Morrison, the Velvet Underground sans Lou Reed, John Cale, or Nico.
This disdain is heightened by a new reality: in the twenty-first century, zombie versions of once cutting-edge bands stumble on for years after death—Dead Kennedys without Jello Biafra, the Misfits without Glen Danzig, Black Flag without anybody but Greg Ginn . . . the list goes on and on. Except for an occasional compilation appearance of its blazing twilight-era anthem “This Is England,” The Clash Mark II has seemed similarly undead, fated to remain one of rock’s great untouchables, unfit for public consumption.
Mick Jones famously described his ejection as “the greatest mistake in rock and roll history”—but that might be expected. More curious is the fact it has been hard to find defenders of The Clash Mark II even from those who played in the band.
In his later years, Joe Strummer hardly uttered a kind word about the unit that he more than anyone else created. Clash Mark II axman Vince White wrote Out of Control, a blistering exposé of the behind-the-scenes chaos and dysfunctional machinations in the band; in Danny Garcia’s book The Rise and Fall of The Clash, final drummer Peter Howard bemoans a foregone opportunity to join hard rockers AC/DC in order to stick with the doomed neo-Clash. While far less vitriolic than White or Howard, guitarist Nick Sheppard has jokingly allowed that this unit might be seen as “the only cover band I’ve ever played in.”
By contrast, Clash cofounder Paul Simonon has reaffirmed the motivation behind the expulsion of Jones, and asserted the worth of the final songs. However, even he doesn’t defend Cut the Crap, faulting manager/cofounder Bernard Rhodes for undoing the album with his dictatorial ways. Quipping, “If The Clash was the Communist Party, Bernie was our Stalin,” bassist Simonon now casts Rhodes as essentially pulling off a musical coup d’état in the studio.
Indeed, in an interview for the Big Issue with Jones and Headon after Sound System’s release, Simonon claims Cut the Crap is “not really a Clash record . . . It hasn’t got Mick or Topper on it.” Jones then delivers the coup de grâce, joking that “for the benefit of Stalinist revision, [Cut the Crap] has been expunged.”
Given all of this, it might fairly be asked: should one notice, much less mourn, the exclusion of this one record from this one box set?
The short answer is that the purging of Cut the Crap—and a concurrent excision of the neo-Clash era—matters. It not only leaves out a crucial chapter in the story of an entity that has been described as “the only band that matters” but it helps subvert what made the unit much more than simply another pop group.
In fact, the Clash Mark II period is a fascinating window into a band of immense vision and passion—as well as fundamental contradictions—as they wrestle with the meaning of success. In addition, this tale plays out against a backdrop of extraordinary sociopolitical drama, the passing of one era of modern history into another: a vibrant epoch that, nonetheless, is fundamentally more cold and cruel.
The Clash Mark II songs that Simonon defends not only document this moment when the world turned, but can also illuminate a possible better future. Contrary to the many voices that ridicule this Clash era, there is a powerful—if sometimes heartbreaking—story here, together with profound moments, words, and music, including works worthy of standing next to the best that The Clash created.
While we will defend this position with exhaustive, painstaking documentation and tightly constructed arguments, this book began with our own experiences as longtime followers of The Clash. Both of our lives were radically changed for the better by our encounter with the band, its music, look, and ideas, including those on display in its last incarnation.
Of course, personal experience, however profound, can only go so far to provide convincing historical evidence. Another crucial bulwark for this project is more broadly based and impossible to dismiss. As the Internet has enabled sixty-plus bootlegs from the band’s final period to be widely circulated, a counterpoint to the “critical consensus”—and The Clash’s own rewritten history—has risen. In a striking example of grassroots resistance, a whole segment of Clash fandom now refuses to allow the band’s last two years to be “expunged.”
These live tapes give the lie to those who dismiss the post-Jones Clash. In short, the passion is palpable, and the performances are compelling, with many of the new songs rivaling the power of the Strummer-Jones classics. These raw documents constitute a lasting rebuke to those who would write The Clash Mark II out of history. They provide not just the foundation of our narrative here; they—as much as live tapes from the earlier Clash years—are also crucial fuel that animate our ongoing personal, creative, and activist endeavors.
Without denying the seamier side of the period, or whitewashing the dysfunction that doomed this last stand, we will strive to take the artistic accomplishments seriously, while also trying to place the failures—or even betrayals—in context, with relentless pursuit of truth and sympathetic assessment of human frailty.
This begins with an honest appraisal of the band’s origins. The Clash was mostly assembled from relative strangers by manager/agitator Bernard Rhodes and given a challenging set of orders: in the words of Strummer, “to be bigger than anybody else but still keep our message.” That their mission of freedom and anticapitalist revolution was somehow to be brought to fruition via the corporate rock world only serves to highlight what longtime Clash roadie/confidante The Baker has called the band’s “unanswerable dilemma.”
This profound tension is the taproot of the band’s final quest. If The Clash’s aims were perhaps doomed from the start, they nonetheless made for an exhilarating ride, one that resonates still, not only for aging fans, but also those discovering the band today. Far from being an embarrassing mistake best forgotten, this neo-Clash era is actually a fascinating and instructive conclusion to their trajectory as a band.
The final phase of this story begins in revolt against basic commercial common sense: the ejection of the authors of two and a half of the band’s three hit singles. Even so, it was not insanity. Without a risky course correction, The Clash could easily have become just another gaggle of rock stars lost in an antiseptic bubble, becoming the very thing that they claimed to despise. This final, desperate effort to bottle lightning yet again, in the end, lends an even greater depth to The Clash’s saga.
Obviously, “the Clash franchise”—the phrase of Mark II guitarist Sheppard—doesn’t believe this. The fervor to scrub away traces of these years is perhaps understandable, given the pain involved. After all, Jones was denounced and summarily purged from a band he helped assemble, Headon’s heroin addiction led to his heart-wrenching expulsion, and Strummer then had to live with guilt over what he came to view as his ego-driven betrayal of close friends.
However explicable, the stance is still disappointing. If The Clash exemplified punk’s “give us some truth” impulse, then facing reality to find the lesson beyond the pain seems essential. To rewrite history, erasing key players from the scenario in a way not so different than Stalin’s falsification of the past—documented in David King’s haunting book, The Commissar Vanishes—seems unworthy of a band as ambitious, principled, and gifted as The Clash.
Finally, we will place this tale squarely in its sociopolitical context, with the result that figures like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher will be nearly as central as The Clash. This approach may not be popular with some more music-centric readers. Indeed, a growing number of people now tend to view The Clash as simply a great rock band: a tendency that, at once, is both obvious and odious.
No less a figure than Topper Headon has suggested that only The Clash’s music has stood the test of time, not its politics, which might be acceptably forgotten. With all due respect to Headon’s immense contributions, The Clash without its politics is a wretched ghost,
