the Clash

the Clash, British punk rock band that was second only to the Sex Pistols in influence and impact as a standard-bearer for the punk movement. The principal members were Joe Strummer (original name John Mellor; b. August 21, 1952, Ankara, Turkey—d. December 22, 2002, Broomfield, Somerset, England), Mick Jones (byname of Michael Jones; b. June 26, 1955, London, England), Paul Simonon (b. December 15, 1955, London), Terry (“Tory Crimes”) Chimes (b. July 5, 1956, London), and Nick (“Topper”) Headon (b. May 30, 1955, Bromley, Kent, England).

Of the many punk bands formed in mid-1970s London as a direct result of the catalytic inspiration of the Sex Pistols, the aptly named Clash came closest to rivaling the Pistols’ impact. However, whereas the Pistols were (ostensibly at least) nihilists come to destroy rock, the Clash were activists come to save it—rabble-rousing street populists waging a rock-and-roll class war. Their explosive debut single, “White Riot,” and eponymous first album (both 1977) were tinny and cranked-up in volume and tempo—the perfect aural signature for scrappy underdogs in stenciled, paint-spattered thrift-shop clothes whose credo was “The truth is only known by guttersnipes.” Their stage shows—spearheaded by Strummer’s teeth-clenched, raw-throated passion—were as galvanic as anything else available in a decidedly galvanic era.

The Clash was considered so rough, so raw, and so wrong-kind-of-English by the band’s American record company that it was not even released in the United States until 1979. Its successor, Give ’Em Enough Rope (1978), was overseen by American producer Sandy Pearlman in an attempt to capture the American market. However, that breakthrough did not come until the eclectic, sophisticated double album London Calling (released in the U.K. in 1979 and in the U.S. in 1980); steeped in reggae and rhythm and blues, it brought the Clash their first American hit single with Jones’s composition “Train in Vain (Stand by Me)”—an afterthought added to the album so late that it was not even listed on the cover. By that time the band’s hard-won professionalism, rapidly developing musical skills, and increasing fascination with the iconography of classic Americana had distanced them from the punk faithful in Britain, who were still singing along to “I’m So Bored with the U.S.A.” from the first album.

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Perpetually in debt to their record company and compelled by their punk ethic to give their all for their fans, the Clash tried to satisfy both constituencies with London Calling’s follow-up, Sandinista! (1980), a triple album that unfortunately produced no hits. Combat Rock (1982), the last album to feature the classic triumvirate of Strummer, Jones, and Simonon, yielded the hit “Rock the Casbah,” which ironically was later appropriated as an American battle anthem during the Persian Gulf War.

Internal tensions brought about by the contradictions within the Clash’s stance—between their revolutionary rhetoric and their addiction to the macho posturing of rock stardom—led to the firing of Jones (who went on to found his own group, Big Audio Dynamite). Unfortunately, this left the Clash a very ordinary punk band with an unusually charismatic front man. They recorded one more, poorly received album without Jones and then disbanded in 1986.

Long after the Clash broke up, their “Should I Stay or Should I Go” became a number one hit in the United Kingdom when it was featured in a commercial in 1991. Despite that success and lucrative offers to reunite, the group refused to do so—unlike the Sex Pistols. One of the Clash’s most-memorable stage numbers was their version of the Bobby Fuller Four’s rockabilly classic “I Fought the Law” (its chorus: “I fought the law / And the law won”); a substitution of the words “the music business” or “capitalism” for “the law” hints at the perennial dilemma for the Clash. However, in its time the Clash pushed its contradictions to the limit and in doing so became for many the most exciting rock band of its era. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003.