We Are The Clash. Mark Andersen
“Armagideon Time” as “the F-Plan Beverly Hills reggae song,” referring to a fad diet popular at the time. This quip turned serious as Strummer evoked the famine building in the Horn of Africa by extemporizing about “the Ethiopian Diet, lose five hundred pounds, success guaranteed, or your money back—yes, your money back” over a spooky dub groove. As he returned to the “a lot of people won’t get no supper tonight / a lot of people won’t get no justice tonight” refrain, the band—led by Jones—brought the song to an ominous close with splashes of dissonant guitars and drums.
If the music was strong, the singer found the audience response wanting. As applause washed over the stage, Strummer retorted, “Bollocks, bollocks! Come on, you don’t have to fake. You spent twenty-five dollars to go out there, so do what you like . . .”
The puzzled crowd responded uncertainly. Strummer upped the ante: “A lot of you seem to have speech operations, can’t talk or shout back or anything.” Balling up his fists, seeming desperate to somehow touch the distant mass, the snarling frontman baited the audience: “Come on, I need some hostility here . . . RRRRAAAWRRR! I need some feeling of some sort!” Then his tone lightened: “As it’s Sunday tomorrow, I hope you will join me . . .” The zinger led into a rollicking version of Sandinista!’s “The Sound of Sinners,” an amiable—but eminently forgettable—bit of gospel rock and roll. Self-deprecation, spoof, and sincerity mixed freely in lines like, “After all this time to believe in Jesus / after all those drugs / I thought I was Him,” before concluding, “I ain’t good enough / I ain’t clean enough / to be Him.”
It seemed something of an odd choice. Strummer, however, had a spiritual side, with radical bits of Christianity coming in largely through the Rastafari faith that imbued the band’s reggae covers. His past inspiration, Woody Guthrie, sang of Jesus as a revolutionary standing against the powers-that-be: “Jesus said to the rich / give your goods to the poor / so they put Jesus Christ in his grave.”
This view was backed up by history, and was shared by many believers. Priests and nuns served in the Sandinista government, for example, and had sacrificed their lives in El Salvador, part of a “liberation theology” that reclaimed this radical Jesus. While Thatcher and Reagan wore Christianity on their sleeves, The Clash’s stand with the dispossessed was more consistent with Christ’s life and teachings.
Unlike “Armagideon Time” or “Police and Thieves,” however, “The Sound of Sinners” did not seem like heavy message music. Yet clearly the song meant much to Strummer, and its comedic disavowal of messianic pretension sparked his most vulnerable appeal of the evening. The singer dismissed rock stars and their glamour, pointedly including himself in that “nowhere” crowd. His anguished outcry aimed to bridge the chasm between The Clash and its audience and, in so doing, perhaps to mend the similar gap widening within the band’s heart.
Schizophrenia nonetheless remained apparent. After a frantic stretch of blazing rockers—“Police on My Back” (with Jones again on lead vocals), “Brand New Cadillac,” “I Fought the Law,” and “I’m So Bored with the USA,” with Strummer pausing only to spit “Oh so you’re still there?” at the audience—the band segued into the pop love song “Train in Vain,” their first US hit.
Next the band brought the funk of “Magnificent Seven,” spinning its tale of workaday desperation before downshifting into the brilliantly bleak seven-minute epic “Straight to Hell.” The song gained further poignancy from Strummer’s extended rant against drug-addled rock stars. Such, the singer noted, made enough money to get their blood changed when their lifestyle grew too toxic, caring not a whit that they were leading others down a dead-end path—a clear reference to an apocryphal story then circulating about Keith Richards.
Strummer brought his improvising to a close with bitter lines like “Hey, man, let’s just party / while our friends are dying / let’s just party / hey, where’s the party at?” before spitting out the song’s aching final verse. Yet, after this sobering, artful challenge, it was back to the lightweight hit “Should I Stay or Should I Go.”
The shifts were jarring—but then it was over. The band went off the stage, returning for a short encore of “Clampdown.” Strummer once again launched into a tirade, blasting complacency about atomic weapons and nuclear power. The song drifted out across the multitude, moving some, no doubt mystifying others.
The band stepped back, intending to return for a final encore. When organizers moved to preclude that by dismissing the crowd, Vinyl tried to grab the mic. A fracas erupted, with the band in fisticuffs with the festival staff. As this unfolded, an emcee took the microphone and called out derisively, “The Clash has left the building,” echoing the fabled Elvis exit announcement. The show was over.
Likely the festival’s most dynamic set, it was surely the most unsettling. The Clash had flung itself against the wall of rock-biz hypocrisy and audience expectation, while being sure to showcase all its hit singles. In its inimitable fashion, the band simultaneously played the game and sought to burn it down.
It was one of their greatest performances. But if The Clash intended a righteous challenge to “business as usual,” it didn’t necessarily come off this way. To many, their behavior was simple rock star ego, self-servingly couched in revolutionary rhetoric. The Clash’s half-million-dollar fee seemed at odds with its concern for the poor. Why didn’t they donate some of their take? And if they didn’t like the festival, why play in the first place? While the band made noises about returning to California to play a free show, this didn’t stem the criticism.
As The Clash returned home with contradictions worsened and internal divisions unhealed, the crucial UK general election loomed. Thatcher’s popularity had dipped from its post-Falklands high but remained well above where it had been a year earlier. In part, this was due to an economy that was bouncing back in some areas—though not in Britain’s hard-hit north, reeling from industrial closures.
Meanwhile, the Labour Party had splintered. Dissident elements had formed the Social Democratic Party that allied itself with the middle-of-the-road Liberal Party. Thatcher’s opponents could not have done her a bigger favor.
Thatcher got a smaller percentage of the vote than in 1979—dropping from 43.9 percent to 42.4 percent—but thanks to the fractures on the left, the Conservatives swept Parliament. This meant Thatcher now had a vast, veto-proof majority—and a free hand to pass right-wing legislation—even though she had won considerably less than half the overall vote. It was an ominous portent, made worse by the news of rebounding popularity for Reagan, readying his own run for reelection.
Meanwhile, the members of The Clash had gone their separate ways after returning from the US Festival. No one seemed to know what the next step was.
June and then July passed with no movement. As The Baker remembers, “I started calling everyone in an attempt to find out what the next move was, but it seemed like no one knew or no one was talking. No matter who I called—Kosmo, Bernie, Joe, Paul, or Mick—I was met with a resolute, ‘I don’t know,’ or, ‘I haven’t heard from anyone.’ It seemed insane.” A conspiracy of silence had descended over the band, with clandestine meetings being conducted behind closed doors.
The Baker finally got a grudging agreement to restart rehearsals—the essential first step toward writing new songs—but with only limited results: “We set up the backline at Rehearsal Rehearsals and put the kettle on just as we did for previous occasions, but it was like flogging a dead horse. One day Paul would turn up, hang around for a while, and go home. The next day Mick would arrive late, miss Joe, and leave again, and so on. Poor Pete Howard was going out of his mind, having succeeded in getting the chance of a lifetime, only to have it turn out like this. I can’t actually remember a complete rehearsal that August.”
Unbeknown to The Baker, pent-up frustration, stoked by the pressure of mass success, was about to splinter The Clash. Jones was soon to be purged from the band that he, more than anyone save perhaps Rhodes, had built.
“The day Mick was fired, the air was thick with tension,” The Baker recalls. “Bernie came into the studio early, then left. Then he would call: ‘Anyone there yet?’