The New Cue #160 May 16: 40 Years of The Clash's Combat Rock with Don Letts
Morning!
Today, we have the first of two editions devoted to the making of Combat Rock, The Clash’s fifth and most successful album. Combat Rock spawned such mega-hits as Should I Stay Or Should I Go and Rock The Casbah, but it also tipped the band over the edge: the central songwriting axis of Joe Strummer and Mick Jones did not survive it. This morning we dial up the DJ and film-maker Don Letts, who was in the band’s inner circle throughout their career, to discover the inside scoop. On Wednesday we have producer Glyn Johns on the line to tell us even more secrets.
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See you there. In the meantime, enjoy this edition.
Ted, Niall and Chris.
Start The Week With… Don Letts spilling the tea about Combat Rock
The weekend that Combat Rock was released by The Clash, the band’s guitarist and singer Joe Strummer was missing. It was May 1982, exactly forty years ago, and Strummer, egged on by the band’s returning manager and professional trouble-maker Bernard Rhodes had vanished, heading to France without letting anyone know his whereabouts for the best part of a month in the run-up to the band’s fifth album release. Rhodes thought it would be a good publicity gimmick for Strummer to disappear initially, but even he became so alarmed that he eventually hired a detective to track Strummer down, locating him via Strummer’s friend Kosmo Vinyl after he’d completed the Paris Marathon in just under three hours and 20 minutes. It gives some indication of Strummer’s mental state at that time that the first thing he did after running the race was head to a bar for celebratory drinks.
So, Combat Rock was released into a mood of considerable tension in and around the band. Having returned to London after their ground-breaking 17-date residency at Bond’s in Times Square, New York, The Clash rehearsed and recorded at The People’s Hall in the squatted Republic of Frestonia near Latimer Road in London. From there they embarked on a tour of the East and South East Asia, during which Combat Rock’s sleeve image was captured by Pennie Smith in Thailand.
Upon their return, guitarist Mick Jones’ mixes were rejected by the rest of the group (at Rhodes’ instigation - Jones had been set against rehiring Rhodes and this only cemented that division in the ranks) and veteran Glyn Johns was hired to chisel the 17 tracks down to a more manageable twelve. It proved a wise commercial move. Combat Rack is the The Clash’s most successful outing, hitting number two in the UK and breaking the group in the US. But it also finished the original band. Drummer Topper Headon was kicked out for his heroin addiction before the band hit the road in the US - despite writing the music for the big hit, Rock The Casbah - and by 1983 the disengaged Mick Jones had been fired by Joe Strummer. They limped on without him, but it wasn’t The Clash without Mick Jones.
This Friday, Sony are celebrating the anniversary by issuing a special edition of the album, titled Combat Rock / The People’s Hall. It couples the album with an additional 12-tracks compiled by the remaining members of The Clash (Strummer sadly died in 2002). The tracks on The People’s Hall chart the period from what was their previous single Radio Clash right up to the release of Combat Rock, including unheard, rare and early versions of tracks.
The disc highlights a new version of Know Your Rights recorded at The People’s Hall on the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, and the previously unreleased instrumental He Who Dares Or Is Tired. There’s also Futura 2000, an unreleased original mix of The Escapades of Futura 2000, Mikey Dread’s Radio One, and the outtakes The Fulham Connection, previously known as The Beautiful People Are Ugly Too, as well as Idle in Kangaroo Court. Combat Rock / The People’s Hall can be pre-ordered HERE. It will be released on double-CD, triple-vinyl and digital formats, too.
Ted phoned up The Clash’s long-term cohort, video-maker, film-maker and all-round force of creative nature Don Letts to hear more about that period in the band’s life. Don was asleep at the time, but he sprung into life pretty quickly. If you want to listen to the original Combat Rock to get in the mood for Friday, be our guest. It’s still a great record.
Hello, Don, it’s Ted Kessler here.
Hello?
Don? I’m calling you about The Clash.
Oh, right! Right, right, right. I forgot all about that! Give me one sec. Shit. Right, I’m with you.
Where are you?
I’m in…fuck. Where am I? Let me think…I’m in Plymouth!
What are you up to?
I’m on tour with UB40. DJ-ing, yeah. It’s alright, but I didn’t realise there are actually two UB40s and both are on tour at the same time. Bit confusing. But as long as I think I’m with my UB40 it’s all good.
Which one are you with?
The one that hasn’t got Ali in it, but that has the most original members. What’s this for again?
It’s For The New Cue, a music newsletter. We’re doing a couple of editions around the new expanded Combat Rock reissue. Take us back to 1981, 1982 please. What was life around The Clash like then?
Oh man! What a bloody question!
Sorry about that, but we need to start somewhere.
1981-82 I’m actually living in New York courtesy of The Clash, trying to make the ill-fated film Clash on Broadway, in the wake of their 17 live dates at Bond’s International on Times Square.
After that, they went back to London, started doing that People’s Hall recordings thing and then went off on the Far East tour. So I’m in New York and it’s kind of cool because I can hear that some black radio stations are starting to pick up on The Clash’s tune. Overpowered By The Funk, Magnificent Seven…pretty soon black radio is hammering The Clash. I’m pretty sure the black and Hispanic audiences didn’t even realise they were white guys. So that was opening up a new world for them over in the US. Then the band returned and asked me to do a video for them, Rock The Casbah, which we did in Austen, Texas and that leads us up to filming Should I Stay Or Should I Go at Shea Stadium, which was pretty momentous.
Tell me about the video for Rock The Casbah.
This is the thing. On the face of it, that whole period looks like it’s coming together for the band, but internally a lot of struggles going on, compounded by Joe rehiring Bernard Rhodes as manager which I don’t think Mick was too happy about. The irony is that Joe and Paul brought Bernie back to help get some of the chaos and madness back of the early days but I don’t think they envisaged the madness and chaos that actually happened. Him coming back set ripples off that ultimately destroyed The Clash. So…where was I? I’ve just woken up. I’m not really sure what the question was.
How was making the Rock the Casbah video?
Yeah! So, we’re shooting in the desert, Texas. Mick turns up and he’s pissed off about something. Everyone is in their Clash get-ups and Mick turns up in red long-johns and black Doc Martens. I’m, like, Mick! You look like a matchstick. He’s trying to make some point or other. I had to remind him that film is forever and if you’re going to be a dick on film, you’re going to be a dick forever. He quickly changed, but was still a bit miffed so he wore a face-mask. Joe has had enough and towards the end just pulls the mask off Mick and lo-and-behold it’s Mick Jones! None of it was choreographed. But MTV absolutely hammered it. It was cool to show Texans a live armadillo because usually they only saw them dead as ashtrays in bars.
Although Topper Headon wrote the music, Terry Chimes sits on the drum stool for the video.
I felt for Terry. Obviously he’d been there in the early days, but was ousted. Then he was drafted in for Topper when Topper had to go [because of his drug addiction], but Topper was a tough act to follow. Great drummer but also by then they were a very tight little unit and it was impossible for Terry to crack that, even though they were cracking it themselves.
Was there a creative power struggle between Strummer and Jones, in that they both wanted to make different records?
The thing about Mick is that he’s into the new. He was interested in what was going on. Mick was really into the new hip hop sound and he was open to incorporating elements of it in the Clash. Overpowered By Funk, for example, is great, a really overlooked tune.
When The Clash took on a genre, they took it to the max. It was wasn’t slavish imitation. From the moment Bernard Rhodes came back there were divisions and it’s like the band were pulling in different directions. When bands break up you hear this cliché about musical differences, but funnily enough in this instance that was a part of it. Just look at what Mick did with Big Audio Dynamite afterwards and look at Joe’s first solo album. They were heading in different directions.
But despite that, Combat Rock is quite a cohesive-sounding album.
Oh yeah, yeah. The anniversary has made me reassess it. That tension in the band is probably what makes it such a great record. Nice people don’t have great ideas, man.
What do you think are the main themes on the album?
Obviously, it’s American-centric. The Clash were in the unique position then of being able to not just travel around America but the rest of the world, so there’s a lot in the record about America’s impact, influence not just Stateside but globally. I’ve come to realise recently that Joe came to realise that that American dream was actually an analogy for everybody’s dream. That’s just my perception, because fuck knows what Joe was thinking of. I mean, check out Car Jamming. What the fuck was that about?!
That song still sounds so contemporary.
Sometimes Joe got more ideas in one verse than most bands get on a whole album. The other thing is that nothing seems as straight-forward as it does on paper. There were all these meanings that were almost between the lines of what he wrote. There are so many layers that are still revealing themselves now. I haven’t worked out what Lauren Bacall and King Kong have got to do with Car Jamming but, one day. And as you say, so much of it transcribes perfectly to the 21st Century.
Where was Joe’s head at that point?
He was intense! But contrary to popular opinion, I was not the fifth member of The Clash and there was a lot of internal, personal things that I could see but was not party to then. Besides all the stuff with Bernard and Topper’s struggles, there was the dilemma of being this band, singing about the disposed and all the rest of it but becoming successful. Lennon had it, Dylan too probably. I think Joe was struggling with that quite a bit. It was hard to keep his feet on the ground when America was putting the band up on a pedestal. Joe didn’t want Rollers and all that shit, he wanted to be a voice of the people. He wanted to communicate on that level, push things forward, make the world a slightly better place. He believed in music as a tool for social change to the very end. He was struggling with the position The Clash were in, and the position he’d put The Clash in.
It all made sense live though, right?
Yes. When those four touched the stage it was four sticks of dynamite going off. That’s where Joe knew what it was for.
What’s the legacy of Combat Rock, do you think?
Well, The Clash weren’t these punk rockers who were going to be trapped by that four-letter word. For a lot of us it was a ladder that you climbed up. Some got stuck on that first rung, but look at the difference between the first album and London Calling. Then London Calling and Sandinista, and then Combat Rock. The Clash were open to the world of music and everything it was offering. The Clash wasn’t just about changing your sneakers, it was about changing your mind too. Every record left that behind.
Thanks for your time, Don. What have you got planned?
Well, I’m off to Cardiff today with UB40. I’m about to embark on a film for a dear dead friend of mine called DJ Derek. Oh! Yeah! Also, during the pandemic I finished my first solo album. Because of the vinyl delay it probably won’t see the light of day until early next year but it’s done, finished it with the help of Youth and a gentleman called Gaudi. It’s basically the soundtrack to all I’ve been thinking over the last three years of Covid, with some wicked bass lines.
Good luck with that.
Keep this short and punchy, please, like a Ramones song!