were and the same), such as ‘Creative
Violence’ and their retort to the sixties
mantra of ‘Love & Peace’: ‘Hate &
War’. Strummer further outlined the
band’s ethos in an early piece, stating, ‘I
think people ought to know that we’re
anti-fascist, we’re anti-violence, we’re
anti-racist, and we’re pro-creative. We’re
against ignorance.’
The first wave of UK punk coalesced
with the infamous Anarchy tour of
December 1976, in which The Clash,
Sex Pistols, The Damned, and ex-New
York Doll guitarist Johnny Thunders’
Heartbreakers, a piratical but likeable
band often acknowledged as being the
first to bring heroin into the British punk
scene. The four bands shared, first a tour
bus and many drunken shenanigans, and
then collective disbelief, as shows were
cancelled following the Pistols infamous
expletive-addled debut TV appearance
on The Bill Grundy Show. Overnight
punk went national and was the subject
of much criticism from the reactionary
UK tabloid newspapers. A wave of
negativity washed over the tour and only
seven of the original twenty-one showswent ahead, with short-lived drummer
Rob Harper temporarily replacing Terry
Chimes.
1977 was the year The Clash – and
punk – broke. On 27 January, mere
months into their career, but with punk
now an exciting emerging subculture,
The Clash signed with CBS for an
advance of £100,000. Suddenly, the
drummer-less band, who were used to
sleeping in draughty squats and existing
on lager and speed, had some money to
spend. They recorded their debut album
quickly, with Chimes back on drums.
It was preceded by their debut single,
White Riot, a gritty, high-speed burst
of noise concerning race riots between
young black youths and the Metropolitan
police that Strummer and Simonon
had witnessed at the previous summer’s
incendiary Notting Hill Carnival.
In April, their debut album, The
Clash, was released to critical acclaim.
An exercise in economy and energy, it
distilled the band’s essence into a brace
of exciting, snarling rock ’n’ roll songs.
The Clash explored alienation, boredom,
frustration, drugs, unemployment and
identity crisis. It oozed anxiety and
negativity, though only in the realist
sense; they were, for much of their career,
naively optimistic. The song titles alone
heavily contributed to the new lexicon
and look of punk, with I’m So Bored
with the USA, What’s My Name, Deny,
Cheat, and London’s Burning. A gutsy
rendition of Junior Murvin’s recent reggae
hit Police & Thieves added onto the end
lent potency through the band’s delivery
and the song’s social relevance – a hint of
things to come. The cover image captured
Joe, Paul, and Mick, blank-eyed, lean and
mean in their customised clothing and
sporting uniformly cropped hair, a rare
look for Mick Jones, who as a guitarist
from the Richards-Thunders school of
style preferred to keep his longer. This
perfectly packaged musical Molotov
cocktail entered the UK album charts at
a creditable No. 12, and with this success
The Clash had announced themselves as a
serious concern.
Meanwhile, after auditioning over
two hundred drummers, the trio found a
new secret weapon: twenty-one-year-old
Nicky ‘Topper’ Headon, a talented and
already experienced rock drummer who
was also skilled in jazz, funk, and soul.
A band is only as good as its drummer,
and Topper provided both the solid
backbone and the diversity to push the
quartet forward. He proved to be a major
contributing factor to their expansive
output in the early eighties.The Clash bassist Paul Simonon.