So, a really long time ago, before school took over my life, I was going to write about the Clash. Since I'm not getting anything done at my stupid job anyway, this seems like as good a time as any--and only a year+ late!

OK...Why the Clash Let Me Down

I found out about the Clash the way I found out about a lot of music in my teens: by reading about them. (It all started with Creem magazine when I was 12 or so, and then there was the day I saw a flyer for Punk magazine at a newsstand near my apartment and knew that it was made for me...but that's another story for another day.) I read about them in the NME, specifically, which by then was my bible--I followed the development of UK punk rock avidly through its pages, and when newsstands started getting it by airmail so that I could read it the week it came out instead of three or four weeks later, it was one of the happiest days of my teenage life. I can't remember exactly when I bought the single of "White Riot" b/w "1977," or even where I bought it (probably Bleecker Bob's), but I do know that it grabbed me by the throat and didn't let go. Ditto, but even more so, for the first album (the import version, of course--even now, I can't warm up to the version that was eventually released in the US, which is all screwy chronologically and just generally wrong). The songs on that record, notably "Hate and War" but lots of others too, summed up everything that mattered to me about punk rock. I remember quoting lyrics from it to my parents, who were concerned about what they saw on the news about the UK punk movement, particularly the Nazi symbolism (and I also quoted an NME interview with the Clash in which they explicitly talked about being antiracist and antifascist). I remember sitting in class one day, bored, and writing a little guide to the record for my friend Marina, who hadn't heard it yet, to try to explain why I was so passionate about it. I wrote down all the lyrics I could remember and did little capsule reviews of each song. (I wish I still had that note.) I was completely sold on the band.

There were about 15 minutes back there in 1977 or so when I really believed that punk, with the Clash at the forefront, was going to change everything. Change what? How? Those are questions I can ask and can't answer now, and I probably couldn't have answered them then, either, but I was 15 or 16 and had missed out on the revolutionary mood of the '60s but still lived in its shadow (people forget now how dominated most of the '70s were by the after-echoes of the '60s, because the Reagan '80s blew all vestiges of '60s idealism away, but for a lot of young people back then, there was a palpable sense that we had missed something, and we mourned it, even if we rejected the flower-power claptrap rhetoric and lifestyle. But I digress), and I was ready for something that would change not just rock music but the world, forever.

And maybe the Clash did. More than 25 years on, it's hard to clearly see the impact that they had, beyond blazing a trail for the mixed blessing that is indie rock, but at the time, it seemed like they--and the Sex Pistols, not to mention the Buzzcocks and the Gang of Four and even the Jam--cleared the air in a way that meant there was no going back to the bloated dinosaur rock of my mid-teens. It wasn't so much "No Elvis, Beatles, or the Rolling Stones" as it was no ELP, Yes, or, I dunno, Gentle Giant. (Politically, of course, the Clash changed nothing; all they did was provide a useful soundtrack for the next decade of ReaganandThatcherism. But it was silly, even for an idealistic 16-year-old, to expect anything different.) At the time, it seemed like nothing was ever going to be the same because of the Clash. It's hard to describe the promise that they represented. And that's why it was so disappointing when they so quickly became Just Another Rock Band. Drug arrests. Tales of excess. Light shows (no, wait, that was Elvis Costello). And worse, a bloated, self-indulgent double freakin' album.

Yeah, I'm talking about "London Calling," the album that people point to as the Clash's crowning achievement. (I've always figured that that's because it was the first Clash album most people heard.) Oh, I loved it when it came out, at least the first two sides, and there are still parts of it I love...mostly on the first two sides. But geez, there's some total tripe on that record. "The Card Cheat," for example--and I love Mick Jones, don't get me wrong--is almost as overblown as any '70s prog swill, and there's just so much faux-outlaw posturing; where once they were outlaws without even trying, on "London Calling," the Clash felt obliged to tell us over and over again what outlaws they were. It was So Not Punk Rock. For me, the most illustrative example has always been the autobiographical song "Four Horsemen." Contrast it with the autobiographical song from "Give 'Em Enough Rope," "Cheapskates," and you can see what went wrong. "Four Horsemen" is studiedly cinematic, pompous, self-important where "Cheapskates" is bitter, self-deprecating, and sharply observed. The Clash had started to believe their own hype, and then some.

It was all downhill from there, at least for me. I didn't even bother to buy the even more overstuffed "Sandinista"; even with the perspective of alleged adulthood, I can't find more than two or three halfway decent songs on that record. Nor did I go to see them during their four- (five-?) night stand at Bond's on Broadway. By then, they were just another rock band, and they had left me far behind. (And by then, I was more excited about the Jam--a band that never set out to change the world but in many ways stayed more true to what they were than the Clash did. But that's a story for another day.)

Nowadays, of course, I can look at the Clash in a different way. I can appreciate the great music they did create, and I can forgive them for not having much more than one brilliant record, one decent record, and a bunch of great singles in them. And I can admire the slightly ironic fact that after their brief moment in the sun, Strummer and Jones both went on to create music with more modest aspirations that was still satisfying and avoided many of the cliches that plagued the post-"London Calling" Clash. I can look forward with great anticipation to the recently unearthed recordings from back in those days. But there's still a little bit of that teenager in me, the one who was crushed by what I saw as the Clash's defection, and for that, I'll never fully let them off the hook. Call me irrational (You're irrational. Thank you.) but there it is.

Next: The Replacements and me. Or possibly a brief digression about the Jam, I'm not sure yet.