We Are The Clash. Mark Andersen

      The Baker in action, handing a restrung guitar to Joe Strummer midsong. (Photographer unknown.)

      At long last, The Clash’s final incarnation has been definitively chronicled. Mark Andersen and Ralph Heibutzki have brilliantly filled in the blanks of the “Clash Mark II” era, including its eventual implosion. And while set three decades ago, the political, social, and economic evils The Clash battled against then are just as relevant today, if not more so. Both Clash fans and general readers alike will be moved by this tale of onstage conquest and offstage turmoil, so deftly woven into the fabric of the charged politics of that time.

      Although the seeds of discontent were sown long before, 1983 was The Clash’s time of bitter harvest. By one measure, the year held the band’s greatest triumph—headlining the first day of the US Festival, before 250,000 people—but also witnessed an astonishing act of self-immolation.

      Joe Strummer’s DIY film noir Hell W10, shot in early 1983 when the band was on break, foreshadowed the tragedy. By the movie’s end, the villain, Mr. Socrates—enthusiastically played by Mick Jones—and his empire are wiped out. By September, that would be the case in real life.

      The irony is inescapable: Mick freely accepted the villain’s role, and would be thus portrayed to the press after his purge. This suggests Mick was a voluntary scapegoat; his expulsion was the purifying remedy for The Clash’s maladies, just as that of Nick “Topper” Headon before him.

      Mick was axed from the band in a scene plotted long in advance. Few knew it was going to happen. Although valid reasons for the dramatic act were apparent, it hit those close to the band like a death in the family; a killing, even, committed by brothers. There could be no neutral ground. Friends and acquaintances were forced to choose sides, and it would be years before many felt comfortable enough to associate socially or professionally again.

      I know, because I lived it. I served alongside Joe, Mick, and Paul starting in the summer of 1976, hauling gear and doing whatever else needed to be done while still a teenager living at home. I signed on shortly after Bernie Rhodes assembled the band, was there when Topper joined in spring 1977, and witnessed Bernie’s dismissal in 1978 and his return in 1981, forming a fateful alliance with Kosmo Vinyl, who had become the band’s ad hoc mouthpiece in the interim. Aside from the first show at the Black Swan in Sheffield, I was at every show, rehearsal, and recording session.

      No one knows what we went through during those years marching up the hill—only us! As Joe once said, “We went to hell and back!” Words are inadequate; it is impossible to convey the anguish of endless months of touring; nonstop revolving hotel rooms; a different town every day; the months of monotony in studios with endless retakes and overdubs; brain-numbing repetition done out of duty and devotion. We had to turn into some kind of machine, or we would have gone mad. Or maybe we did . . . PTSD isn’t confined to soldiers. But I’d do it all over again, for such was The Clash’s irrepressible sense of mission, a calling I embraced.

      That level of dedication always comes at a cost, however. To maintain my own sanity, I ignored the excesses of rock and roll to single-mindedly focus on the equipment and work needed to enable the band to perform, record, and rehearse. I didn’t waver from that purpose until September 1983, in a head-on collision of interband politics, personal resentments, managerial manipulation, and road-weary exhaustion.

      Once reinstated in 1981, Bernie had set about reconstructing the band he had originally created, resurrecting his Stalinist regime from 1976, with Kosmo’s assistance. By 1982, the duo was pounding the table about all manner of band diktats, with Bernie barking the orders and Kosmo cracking the whip to keep everyone in line. From Topper’s removal; the decision to support The Who