The Clash: The Clash - 1977
"I was in my flat in the suburbs of London before I was a professional musician, and I'd been up for thirty-six hours. I was actually listening to another inductee's record, The Clash's first album. When I first put it on, I thought it was just terrible. Then I played it again and I liked it better. By the end, I stayed up all night listening to it on headphones, and I thought it was great. Then I wrote Watching the Detective'" - Elvis Costello
Here's The Clash's debut....
I vividly remember a friend of mine getting his first car and we drove from Buckinghamshire to Manchester for the sake of it, just because we could and slept the night in the car in a backstreet in the city’s warehouse district. We had one cassette to play - this album. We played it over and over, there and back. Its effect was that remarkable. We loved every minute - the buzzsaw guitar, the frantic drums, the rumbling basic bass and Joe Strummer’s barked, often incomprehensible vocals.
Some people question The Clash’s punk credentials because Strummer was the middle class son of a diplomat and was slightly older and Mick Jones had been a Mott The Hoople fan and a Stones fan too (although they claimed not to be in their single release “1977”). Basically, this was irrelevant. Did The Clash blow a huge hole in the ceiling of contemporary pop music in 1977? Were they perceived by the youth of the time as politically and musically relevant? The answer is a firm “yes, not half” to both questions, at least for those who were receptive. Many at the time, it has to be said, though, were disco or prog rock fans for whom The Clash meant absolutely nothing. Thankfully, I was one of the receptive. The group were manna from Heaven for angry young men like me. For all the praise showered on the eclectic London Calling, from two years hence, it will always be this album that epitomises The Clash for me.
A quick word on that iconic green and monochrome cover and its orange type face. It was just perfect. The three band members pictured on the front (minus original drummer Terry Chimes) looked hard, uncompromising and scruffy-cool - no long hair, medallions or exposed chests here. This was your classic anti-hero cover. The rear image of police dealing with urban rioting left one in no doubt as to the group's political concerns. No Tolkein-esque images, no tubular bells, no guitarists in make-up, no corkscrew curls to be found within a hundred miles of this. The times they were a-changing....
Terry Chimes’ upbeat drum riff heralds the start of this great album on Janie Jones, Mick Jones’ guitar chops in, Paul Simonon’s bass rumbles and Joe Strummer’s rasping vocal enters the fray in this catchy song about a notorious 70s London madam who made the news for some reason that I cannot remember. Running a bawdy house, no doubt.
At three minutes long, Remote Control is almost a “rock” track as opposed to a “punk” one, introducing us for the first time to that riff from Mick Jones - unique and always musical. On Complete Control, a non-album single, the band began with the line “they said release “Remote Control”, but we didn’t want it on the label...” indicating that CBS wanted this track released as a single but the band did not. Already we had a band here making waves with their record company - rebels from the outset.
I'm So Bored With The USA sees a buzzsaw guitar crackle in the aggressive intro to this militant attack on the USA and its seemingly omnipresent culture, complete with fist punching, singalong chorus.
On Hate And War, the racist mentality of contemporary neo-fascist groups were confronted on this slightly slower pace track - “hate and war, it is the currency”. After such a fine quartet before it, however, it sounds comparatively unremarkable. What's My Name was another wired, frenetic, fast paced punker. “What the hell is wrong with me” barks Strummer, questioning his own behaviour and identity. It is in the same vein of Hate And War and indeed the next one.... "Deny - you're such a liar!” moans Strummer to an unreliable girlfriend on Deny. Even punks had girlfriend problems in between all that griping about society. Again, it is a bit of a comparatively ordinary one.
London's Burning is a true Clash classic. Jones’ guitar chops stab in to a wonderful intro and then some angry lyrics about driving around London’s Westway elevated flyover “speeding around underneath the yellow lights”. London was burning with boredom, they exclaimed. Such an anthem of urban youth protest. Glorious stuff when you’re eighteen. There is a great moment, just a short while in, when Mick Jones' guitar slashes furiously straight to one of your speakers. Marvellous.
Career Opportunities is another great track, about unemployment and the lack of decent job opportunities - “they offered me the office, offered me the shop, they said I’d better take any job they got”. Finger on the pulse in a sub-two minute punk song. Great guitar and drum intro too. It featured in the scene in the film Rude Boy when lead character Ray put the album on in his grubby bedsit room.
An angry tub-thumper about cheating if you can’t win, Cheat is narrated in the first person but written as an observation of a nihilistic, selfish person - "I get violent when I'm fucked up, I get silent when I'm drugged up".
Protex Blue is a short, sharp, furious-paced song about a brand of condoms, apparently. Never heard of them. I was always a regular "Durex" man myself - 50p for three from the railway station toilet vending machine. I recall running up there one night to get some, leaving my girl waiting impatiently in bed. It took about twenty minutes or so of fast pace running - then I was expected to perform upon my knackered return. The things we do for love.
48 Hours is the shortest track on the album, and maybe the most forgettable. Fast and furious, but that’s about it.
With the closer, Garageland, though, we saw pointer to the future in another semi-rock song to finish off - the story of the band’s progression to be a “garage band”. “I don’t want to hear about what the rich are doing” gargled Strummer. None of us did, Joe.
A quick mention has to be given to the subsequently-released US version of the album. It was issued two years later, in 1979, thus missing the impact that the original album and tracks had in the music scene. It omits Deny, Cheat, Protex Blue and 48 Hours, replacing them with Complete Control, Clash City Rockers, (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais, I Fought The Law and Jail Guitar Doors. While I fully accept that these are better tracks, by far, it just simply isn't the original album that we were all knocked sideways by, is it? Anyone who was there in 1977 will simply not accept this as The Clash's debut album. The one correct decision, however, was to use the original single version of White Riot. Good old Remote Control is still there too!
The non-album tracks that were recorded either side of this album were quite a few, and of a good quality.
1977, the 'b' side of White Riot, (the single version of which, incidentally, was better than the one that appeared on the album, far more instant, riffy and confrontational) was taken as a call to arms for the punk movement, eschewing all rock bands that had been before - “no Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones in 1977” growled Joe Strummer over a choppy, riff-driven guitar backing. Strange that Mick Jones was a fan of Keith Richards, and had a lot of Richards about his look at times, and also that within a couple of years, The Clash would be recording music that utilised influences from pretty every type of popular music that had ever been. That said, it was a great track - those drum rolls and the “danger, danger” refrain.
Listen is actually a pretty convincing, albeit simple instrumental, featuring some good Mick Jones guitar. The original Capital Radio was a classic punk single - riff-dominated, vocals spat out, expressing a perceived grievance - here with Capitol Radio’s refusal to play punk records.
Complete Control was a superb single. Starting with a truly blistering guitar intro, it tells of the band’s frustration, firstly with CBS wanting to release Remote Control as a single, the increasing business/financial side of punk and then with their mates not being able to get into their gigs - "They said we'll be artistically free, when we signed that bit of paper - they meant let's make lots of money and worry about it later...."/"At the last gig, my mates they couldn't get in...". Musically, it has one of those classic Mick Jones riffs - “You're my guitar hero” indeed. It loses a bit of momentum a bit in the middle at the “I won’t judge you” point and also in the fade out, but no real matter. It was, and is, a Clash classic. The live version that opens From Here To Eternity is awesome.
Its 'b' side, City Of The Dead, is a powerful, grinding track that would have been great on the first album, or on Give ‘Em Enough Rope for that matter. It utilises saxophone for the first time on a Clash recording, I believe. It is a track that shows far more musical maturity than you would expect from the group in this period. It doesn't sound out of place in the company of their 1978-79 material. The Clash were progressing at a pace.
Stabbing guitar chops introduce the searing Clash City Rockers and Joe proceeds to rant about “old Bowie” and so on. For some reason, the track has never quite convinced me, but I could never really explain exactly why. I still can't. Sorry
The 'b' side, Jail Guitar Doors, is a Stonesy, riffy rocker that namechecks Keith Richards. The sentiments of “1977” didn’t take long to wear off, it seems.
