Latest / DISGRACELAND / The Clash: Guns on the Roof, Chased out of Kingston, and a Riot in Times Square

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The Clash: Guns on the Roof, Chased out of Kingston, and a Riot in Times Square · DISGRACELAND

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: the Clash are insane. They were arrested on suspicion of
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: terrorism after shooting guns off of a roof. They were
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: chased out of Jamaica by local drug lords armed to
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: the teeth. They caused a near riot in Times Square
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: when their week long takeover of a disco was shut
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: down by the city after one night. They were famously
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: described as the only band that matters, a description that
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: weighed so heavy it caused one of the members of
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: the band to disappear at their commercial peak. Long before
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: they reached that peak, the Clash were making great music,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: unlike that clip I played for you at the top
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: preset loop from my mellotron called the Illustrious seven MK two.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I played you that clip because I can't afford the
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: rights to a clip from Betty Davis Eyes by Kim Carnes.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: And why would I play you that specific slice of
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: teazy just to please you cheese? Could I afford it?
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Because that was the number one song in America on
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: May twenty eighth, nineteen eighty one, and that was the
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: day that The Clash in seven nights stand at Bond
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: International Casino came to a screeching halt when it was
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: discovered that the promoters had oversold every show by double
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: initiating a standoff between the band, the fire department, the police,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: rival club owners and angry fans. On this episode, guns
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: on the roof Jamaican drug lords, a Times Square riot,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: and the only band that matters The Clash. I'm Jake
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Brennan and this is Disgraceland. The Clash's manager, Bernie Rhodes,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: once described the band as a news organization first, an
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: entertainer's second, or as the Clash's own Joe Strummer put it,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: a public service announcement. With guitar Joe Mick Jones, Paul
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Simonon and Topperheaton were on the front lines of a
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: world that was ripping apart at the seams, hate in war, racism,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: and greed, corruption, inequality. But over forty years ago, when
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: The Clash were the only band that matters, to quote
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: their record company, they reported on that world with music
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: on the cutting edge. The Clash where a punk band
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: at a time, and the word punk actually meant something.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Key players at the dawn of a movement that didn't
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: want to top the charts. Note punk wanted the charts
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: torn down. Charts, just like every other pecking order in life,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: were meaningless. Punk Rocks meaning was to gnaws everything up,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: to use a Joe strummerism, that is, to fuck with
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: the order of things, to challenge the status quo. Punk
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: rock wanted no charts, which isn't the same as no future,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: the buzz phrase of the clash as contemporary as the
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: sex pistols. I never mind those bollocks. Joe Strummer, for one,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: could see the future. It was unwritten there for the taking.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Allow the wrong people to take it, and there will
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: be Trump to stand by and do nothing, and there
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: will be double And Joe Strummer wasn't about to stand
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: by while the world clashed the haves and the have nots,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: police and thieves. High and low. Culture nineteen seventy seven
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: was quote unquote a Magideon time, and there was no
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: chaos on seven seven nineteen seventy seven, as prophesied by
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Marcus Garvey and soundtracked by the Roots reggae group Culture
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: on their hit two seven's Clash, But one year prior,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: war was declared and battle come down. Long simmering tensions
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: between the West London black community and the local police
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: boiled over. The cops at the annual carnival celebration in
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: notting Hill weren't there to celebrate, but to remind everyone
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: of their authority, to demonstrate complete control. Instead, the ruled
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: rose up against the rulers. It started small, an alleged
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: pickpocket being roughed up by a cop with the truncheon,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: a coke can tossed at a phalanx of Bobby's out
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: of frustration, and then ma'am police charging through the streets
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Black men and women attacked, arrested men and women with
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: nothing more than an axe to grind and the guts
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: to do something about it. That's according to Joe Strummer,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: who should know because he was there on the front
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: lines fighting the fight, trying in vain to set a
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: car on fire while Paul Simmon and the Clash's bass
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: player tossed bricks at police in solidarity. Joe Strummer couldn't
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: set a car on fire, but he could write a song.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: White Riot was the Clash's first single, released in March
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy seven, when the Nodding Hill Melee was
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: still fresh. White Riot was a call to action in
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: two snarling minutes. Joe Strummer intended for the song to
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: encourage white people like himself to get involved in the
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: fight against authority, to help grind that axe and fuck
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: those jack boot heels pressed tight against the necks of
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: the disenfranchised. But those heels were powerful. Authority was powerful.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: A song was not enough, especially when a song could
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: easily be misconstrued. White Riot was when it was quickly
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: co opted by the National Front. Now a few years later,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Joe Stormer was back to the drawing board, back to
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: a corner of the recording studio, surrounded by road cases,
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: deep inside his self constructed Spliff Bunker, a makeshift hiding
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: place where one could smoke huge joints and plot the
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: next big thing while not disturbing the engineers and musicians
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: as they worked, because one must have order. Punk was
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: not chaos, and by nineteen eighty one, the Clash were
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: not Punk. Punk was dead, just like the fanzine said,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: it died the day the Clash signed to CBS Records.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: If punk was indeed Yesterday's papers, as Joe Starmer suspected
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: it was, when he once again looked to the future.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: That meant the Clash had to adapt or die. First,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: they traded punk for rockabilly, scot even pop London, calling
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: their DOLP Masterpiece, sold hundreds of thousands of copies and
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: found its way under those ridiculous charts, and their new
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: record was going to be even bigger, if not in
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: sales and at least in scope. Sandinista was a triple LP,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: yet the band demanded it be priced at just a
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: little more than a single album. Much to their record
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: label CBS's chagrin, Sandinista got even further away from punk
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: into dub reggae, R and B and most importantly, a
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: new sound coming from the streets of New York City.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Hip hop had the new punk attitude. Hip hop was
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: the future. Joe Strummer planned his next move from the
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: sanctity of a spliff bunker. The Clash were once to
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: take a stand against apathy, clamp downs, Spanish bombs, tommy guns.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Sometimes the stand wasn't political, but rather about love, about
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: standing by your man, like in Mick Jones great pop
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: song Train in Vain. Right now, Joe wasn't thinking about
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: making the world a little less miserable with a song.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: He was thinking about doing it by making a stand,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: a seven nights stand in New York City to be
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: exact ground zero for hip hop, the nucleus of the future.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: A massive undertaking, but not massive like Madison Square Garden,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: as they were originally offered more money for less effort,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: defeated the purpose. The grateful dead rush sticks, fucking rolling stones,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: those bloated dinosaurs. They could have Madison Square Garden. The
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Clash wanted to be at street level, with the graffiti
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: artists and the bee boys in the boomboxes banging out
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: that crooked beat. The plan was to play seven Nights
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: at Bond International Casino in Times Square aka Bonds, which
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: wasn't an actual casino, but a one time restaurant turned
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: haberdasher he left vacant for years, like the building's gone
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: to rock back in Camden Town, the ones that Joe
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: squatted in before he joined the Clash and had the
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: opportunity to play music in as a far away place
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: as Times Square. Tickets here in Times Square at Bonds
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: were ten dollars and the all ages mattinee shows were
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: only five That was eleven bucks less than the cost
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: to see Mick Jagger embarrass himself at Madison Square Garden.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't just the price, it was the opportunity.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: The show is at Bonds, where the Clash's only scheduled
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: performances in North America that year. New Yorkers flocked down
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: to forty fifth and Broadway. They slept on the sidewalk
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: overnight to be the first in line when the box
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: office opened. Outside the city, fans flooded the phone lines
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: at Ticketron aka Ticketmaster before Ticketmaster was Ticketmaster, and all
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: seven shows quickly sold out. New York City was all
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: of a sudden clash central on the street sayings Joe
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Rap from the Magnificent Seven WBLS played the extended twelve
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: inch remix The Magnificent Dance on repeat. WNEW declared Clash
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Week in New York City, and the hype was palpable,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: as palpable as the heat over one hundred degrees on
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: night one, Thursday May twenty eighth. Inside Bonds, the Clash
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: were equally hot. Joe Strummer attacking his telecaster with a
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: jackhammer arm and gritted teeth. Mick Jones moving NonStop, bouncing,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: trading songs with Joe Paul Simon in his bass, a
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: low slung weapon of truth to Raheaton, overpowered by funk
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: images as arresting as the music projected on the wall
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: behind them, tanks, soldiers, handguns, gas masks, napalm babies. The Clash,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: true to their manager's word, were a news organization first,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: entertainer's second. But not everybody was entertained before the Clash.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: He even took the stage. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Five at the forefront of New York Hip Hop, hand
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: picked by the Clash that opened the show, were booed
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: and pelted with trash. And then when the show ended
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: and the front door opened up, a group of New
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: York firefighters rushed inside, and Joe Starmer felt a sudden panic.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Where's the fire? There was no fire, but there were
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: thirty six hundred people inside, nearly twice as much as
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: was legally allowed for the city's fire coding. The Clash
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: had created a death trap, or so said the person
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: who called the fire department to complain. A concerned citizen.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Think again, more likely a rival club or promoter, pissed
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: that the Clash were taking away business from every other
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: spot in Manhattan. Piss that the promoters of this unprecedented
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: seven nights stand at Bonds had oversold the show by
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: double and not just the first night, every night. Now
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: there would be no more nights. The Clash were done. Meanwhile,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: the greedy promoters were counting their thousands fans left holding
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: tickets were a shit out of luck, and the prevailing
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: authority that was the City of New York was in
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: complete control. When it came to complete control, everyone wanted it.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, the Clash's manager, Bernie Rhodes, but
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: it was their label, CBS Records, who were the ones
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: really calling the shots. CBS could release music by the
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Clash whether the band wanted them to or not, and
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: that pissed Joe oft enough that he wrote a song
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: about it. But Joe and the Boys should have known better.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: CBS wasn't some charitable foundation for artists. It was a
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: business run by businessmen, men like Maurice Oberstein, CBS's chairman,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: who thought the Clash's new song, Bank Robber, sounded like
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: David Bowie backwards. Whatever that meant. Maurice didn't get it.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: It was nineteen eighty, just three years since the Clash's
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: debut already they were confusing the suit in the corner office,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: the guy with complete control Bank Robber, was drenched in
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: echo and reverb, with a groove as knocked out loaded
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: as one of the splits Joe smoked in his bunker.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: It was blessed with the fingerprints of Mikey Dredd, legendary
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Jamaican DJ dub and reggae guru, who had become friendly
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: with the band and was fully on board with the
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: musical hybrid they were now eager to pursue. Maurice would
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: catch up soon enough, the Clash, Mikey dread they'd all
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: be waiting for him in the future, But until then,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: the Clash weren't waiting around, not for Marie Oberstein's approval
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: or for his money. With the help of Paul Simonon's
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: girlfriend's AMEX card, the Clash flew to Jamaica to Studio
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: one in Kingston, where Mikey Dredd was waiting to work
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: with them again, this time for Sandinista, which was quickly
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: becoming a three LP indulgence in just about any and
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: every idea the band had, like Junker partner, an old
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: blues tune that Joe's former band the one oh one
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Ers used to play, but they didn't play at one
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: oh onon ER's style. This wasn't pub rock. This was
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: radio Clash, Pirates, Satellite Kingston, dub punk, and spirit if
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: not in sound. Joe sat at the old piano inside
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Studio one. It was out of tune, but in the
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: best way possible. He fumbled his fingers across the keys
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: and worked out the song's chor progression. A fiddler wandered
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: in from outside and began to play along the dreads
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: from roots radis Studio one session players who hung around
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: the march enchewed the scenery. The vibe inside the little
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: studio was as strong as the ganja that was currently
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: making the rounds. Joe felt a tapping at his shoulder.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: He stopped playing and spun around. It was Mikey, Joe,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: come on, man, quick, we must go what Joe was confused?
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: The hell was going on? What was Mikey even talking about? Now?
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Mikey shouted, They're coming to kill us all by they
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Mikey men, drug men, hustlers armed to the teeth, on
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: their way to the studio to collect payment protection money.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: You're not from around here money. The kind that even
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: the Rolling Stones coughed up when they came to Kingston
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: to make goats head soup. But the Clash weren't the Stones.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: They didn't have that kind of bread. Shit man. The
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: only reason they were in Kingston in the first place
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: was because Paul's girl had a room on her credit card.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: And if the Clash came up empty, the drug men
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: were going to get what they thought was theirs and
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: other way with bloodshed. There was only one thing for
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: the Clash to do. Run. They left everything behind the
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: old piano at the Roots Erratics, the killer Ganja, that
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: fiddle player, and scurried outside in Kingston's dry season. Directly
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: across the street, local gangsters carrying automatic weapons and machetes
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: began to emerge from the shadows from anale The locals
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: called Idler's rest, but there was no resting on the
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: docket for the Clash. No Idly, not while the world
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: ripped apart, and it seems and not today. Within seconds, Joe, Mick,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Paul and Topper were inside the car that used to
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: get to the studio, retracing their tracks back down a
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: dirt road, kicking up dust, passed an intersection where just
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: hours earlier, unbeknownst to any of them, fourteen men had
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: been shot dead as part of an ongoing civil war that,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: while not officially declared, was very real. And then the
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: car dissolved into the Jamaican sunset, the dust settled, the
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Clash were gone. Kingston's drug men didn't get their money,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: but they did send the Clash packing out of Jamaica
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: over to New York City, where they finished making Sandinista
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: at studios like Jimmy Hendrix's Electric Lady Land, where one
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: year later they once again found themselves at the mercy
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: of gangsters and hustlers looking to take complete control. This time,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: the gangsters were greedy promoters who had oversold the band's
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: seven nights stand at Bonds in Times Square. The hustlers
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: were other vindictive club owners from around the way, eager
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: to punish the Clash for their hubris, and their own
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: contemporaries were using this moment to call the Clash out
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: for getting on the charts, for getting bloated, just like
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: the rock Dinosaurs playing Madison Square Garden. Look at them,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: That Clash a bunch of corporate shills. The little guy
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: reporting from the front lines, horseshit. Try this on for
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: size instead, Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, the whole lot. They
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: pretended to be enraged by the actions of a guy
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: like Maurice Oberstein at the multi conglomerate mass market clusterfuck
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: that was CBS Records, but in reality the four of
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: them were no different. At a press conference immediately before
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: night one, before the show that got them shut down,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: the Clash were told that Paul Weller of The Jam
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: had just called them sellouts. What constitutes a sellout in
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: the eyes of the Clash, the reporter wondered. Mick Jones
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: couldn't resist. What happens is that all the tickets go
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: on sale for a concert, and all the people who
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: want to go go and buy them as there are tickets,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: That constitutes a sellout. Fuck all mod cons, Paul Weller
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: and The Jam were living in the past, bitter that
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: their music wasn't reaching the same number of people people
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: now flooding into Times Square because of one band and
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: one band only. The Clash outside Bonds it was chaos,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: cops kicking gypsies on the pavement and all that. While
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: yellow calves raced down Broadway NYPD riding around on horsebacks,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: swinging their billy clubs at the hordes of kids crowding
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: the street, kids who were infuriated that they'd stood in
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: line for hours, slept on the pavement overnight, and in
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: many cases spent a great deal of money and traveled
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: a great distance just to secure tickets to shows that
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: were now canceled. But Joe Strummer wasn't about to accept
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: that tens of thousands of fans were now getting turned away.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: He also wasn't about to get chased out of New
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: York by club owners and firefighters, just like he'd been
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: chased out of Kingston by men who meant to do
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: him harm. There was a simple solution to this predicament.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Honor every ticket, even if that meant performing double the
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: amount of shows, which is exactly what the Clash did.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Seventeen shows squeezed into nearly half a month's time, Seventeen
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: shows when they were only slated to play seven each
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: show with a different opening act, punk, funk, hardcore, hip hop,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: whatever was cool at the time. Bad Brains, The Sirens,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: The Slits, Joe E. Lee, The Treacherous Three, The Bloods, Bush, Tetris, Funk, Apaulitan,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Least Scratch, Perry, The Fall, the Dead, Kennedy's Every night,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: the same energy every night. A new crowd eager did
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: not miss out on music's hottest ticket. Say isn't that Hey,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: that's Robert de Niro, Honey. He made his way inside
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Bonds along with everyone else. Incognito. Martin Scorsese had a side.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: After the show, they took Joe and the Guy's up
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Broadway to a bar called Tin Pan Alley. Were some
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: arraging bulletpin shot. Just two years prior the clash, a
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: New York entourage grew Bobby Marty graffiti artists, future of
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: two thousand and five five Freddy like Min's reporting the
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: news on cinema screens and the sides of subway cars,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: men on the street, men of the people. They didn't
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: have the answers to the world's problems, but they had
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: the questions. Questions they asked with spray paint on a wall,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: with a flickering image, on a cinema screen, or in
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: a song played with utmost urgency, questions like where are
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: we going and what will happen when we get there?
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: What will you do if you rule the world? But
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: in less than a year's time, the Clash would be
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: asking a different sort of question, asking not of the
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: people on the street or the people in the audience,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: but of themselves, and that question, should I stay or
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: should I go? We'll be right back after this. We're We're,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: We're the West Way, London, nineteen seventy eight. Paul Simmon
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: and In Topper Heaton, the Clash's rhythm section, were up
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: on the roof. They traded a friend's air rifle back
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: and forth. Didn't have much of a kick, but it
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: made a decent bang, and the aim was half decent,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: too good enough to hit a few of the pigeons
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: cooing and shitting all over the place, also good enough
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: to pass the time. While Mick and Joe laid down
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: overdubs for the band's current studio effort give him enough rope. Topper,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: like most drummers, found that recording an album was about
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: ten percent work in ninety percent downtime. Topper was now
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: spending that downtime looking through a rifle scope. He honed
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: in on the pack of flying rats, dirty fucking animals.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: He pulled the trigger, the rifle snapped, and the palette
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: exploded into the bunch sending feathers flying. One pigeon toppled
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: over dead, while the others flapped their wings and flew
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: into the air. But they didn't go far, and they
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: came right back, dirty and stupid. What a combo. Topper
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: cocked the rifle again and again he fired. Soon all
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: those rifle shots drew attention, not just people down on
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: the streets, but cops. Cops who had last busted a
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: rock group up on a roof some nine years prior,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: when the Beatles pulled that little stunt five miles due
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: east from here atop Savile Row. But the Fabs were
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: just being loud. Topper and Paul were shooting a gun,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: killing it turns out, not random dirty street pigeons, but
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: racing pigeons being raised by a local mechanic. Cops didn't
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: care about the birds. They took Topper and Paul for
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: terrorists and booked them as such. Now, four years later,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty two, he wouldn't mistake Topper Heaton as
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: a terrorist, even if the Clash were dressing in fatigues
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: and naming albums for Nicaraguan freedom fighters. Topper was a
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: junkie addicted to heroin, a drug that may have suited
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: a horn player like Charlie Parker, but for a drummer,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: a player who had to keep time presented a very
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: difficult set of challenges, And those challenges and Topper's unrelenting
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: habit weighed heavy on Joe Strummer's mind. So it did
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: as well on Mick Jones's mind, Joe's longtime songwriting partner.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: And they weren't doing that anymore. Mick with the music
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: and Joe with the words. The two were barely speaking,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: let alone writing. Mick just made Joe wait. He made
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: them all wait. He was Elizabeth Taylor in a foul mood,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: and he was writing these big pop songs, songs that
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: weren't ripped from the headlines, but songs that aimed directly
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: for the charts, that meaningless pecking order that bands like
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: The Clash once revolted against. Take Should I Stay or
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Should I Go? A song that wasn't about the things
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Joe was writing, songs about colonialism and the hangover of
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: the Vietnam War and basic human rights. Should I Stay
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: or Should I Go? As a song about breaking up,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Joe didn't have to read between the lines. With Topper
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: nodding off and Mick buggering about. It was already obvious
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: that the Clash, once so tightly bound together, were like
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: the rest of the world coming apart. With the seams still,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: they needed each other in order to keep this thing going. Remember,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: they had convinced CBS to let them sell Sandinista their
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: triple LP for the price of a single record. They
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: did this by foregoing their royalties, which would help the
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: label recoup the money they otherwise would have lost, Which
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: meant that the Clash had a tour non stop to
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: generate the revenue to maintain the lifestyles they'd gotten used
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: to a half decade into their careers. So the class
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: played shows constantly and risked burnout at Bonds seventeen nights
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: in a row in the same city, at the same venue,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: on the same stage, they risked losing their minds. Before long,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: it was time to record another album, to make more
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: money and to feed the machine. Call it a hamster wheel,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: call it a grind. Whatever it was, it wasn't what
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Joe Strummer signed off for. What it was was a job,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: and despite all of this, Joe and the Clash made
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: the job look easy. Record number five, Combat Rock became
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: their best selling album thanks to mixed breakup Song and
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Topper's Rock the Kaspo, a song he recorded in a
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: rare state of sobriety. The drums, the bass, the keys,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: the whole damn thing save for mixed guitar and Joe's
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: vocal knocked off in twenty minutes by Topper alone. But
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: that kind of focus and discipline was rare for a
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: guy in the grip of a habit. Soon Topper was
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: back to coppying a fix and Mick was back in
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: his foul mood, covering his face with a mosquito mast
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: during the Rock the Kasbo video shoot. Just because Bernie Rhoades,
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: the Clash's manager, was worried, maybe even more so than Joe,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: not about the stability of the band, about the stability
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: of their finances. Bernie had put together an amazing US
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: tour for them in nineteen eighty three. This was the
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: tour that was going to make the band explode in
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: the United States, bigger than the Bonds run and bigger
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: than they could ever imagine, or so went Bernie's thinking.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: The stakes the worst thing that could happen to the
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: band was to head out under the road and play
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: the half empty rooms. It would be a signal to
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: the rest of the record buying public that the Clash
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: was no longer in ascent, but was instead on a
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: downward spiral. And this could not happen. So the Clash's
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: conniving manager got an idea. What if the Clash had
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: to cancel their tour but for reasons that were beyond
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: their control. What if they couldn't find one of their
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: band members, and what if that band member was indispensable.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: What if the class is Joe's strummer went missing. The
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: plan could have been hatched in a split bunker. It
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: was that simple and brilliant. It went like this, Joe
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: disappears for three days. Management Meanwhile, Jin's up a bunch
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: of quick press. Joe's missing, Joe's dead. Sympathy pours in
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: from the fans. The band reaches a peak of popularity
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: as those first few undersold shows are canceled, and then
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Joe miraculously reappears, and that fever pitch of interest in
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: his disappearance and sudden reappearance causes a huge spike in
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: ticket sales, bing Bang boom. But Joe couldn't hide out
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: in London. He was too well known there, so the
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: plan was to head to Texas, of all places, and
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: chill with Joe E, the hockey talk singer, who toured
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: with The Clash back in their early days and opened
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: one of their nights at Bonds. Bernie told Joe to
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: call when he got there, but the call never came
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: because Joe Strummer never went to Texas. Joe Strummer stood
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: in the middle of a cemetery outside Paris. At his
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: feet the final resting place of Arthur Rambeau. The poet
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: had been dead for nearly one hundred years, but his
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: spirit was very much still alive. It was there, in
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: the words of American beat poet Alan Ginsberg, who guested
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: on The Clash's song Ghetto Defendant, a deep cut on
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: the combat rock album. That album, which had just been
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: released at the very moment that Joe Strummer, the band's frontman,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: went missing. Not missing like Bernie Rhodes had plotted. Joe
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Strummer changed the plan and didn't tell a soul. Only
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: his girlfriend knew that he was here in France, wandering
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: around cemeteries, grabbing pints at the pub, and running anonymously
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: in the Paris Marathon. That's right, Joe Strummer, singer of
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: the Clash, running anonymously in the Paris Marathon, and somehow,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: despite that, Joe Strummer's disappearance was no longer fake but
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: very real, just as real as the love that Combat
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Rock was now receiving, especially in the United States, where
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: it cracked the top ten. But again, Joe didn't care
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: about the charts, never had and never would. He didn't
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: want to think about charts or about Combat Rock. He
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: was sick of the headache of leading the Clash into battle,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: a battle that Mick didn't seem to want to fight anymore.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: And he was sick of pissed off guitar players, junkie drummers,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: ticket sales, record sales, record prices. Here in Paris you
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: could forget about it all. But back in London, his
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: disappearance was all anyone could talk about. Bernie's plan had backfired.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Ticket sales for the tour weren't increasing. In fact, there
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: were plummeting. Venues started canceling gigs. Bernie was pissed, The
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Clash were pissed. Fans were confused. The New Music Express NME,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: the biggest music paper in Britain, began a weekly Strummer
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Watch column, anonymous tips poured in. Joe Stummer was on
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: safari in Southern Africa. Joe Strummer was fighting with the
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Joe Strummer was a joke, just like
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: this column, and the joke was getting old. In Paris,
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: Joe wasn't a joke. He was a treasure. The small
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: beard had groan couldn't hide his identity for long. Every
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: French punk had a Joe Strummer sighting, but the French
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: fans were willing to keep his secret. Joe thought he
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: could disappear forever and live off baguettes, pints and Serge
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: Gainsburg musk, but that wasn't a reality his management or
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: his band were going to accept. If Joe stayed in Paris,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: if the Clash were forced to cancel the US tour,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: there would be no money, and no cash to feed
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: the constantly starving beast of a rock and roll machine
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: that their business become, They'd go bankrupt, They'd be finished.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: The Clash tried to keep going without Joe. Ticket sales
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: for a warm up gig in the Netherlands were sparse.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Dutch punks wondered whether it was worth forking over their
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: hard earned cash to see only three of the only
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: band that mattered, and the promoter was on the verge
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: of canceling the concert. And then he got a call
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: from Paris. It was a Dutch journalist on assignment in France.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Joe Strummer is here, he told the promoter in Paris,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: I just had a pint with him. The promoter hung
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: up the phone and called Bernie Rhodes, and Bernie sent
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: a heavy to Paris to find Joe, grabbed Joe and
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: bring Joe back to the clash. The heavy was a
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: guy named Cosmo Vinyl, an old London punk rocker who
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: was friends with Joe and whose ex girlfriend Pearl Harbor
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: was now dating Joe's bassist Paul Simonon. But when Cosmo
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: arrived in Paris, the city clammed up. The people went
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: into protection mode. They didn't want their secret taken away
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: from them. They didn't want their new rock star exported
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: back onto the rock star hamster wheel. But Cosmo was persistent.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: He found Joe drinking in a half empty Paris pub alone.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: His gait was familiar, but his appearance was off. He
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: seemed skinnier than Joe Strummer, if that was even possible,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: and he had a beard like a punk rock Fidel
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: Castro Cosmo put his hand on the guy's shoulder and said, hey, Fidel.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: Joe Strummer turned around and saw his old friend. He'd
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: been found getting care. Every gig has to end, even
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: the disappearing kind. Joe Strummer gave up his ghost, finished
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: his pipe, threw his arm over his friend's shoulder, and left.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: The Clash were back together and back on the road.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: In that fall, Joe stood in the wings at Buffalo's
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: Rich Stadium waiting to go on stage, his head shaved
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: into a mohawk, camouflage pants combat boots, ready for battle
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: to come down. The Clash were opening for the who
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: one time Titans of the British rock scene. The first
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: opener was David Johansson, former frontman of the New York Dolls.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: The New York Dolls pre dated punk rock. They were weird,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: fast and dangerous, and now David Johansson was crooning reach out,
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: I'll be there, and trudging through a medley of British
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: invasion classics. David Johansson used to be a punk legend,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: and now here in Buffalo in the Stadium, David Johansson
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: seemed more like a joke next to Joe Strummer on
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: the side of the stage, the Who's Pete Townsend nodded
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: approvingly at David Johansson at his tight leather jacket a
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: ridiculous headband. Pete Townsend looked like someone's dad dressed as
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: a punk rocker for Halloween. At the time, Pete was
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: pushing forty ancient in rock ears. Between Pete Townsend and
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: David Johansson on the bill that night was the only
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: band that used to matter because Joe Strummer had made
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: the decision the future was no longer written. The future
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: had written off the clash such disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: this episode can be found on the show notes page
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: at disgracelampod dot com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland
• 35:35
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• 35:38
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• 35:41
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• 35:45
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• 35:50
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• 35:54
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• 35:58
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• 36:03
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• 36:05
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• 36:09
  Speaker 1: YouTube at YouTube dot com slash at Disgraceslampod Rock a Roller.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: He's a bad don man.