The Group’s Debut/The U.S. Version
The Clash formed in London in 1976. The group consisted of singer and guitarist Joe Strummer, guitarist Mick Jones, bassist Paul Simonon, and drummer Nicky "Topper" Headon. Along with the Sex Pistols, they were considered one of the fundamental bands in the shaping of punk rock in the UK. The Clash “proved to be rabble-rousers” JSH and their self-titled debut “was the punk call-to-arms summer ’77” JSH and “a catalyst for much mayhem to follow.” JSH
U.S. Version
The Clash followed their 1977 debut with their sophomore album, Give 'Em Enough Rope, in 1978. That “muddled-up affair” JSH ended up being the first official Clash album to hit U.S. soil. However, the debut album “sold an unprecedented 100,000 copies” CC as an import. It wasn’t until 1979 that the Clash’s debut album was released in the United States. Ten of the thirteen songs from the original album were featured alongside five singles and one B-side released from 1977 to 1979, “all of which were stronger than the items they replaced.” AM2 “In a way, the U.S. edition served as an extremely early best-of,” AM1
However, because these songs were “more polished and thus somewhat jarring,” AM1 “purists…most likely swear on the sonic cohesion of this U.K. edition.” AM1 No matter which way you go, though, “rock & roll is rarely as edgy, invigorating, and sonically revolutionary as The Clash.” AM2 It “didn’t just help invigorate the punk scene – it was a desperate call to arms.” RV
Primal Punk
When it comes to debuts, “this might’ve been the most dramatic one of all time.” JSH “With a rat-a-tat-tat the punk “movement” was born: short hair, buzzsaw rhythms, marching jackboots.” JSH The Clash’s debut album “sees the band in its most primal, punk form.” AM1The Clash/i> is The Who Sings My Generation for a new era.” JSH This “the definitive punk-rock statement.” CC
The punk movement was partly “a reaction to the overblown prog-rock operas of the mid-Seventies.” CC “The charging, relentless rhythms, primitive three-chord rockers, and the poor sound quality give the album a nervy, vital energy.” AM2 “The Ramones debut album had influenced British punk (including the Clash) with its speaker-shattering, stripped-down simplicity, but much of its sensationalism was wrapped in direct humour, and the New York band made no attempt to anger the political establishment.” CC By contrast, the Clash “presented itself as nothing less than a call to musical and class warfare.” CC
Joe Strummer’s slurred wails perfectly compliment the edgy rock, while Mick Jones’ clearer singing and charged guitar breaks make his numbers righteously anthemic.” AM2 “Despite Mickey Foote’s low-key, lo-fi production, [the band] mesh and unite with a snarling ferocity and energy. Raw, bouncy edginess pours out of each song, with new hooks popping out at odd angles by the second.” AM1
Clash vs. Sex Pistols
“The cliché about punk rock was that the bands couldn’t play.” AM2 “Although they gave that illusion,” AM “unlike its punk rivals the Sex Pistols, The Clash could play, and they played hard.” RV The Sex Pistols’ “Never Mind the Bollocks may have appeared revolutionary, but the Clash’s eponymous debut album was pure, unadulterated rage and fury, fueled by passion for both rock & roll and revolution.” AM2 In addition, The Clash was actually “the first major Brit punk” JSH album, beating “the Pistols to the punch for the first full-length.” JSH While Bollocks is the more celebrated album when it comes to ground zero for punk, it “didn’t come out ‘til the hype had almost already peaked.” JSH
The Impact
“While the Pistols’ music focuses on its own brand of nihilism, The Clash examines the struggles of England's streets with…wit and edge” RV and what was even considered by some to be a “proto-fascist call-to-arms.” WR The album captures a moment in time: it “will forever tell the story of the desperate, repressed young white male in the faltering, fragmented England of 1977.” CC
The Songs
Here are insights into individual songs.
“Janie Jones”
“The opening song on The Clash features almost all the album’s familiar ingredients: staccato guitars, lo-fi drums and bass, a chorus half-sung and half-shouted in three-person unison, and largely indiscernible lyrics.” CC “Mick Jones’ phonetic harmony towards the end of the two-minute anthem is the first appearance of a particularly popular and endearing Clash trademark.” CC
Jones originally wrote the song in the first person, but it was switched to third person when Joe Strummer balked about singing “I’m in love.” CC “The real-life Janie Jones was a madam who had been British front-page newspaper fodder back in 1973” CC but most of the Clash’s young audience missed the reference. CC
“Remote Control”
“Remote Control mixes Kinks-style fractured pop with pace changes lifted straight from Chuck Berry.” AM1 The song focused on “the lack of options in London after the pubs shut at 11 each night.” CC “Strummer and Jones alternate vocals here, and prove that poor pronunciation was a band trait.” CC It was released as the album’s second single against the band’s wishes. CC
“I’m So Bored with the U.S.A.”
This song transformed from “I’m So Bored with You” into “an anti-American rant…aiming barbs at military adventurism (Cambodia), Washington intrigue (Watergate), and cultural imperialism (Kojak).” CC It is “driven by a singalong chorus, constant bass notes, and a succession of hard-hitting guitar riffs – a perfect punk anthem.” CC
“White Riot”
“I’m So Bored with the U.S.A.” and White Riot “reflect the somewhat youthful, early quasi-political leanings of the band. Though they would come across as slightly amateurish years later, it’s hard to deny their punchy charm.” AM1 “This is a band not so much rebelling against a society but trying to incite a riot in a world where ‘All the power is in the hands / Of people rich enough to buy it / While we walk the street / Too chicken to even try it.’” RV
The album version differs from the single in that it is “harder and more violent, the most uncompromising aural assault on the album.” CC
“Hate & War”
Strummer inverted “the late-Sixties hippy ethos of ‘love and peace’” CC to create a “summation of the world in which they were living. Mick Jones ended up singing lead on one of the album’s most musically commercial yet lyrically nihilistic numbers, wherein the singer stubbornly refuses to quit town and instead promises to meet violence with more of the same.” CC
“What’s My Name”
This is the only song on the album credited to guitarist Keith Levine. The lyrics “can be seen either as fictional Clash self-glorification, or as an example of the narrative being projected beyond group experience to represent that of society’s real outcast.” CC With “its propelling tom-tom drums, phonetic harmonies, use of the f-word, and simplistic singalong chorus, What’s My Name sounds like it was designed for the football terraces.” CC
“Deny”
As pure a pop song as anything on The Clash.” CC With its “dark and revealing paranoia,” AM1 this is “a love song of sorts for punks, in which the narrator forgoes traditional romance and admiration to accuse his girlfriend of deceit and deception.” CC “Vocal ‘oohs’ and guitar riffs reminiscent of Mick Jones’ early Seventies heroes Mott the Hoople reveal the Clash’s commercial influences, while Strummer’s vocal performance is among his most urgent on the album.” CC
“London’s Burning”
“London’s Burning is often considered of a pair with ‘White Riot’: each song places itself in west London.” CC This one is “written from the perspective of the 18th-floor balcony at Wilmcote House, the tower block overlooking the Westway where Mick Jones lived with his grandmother during the early days of the Clash – but then actually composed by Strummer in near-silence in his own squat while his girlfriend…slept in the same room.”
“Career Opportunities”
This album “was a relentless juggernaut of tightly-wound aggression.” JSH “No artist since vintage Dylan summed up the plight of the underclass w/ such accuracy—Career Opportunities waxed hopeless in the face of impending employment options, something a great deal of people could relate to in the late seventies (and now).” JSH
“Bolstered by Mick Jones’ power chords, which owe much here to Pete Townshend’s rhythmic style of playing, Strummer’s voice is mixed high, as if this one time he wants every word to be clearly understood.” CC It “follows a classic pop pattern – intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle eight, verse, chorus , outro – all completed several seconds’ shy of two minutes.” CC
“Cheat”
“Cheat sounds like the Ramones’ ‘Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment’ given a rockabilly makeover.” AM1 This and “’Hate & War’ taken together…suggest the Clash’s punk vision as inherently negative and violent.” CC It “encourages people to ‘learn how to lie…but this is only a career contradiction for those who would assume every lyric to mirror Strummer and Jones’ personal intent. From the perspective of the album’s narrator, the dichotomy is part of his frustrating everyday life.” CC
“Protex Blues”
“The funky singalong Protex Blue” AM1 is “an anti-love song, concerning the era’s predominant condom of the title. There’s no sense of political correctness about using protection, just a typical male acknowledgement that, ‘I didn’t want to hold you.’” CC “Stereo separation of both guitars, drums, classic Clash vocal harmonies, and a guitar solo all of four seconds long do much to propel the song beyond the ordinary.” CC
“Police & Thieves”
“The Clash embraced variety.” CC “Even at this early stage, the Clash were experimenting with reggae, most notably on…Police & Thieves, “a massively catchy take on the Junior Murvin/Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry song and an early signpost for the future dub/rock fusions to come on Sandinista!.” AM1 “The recording served to drastically shift the mood of the album at the very moment it could have been written off as monochromatic.” CC
Before punk, “Britain’s only contemporary rebel music was Jamaican reggae.” CC The Clash “were absolutely the first to do something legitimate with the form, as opposed to the usual Stones/Clapton minstrelsy.” JSH This “audacious adaptation…separated them from other punk groups, who wouldn’t dare to (or more likely, simply couldn’t) play black music.” CC
“48 Hours”
“The short but utterly delightful 48 Hours” AM1 “offers an echo to the last sharp British street movement, the mods of the Sixties and their focus on the weekend.” CCCC Jones says the song – which runs only 96 seconds – was written in just a half hour. CC
“Garageland”
The final song on the album was also the last to be written. It’s the first time the Clash sing about themselves as a band. It was inspired by a “damning review in NME by Charles Shaar Murray…[but] the lyric was broadened to include every band that every aspired to make a noise for the sheer gleeful hell of it.” CC “With the twin guitars…drenched in reverb, and Jones contributing occasional harmonica, one of the album’s strongest melodies finds Strummer referring to the group’s major record deal but, crucially, without the details that would have rendered the song specific to the Clash.” CC Strummer “appears to be inviting every other dissatisfied middle – and upper-class kid to follow his lead, leave home and come join the Clash’s revolution.” CC
“White Man in Hammersmith Palais”
The Clash, however, is about more than just punk rock. “The Clash were eager to confront the degenerating music scene as fiercely as they attacked the bourgeoisie.” RV “The band isn’t satisfied lingering in any one genre.” AM1 “White Man in Hammersmith Palais is the ultimate anti-punk song, which also manages to convert rock lovers into punks.” RV
|
