We Are The Clash. Mark Andersen
in London’s Victoria Park for Rock Against Racism on April 30, 1978. That gig, however, had a political urgency and purpose, helping to defeat a rising neo-Nazi threat in the form of the National Front, amid acts of racist violence.
One of those in attendance was a teenage Clash fan named Billy Bragg. Years later, Bragg would recall, “That was the first political activism I ever took part in, and I went because The Clash were playing. It totally changed my perspective. There were 100,000 kids just like me. And I realized that I wasn’t the only person who felt this way. It was that gig—and that audience, really—that gave me the courage of my convictions, to start speaking out.”
Bragg was not alone in feeling the day was a transformative experience. In 2008, leading UK newspaper the Guardian wrote, “For those who attended the concert in 1978 it was a show that changed their lives and helped change Britain. Rock Against Racism radicalized a generation, it showed that music could do more than just entertain: it could make a difference.”
Victoria Park carried an extraordinary resonance—but Strummer found that stadium shows rarely had such a vibe. They were engineered to include as many fans, and make as much money, as possible, with little thought to the quality of the experience. Bands would generally be visible only on gigantic video screens, blurring the line between experiencing live music and watching TV.
This meant hard work for any group serious about connecting with its audience, often resulting in an exhaustion that was more psychic than physical. The Clash was a band that fed off its fans, enjoying the chaos and spontaneity. The businesslike tick-tock of these huge shows was alien to them, and the immense distance from the audience took its toll.
At New York’s Shea Stadium, Strummer chided the crowd for chatting during the songs. After another gig, a visibly exhausted Strummer—sitting slouched over and hiding behind sunglasses—was asked about the band’s responsibility to the fans. He responded curtly, “I’m not strong enough to carry anything like that right now.” When the interviewer followed up with Jones, asking how he felt about the music industry, he replied, “It’s not any worse than any other prostitution business.”
That Jones would say this is striking because, of the band’s original cohort, he was perhaps the one most open to this level of success. It did not mean, however, that he handled the breakthrough well.
Jones had never been known for punctuality—in the movie Rude Boy he is scolded on camera by road manager Johnny Green—but after Combat Rock broke big, it got worse. Whether this was due to his late-night lifestyle or a power play is not clear. Whatever the cause, Jones regularly left the band waiting. Added to existing musical and ideological differences, a chasm was growing.
When the seemingly endless tour finally concluded just before Halloween 1982, The Clash was on top commercially, but battered spiritually. Moreover, Chimes did not wish to continue as drummer—nor did the band want to record new material with him, according to Vinyl.
After one last show in Jamaica on November 27, 1982, the band settled in for a lengthy break. Before recording Sandinista! the band had come off the road energized, eager to go to work writing new material, and even Combat Rock songs had come swiftly. Now everything felt different. There was no move to replace Chimes, and no plans were made even for rehearsals.
Ever eager for the stage, Strummer played a series of gigs with old friends—including Mole and Richard Dudanski from the 101ers—in an impromptu combo called the Soul Vendors. Both the band’s name and the raw roots-rock it played suggested the deep ambivalence Strummer felt about the commercial status and musical direction of The Clash, increasingly driven by Jones, whose interest in hip-hop and electronic music was growing.
Jones had begun using a guitar-synthesizer hybrid that Vinyl derisively dubbed “the dalek’s handbag,” referencing evil extraterrestrials in the Doctor Who TV series. Jones’s adventurous spirit had catapulted The Clash past most of its peers, asserting punk as far more than a static set of chords, hairstyles, and clothes. Now, it was not clear whether Strummer or Simonon wished to continue on that journey, at least in the direction Jones proposed.
When Strummer suddenly decided to make a ragged but engaging film noir, Hell W10, in early 1983, he enlisted friends and bandmates for the DIY endeavor. Strikingly, Jones was cast as the villain. For some participants like The Baker, the clues were too obvious to miss: “It was as if Joe knew that the only way they could keep working together was by not playing music.”
In the midst of editing the film, a call came with an astonishing offer: The Clash had been offered $500,000 to headline the first night of something called the US Festival, to be held near San Bernardino in Southern California.
The US Festival, which aspired to be “the Woodstock of the 1980s,” was the brainchild of American entrepreneur Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple Computers. The mountains of money being made in this emerging sector was contributing to fundamental shifts in the US and global economies—and allowed Wozniak to bankroll a huge festival costing untold millions of dollars.
Could that cash buy The Clash? The band had made a reputation by not being overly impressed by money and its temptations, even rebuffing the UK hit maker Top of the Pops because it required lip-synching. But if stadium shows were difficult, playing such a festival was a whole other animal.
In the sixties, the rock festival represented a “gathering of the tribes,” a communal celebration of the counterculture transcending a simple commercial transaction. Many were free, exemplifying a belief that music is for the people more than profit, for communion more than commerce.
But the intimate context that fed punk—with audience and band on essentially the same level—was worlds apart from the mass scale of rock festivals. Vinyl later noted, “Festivals are a hippie’s dream, but a punk’s nightmare.”
In 1989, Strummer articulated the punk ethic in praising the original 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, which had a legal capacity of 199: “I like tight spaces like this one where the crowd can feel the sweat splashing off the stage and you can look one another dead in the eye, take each other’s measure. It makes it all real, you know? Whatever it is, we’re doing something together, right in this spot, right now. It ain’t luxury, but it has some soul, like it was made for people, not cattle.”
The US Festival was going to be the sort of massive rock spectacle that made powerful communion difficult at best. But perhaps this was the moment for The Clash to take on the music biz on its own turf, a chance to stand up for “revolution rock.” Or maybe the money and momentum propelling them into the mass arena was too great to resist. Whatever the mix of motives, The Clash signed on.
Immediately the band faced a problem: there was no band. Seeing “the row brewing between Mick and the other two,” Chimes had definitively stepped back. Headon was still lost in his addiction. As a result, The Baker—none too excited about the show in the first place—was tasked with finding a skilled, relatively unknown replacement that could fit The Clash’s music, look, and mission.
The Baker knew there was no time for lengthy auditions. (The Clash had tried out perhaps one hundred drummers after Chimes left the first time, before settling on Headon in April 1977). He placed an ad in the April 23 issue of Melody Maker, and Peter Howard was one of those who answered the call. As The Baker remembers, “From the moment Pete walked into rehearsal he was so right for the Clash that it was an open-and-shut case . . . Musically, stylistically, and culturally, he was perfect for them.”
Howard was young, just twenty-three, but skilled. Although a casual fan of The Clash, he was not a devoted follower. “I’d seen The Clash, and I liked them, but I was not overawed. Headon was great, but my drum heroes were mostly prog-rock guys like Bill Bruford or Alan White, so I wasn’t intimidated.”
It was a high-pressure moment to be joining The Clash, and the managerial team of Rhodes and Vinyl were scarcely warm and fuzzy. Yet Howard seemed to hit it off with his rhythm-section mate Simonon, as well as The Baker who recalls, “With Pete’s arrival, it appeared possible that the dynamism, energy, and creativity could once again be ignited with the introduction of another element into the mix.”