Original subtitles

It seems to me that origination is perhaps instinct, not intellect.

In '68, the whole world was exploding.

There was Paris, Vietnam, Grosvenor Square,

the...counterculture...

It had an affect on me, that kind of...

taking direct action.

I remember somebody shouting out, "The Rolling Stones are on telly!"

And so we sort of cut across the railways and went over to their house

and some bloke's jumping around on the TV.

Street Fighting Man We just accepted as a fantastic song.

The first records I bought with my money was Jimi Hendrix Smash Hits

and also Disraeli Gears by the Cream.

I don't think we had the faculty

to take on board really what it was saying.

The sounds that I remember hearing...

Was probably reggae, really.

I used to pass by a lot of houses

where there was West Indian music playing.

I can remember hearing Not Fade Away by The Rolling Stones

coming out of this huge wooden radio.

I did my first concer playing a Beatles number with a tennis racket

on the front lawn of the block of flats I lived at -

I was about 10 years old - for all the people passing by.

My brother'd be in the room with headphones on,

then he'd take the headphones off and he'd been listening to Yes.

There'd be birds twittering. I'd go, "God, what are you listening to? "

The Beatles, The Stones, The Yardbirds, The Kinks...

It was a great year to come of age - fantastic!

Maybe music became an escape for me.

I think it did to a cerain extent - my parents used to fight a lot.

And my gran used to take me downstairs -

they had a bomb shelter in the basement of the flats.

My father was in the Foreign Office and that's why I was born in Turkey.

She'd take me downstairs and we'd wait for it to, like...

for the raid to pass.

And then I came to England, to boarding school.

Because my parents had split up,

I was able to come and go as I pleased.

My father pulled himself up by his own intelligence.

He had a very big ethos of... "You study!"

Playing on the railways, going into people's houses, a bit of robbing...

I was living with my gran and her sister and her sister-in-law.

So it was like three old ladies.

I often think about my parents and how I must have felt about it.

Cos it was like being sent away.

I think I definitely have a built-in self-preservation thing.

I just went straight to the hear of the matter,

Which was, "Forget about your parents and deal with this."

Authority is supposedly grounded in wisdom,

but I saw from an early age that it was only a system of control.

It didn't have any inherent wisdom.

When I went to see a concer, I'd be like...checking it all out.

I was checking out what the drummer was doing, the guitarist,

if they were gelling together,

if they had any kind of telepathic communication.

I remember having a birhday party and my mum said,

"You can have a party for your friends."

We were sitting at the table and I looked up and there's my brother

and I looked around and every face was black.

And that's what made me realise there's something different here.

Then The New York Dolls came along, and they were everything.

They were incredible, the way they looked, their whole attitude.

They didn't care about anything.

They were just more... a group that was more about style.

I suppose when I was about 17, I stared wondering about...

Well, this is not really my story - even though it was in one way,

because that was my background.

I quickly realised that you either became a power or you were crushed.

I went to art school because I wanted to be a painter.

That was how I thought you got into bands and stuff.

The last resort of malingerers and bluffers

and people who don't want to work, basically.

I didn't really meet that many musicians. I was disappointed really.

It was one way I could excel in the classroom.

I'd have kids coming up to me and they'd go,

"Oi, Paul! If you don't draw this for me, I'm gonna beat you up,"

or whatever, you know??

They weren't teaching us to draw an object,

they were teaching us to make a drawing

that looked like We knew how to draw the object.

I was doing it for the grant really.

Cos you'd get that and then you could buy more equipment.

Maybe the ar school thing had messed me up too much already.

I just thought,

"I can't see myself for the rest of my life doing this stuff.

"I've gotta do something a bit more exciting."

I wasn't in any choir, I didn't learn any instrument, nothing.

But we were fervent listeners.

Taking in music... It was before I had any discrimination.

It seemed to be a mystical world where only...

mythical beings could actually play.

We used to have a careers officer at school.

I honestly did go in there and say, "I wanna be in a band."

It wasn't like no creative choice.

You know what I mean?? It wasn't like a vegetarian option on the menu.

When I managed to get some chords together...

I was chuffed.

In '74, it did seem like life was in black and white.

There were rows of buildings bought up by the council and left to rot.

And that's what gave birh to squatting.

If we hadn't had the squats - A, for a place to live,

and B, we could set up a rock 'n' roll group and practise in them.

The first time I met Mick, I went into this room

and there's these four guys standing around.

And Mick's hair was really... It was like this -

Iittle eye and nose looking through.

He looked so stunning that we said, "Can you sing?? "

And then he said, "Try this song," and it was a Jonathan Richman song,

Which I was completely unaware of, and they said,

"Oh, just sing 'radio on'" or something. So I did.

I just ranted it non-stop and that was the end of that.

The 101ers had been playing for about two years

and by the time we reached Thursday night at the Elgin we were flaming.

The place used to be packed.

What I remember is glasses smashing, fighting, dogs running around.

I remember going to Mick's flat and he was trying to show me this E chord

that went this way and went that way.

And after about an hour of complete frustration on both sides

We decided to get hold of a bass.

I spent like a year in the bedroom just playing along with records.

That's how I learnt.

I thought rather than make it a hard job,

I'd get stickers and write A, B, G and stick them on, and it was fine.

Mick would say G and I'd go, "There's G."

"Up an octave, Mick...?? "

It was very much Malcolm had the Sex Pistols

and Bernie was gonna go out and get a group.

He was a really interesting guy, Bernie, and he had a lot to say,

and we just sort of struck up a relationship.

And then we saw Joe - the 101ers - play the Nashville with the Pistols.

Five seconds into their first song

I just knew we were yesterday's papers, I mean, we were over!

That was the moment when we realised that Joe was the best guy out there.

I think we needed a fresh input.

And seeing Joe I think it crossed all our minds about nicking him.

Bernie and Keith went to see him play at the Golden Lion in Fulham,

and that's when they made the offer:?

"We're getting it together, do you want to join us?? "

And he came up to the dressing room after the show and went,

"Hey, come with me. I want you to meet some people."

I said, "OK." We went to Shepherd's Bush to a squat on Davis Road

Where Mick Jones and Paul Simonon were waiting in a room.

We gave him 48 hours to kind of make his mind up.

I thought about it for 24 hours and I rang him back and said, "OK, I'm in."

"Complete control" was one of Bernie's favourite phrases.

He said to us that, "I've gotta have complete control."

I first saw Mick and Paul in Lissen Grove labour exchange.

I was queuing up to get dole.

He definitely caught us looking at him and he was a bit worried.

He looked like he thought he was gonna be done over.

I could see them staring at me

and I didn't realise they'd seen the 101ers the previous weekend.

For that moment he looked really timid and he was in terror it seemed.

I just ignored them, got my dole.

And I was expecting them to tangle With me on the way out to the street.

We were looking on in awe, really.

And then later he said that's not what he was getting.

Well, I thought I'd punch Mick first cos he looked thinner.

And Paul looked a bit tasty.

So I thought I wouldn't... I thought I'd smack Mick first and then leg it.

We were nervous. Well, I was anyway.

And he came in and we went into this little tiny room.

It was really small and we all sat around with our guitars.

And we went like, "This is one of ours, right??

"One, two, three, four... I'm so bored with you!"

I said, "Never mind all that. Let's write it now.

"I'm so bored with the USA."

USA!

And he went, "I didn't say that.

"It's about my girlfriend - I'm So Bored With You."

We went to an ice cream parlour in Edgware Road

and wrote "I'm So Bored With The USA" on the window with the ice cream.

We were always taking about how there was too many MacDonald's.

Although we'd been brought up on American TV shows and all that.

There was still too much of an American influence.

That was really What the song was about.

The day that I joined The Clash was very much...back to square one.

Year zero.

He didn't want to do any of this stuff. He wanted a clean break.

We were almost Stalinist in the way that you had to shed all your friends

or everything that you'd known, or every way that you'd played before.

So we were really going through the motions of...

just getting the unity between us.

It was Bernie that...

told us to write about what we knew.

Mick Jones lived in a tower block with his granny.

You looked down on the Westway and wondered what'll happen to your life

and your town and your country.

Say, like, Paul looking in the paper, "What about career opporunities?? "

I mean we were trying to grope in a socialist way

towards some future Where the world might be

Iess of a miserable place than it is.

Tower blocks and urban alienation and disaffected youth and all that.

That all came from somewhere real.

I don't know why it was called Rehearsal Rehearsals,

but I always thought it was like kind of a Jewish thing.

Where you going?? Rehearsal Rehearsals.

There was like a one bar heater.

So I spent a lot of evenings with Sid huddled over it, just gobbing on it.

We had this jukebox which we put all our favourite records on,

Iike Pressure Drop and Two Sevens Clash,

MPLA, by Tapper Zukie.

We used to play those records in rehearsal sometimes.

It can't be stressed how great The Ramones first album was

to the scene in London.

It was simple enough to be able to play.

Me and Paul would definitely spend hours, days, weeks

playing along to the record.

Paul was learning the bass.

I wanted to be the one that jumped up and down and throws his arms around.

Mick had already played really great

and I could hack in there, and we didn't have a drummer really.

I don't think Terry was officially hired or anything,

he just had been playing with us and was one of the best drummers.

They had something different. I didn't paricularly like them.

But there was something about the way they did things that said,

"We mean business. Nothing's going to stop us."

Terry Chimes was a bit freaked out by our...

kind of lunatic...overboard... Stalinist-type behaviour.

We used to have a lot of political discussions about...

you know, our lives and things that affect us.

And then Bernie helping us like to realise what we were about.

I think that concerned Terry because, you know, we'd say,

"Well, what'd you wanna do if you had some money?? "

He'd got into music so he could get a Lamborghini spors car.

I don't remember the Lamborghini, I think it was an E-type Jag, actually.

The point was I wanted one kind of life and they wanted another...

"Why are we working together?? "

The Clash came from just looking at the Evening Standard really.

And it just sort of... It had a bit of style, flashness to it.

And, you know, I suggested it and everybody liked it.

It describes our sound.

We were like sticks of dynamite, we could go off at any minute.

The line-up at this point - the first gig would be Terry Chimes on drums,

Paul Simonon, Mick Jones, myself and Keith Levene.

Keith's approach was always from another angle to Mick's.

And it really made an interesting sort of sound.

keith left because he couldn't be bothered to come to rehearsals.

And then I think Joe said, "Well, don't bloddy come at all, then!"

Bernie used to say to me, "Paul, you stand furher back over there."

I used to ignore him.

I said, "Well, not if I'm gonna be Pete Townshend."

I had to stick up the front.

I suppose, in some ways, when Keith left,

that was probably quite handy for me in one way

cos then it meant I had my spot.

You had to be in league with each other cos there were so many enemies.

The moment we walked on stage I felt like I was in the living room.

I felt that comforable.

And, you know, things would go a bit wrong.

I just remember We had a tune called Listen

Where the bass line went...

And that was the first time I went on stage.

Paul being very nervous, he went...

until we all fell down laughing on the stage

cos we didn't know when to come in.

I just wanted to jump around a bit.

Somebody wrote in the Melody Maker - we were all thrilled - but they said,

"We saw this group Clash up in Sheffield and they were rubbish."

Home-made and do-it-yourself expressive.

I got some gloss paint and got my shoes

and just sort of splashed a bit here and there and it looked pretty good.

I took it a stage furher, I got this black shir,

did a bit on that With a different paint.

It was all being aware of your textures and all that arty stuff.

Mick and Paul were really, like...

they had dyed hair and all the things we associate with punk.

There were sort of brass stencils and you could clip them together.

And we used those to spray on lettering...whatever.

And it became sort of a Rauschenberg thing.

You know, like picking up things from album covers -

Iike "heavy manners" and "heavy-duty discipline" and all that.

Those were the things we picked up - as well as lyrics from our songs.

And just transferred them onto the clothing.

It gave people a bit of a shock

when you walked down the street With "hate and war" on your shir.

Like trousers, like brain.

That was the difference between the flared look from the '60s

and the new look which was Mod - fast and trim and going places.

Once I was being chased by some teddy boys

and one of them whacked me over the back of the head as I was fleeing.

You could tell a mile off what people were into.

The thing with The Clash is We didn't have any shop to rely on.

Malcolm who was in charge of the Pistols had

Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die and then Let it Rock

and then it was called Sex.

The Pistols had it already sewn up for them...Iiterally.

The second gig we did was a special gig at Rehearsal's,

a special "invited only" private affair.

Bernie organised it to play to the journalists

and the movers and shakers of London.

We all realised that we needed to cut a unified look on stage.

Just up the road from the rehearsal room

was the people that Bernie used to spray cars.

So we went to them and they sprayed the guitars, the amps...

the jackets, the ties, the shirs, the shoes.

We came out and we must have looked fairly striking...

if not somewhat ridiculous.

We had all these barber chairs and these lovely lilac curains.

The writers kinda knew who we were and they were like modern writers -

John Ingham and Caroline Coon.

Paul's mural was all lovely car dump.

They were people who stuck their head above the parapet, really,

in order to publicise punk rock.

I think that they made some of the most exciting, vital rock music ever.

And cerainly made it impossible for me

to ever listen to any rock music again.

Mark P stared Sniffin' Glue, Which was like the first fanzine

and it was followed by a million others.

That was a really great scene

because there was like punk criticism of the punk acts.

We do it how we want to do it.

If that's not good enough, we'll forget it.

It really seemed and felt like the last word.

And 20 years down the line, I sort of feel that they were.

The Clash put the boot into ageing rock millionaires

whose music and lifestyle have been dominant for so long.

It's got nothing to do With them any more.

When Rod Stewar gets up there

and stars like going on With his string orchestra,

it's not what you feel like.

You gotta have music what you feel like.

Otherwise, you go barmy, don't you??

There just has to be new groups and that's what you got.

The gig didn't star till about midnight on Sunday night.

I had to sit there the whole day

watching equipment that was stashed under the stage.

That was to make us completely knackered.

I couldn't understand Why we sounded so awful on stage

and then the Pistols sounded fantastic.

I suppose they were a bit scared of us, probably.

We were pretty done over when Charles Shaar Murray wrote in the paper,

"The Clash are one of those garage bands

"that should be swiftly returned to the garage

"with the doors locked and the motor left running."

And from that review we got the idea for the song Garageland.

It went on all day and all night. They couldn't control it.

The Grove burned.

In London every year they have a carnival

that was stared by the Jamaican immigrants to the UK,

possibly about '57, '58.

In that summer of '76, which was very hot,

there had been some very heavy police pressure on the black community.

Me and Joe went down there with Bernie

and we were on the Westway checking out all the sound systems and stuff.

And a conga line of policemen came through the crowd.

Next minute paper cups were being lobbed over and then cans.

We were there at the very first throw of the first brick.

Next minute there was police everywhere.

And they literally just charged.

All hell broke loose... and I mean hell.

The crowd pared, We were pushed onto a wire netting.

Bernie's glasses went over there and I was over here

and Joe was chucked upside down.

This was one time where people went,

"We've had enough and we're going to say so now!"

And that's what gave rise to the song White Riot.

Because we participated in the riot,

but I was aware all the time that it was a black people's riot,

i.e. they had more of an axe to grind

and they had the guts to do something physical about it.

It was a moment of... I don't know, I just sort of felt relieved.

Especially when you held that brick and you lobbed it.

And I remember Joe and me... This car had been tipped upside down

and me and Joe were trying to light the car to set it ablaze.

It's one thing to say, "Right, let's burn the cars and burn the ghetto,"

but you try and set a car alight.

And this big fat woman was screaming,

"Oh, Lord, they're going to set the car alight!"

And, like, the wind was blowing out the Swan Vestas.

I couldn't get anything going on this car.

It was just a comedy, some of it.

But it was a hell of a day.

Bernie was really keen on using some of that imagery

for albums or posters or whatever.

Me and Bernie used to spend a lot of time looking at album covers,

especially the Jamaican ones.

That's the ones we really got a lot of influence from.

One that was really popular with us was Screaming Target - Big Youth.

Visually, very exciting, as well as musically...explosive.

Police And Thieves was just ringing out all over the town.

We decided to try and cut a version.

It hasn't been said enough, Mick Jones' talent as an arranger,

the way he just told me to go like that...

and then kill it, and then he'd go...

When I listen to Julian Irvine today, I think

what a bold brass neck We had to try and attempt that.

By rights they should have said,

"You heathen man, you ruined the works of Jah, you know?? "

But they were hip enough to realise

we'd brought our own music to the party.

These Americans were invited down to see the Sex Pistols.

They saw us,

and then went home thinking that they'd seen the Pistols.

And they said, "Yeah, it was a really great show.

"I didn't know you had an extra guitarist."

And obviously, it must have been a bit difficult for Americans to say,

"You've just seen the wrong group."

I suppose it was historically great cos of Siouxsie and the Banshees

With Sid Vicious on the drums playing and what have you.

Firstly, they came up, a few teddy boys, and offered the sound man 5p.

And they gave him 5p, and he said, "What's that?? "

And they said, "It's your fare home."

We was playing on stage and this mad person jumped on stage,

and I thought, "Who's this?? I'm gonna have to kick 'em off the stage."

And it turned out to be Patti Smith.

The whole stage Was like all twinkling.

It was glass - all the bottles that were lobbed on the stage.

That's why we moved around so much.

Bernie Rhodes had hung around with Guy Stevens a lot in the sixties.

I think it was Bernie Who suggested working with Guy.

The results were kind of disappointing somehow.

Cos we had quite an energetic unit and it sounded very flat.

I remember the engineer going on about Joe,

that he's got to mind his Ps and Qs when he's singing the songs.

Shorly after that, Terry Chimes announced he was quitting.

We must have tried every drummer that then had a kit.

I mean, every drummer in London.

I think we counted 205.

And that's why we were lost until we found Topper Headon.

We hardly did any shows, we just sort of travelled on this coach.

I think only nine gigs out of 30 were left.

We weren't going to play a gig Where the Pistols were cancelled

cos they had sworn on television.

And then it just kind of exploded.

You know, what with the Grundy show.

And The Damned decided to play a gig anyway

and that caused the first rift between the punk groups.

But it really put punk on the map.

Every truck driver and builder and your grandma and your uncle

knew what punk rock was now about.

This was the first club for punk groups and their followers.

We agreed to kick it off on... I think it was New Year's Day.

It was a good place to hang out.

And there was also a punk-rasta interface because...

the DJ at the time was Don Letts.

He would play a lot of reggae records

that we hadn't had any chance to come across.

That gave us a lot of new information.

That rasta-punk crossover was like really crucial.

The whole scene would have been piffle without that really.

Cos it... Yeah, it was something else.

I remember thinking,

"Well, that's nice for you, but we Were never your toy to begin with."

It didn't matter Who we were signed to or anything.

I think we were probably outside the Polydor building in a taxi.

At the last moment Bernie said, "Right, we're going to Soho Square."

And within moments we signed to CBS.

Maurice Oberstein was there.

But it was only thanks to him that...

He was prepared to stick his neck out and sign one of these punk groups.

It was so fast I guess Bernie couldn't think of, you know...

a big stunt to celebrate it.

All that was needed from us was to sign the damn thing.

They weren't going to sit down and talk about Clause 95B to us.

I guess Bernie went off to bank the cheque.

We signed for $100,000. At the time, that seemed like a forune.

But later I found out what we thought was a five-record deal,

in fact, in the small print - like in every corny story -

it was in fact a ten-record deal.

I remember for days after me and Joe walking up the street

and deliberating over the content of the songs.

Like, "Well, we can't sing about career opporunities any more,

"because we've now got some cash," you know??

It needed to break out and reach America and be kind of global.

And somebody had to take that bull by the horns.

There was a lot of struggling With our instruments at the star.

It was that struggling, learning to play.

It made it alive, it made it real.

It made it something that wasn't anything else.

One of the few things the punks had for recreation

Was amphetamine sulphate, which was value for money - its effects lasted.

I decided quite quickly that the up wasn't worh the down.

We didn't write anything in the studio. We just banged it out.

We'd all come from different aspects

of what is now known as popular culture.

We obviously all immersed ourselves in different pars of it.

I remember Mick pulling me over and saying,

"Paul, I want you to sing this bit about pensions,"

in, I think, Career Opporunities.

And I remember saying, "I'm not bloody singing about pensions,"

and Mick was going, "What do you mean?? "

"I'm not gonna sing about pensions."

We didn't want to get compromised by the sound

and we'd also felt burnt by that Guy Stevens demo session

Where it had come out kinda boring.

We knocked that album out... I think in three weekends...

four-day sessions.

I like the first album best, actually.

I like that kind of sound that it has overall.

From the time I first stared playing the drums

that's all I ever wanted to be.

There's a rule of rock 'n' roll and it says

"You're only as good as your drummer".

I told everyone that I played for The Temptations.

But I never... I played for a band supporing The Temptations.

He could play funk, soul... reggae didn't phase him.

We weren't supposed to come out With something like that at the time.

We were a big fat riff group. We were like rock solid beats.

Coming out with White Man in Hammersmith Palais

was really unexpected and these are the best moments of any career.

To be honest, I thought, "I'll join, stay with the band for a year,

"get me name known and then move onto something good."

This wasn't a time like today

when people play along to DAT tapes or sequences or loops.

Everything coming off the stage you've manufactured in that moment.

And it was really fast and really hard and very loud.

To me it was kind of so...so different,

I didn't have the foresight to believe it would actually work.

Finding someone Who not only had the chops,

but the strength and stamina to do it was just the breakthrough for us.

That was unheard of for punk rock groups to play The Rainbow.

That was like the Madison Square Garden, if you like, of London.

People ripping up seats, piling them up on stage, stuff going all over.

For punk rock groups to fill that joint,

it meant there was no stopping it now.

It was like the dam burst.

Our attitude was, "What?? What do you mean, second album?? "

I remember going to Jamaica with Mick for maybe a week or ten days

and we came up with some tunes.

Safe European Home, probably,

and Drug Stabbing Time, I think was the other one.

I was really pissed off about that, cos I really wanted to go.

And that...

That really pissed me off.

I don't know how we weren't filleted and served up on a bed of chips,

because me and Mick Wandered around the harbour.

I think they mistook us for sailors...merchant seamen.

We went down to score, down to the seafront to score,

and I was like, "Don't give this guy the money, Joe."

Joe was like, "Yeah, we'll give him the money."

So I gave him the money and watched him fly off...with wings.

And the guy just appeared in the distance and he came back.

The record company had this idea

that they wanted somebody to produce the record.

It wasn't even a decision to bring in somebody

as far as the band was concerned.

I think it was like, "This bloke Sandy Pearlman's going to come...

"and maybe produce."

Pearlman kept turning up at our shows.

And Mick's schoolmate Robin wouldn't let him in the dressing room.

He knocked on the door just before we were going on stage

and my mate Robin answered and he said, "Hi, I'm Sandy,"

and he went, "Well, the band's going on stage so you can't come in now."

He was like, "No, you don't understand."

And he was told to leave the room

and then he stuck his head back through the door...

And next minute it was, like, wallop,

and Sandy Pearlman's lying on the floor with all blood coming down.

We all stepped over him and went out on stage.

I must admit that whole situation of recording that album

Was just the most boring situation ever.

It was just so nitpicking... It was such a contrast to the first album

and it just sort of ruined any spontaneity.

We didn't realise how the first album sounded weird

to American record company people.

They figured it wasn't fit for human consumption.

The audience was already well into it in America,

far more than the executives knew.

And so they released the second album and then the first album.

I think we were waiting for Mick to come to rehearsal.

I walked up Camden High Street

with a rifle over me shoulder and two pistols down me belt.

Being bored, we thought we'd go out and try these air rifles.

And they went up on the roof and they stared firing away at these pigeons.

..missed and then they came back again.

Took another shot and they kept coming back.

They didn't know but they were priceless racing pigeons

belonging to one of the mechanics Who had a coop up there on the roof.

And next minute there are police coming over the roof with guns going,

"Freeze!"

Whenever we were working - especially touring, cos I used to love touring -

I just felt on top of the world the whole time.

I loved every minute of it.

Live performances with The Clash were never predictable.

It was just mayhem from the word go - running, jumping, all action.

You fall off the stage and they catch you, you're happening.

If they don't - they make a space, then that's it.

So sometimes I'd be going so fast, I'd go off the end of the stage.

But I'd be cool.

You couldn't play a gig in the punk years

that was not just covered in gob.

From the moment you stepped behind the amplifiers to the stage

you were covered in gob, and it didn't matter who you were,

but especially good if you could gob on The Clash.

Because we weren't playing along to backing tapes, we could stop.

When somebody's getting kicked by 30 other geezers, you've gotta stop.

Come on, you slobs.

There's no need to fight. This is rock 'n' roll, not a fight.

There's an unwritten law, if you turn around and go like that

and we'd all stop and sort the ruck out

and then we'd kick it right back in again.

We was on tour and I remember me and Mick had an argument.

I don't know, I just snapped.

So I went to punch him and I got him in the ear.

And then next minute, like Topper and Joe are trying to hold my elbows

and I'm thrashing around trying to get hold of Mick.

Joe and Topper took bruises from my elbows.

And then we ended up in the studio where Mick's over there

and I'm over here and Joe has to go back and forh to tell me,

"It's E now."

Go over there, come back, "Oh, now it's C."

Help us to carry on our fight against racism.

This is the official collection for the Anti-Nazi League...

When we played Victoria Park,

that was the most people We played to at that point.

Which was kind of good, cos a lot of skinheads were getting into punk.

Only some of who were racist and some of them were anti-racist.

About a month later, Bernie was manouevered out

from the managerial chair in a power struggle.

I know him and Mick used to have a serious falling out at times.

Whatever The Clash was, it was to do with Bernie Rhodes and The Clash.

That's what I always maintained - for better or for worse.

Between May and August We'd come up with London Calling.

Then we went with Guy Stevens into Wessex Studios.

Guy used to believe that his job as a record producer

Was to install the maximum emotion in the record.

He used to do this by a process of direct psychic injection.

He used to inject his personality into the musicians,

face-to-face, as they were playing the master.

He made me feel really at ease.

And if I played wrong notes he didn't care.

You'd like write, rehearse and then record.

See the thing what I realised was with being in a group,

you get money if you write songs.

You don't write songs, you don't get any money.

Writing songs was a bit of a problem,

I suppose because I always played reggae

and played reggae and played reggae.

So once I stared having ideas for songs,

I'd throw a song in and everyone would just go...

And if I had a bit more skill on the guitar,

I could say, "No, I want it to be a bit more rock, like this."

Many say that's our finest hour, that double album London Calling.

There was a point where punk was going narrower and narrower,

painting themselves into a corner.

We thought we could just do any kind of music.

We were playing The Palladium in New York and I remember doing the show

and we were sort of nearing the end and nothing was complete -

I didn't feel satisfied.

I watched him, his guitar went up instead of down,

he didn't do a jump, he stared smashing the head end on the deck.

He stared coming towards me, I stared backing off,

hence it being out of focus.

Just kept shooting.

I'd chucked me basses round before,

I didn't really have any respect for them in the first place.

The moment I got a new bass, I'd star getting a hammer

and I'd star smashing it around, digging bits out...

I did spend the remainder of the night, after they'd seen the contacts

trying to persuade Joe that it Wouldn't make a very good front cover

basically because it was too out of focus. I was wrong.

As soon as we'd finished the last chord of it,

we left Bill Price to mix it With Guy Stevens overseeing it.

We looked over in the control booth

and there's two grown men wrestling over the mixing desk.

And we looked closer and it's like Guy is wrestling with Bill Price.

He used to get so excited that I used to hold him down with one hand

and try and carry on the manual mix on the desk with the other.

When you've been into American music for as long as I have

to go there...is a trip.

You're constantly watching out the Window - it's like watching a movie.

To ride across the country, even better on a bus, is another trip.

It was great to see it, cos We'd always seen it through the TV.

It was fantastic.

I got endless inspiration from it.

After we'd been to America, and we got off great there

and the audience was hip enough there to get into us,

we came back to London and we didn't have a manager

and we got into Blackhill Management.

They were like a regular management group -

you go on tour, you record, you go on tour, you record.

That was it - none of the excitement that Bernie had.

As soon as they'd got a rough mix down, we'd be like,

"Fresh tape on the reel. Let's get the mikes out,

"cos we're gonna go like this and this..."

And we'd just keep doing that day and night.

And that's why it had to be a triple album.

Even though it would have been better as a double or single album or EP...

Who knows??

The fact is we recorded all that music in one spot at one moment.

And in one three-week blast, for better or for worse.

That's the document.

Sandinista! was originally going to be a double album.

But what we decided we wanted to bring out a single a month.

And the first one we put forward was Bank Robber.

I think the head of the record company said they didn't like it.

They said it sounded like David Bowie backwards.

We weren't happy with that.

It was hard enough making the records

without having to deal With somebody who couldn't even hear

or didn't have the grace to go,

"OK, maybe you've got something here."

People bought it and it did well, but we wouldn't do Top of the Pops,

so they got Pan's People to do it instead.

We were writing a lot of material and making it up as we go along.

There was a lot of jamming.

I remember one day the only person in the studio was Topper.

He'd stroll around, find a marimba or something in a corner of the studio.

He'd star jamming all on his own on that,

and before you knew it, we'd record some of it.

A few hours later the rest of the band would turn up

and that would become another track on Sandinista!

All of a sudden We were up to track 35.

Some of those takes are songs being written as they're going down.

We always took music that was going on around us on board

and made it par of our thing.

Mick Jones is the one who... Again, he's the king arranger,

and he's bringing in the... He was always looking to do the new thing.

It was really banging off in New York -

rap was there, it was like 1980.

I was so gone with it that the others used to call me Whack Attack!

I'd walk around with a beat box.

And WBLS was blasting all over the city

and we just hooked on to some of that vibe and made our own version of it.

We made an instrumental mix of The Mag Seven

and WBLS played it to death.

You couldn't go anywhere in New York that summer without hearing that.

And that was us...

Weirdo-punk-rock-white guys...

doing the kit.

That was when hip-hop was just staring.

And that was like another signpost of what was to come.

We fell in with some grafitti arists and they made a big banner for us.

If someone had come in and gone, "Let's play this with balalaikas,"

everyone would have gone, "Give me the biggest balalaika," you know??

We were open about stuff.

Mick Jones bringing in the new sound of New York and stuff

and Simo with his reggae thing and me with my rhythm and blues thing

and Topper with all his soul chocks, and we could just do that.

There was one point When we went to Kingston, Jamaica

and that was great because that's where I could...

At least I was there at last.

On the album, the band brought in Mikey Dread.

And Mikey expanded the range of music from rock 'n' roll

to what he had to offer Which was genuine Jamaican dub.

And this was very exciting.

And I mean that.

I was sitting at a piano, that lovely channel one,

completely out of tune piano that just sounds...

It just has the sound of the town.

I was just sitting at the piano, figuring out the chords

and Mikey Dread tapped me on the shoulder,

and I said, "What?? " And he said, "We have to run."

And I looked in his eyes and realised he was serious.

Previously, a month before, I think,

the Rolling Stones had been down there using that same studio,

and they'd been dishing out money all over the place,

you know, to keep everybody happy.

So the guys in the studio thought, "Well, where's all the money?? "

The gunmen were gonna come down and slice everybody up.

"Who do you think you are, coming into Kingston

"without paying your way, white rass clot?? "

And they were going to come and chop everyone up.

And we just had to leg it.

Sandinista! was three pieces of long playing vinyl for the price of one.

I always saw it as a record for people who were on oil rigs

or aric stations, that weren't able to get to the record shops regularly.

I can only say I'm proud of it... wars and all, as they say.

It's a magnificent thing.

And I wouldn't change it, even if I could.

And that's after some soul searching.

There are cerain songs I wouldn't have put on it,

but I'm one of many members.

Just from the fact it was all thrown down in one go. It's outrageous.

And then released like that,

it's doubly outrageous, it's triply outrageous.

After a couple of years working with Blackhill,

Joe put his foot down and I'm pleased he did,

cos he wanted Bernie back.

It was Bernie's idea to do seven nights and really rock places out.

That's when I realised parly the way the world works

because you can't march into a city like New York

and take away the nightlife.

I gotta get into the show, you know what I mean??

I have to get into the show.

We were doing residency in Times Square, basically.

We turned up and they said, "There's too many people, close it down."

We were presented with a situation that escalated beyond control.

We were on the news.

"All you who wanted to see The Clash at Bond's tonight, it's cancelled."

It was great, checking into New York and you're on the evening news.

That was fantastic.

"They are punks, throwing out the disco sound for something else."

Know Your Rights! Slate 75!

I think we've reached furher than any original punk group.

We were always ambitious as a group.

I think they only need to listen to the lyrics

to understand what the song's about.

We decided to play out,

however many tickets had been put out we were going to play.

We hope that they've got the news behind the news.

Because they really oversold it, We ended up doing about 16 nights,

16 nights and a couple of matinees or something.

Something strangely monotonous about getting up, going to the same hall -

playing a gig.

Doing that 15 nights in a row, it nearly killed us.

And 17 shows is...it's cushy, you know,

it's so easy compared to being on the road.

It wasn't hard work at all

and the good thing was everyone thought it was,

so you could like pretend when you got out,

"Oh, yeah, I'll manage." Gimme some more of that.

To go to New York and take New York... that is great.

Just listen, OK??

We did a gig in Hong Kong and then we went to Thailand.

I was shooting what I knew to be the album cover on the railroad tracks.

Halfway through the shoot, something just happened.

Somehow they dissolved in front of my eyes.

Topper's health at this point was going. He got addicted to heroin.

Looking back on it, you know, I was out of control.

If you try and imagine a group and the drummer is falling apar,

then no matter what you put on top, it's gonna fall apar.

What he was up to sort of made a mockery of what the group was about

and what Joe was writing about.

He was saying,

"How can I write all these anti-drugs songs with you stoned behind me?? "

In the jazz days, the saxophone section would be addicted to heroin.

Each drug has a nature and that surely suits horn playing,

cos you can float over the music doing your thing.

But it doesn't suit drumming, it's like nailing a nail into the floor.

It's so precise - the beat's gotta be there.

So there was a lot of friction building up over a period of time.

And so...that was the beginning of the end really.

Although Bernie was 100% always working on ideas for the group,

he wouldn't share with the rest of us

and so we didn't know what was going on.

Bernie said, "We're staring a tour.

"Tickets in Scotland are not selling that well."

He didn't understand the nature of the beast of The Clash

is that we have a walk up, yeah??

We have a right big walk up.

And anybody, especially Bernie should have known that.

He said, "Disappear or something. I need an excuse to cancel the tour."

Like a fool, I did.

Joe did do that, but then obviously couldn't stand it,

and actually vanished from everybody.

I should never have listened to that. You have to have some regrets.

I didn't know where he'd gone, what had happened.

I went to France and just dicked around for a while.

And basically, he came back and I was given an ultimatum.

And the next thing that happened was that Topper left.

I remember when the band sacked me,

I promised them I'd stop, you know, misbehaving and taking substances.

You need to have everyone firing on all cylinders

if you're gonna take things to new levels or new directions.

And I felt a lot of guilt about that, because if I'd kept my act together,

I could see the band possibly still being together today in a way.

You can't have any passengers on board,

because it slows the whole thing down

and you slow it down, you lose spirit and you grind to a shuddering halt.

I'd like to kind of apologise to them for kind of letting the side down,

for going off the rails.

But if it happened again, I think I'd probably do the same thing.

I'm just that sort of person, you know??

Whatever a group is, it was the chemical mixture of those four people

that makes a group work.

And you can replace one with whoever you like and it's never gonna work.

We were just so tired...

tired of each other, tired of the road, tired of the studio.

We were burned out.

We tried to mix it as we were going along on that Far Eastern tour.

We booked studios in Australia and that's where we ground to a halt.

All I remember really is having this two-hour argument with Mick

about the level of the bass on Know Your Rights.

When you're struggling, it holds you together,

cos you're heading for some point, "We're gonna make it. Come on, boys!

"Hang in there."

And then Rock The Casbah went top five.

All this has gone down in the space of, what, four years??

We were in like the fifth year. It had to have a toll on us.

I think we should have had maybe, like, a year off.

Combat Rock went top five in America. This was unheard of for us.

Our placings had been 198 below that.

And suddenly, it just all blew up.

It was fun to play Career Opporunities in Shea Stadium

cos who'd have thought four years previously when we'd written it

that we'd be playing it at Shea Stadium??

These are the things that makes the world so interesting...

and the music.

The last gig was a huge gig. It was like 200,000 people.

It was the computer generation's festival.

I suppose, er...

you don't want to hear about this and that and what's up my arse, huh??

Try this on for size.

Like we were on stage, that's how it was backstage.

Like, Mick was all the way over there and I was over here

and Joe was in the middle, and that's how it was.

Me and Mick didn't talk.

There was a little scuffle at the end,

that was sort of symbolic of the whole mayhem.

I remember looking over and seeing some bouncer hitting Mick.

I just went over and stared laying into this bloke's head

cos I thought it was unfair cos Mick's like...

He's not muscles or whatever.

1984 and we were gone really.

It was all over bar the... brushing out the room.

Gunfight at the OK Corral...

or something's gonna happen.

I didn't know personally about self-control.

I didn't know about that stuff until much later.

Me and Joe had talked about it and got to the point where we said,

"We're grown men. I can't take any more of this."

We lost communication with each other.

Even in the same room, We were looking at the floor.

Joe said, "Mick, we want you to leave."

And then Mick said to me, "What do you say?? "

And I said, "Well, yeah."

You know??

Mick was intolerable to work with by this time. I mean, no fun at all.

He didn't show up.

When he did show up, it was like Elizabeth Taylor in a filthy mood.

And he didn't want to go on tour,

the perfect time to go on tour When everything was moving up.

I would say that one of Mick's talents was not punctuality.

He was fairly late most of the time.

But then, you know, talent's worh waiting for, I think...

When all's said and done.

I was just carried away, really. I wish I had a bit more control...

You wish you knew what you knew now.

It only happens like that in hindsight.

It never happens like that when it's going on

cos things are going so fast

you don't have time to step back and take a view.

And that probably explains some of the moments

when you didn't have as much control...on yourself.

Always wanting to interject, you know, "And another thing..."

We weren't parochial, We weren't narrow-minded.

We weren't Little Englanders.

At least we had the suss to embrace what we were presented with,

which was the world and all its weird varieties.

In America or in Spain or France or Sweden or Italy

or Japan or Australia or anywhere in the world but here,

they really know and appreciate The Clash.

Whatever a group is it was the chemical mixture

of those four people that makes a group work.

That's a lesson everyone should learn, "Don't mess with it!"

If it works just let it...

Do whatever you have to do to bring it forward

but don't mess with it.

And like, we learned that...bitterly.

If I could do it all again, I wouldn't change anything.

I think it was fine as it is.

Who couldn't write good tunes with such great lyrics??

and, you know, fantastic drumming,

and it was just great to be With Paul who was just there

probably from when I first met him...

Bastard.

We did our job and that's the story and now we're gone.

And that's it. That suits me fine.