The Clash

When punk exploded in London in the mid-seventies, it came with a slogan and an attitude: "no future". Destroy, spit, three furious chords and to hell with everything. It was a bomb, and like every bomb it was built to go off fast and leave smoke. In the middle of that explosion a band appeared that took the same rage and used it the other way round: instead of blowing up, it built. They were called, with reason, "the only band that matters". They were The Clash, and what set them apart from the rest of punk fits into a single word: they believed.

They formed in London in 1976: Joe Strummer on vocals —the oldest of the group, who came from another band and brought some conscience and some street with him—, Mick Jones on guitar, Paul Simonon on bass, Topper Headon on drums. They made their debut supporting the Sex Pistols, which is to say they were born in the very heart of punk. But it showed very early on that they were something else. Their first album, from 1977, was no longer only fury: it was fury with an aim. Aimed at racism, at unemployment, at war, at empire, at the concrete things that were wrecking the lives of people from their own class.

Rage that builds

And here is the reading I would offer, the turn in this story. The punk that stayed inside "no future" was nihilistic: it believed in nothing, and so it shut itself inside three chords and the gesture of destroying. The Clash believed in something, and that faith that the world could be better made them, paradoxically, the most curious and generous of them all. Because whoever believes in the world wants to hear the whole world. While purist punk closed down, they opened up: they brought in reggae, ska, dub, rockabilly, soul, even rap when rap was barely being born. Calling The Clash "a punk band" is like calling the Beatles "a local group". Nihilism locks you inside a closed fist; faith opens your hand and your ear. Their musical generosity was not an ornament: it was the direct consequence of believing in something bigger than their own rage.

Curiosity as a form of politics

That showed clearly in one cause: racism. When punk could easily have remained a matter of furious white men, The Clash embraced Black music, Jamaican reggae, and stood on the right side. They played at Rock Against Racism —the concert that took punk into the street to fight racial hatred— before a crowd the chronicles put at between fifty and a hundred thousand people. And what they did afterwards is better still, because it cost them: they handed their stage over to the music they loved. On their tours they were supported by Mikey Dread's reggae and Lee Dorsey's soul, and when in 1981 they took New York by storm with seventeen consecutive nights at Bond's, they had Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five open for them, and the Treacherous Three, and the Sugarhill Gang: newborn rap, presented to an audience of white punks who booed them and threw things. Strummer came out and told off his own audience from the microphone. For them, opening up to somebody else's music and defending that somebody were the same gesture.

"London Calling" and "Sandinista!"

Their masterpiece crowns it. In 1979 they released "London Calling", a double album that spilled out of punk in every direction —rockabilly, reggae, jazz, rhythm and blues— and that is now considered one of the greatest records in rock history. Its cover, with Paul Simonon smashing his bass against the stage, became one of the most famous images in music. It was the proof that the band that believed was also the most alive, the one that didn't repeat itself, the one that kept searching.

And for your Chilean ear there is a detail that cannot be passed over. The following year, in 1980, they put out a triple album and called it "Sandinista!", after the revolutionaries of Nicaragua. An English punk band, at the top, gave their record the name of a Latin American revolution, because their view against empire included this side of the world. Their rage was not only British: it reached all the way here, to us, to the peoples that the great power was trampling on our continent. We were not strangers to what they sang.

What happens to a song when it goes out into the world

Two songs from their last great album, "Combat Rock" (1982), deserve that we stop, because they say something about what happens to a work once it goes out into the world. The first is "Rock the Casbah". It sounds like a party, catchy, and for years it was danced to as a cheerful hit; but what it is about is another matter. Behind it lies a real fact: after the 1979 revolution, Khomeini's regime in Iran had banned music from state radio and television, judging it decadent, Western, corrupting —Khomeini declared it, in his own words, "no different from opium". The song imagines, with humour and sarcasm, a people disobeying that ban; even the fighter pilots the king sends to bomb the protesters end up playing rock on their cockpit radios and joining the revolt. It is, at bottom, a song about music as an act of rebellion against the power that wants to silence it. The music, to give credit where it is due, was put together almost single-handedly by drummer Topper Headon; Strummer gave it the lyric and the meaning.

And here, for anyone following our other series, the history of Chilean rock, there is a rhyme that raises the hair on your arms. In Iran, a religious regime banned music for being decadent and Western. In Chile, in those same years, a military dictatorship made the quena and the charango suspicious, subversive, left-wing. Two powers opposed to the marrow —one theocratic, the other anti-communist— doing exactly the same thing: fearing an instrument, banning a music because they feel it is dangerous. Authoritarianism, of whatever stripe, always ends up afraid of songs. The Clash sang that looking at Tehran, without knowing they were also singing what was happening in Santiago.

And that song had a bitter fate, the kind that teaches. In 1991, during the Gulf War, it was the first song the United States armed forces radio played for its troops, and someone went as far as writing the phrase "Rock the Casbah" on one of the bombs that fell on Iraq. A song against the authoritarian banning of music ended up painted on a weapon of war. They say Joe Strummer, a lifelong anti-imperialist, wept when he found out. His work had slipped out of his hands and suddenly meant the opposite of what he had wanted to say.

The other song on that album, "Should I Stay or Should I Go", shows the opposite face of the same thing: in a band famous for its politics, this one is not about politics at all. Mick Jones wrote it and sings it, and it is barely the doubt of a love that doesn't know whether to stay or go, with Spanish backing vocals improvised in the studio —to translate them, the tape operator phoned his mother and read her the lyrics. And it was, of all their songs, the one that travelled furthest: only in 1991, almost ten years after recording it, when it was used in a jeans commercial, did it become their only number one in the United Kingdom. The band had already broken up. Their biggest hit reached them when they no longer existed. Together the two songs say something true and a little cruel: once a song goes out into the world, it stops being yours. It can end up on a bomb or in a commercial, and it no longer depends on you.

They were no plaster saints

Now, the honest edge, because they were no plaster saints. The Clash signed with a giant record company, CBS, for an enormous contract, and the punk world accused them of selling out, of betraying the purity of the movement. And it is an accusation with grounds: they were not a garage band, they had a multinational behind them. Their answer, in practice, was clear: they preferred to reach millions and fight from the inside rather than stay pure, small and marginal. It is a real tension, the eternal one —purity that reaches nobody against reach that forces you to dirty your hands— and they chose reach. It can be argued about; the honest thing is not to hide it. The only band that mattered mattered, among other reasons, because it decided to play where the game is played for real.

Rage with a cause lasts longer

The lesson they leave, and the reason we bring them to Rebobinados, is this. Rage on its own burns out fast: almost all nihilistic punk blazed and went out within a few years, because "no future" has nowhere to go. Rage with a cause, on the other hand, lasts, because believing in something forces you to keep going, to learn, to include, to build. The Clash were furious all their lives, but it was a fury that embraced, not one that only hit. They believed in a better world, and that faith made them curious, generous and enormous.

Go and listen to them, start with "London Calling", and you will hear a band that took the anger of its time and, instead of shutting itself inside the fashionable nihilism, aimed it at the world and stayed open to everything. Joe Strummer died in 2002, suddenly, with a faulty heart; but what he believed outlived him, and it still sounds. That is the memory worth rewinding: the memory of those who proved you can be furious and generous at once, because both things, looked at properly, are born of the same thing: of caring.

Sources

The Clash formed in London in 1976; the classic line-up was Joe Strummer (vocals and rhythm guitar; born John Graham Mellor, previously in the pub rock band The 101'ers), Mick Jones (guitar and vocals), Paul Simonon (bass) and Nicky "Topper" Headon (drums). They made their debut on 4 July 1976 supporting the Sex Pistols in Sheffield; the nickname "the only band that matters" began as a promotional slogan from their label, CBS, and took hold among critics and fans. They fused reggae, dub, funk, ska, rockabilly and rap, among other genres. They signed with CBS on 25 January 1977 for around £100,000, which prompted accusations of "selling out". They played the Rock Against Racism carnival on 30 April 1978 at Victoria Park, London, before a crowd sources place at between 50,000 and 100,000 people. On their 1980 tours they were supported by Mikey Dread and Lee Dorsey, and for their seventeen-show residency at Bond's International Casino in New York (May-June 1981) they programmed Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, the Treacherous Three and the Sugarhill Gang, among others; several of those hip-hop acts were booed by the audience and Strummer rebuked the crowd from the stage. Their third album, the double "London Calling" (December 1979), is considered one of the greatest records ever made; its cover, by Pennie Smith, shows Paul Simonon smashing his bass. In December 1980 they released the triple "Sandinista!", named after the Nicaraguan revolutionaries who overthrew Somoza. "Combat Rock" (1982) was their greatest commercial success. "Rock the Casbah" (1982) tells of a king who bans music: what it describes is equivalent to the real ban on music imposed in Iran after the 1979 Revolution —on 24 July of that year Khomeini ordered music removed from state radio and television as being "no different from opium"; the music was largely composed by drummer Topper Headon and the lyrics by Joe Strummer. During the Gulf War (1991) it was the first song broadcast by the United States armed forces radio in Operation Desert Storm, and the phrase "Rock the Casbah" was written on a bomb dropped on Iraq; according to the documentary "Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten" (2007), Strummer wept when he learned of it. "Should I Stay or Should I Go" (1982), written and sung by Mick Jones, carries Spanish backing vocals by Joe Strummer and Joe Ely, translated in the studio over the phone by the tape operator's mother; it reached number one in the United Kingdom in 1991 —their only number one there— after being used in a jeans commercial, when the band had already broken up. The rhyme with the suspicion cast on Andean instruments under the Chilean dictatorship is the author's observation. Topper Headon left the band in May 1982 and Mick Jones in September 1983; the group disbanded in January 1986. Joe Strummer died on 22 December 2002, aged 50, of an undiagnosed congenital heart defect. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003. Readings are offered as the author's interpretation. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, the band's official site and press coverage.