics, if singing is the right word. Strummer delivered words as if there were no such things as amplification and he would have been willing to run around town singing through a tube if he had to.

StrummerÕs moral authority, coupled with JonesÕs ability to synthesize decades of rock music without seeming too clever, made people care about The Clash, personally, intensely, and totally. When the band, not yet a year old, signed with CBS in 1977, the London fanzine writer Mark Perry said, ÒPunk died the day The Clash signed to CBS.Ó Perry was only taking the band as seriously as they took themselves. Strummer, especially, believed that punk should be available to all, and felt inherently hostile to authority. Paradoxically, it was the corporate paymaster CBS that eventually ran ads for The Clash with the tagline ÒThe only band that matters.Ó In March of 1979, everyone, including The Clash, knew that the hype might be more than hype. But how could a rock band possibly live up to those expectations?

By releasing ÒLondon Calling,Ó sixty-five minutes of rock music that never goes wrong. Without self-importance, the music covers huge amounts of ground. The stories hang together with the weight of commandments and the serendipitous grace of a pile of empty bottles. Montgomery Clift becomes a folk hero (ÒThe Right ProfileÓ), the myth of Stagger Lee is resurrected for a new audience (ÒWrong ÕEm, BoyoÓ), and London burns. Nothing sounds forced or insincere, not the breezy cover of an obscure English rockabilly song (ÒBrand New CadillacÓ) or fantasies of being a Jamaican bad boy (ÒRevolution RockÓ). Hyperbole itself cannot diminish this record. Each of us is invincible when itÕs playing.

Now reissued in a new boxed set, ÒLondon CallingÓ comes with a bonus CD of rehearsals and a DVD documentary about the making of the album and original promo clips. This generosity would have pleased Strummer, who died in 2002, but he likely would have been less thrilled that the set lists for $29.98. When the album was originally released, as a two-LP set, the band felt that their records had to be priced for punks and insisted that CBS sell it for $9.98.

The documentary and the rough rehearsal demos make the same point: The Clash worked fiendishly hard to be magical. In an on-camera interview, Strummer says, ÒFor some reason, we werenÕt night-clubbing people. All I can remember is writing and rehearsing and recording. A real intensity of effort.Ó The rehearsals are evidence that the songs on ÒLondon CallingÓ were almost entirely worked out before the recordÕs producer, Guy Stevens, was even hired. The only remaining task was to record the music. How Stevens, who died of an overdose of an anti-alcohol medication two years later, helped do this is unclear; thanks to this DVD, history will remember him as the guy who threw chairs and swung ladders about while The Clash recorded.

On ÒLondon Calling,Ó Strummer remakes his major points: the police are on the wrong side, wage labor will crush your soul, and sometimes people need to destroy property to be heard. His sense of righteousness is enhanced by the albumÕs sequencing, which feels Biblically logical and begins with one of the best opening songs of any record ever, the title track. The song starts cold. Two guitar chords ring on the downbeats, locked in step with the drums, marching forward with no dynamic variation. A second guitar introduces difference, coming toward us like an ambulance Dopplering into range. The bass guitar, sounding like someoneÕs voice, heralds everybody over the hill and into the song. If you can listen to it without getting a chilly burst of immortality, there is a layer between you and the world. Joe Strummer simultaneously watches the riots and sloughs off his role as de-facto punk president: ÒLondon calling, now donÕt look to us / All that phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust / London calling, see we ainÕt got no swing / ÕCept for the ring of that truncheon thing.Ó The chorus forms a keystone for the whole album: ÒA nuclear error, but I have no fear / London is drowning and I, I live by the river.Ó The Clash are laughing at Margaret Thatcher and will be dancing long after the police have come and gone.

And what can you call this generous mountain of music, this sound that levitates around its own grievances like a plane on fire? Is it chopped-up rock? Very loud reggae? Some kind of devotional punk? The sensation of hearing several kinds of music at once runs through the album. Reggae is a force that permeates much of it, both as a source of topical songwriting and as a sound, but nothing on the album is strictly reggae. A song like the massive ÒClampdownÓ shifts naturally through three sections: the four huge, descending chords big enough to open a season at Bayreuth; the dancing, pendulous rock of the verses; and the taunting funk of the bridge. The song fades away in a vamp that sounds like disco, so light you might get the impression the band had forgotten everything theyÕd just sung about: institutional racism, political brainwashing, and the creeping compromise of working life. ÒYou start wearing the blue and brown / YouÕre working for the clampdown / So you got someone to boss around / It makes you feel big now.Ó The hectoring is never so simple that you donÕt wonder if theyÕre directing it partly at themselves.

The albumÕs soul might be found in ÒThe Guns of Brixton,Ó by the groupÕs bassist, Paul Simonon. ItÕs reggae thickened up and filtered by musicians who donÕt exactly know how to play reggae but love it completely. Their heavy hands make it something new. Simonon is a croaky and untrained singer, and this only enhances his convictions: ÒWhen they kick at your front door / How you gonna come? / With your hands on your head / Or on the trigger of your gun?Ó Threatening your rivals and writing scatological lyrics is one way to be Òcontroversial.Ó Staring down the riot police is another.

If StrummerÕs instincts were not his alone, then somewhere right now a kid is throwing a fancy, overpriced package of twenty-five-year-old material across the room and pledging to reinvent punk rock once and for all, doubting her heroes while carrying their astonishing music in her whole body.

 

link:
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/music/?041101crmu_music