Original subtitles

All right, then. Here we are...

in the capital of the decadent U.S. of A.

Now widely regarded as one of the most important bands ever,

The Clash disintegrated over a 12-month period

when the band were actually at their peak.

Why was this?

And exactly what happened next?

This is the story.

People say to me, "What happened to The Clash?

Why did they break up?"

I always say, "Well, they went mad," and people think I'm joking.

I'm not.

Where you going?

Well, when I was hanging around The Clash for so long,

I definitely felt like I was going to "Rock'n'Roll High School. "

I wanted to figure out

what it was that made them so special,

so I just observed.

And from what I learned,

the band has to have a few things, and they had everything.

They were very ambitious and very keen to make it happen.

First, you have to have the great drummer.

If you don't have a great drummer, you haven't got a great band.

Topper was the best drummer in the whole world, according to me.

Just electrifying.

Exciting. Absolutely manic.

Bass player Paul- when he first started, he couldn't play bass.

But Paul practiced bass every single day.

He had a great style that he influenced The Clash,

you know, and their way of dressing.

And he was responsible for, you know,

always making sure that the visuals were good.

They had attitude. They had politics.

Just everything you wanted in a rock'n'roll band.

They were tremendous.

Then you have Mick Jones, who is basically a rock'n'roll fan.

Really, like, you know, like, the Stones...

His hero is Keith Richards, like, Mott the Hoople...

They were an attractive, sort of, Beatles-like

gadabout thing, you know?

So there was Topper, the jazz-bo.

Paul mostly liked black music.

Then Mick's rock'n'roll influence,

with not only the way he looked but the way he thought.

At that time, they were, like, the only band that mattered.

And then there's Joe.

Joe was basically rhythm and blues.

Blues person. American roots.

The Clash are basically number three.

I mean, you know, it's the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and The Clash.

So, there's four different people

who liked four different styles of music,

and they were all really intelligent,

and they were all really passionate.

And, so, if you have all those things,

you have a great band.

He's in love with rock'n'roll

He's in love with gettin' stoned

He's in love with Janie Jones

He don't like his boring job

No

Let them know

Let them know

How you feel.

The Clash are kind of unique amongst all rock bands.

They kind of had a higher purpose,

and I can't think of one other band

that you can say that about.

What made The Clash really endure- it's got to be down to the songwriting.

And I put that mostly down to Mick, or the conflict between Mick and Joe-

the artistic conflict between those two-

which have made so many great, great songs.

Rock'n'roll meant an enormous amount to young people in those days.

It was the process by which attitudes changed,

and The Clash were the next wave of revolutionaries.

So, in the political framework,

I saw them as terrorists getting away with murder.

The thing about The Clash, really, I think,

is that it operates on a multiplicity of levels.

You know, it's like, on one hand, it's performance art,

it's street theater.

It's the poetry of satire, really, you know?

I mean, this whole thing about, kind of, The Clash being a political group-

I never saw them as a political group.

I thought they were a satirical group. They were pointing fingers

at the things that needed to have fingers pointed at.

I think we did something good, and that just turned out,

probably a mixture of luck

and fortunate timing.

Timing was very important.

But nothing you could've contrived in any way.

It just turned out that way.

I am punk.

Bernie would always describe The Clash early on

as a very creative situation.

And I think he genuinely did believe in that.

I think he believed in the group very, very much.

Bernie was, I called it,

an intellectual of fashion and the zeitgeist.

When I went to his house in Camden, he had an empty room,

and in the room were these piles of magazines-

Marxist Today, mainly- and they were piled up high.

About two foot high. He used those instead of chairs.

Compared to Malcolm McLaren, Bernie was the real deal.

He was the one who was kind of fueling McLaren,

who was a bit of a dilettante and would flit onto the next thing.

But a lot of that was Bernie.

Bernie came up with the name "the Sex Pistols. "

For a few months, he had to sort of sit there

while McLaren took the Pistols

to become the most notorious band in the country.

Bernie Rhodes, to me, is like "The Emperor's New Clothes. "

He's just someone who's pumped himself up into something

that he wasn't really as a person, as a man, as a manager.

He was very much always, sort of,

on the coattails of Malcolm McLaren, trying to copy his way,

but without the finesse, without the charm,

and without the artistic vision.

But he wanted a band that would almost be his mouthpiece.

Joe and Paul especially loved Bernie.

And he did bring so much

great stuff to the table that I can't make fun of it.

He wound them up in the right way. He told them not to be pussies.

He said, you know, "Don't talk about love,

and don't talk about cars, talk about politics. "

Bernard Rhodes is, like, really-

You gotta consider him as a member of The Clash,

because he did put, obviously, a lot of ideas into the band.

So it's a very unusual situation where you get, like, a manager

who's not, like, aloof from the band.

He's actually part of the creative process of it, I suppose.

I would say he's not a good manager.

He didn't understand how to keep things together, how to solve problems.

He only understood this sort of conflict management.

But having said that,

you wouldn't have The Clash if Bernie hadn't done that.

Well, he's a very intelligent guy.

He's always thinking outside the box,

and always got something to say

in terms of what you should do,

which is very good if you need to know

what you need to do.

You know, you should always remain open to things,

and Bernie was always very challenging.

And that's, like, kind of gets your mind going, you know?

So it's like a big part of things.

But it didn't-

The only trouble is, that he wasn't sharing with us

as much as he should've done, probably.

He didn't like telling you about what he was organizing.

He liked to sort of surprise you with things, you know?

He was an easy figure of fun for the band to, you know,

plant a piece of cheese on his head while you're talking to him

so that you're collapsing laughing

when he's telling you about the Paris riots.

But, on the other hand, he had some brilliant ideas.

Bernie Rhodes would arrive at the door.

I'd open the door, he'd push past me, up the stairs,

and not speak a word to me, not even look me in the eye.

He's a rude, socially inept person.

Asshole.

Sorry.

He's an asshole.

Bernie's managerial technique

as such, if it existed,

was something which was obscured.

But I know that Joe leaned heavily

on his opinion.

You know, like, what do we do next?

What are we doing? What does it all mean?

Bernie could always reduce it to a simple

sort of political thing.

I think Bernie is one of the unsung heroes

of music management.

I just think it was great that he brought this

kind of mad anarchic

political energy to the band,

and that he ran the band like it was

some kind of military operation

where people were expendable.

In the autumn of 1978,

the increasing conflict between Bernard Rhodes and the band,

and in particular Mick,

led to the sacking of the manager.

To see his face so beaten in fear

Just around the corner in the English Civil War

Still at the stage of clubs and fists

Hurrah, hurrah

Well-known face got beaten to bits

Hurrah

Your face was blue in the light of the screen

Watched the speech, animal scream

New party army marching right over our heads

After two years with Blackhill Management,

run by Peter Jenner and Andrew King,

who had previously managed Pink Floyd,

Bernie was reinstated as the manager.

It is worth noting that during the absence of Bernie,

The Clash produced some of their most enduring and inspirational work:

London Calling and Sandinista!

Before Bernie came back, they had Blackhill Management,

and they were all really great people, as well.

It was a whole organization. But I think they just-

The Clash felt they were just too nice and safe for them.

Bernie had been sacked.

Then they'd come back,

probably cap in hand, you know?

"Please come back and save us. "

He wasn't gonna blow it this time. He was going to-

He was going to assert himself.

Bernie Rhodes came along and got them away from there

and took over.

I understand it was Joe

who insisted that Bernard come back and sort it out,

to give them fresh impetus, to give them new ideas.

Well, 'cause we were reeling

out of control completely, yeah.

And he was like- He sensed that.

It's not that we wanted to be in control,

but we were just, like, drifting in space, I reckon.

They weren't comfortable with things running around smoothly.

And so, whenever Bernie was around,

then things became chaos and madness,

and that's what they liked.

Joe and Paul, that is.

I think Mick was a bit more happy being comfortable.

He wanted to sack everybody, all our crew and stuff.

But everybody seemed to be going along with it,

and I didn't want to go along with it.

All the guys that had been working with us for so long,

and they wanted to sack them.

Mick hated the fact Bernie was back.

Because he always thought he was out to scam him.

I'm watching you.

He always knew that it was something to do with his money,

or something like that- that he was out to scam him.

But he had him sussed from the beginning.

But to keep Joe sweet, he went along with it.

Joe was the one who wanted the edge put back in the band,

and he felt that with Bernie you had that edge,

whereas the rest of the band didn't really have much respect-

I mean, Paul did a big mural that was on the wall of rehearsals

of a naked Bernie getting shat on by pigeons.

I lived with Kosmo Vinyl,

who became The Clash publicist.

He was obsessed by The Clash before he worked for them.

What do you do for The Clash?

Whatever needs doing.

Anything. Wash a pair of socks,

go out and see the record company...

Kosmo was the press man.

He used to work with Ian Dury before, as a press man.

And Kosmo couldn't get anything done.

He influenced the way the band looked,

with that kind of, you know-

"This is the stuff you stick on your hair. "

He steamed in, basically.

Someone's really smart

Complete control, that's a laugh

During 1981, at Bernie's instigation,

and due to the financial black hole the band were in,

The Clash had played three sell-out residencies

in London, Paris, and New York.

We just went to New York to play seven dates in a club there.

But when we got there, the whole thing blew up,

and we made it onto, like, the news at 10:00 and TV,

and that was something that we hadn't done before.

The Clash were to do eight shows at Bond's,

but when the disco packed in more than 3,600 fans-

the club only legally holds 1,800-

all the trouble began.

So it turned out that because the police shut the club down-

And so we ended up playing 17 shows there.

Well, that was really exciting.

Especially for me, too,

because it was three weeks at Bond's.

It was like Beatlemania in terms of fans screaming.

None of that shit had ever happened.

Police everywhere.

And each show was sold out to capacity,

and I was the deejay.

The Bond's residency was possibly one of-

That was one of the greatest things that The Clash did.

And it was so important in breaking them,

for The Clash to bring New York to a standstill

and get on the evening news.

And somehow,

Bernie managed to place The Clash, from West London,

smack in the middle of Manhattan,

and make them the center point

of the whole New York explosion going on at that time.

When they were going to New York and Mick got into hip-hop,

I think that's when they started really going in different directions.

Joe kicked back to rockabilly.

Joe wants to kind of, you know, do, sort of,

really, probably just straight rock'n'roll songs.

And Mick is much more interested in hip-hop,

you know, in kind of the emerging rap culture.

New musics, generally.

I used to get on their nerves because of it a bit,

because I was so, you know, enthusiastic about it.

One of the things about Combat Rock

is that it's the first album that's been made

since Bernie Rhodes has returned.

So he wants a commercial record,

and he's very certain of this.

Mick is already being reined in by his instructions,

and he's telling Mick, you know, to write commercial songs.

But Mick does insist that the record is made in New York.

Bernie- I remember him coming in and making a criticism

that there was too many things going on-

that there wasn't one direction.

'Cause he wanted to really get back to a bit like the first album.

Mick started experimenting again.

And then they go off on the tour of Japan and Australia,

Hong Kong, Thailand.

And in Australia, they have this crazy idea

they're gonna mix it after they've done the shows.

When all their ears are shot. A complete waste of time.

We ended up with a lot of music, a lot of tapes,

and I wanted to boil it down onto one album

and stop mucking around, you know,

and refine it down to the essence.

And Mick was into,

"Let's have a 12-inch or two 12-inches with the album. "

And I wouldn't have minded if the tracks had merited it,

but I felt like they were all too long.

It was becoming too self-indulgent, and I felt like the opposite.

Y eah, that was the time when we found out we couldn't-

I didn't know how to mix records anymore.

We had to call Glyn Johns in at the last minute to mix the album,

because we had made an attempt to mix it ourselves

that we hadn't been able to do.

And Glyn Johns mixed it in a week.

Bernie gets Glyn Johns to remix the album, you know.

Joe is down there very early.

Mick, as is his tradition, arrives rather late,

by which time- half of his stuff's the first day-

some of his stuff's been taken off already.

Mick Jones of The Clash.

He saved the album, really.

And Mick-

his view was that I ruined his music and stuff like this.

He didn't like it. But actually now

he does think that it was the right way to mix it.

Combat Rock. On Epic Records and cassettes.

I think it's a good job that it came out as one- Combat Rock.

It was good after all that. You know what I mean?

It was a bit painful at the time,

but it's a much better record than the other one,

I think.

That's another one of those cymbal level things.

That was something that went a bit wrong for Bernie.

Originally, they were gonna start touring,

and it's commonly assumed that tickets weren't going very well

and that they'd had to pull some kind of publicity stunt

to sell more tickets-

i. e. make Joe disappear.

Yeah, I just dropped out of a UK tour,

and I went to Paris instead and got drunk.

And he did end up in Paris, doing the marathon.

He went a lot longer than everyone thought.

And Bernie, particularly,

who sort of encouraged this little disappearing act

to shake up the band and get some publicity-

I think he was rather surprised.

They had all agreed that they were drinkers and smokers,

and so that was gonna be what The Clash were.

They just smoked dope and drank,

and everybody liked to drink a lot.

They loved to smoke, you know, pot. California pot.

They go, "Where can we get some?"

So, I call my friend Glenn up, and I go- He's a big pot dealer in San Francisco.

I go, "Glenn, you gotta get down here.

Come down to Monterey. We're with these guys.

We're gonna have a great time, you know? Bring some stuff. "

He goes, "How much you want me to bring?" I said, "Bring it all!"

So in a couple hours, he's down there with, like, a duffel bag full of stuff.

He couldn't work without

getting up in the morning and having his first spliff.

So, anytime you hear him say he's not going until spliff comes,

that is quite true.

You know, I think The Clash- It wasn't a church picnic.

In Japan, you just get loads of alcohol.

And somehow they would get crushed aspirins and things like that.

Oh, yeah. Different-

Crushed aspirins and everything, just to keep them going.

Like, I remember in the recording studio,

you know, things like, "Hey, where's Topper?"

And then you would know that he was in the bathroom doing drugs.

And everybody would roll their eyes.

He'd borrow any note off you for approximately three minutes

and then hand it back, rolled up, yeah.

Yeah, I'll manage, you know.

Give me some more of that.

Topper was marginalized from the very beginning, really.

He was the drummer from Dover.

You know, he wasn't a London boy.

All the press focus

was on the other three,

never on Topper, and he was a big part of the band.

His fucking drumming held it together, you know?

So Topper started to spend more time

on the road with the crew,

and some of the crew were heavy drug takers.

And that's where his drug habit really mushroomed.

In terms of new drummers

that had come along in that decade,

Topper was the best.

Topper was the "Engine Room," as Joe liked to call him.

Topper was a genius at what he done, and I-

You know, I completely applaud his energy.

He was a great performer.

Every show, he would come off that stage completely exhausted.

They lost patience with him.

I wish they hadn't, 'cause they knew that Topper

was the best drummer in the whole world, too,

but they just couldn't tolerate the junkiness stuff.

So that's what happened.

Topper was the only one who was heavily into that sort of thing,

and it took me a long time to find out.

I found out properly in New Zealand when he started shaking,

and I didn't know what was wrong with him.

And everybody realized.

Then, really, they should have said,

"Topper is ill.

Let's get him some treatment, some help,

and we'll step back for six months or however long it takes. "

But, instead, he was sacked.

That's not very good, is it?

I thought we could work something out,

but the times were like,

you needed it, you need it now.

We needed it now, and we didn't have it then,

and so that's what happened.

But I didn't want that to happen.

Not at all. But that did happen,

and probably that was inevitable, as well.

You can't run a thing if you're-

So, yeah, you're a drug band, sure,

but it just gets too much after a while.

Joe and Paul and Mick were, you know, really sad about it,

but they felt they had no choice.

And I think Topper was really shocked and hurt

and was hoping that, "Hey, give me another chance,"

but they didn't feel like giving him another chance.

If you can't do it, you can't do it.

You get to a point where you can't do it anymore.

And so, you're too messed up.

I thought he was in fantastic shape as a musician.

It was more the fear of a dependent drug getting into the band

than what it was actually doing to Topper.

It was more of a mental thing

that particularly Joe had,

that if heroin came in, it would be destructive.

Would you please say hello to Mr. Terry Chimes on drums.

Terry's great. It was, like, a good thing Terry came back.

You know what I mean? 'Cause it was still like-

He was with us originally, and so he's still part of the same thing.

There's, like, continuity to that that was really good.

There was this sort of poetry about the flow of The Clash

and, you know, the people around them.

There was a synchronicity about the actions of The Clash

which suggested that they were a pure, intuitive art movement, really.

I liked playing with Terry, as well. Yeah, I liked playing with-

Both of them are fantastic drummers, you know.

So I liked it. I did enjoy it.

I still enjoyed playing the numbers and stuff.

There was still-

Most of the time, it was still pretty good

when we were on the stage.

I'm runnin'

Police on my back

I've been hidin'

Police on my back

There was a shooting

Police on my back

And the victim, well, he won't come back

You could tell the music changed.

The beat wasn't there.

You could tell.

And Topper had a certain way of bashing the drums.

You knew it was somebody else.

There was no other drummer like him.

You could tell from the crowd's reaction and all.

This is how The Clash worked, right?

They had a week to find a new drummer.

And as far as I understand it,

they didn't even have any rehearsals- full band rehearsals-

before they started the American tour,

because Paul had already left to go to America.

We had to rehearse without Paul,

with Mick playing the bass, and then Joe.

So it was all very chaotic.

But I kind of liked that chaos in my life.

I enjoy chaos. You know, it's kind of uplifting and exciting.

Terry was a professional enough,

you know, player to just slot in with that.

And, you know, they sounded good.

I mean, you know, he was a great drummer.

I think the problem would've been if they had tried to record with him.

In some ways, it was good getting Terry back.

But I think it was hopeless no matter who they would've got then,

because Topper had gone, and it wasn't the same.

And after Topper had gone, Mick's days were numbered.

It was kind of interesting to see how far we'd got

and what it was like to play that kind of thing,

and how strange it was with our numbers

and what we were about.

To be in that kind of arena-style thing-

it was a really interesting, memorable thing.

The band were really happy.

Because how can you not be in your twenties

and be really happy that you're succeeding,

and that people like it, and you're getting all this dough?

They were best when they were small and angry

and not the stadium rockers.

You know, they were still a great stadium rock band,

and, you know, the American audiences love that and everything.

But for me and for British audiences,

they were at their best when they were hard and angry and poor.

We haven't ate since we've been here.

We've been here three days. We haven't had a thing to eat yet.

But the dough can be the problem,

because, you know, it's kind of a clich�

to say that, you know, people write their best music

when they're starving.

Well, people say that for a good reason.

And, you know, when they had all their angst and energy

and were rebelling because everything was fucked up with them-

they had no money and blah, blah, blah-

you know, the fight was for real.

When they cracked it, really, with Combat Rock,

everything seemed a bit frenetic,

and everyone seemed to be a bit generally stressed, actually.

It felt to me like, in the first time around,

they were all arguing with me,

and now they're arguing with each other.

That's the first thing. Bernie's role had changed.

He was less in control. He was more...

getting orders from Joe rather than giving the orders.

That was kind of reversed.

And I think during that year, '82, we did an awful lot of touring.

We went everywhere and did loads of work.

Probably worked too hard, I think.

And there was a tension developed between Mick on one side

and Joe and Paul on the other.

And so, I was under immense pressure.

And so, Bernie said to me, "Mick, why don't you give your lawyer

power of attorney, and then I'll work it out with him?"

You know what I mean? And so, I felt under pressure at the time,

and I said okay for that period.

Then he went to the others and went,

"Look what Mick's done. He doesn't want to talk to you anymore.

He wants you to talk to his lawyer. "

And it fucked everything up.

And so, that was what was happening backstage, you know.

But backstage, it was always, like, a bit chaotic.

It was, like, manipulative, because-

Also, we weren't really told what was going on.

And so, by that time,

we'd stopped talking to each other a bit, you know?

Well, more than a bit.

We'd stopped pretty much talking to each other,

because we just were off on our own trips,

and we didn't know what we were doing.

We were just like a bunch of idiots thrust into-

into the spotlight, you know?

The more they cranked up the heat

and made us work harder and harder, the more that tension-

It was like a hothouse, you know? It just got hotter and hotter.

Really, it was so much work

that it was killing Joe.

It was just work, work, work.

When you're working at that pressure, you know, no one's thinking.

There's no time for yourself

to sit down and think about what's going on with your life,

and what's going on with what you're doing, with your art, with your creativity.

And I think they did- They kind of, you know-

They really kind of imploded

through a sort of madness that took over.

Maybe everyone was infected with it.

But Joe certainly was.

Now they had it,

everybody started taking liberties.

Darling, you gotta let me know

Should I say or should I go

If you say that you are mine

I'll be here till the day I die

Come on and let me know

Should I stay or should I go

It was like an unstoppable monster.

And it was gonna become, at that point-

That they were gonna become the biggest band in the world.

And I later found out that by this time, I think,

Joe and Paul and Bernie

were already plotting the right time

for Mick to be sacked.

Should I stay or should I go

I always heard various discussions about that,

but I didn't really think it would ever happen.

I knew they were disgruntled with him.

It had a lot to do with them being successful,

and Joe and Paul wanted to carry on

and just keep rocking and rolling

and not caring about the money and not buying things,

whereas Mick wanted to buy a nice house and a nice car.

He got a girlfriend who was a model, you know.

He started living the pop star life that they were making fun of,

and so that became sort of dangerous.

Oh, yeah, I'm absolutely sure that Joe was frightened

of the success that he got.

Oh, I think that was the case right from the very first day,

because we used to argue about it.

You know, I think it was Joe that said, "We don't want any money. "

I said, "What the hell you talking about- don't want any money? Don't be silly. "

Because I said, "If you want to be successful, the best band in the world"-

he always wanted to be the best band in the world-

"you're gonna sell millions of records, and millions of pounds come in,

so what are you gonna do with it?"

You know, the contradiction of, kind of, his upbringing,

his squatting background,

what he was supposed to be, plus money,

is really a complex issue for him.

'Cause he's a bit naive, as well. Joe is a bit naive.

That's an important point, you know?

I mean, you know, he's developed in many ways-

creatively, artistically-

but he has a few basic things

he hasn't really figured out about life.

I think if you're a band and you've got a set of ideals,

you're bound to be a bit-

kind of concerned if, like, suddenly what you're doing

is the opposite of what you kind of set out

and said you were gonna do in the first place.

I mean, some people say doing the Who dates

was the beginning of the end, because they'd suddenly

hit the roof that they were trying to avoid when they started.

They were playing stadiums.

To be touring stadiums with them-

in a way, it was traumatic,

because it was like seeing where we might end up.

Because we were sort of supporting the Who,

and they were pulling the crowd in.

And I could see that in order to get to that position,

you'd have to become a travesty of yourself.

It really got to me, thinking that your whole life would be one long-

like, doing a photo shoot in the morning,

and then shooting some crap video in the afternoon,

and then doing some interview,

and the amount of promotion needed to drive-

You know, it would just destroy a person.

It was becoming too much for us, in a way.

We didn't know how to handle

all that tension or something.

We didn't really know how to handle it all.

We never really thought about it when we were going for it-

what it would actually be like.

We didn't have any plans.

In any decent group, there's always tension.

That's how it works.

No one gets anywhere by being nice to each other.

Mick can be really laid back.

And everybody's ready to go,

but Mick would take about another hour

to get to the tour bus, you know.

While we're all sitting on the bus,

then Mick would come along, spliff in mouth.

He's ready to go now.

Everybody was pissed off about it.

Joe- he would go,

especially on his own,

not to be with Mick.

Like, he would take a car.

Everybody else would be on the coach.

Joe would take a car and travel on his own,

'cause he was pissed off with him

just doing his own thing.

Never wanted to be on time.

He just didn't care.

He didn't see the reason why he had to be on time.

We all had to wait on Mick.

That was going on every day.

Every day, every night.

Even to go to the sound check, to go to the show,

to catch the plane...

Every day, we leave at Mick's time.

And it was two camps, really, wasn't it?

It was Joe and Mick.

And you've got Kosmo's influence, as well.

I think he more or less stamped his flag

in the ground at Joe's feet.

And Mick was looked upon as this camp,

you know, rock'n'roll star.

He was a rock'n'roll star.

But the Strummer camp didn't like him to make it obvious

that he was prepared to enjoy the fruits of their success.

Mick was good at dealing with the music business,

and he wanted to join it,

but he didn't see that necessarily as being against his principles.

Mick was like, "Hey, we just made some money.

We haven't made any money forever.

We've just been working hard. Let's take a break. "

Which is reasonable.

But to Joe and Paul and Bernie, it was unreasonable.

They're such different people.

In a way, it was quite a paradox.

So you had Mick, who,

from what I know when I met him,

he was in a tower block,

and you had Joe from a relatively privileged background.

It was funny how they took on the almost opposite characters

to what they really-

You see, like, Mick was the working-class guy,

and then Joe was sort of trying

to cover up his background,

as if anyone gave a shit, basically.

I think we were becoming more successful,

which was making Joe more tense, generally.

And I think Mick was kind of enjoying the success,

and Joe was feeling more pressure from it.

Yeah, I was out on my own, I suppose, yeah.

I was, like, pretty difficult to get along with,

'cause things weren't going my way,

so I was in a bad mood all the time.

These frictions reminded me of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

I mean, you could not be more poles apart than their personalities.

But for a while, it worked in The Clash.

Gave them an edge. But in the end,

it drove too big a wedge between them.

And then there were other factors coming in,

like the Bernie Rhodes factor.

Towards Christmas,

there was serious conversations about what's gonna happen next.

And this idea came up that, you know, Joe and Paul were saying,

"We don't know if Mick is gonna be involved. "

And, actually, looking back, I didn't really take them very serious.

I thought, "No, that can't be right. That's silly. "

I don't know. I didn't really-

I found it very odd to imagine The Clash without Mick.

Wow. No, I never knew anything about that. I don't know.

We were going really fast, and so we don't really-

didn't have much time for reflection

at that particular time, you know?

You never know anything.

You never know what's gonna happen the next minute.

Something could change.

I can understand that.

Early in 1983,

Joe decided to make a home movie of sorts.

Perhaps in an attempt to restore harmony

where there was now discord.

I was, like, cast as the bad guy,

and...

we just acted out a part.

Mick, in the movie, was really great, really funny,

and he's just his own character, you know?

So, we all enjoyed doing that film.

I did write some music for it.

It was, like, a hip-hop symphony of the city,

and I think he didn't like it very much.

And then he didn't end up using any music,

'cause it was a silent film, and so he kind of left it like that.

He didn't like the music anyway, and so...

And then they put it on afterwards, that music.

It's all right.

Which is fine, you know what I mean?

You couldn't have any old music, because it's a silent movie, isn't it?

So I was just at a piano, playing...

I thought that would've been good. But after they, you know,

canned my symphonic ambitions,

it just pulled us further apart.

I'd been through a very tough year, and I've enjoyed it.

And we did all those things- all this touring in America and so on.

But at that point, I felt I'd been there and done it.

Yeah. There's a new English bloke

on the drums here.

He's called Peter Howard.

Peter Howard's drumming is obviously very different

to Topper's and to Terry Chimes'.

He's a bit of a meat-and-potatoes, sort of, almost John Bonham,

pound-those-drums sort of merchant.

You know, I was into prog rock and Yes and Genesis and stuff,

which is something I never told them in the interview.

I liked Pete. I liked Pete very much.

I wasn't really that involved in the audition process by that time.

We'd drifted a little bit.

A lot of people won't get no justice tonight

A lot of people won't get no supper tonight

'Cause the battle is getting harder

In this iration

Armagideon time

It's Armagideon

Paul always, I think, saw himself as a bit of a mediator, you know.

He was always kind of trying to get them to speak to each other.

There wasn't much tension, 'cause they didn't talk.

You know, it was very, kind of-

It wasn't much of an atmosphere in the dressing room.

It really wasn't.

We got a lot of money off of the US Festival-

a giant U. S. rock festival.

It's got something to do with the guy that invented Apple Computers-

Steve Wozniak.

Anyway, so he must have had a lot of money,

so he decided to throw the concert.

He probably lost his shirt on it.

Playing the US Festival, yeah, The Clash got half a million dollars.

But Van Halen, who topped the bill the next night,

get a million dollars.

But what was the great one-

The stroke that Bernie pulls about,

you know, how they're pulling the press conference-

that they are demanding, you know, that the promoters give,

you know, $100,000 of whatever it is,

to, you know, the dispossessed of East L.A.

You know, Bernie was, like, really sloganeering,

almost, like, and trying to use it.

And then we had just a massive pressure.

Like a massive- More- Even more so-

Even apart from the fact that it was a really big gig.

And it was my last gig.

There was a punch-up at the end, and then...

And then Paul jumped in,

and then it was, "Elvis has left the building. "

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please.

The Clash have left the building.

The Clash have left the building.

You needn't scream anymore, I guess.

Bernie said, "Let's do New Orleans music, "

and that was, like, kind of a way, I think-

probably his way to kind of get us back to refocusing.

But it was like, "Why would we wanna do that?"

You know what I mean? And so that was like-

We were really not on good terms

by the time we were trying to do New Orleans music in Camden Town.

We were in rehearsal rooms trying to do New Orleans music, and it was like-

Not that I've got anything against New Orleans music,

but it just seemed ridiculous.

And it was, like, soon after that, I was sacked.

Then I left.

One of the things about Mick, and it's undeniable,

is that he's always late.

Mick, you're late. They're waiting in there for you.

All right, Charlie.

And very significantly, on the day that he's fired,

Mick turns up early, and no one's there.

I was early for once, and so then I went up-

I thought, "Sod this. Is anybody else here?"

And they went "no. " So I went up to the bookshop

up the road, and then I came back.

And funny enough, Topper was there as well that day,

and he'd already left the group.

Just shows you how close we are anyway.

Mick just came up to me and he went, "You're not gonna believe this.

They just sacked me from my own band. "

And I said, "You're joking. "

And he said, "Yes. I'm going now. "

Gone. Went to his guitar case,

packed his guitars up, and gone.

And Joe looked around, looked around.

Then Joe looked at me and went, "Well, that's your boy.

If you want to, you can go as well.

That's your boy. Follow him then. "

Basically, we were fed up with each other by that time,

and so we'd had enough.

And we all got on our own trips.

Our own trips were, like- It wasn't the same.

You know, when we were all together at the start,

we were like, "Come on, guys, we can do this," you know?

Blindly going forward.

And then we did do it,

and then...

we started to fall apart.

We had to change the team,

because the atmosphere was too terrible to-

We've got so much work to do that we can't waste time

begging people to play the damn guitar, you know?

Bernie and Kosmo and Joe and Paul all thought,

"If we do that, we've solved all these problems. "

Actually, yeah, you solve a problem,

but you throw the baby out with the bathwater,

because the band is no longer the band it was.

At this point, you know, we were sort of grown men,

and, you know, as it's been reported,

you know, Mick did get a bit out of hand

in an Elizabeth Taylor way, with his moods and whatever.

But, you know, at the time, that's what we felt.

We felt, well, you know, we'd had enough.

Let's just kick him out, and to hell with the consequences.

After a while, you work together,

and you live in each other's pockets almost continually.

In our time, we didn't even have holidays where we could have a break.

So we just continued without any questions, so that-

Obviously, you know,

you get fed up with each other, and then the group splits up,

even though there must've been lots of other reasons,

you would think, contributing towards it.

You don't really see it happening at the time,

because you're going too fast to notice anything.

And then the next thing you know, it's like a car crash.

He always wanted holidays, and it was terrible,

'cause we always wanted to get on and do the job.

So, we had the tour set up...

And just about to start the tour, Mick's off on holiday.

So, obviously, we didn't do the tour, which is a bit of a pain in the neck.

They say I didn't want to tour, but I wanted to tour.

But I wanted to play some places that we hadn't played before,

or something like that, you know?

So it wasn't that I didn't want to tour,

but I wanted to play some other places.

They say I didn't want to tour, but I did.

But I wanted to play in Eskimo land.

A lot of people won't get no supper tonight

A lot of people won't get no justice tonight

Choose your faction

The one final thing that made me really go over the edge

was that he started to go on about his lawyer a lot

and say, "Well, my lawyer says this, my lawyer says that. "

And I didn't want that to come between us,

because we're a team, you know.

We decide what we're gonna do amongst ourselves.

We don't go and see lawyers about it. What do they got to do with it?

And when he started to say, "Well, my lawyer... "

"We can sign that publishing deal if my lawyer says it's okay... "

"I'll do this if my lawyer... "

I just said, "Well, go write songs with him then. "

Rock'n'roll history is littered with errors, isn't it?

But that is one that leaps out at you

as a mistake of poor management.

I mean, who was managing The Clash that week

when the decision was made to sack Mick Jones?

Bernie!

I was as sad as everybody, but I did see it coming,

because they were always talking about it.

Especially Bernie.

I don't think any other member of the band was relevant to Joe at that point,

apart from Bernie, because Bernie had a hold.

Asking Bernie back meant that Bernie-

he had his band back.

And Joe was very easily influenced by stronger personalities.

And Bernie was like a father figure.

When he spoke to The Clash,

it was always Mick who was the one that he sort of found

was the one who spoke back to him.

Let Bernie sort out those...

The others tended to sort of, like, more agree with him,

whereas Mick was more of a sort of...

You know, more of a strong individual.

Don't tell me to shut my mouth.

I just didn't understand why it would happen,

and I said to Bernie, "Did you try and stop him?"

And he said, "No. We're gonna reinvigorate the band.

It's gonna be a new thing, you know?

We're gonna go forward, and we've been looking backwards. "

I just felt like he wanted to go and do other things,

and so, eventually, I had to give him a push in that direction.

Joe rang me.

He said, " I've got rid of that wanker.

Are you with me, or are you with him?"

The first audition was up in Camden, up in the Electric Ballroom,

and there were about 60 other guitar players there.

And then there was a second audition at rehearsal rehearsals.

More of the same. Playing along to a tape.

I was a punk, you know. I was in the Cortinas.

I was a guy that was playing in a band in 1976,

you know, and was making records in 1977.

So my influences were the same as theirs.

You know, hundreds of people out there would give their right arm

to play the guitar for The Clash,

and, like, that's where Vince and Nick came in.

I took a day off work and went up there to,

you know, audition for a band.

I don't know. I was just quite-

quite drunk.

Extremely drunk.

I was put in a room with four initially-

four other guys who I knew of-

to learn a bunch of songs.

And then about five or six weeks in, they said,

"Oh, and there's another guitar player coming. He's coming in today. "

No warning, nothing.

So that was a bit of a shock.

Yeah, I thought I was gonna be the main guy.

There was a little bit of a conflict there, you know?

We both thought, "Who's going to be the one?"

Oh, another guitar player?

What, you mean you're not gonna play guitar, Joe?

Your name is Strummer. What's going on? You know.

So it was explained to me...

You know, new look, new idea...

You know, two guitarists means

that there isn't one person replacing Mick,

et cetera...

I don't know what Vince likes musically,

because he didn't discuss things musically.

And Vince, now and again, when there was no one looking,

would play the chords from a Yes song

or from a Genesis song, just to kind of-

It was kind of winking at me that he knew-

You know, it was like, kind of, yeah, I know.

They seemed to me to be the wrong choice at that time,

because what Bernie was saying was that it was gonna reinvigorate The Clash.

Looking at it, I didn't see how you were gonna reinvigorate it

by bringing in people who were already enamored by it,

because all you were gonna do was reproduce

what was going on before.

And I just got very suspicious at that point

about what the band was gonna do.

I couldn't see how it was gonna break new ground.

Nick Sheppard was great. He was the part.

But Vince, I think, they could've done without.

It's just Spinal Tap, man.

You just turn it up and just fucking...

That's what I did.

Did Vince have a bad attitude?

Vince was hired for his attitude.

I went down to the audition, and Vince was the only person

who stood up and said-

In front of all the other guitar players and went,

"This is fucking crap!"

And "I'm not fucking playing this shit!"

"Oh, he's got attitude. "

And they practically kind of went, "Right.

That's our man right there," you know?

Without even really hearing what he was like as a musician.

So they hired him for attitude.

What they maybe didn't get

was that when you hire someone for attitude,

you get their attitude,

not the one you think you're gonna get.

Which is, yeah, again- Yeah, sure,

it's kind of a Bernie Rhodes type thing, you know?

Especially when Bernie became more established

and wants more back end, and once Mick had gone,

it was about kind of getting everyone

to kind of, you know, live rough practically.

You know, so my wages went down to practically nothing.

There was no means of support any other way at all, you know.

Obviously, there was a great deal of money around, you know,

but not for me

and not for Nick and not for Vince either.

The new musicians are all on 150 quid a week.

Well, of course it's a con.

The whole thing is a con by then, isn't it?

Even rock'n'roll is a con.

100 pounds a week? I can make that and more-

more money than that just by...

fucking selling my ass, you know,

and make more money than 150 quid a week.

You go around the planet,

making piles and piles and piles of fucking cash

for a bunch of people

who were supposed to be going around, going like,

"Oh, we're so humanitarian.

We love the people. We're so socialist.

We love looking after the band. "

You know, blah-dee-blah.

And they're just "corporated" into the bloody system.

You know, they'd been taken over. They were "corporated," you know?

It's all about, kind of, making life difficult

potentially to make great music.

It was like a corporation, and you work with...

You got your guitar broom,

and you're walking around, and you're sweeping the floor.

I've worked in a lot of warehouses,

and they're all those sort of jobs and crap.

And you don't have any say.

You don't have any say in anything.

You just do what you're told.

And you do what you're told to get the money

and keep the thing moving along, you know?

I don't deal with this drug-related culture anymore.

It's all hippie stuff.

And all of a sudden, nobody was allowed to get stoned.

Nobody was allowed to take drugs.

There was a real kind of, you know, regime going on

about what people could and couldn't wear, you know,

and it was pretty bad.

And the anti-drugs thing really is also-

That's a kind of, you know, back-handed way of criticizing Mick,

who everyone knows is a big spliff-head, of course.

But so did Joe.

Just as much.

There was a lot of slagging and public stuff going on from their side.

Mick never says a bloody word,

which I thought was really cool, actually.

I didn't even like what they were starting to wear.

They were starting to wear sort of

commercially produced punk outfits.

That was the moment in which I felt that Joe was being exploited,

that The Clash was being pushed forward for other reasons.

I think it mainly happened

not just for Bernie's political reasons,

but for financial reasons as well,

because it had become a monster.

We wanted to strip it down back to punk rock roots

and see what's left and see how it progresses from there.

I think Kosmo had baked up this theory

that they would be "the" punk rockers,

king punks,

and take it back to basics almost.

Yeah, I just feel like

the blander the rest of the music is getting,

the more it needs for something that's raw again.

The trouble is, Joe is coming out with all this stuff about, you know,

going back to basics and whatever.

But if you look at him,

the state of his soul is fairly evident,

and you don't really necessarily believe what he's saying in those interviews.

Actually, you're not convinced that he's convinced.

Punk was a rebellion against self-indulgence.

Punk said, "To hell with self-indulgence. It's meaningless. "

Well, he seems to be actually behaving like a dictator, to be honest.

And he also seems extremely angry.

Sometimes you think it's just contrived anger,

probably for the sake of the media.

But, actually, I think he's imploding with anger, actually.

The message is, now is the time

to cut everything out

that's been wasting all your time.

If you want to be out of control,

now is the time!

It's The Clash!

Down the road

Came a junco partner

Boy, he was loaded

As can be

He was knocked out

Knocked out, loaded

We started playing in America.

Big gigs. 15,000 people.

Stadium rock, you know?

Songs they knew. They all had a great time.

I did try to phone up all the promoters in the world

and tell them I was coming out with The Clash as well,

just to mess with them a little bit.

But apart from that, I was fine with it.

I was only kidding.

It was a complete wind-up, you know,

just to make Bernie go crazy.

Touring America. You're 24. You're single.

Everybody loves you. Everybody wants to take you out

and show you the town, buy you drinks.

Jeez, what a hard job.

We were driving massive drives,

and I don't think there was a toilet on the bus, and it was uncomfortable.

You know what Greyhound buses are like. They're for poor people.

It wasn't as much fun as the early Clash tours, definitely.

Everybody tried.

And especially Joe and Paul,

you know, were trying to make it work

and have a successful band,

but it was just very, very difficult.

It's hard to replace people. It's hard to replace your youth.

You can't have money and pretend that you don't.

You know, all this stuff goes into the whole punk rock picture.

It doesn't go into every rock'n'roll story,

but it goes into punk rock,

'cause punk rock is supposed to mean a certain thing.

You know what I mean?

It means youth and rebellion.

It wasn't a good band anymore.

You know, they did the moves and stuff,

and you're hearing the songs you want to hear,

but there wasn't a focus, and nobody really knew

what they were doing.

Pete was a good guy.

You know, as it must've been consequently the group after I left.

He must've found it very difficult circumstances.

And it's, like, very difficult if you're not actually

emotionally connected to the songs that you're playing as well.

If you haven't lived the songs, how difficult it must be

to try to play them and sing them with any conviction.

Bernie Rhodes thought, you know,

that there's some more guys he can tell what to do,

so he had full control.

Joe just sort of decided to let Bernie

do whatever he wanted.

But Paul didn't say much.

He was happy just to stand there, follow Joe.

But those guys- I felt real sorry for them,

because they could not handle it.

And then, you know, two guys to play Mick's part?

And not only that, but the audience would tell them

they're no Mick Jones.

And at times, they just-

you know, you could see them crumbling on stage.

They tried their best, man,

but no way could they handle it.

They were just playing the songs.

Mick used to play different solos all the time.

He used to add things or throw something away.

But these guys- it was just like going through the motions.

It wasn't their fault.

Joe's dad passes on

in the autumn of 1984,

while they're on, you know, the dodgy Clash tour of Britain,

and he just goes to the funeral.

There's a gig that night. Leaves to go to the gig.

He doesn't have any time to mourn it.

And from what I understand,

no one in the rest of the group was really told about it.

He disappeared for two days, and we didn't even know

he'd gone to his father's funeral.

Then, at the same time, you know, his mother is ill.

She's got cancer. She was in a hospice.

He's going to visit her regularly.

He's been in a crisis, really, ever since Mick's kicked out of the group.

He was quite ripe to be steered by Bernie.

He was quite vulnerable.

Very strong guy, but he was very vulnerable.

He must have felt like he was gonna take over the world with Bernie.

Bernie ran the band like it was some military operation.

Yeah, I mean, we had a lot of band meetings all the time,

and then there'd be a lot of, "And you-", you know?

"And you- And you wore a checked shirt.

What fucking band do you think this is, Big Country?"

Bernie, Joe and Kosmo

obviously had an agenda,

and Bernie wanted that agenda to proceed,

and so he would use what he thought

were the appropriate tactics to get a result.

Kosmo, Joe and Bernie

all did an amount of bullying,

but Vince was probably a lot more sensitive to it.

He might have taken it a bit more personally.

I was bullied from the day one.

God, for fuck's sake.

The guy fucking was laying into me

from the day I joined, almost, isn't it?

Controlling them, telling them who's the boss.

He's the boss. "Do what I say. " That sort of thing.

But I wouldn't call that bullying.

I just thought he wanted them to get on with it, and don't slack.

The band was a band for about four weeks,

and then Bernie jumped in and started kicking butt

and pushing our fucking asses.

And that was the end of that, you know?

You just, like, become slaves

to The Clash machine.

I don't think Vince was any more targeted

than anybody else.

I don't think that Bernie succeeded

in what he was trying to do with any of us.

But I know what they were trying to do, and perhaps-

I don't want to be too positive about anything Bernie did,

but perhaps, in some kind of way,

it wasn't a terrible idea to try and get five people to work

and bond, you know, and make them into a gang.

So, in October 1984,

Joe goes down to Granada, in Spain.

And it's kind of a bit of a pilgrimage for him.

He needs to get away from things. He needs a creative place to think.

He wanted to visit the grave of Federico Garc�a Lorca,

the great surrealist poet, dramatist,

who was murdered in the Spanish Civil War.

He meets this group called 091,

a Spanish group who he wants to produce.

He said that he had to fire Mick Jones

because Mick Jones smoked too much joints.

And he said that

while he was preparing a joint.

We finished the American tour, and we came home,

and there was, kind of, some time off.

Obviously, the next job was to make a record.

So the first idea was,

it would be Joe, Norman Watt-Roy,

Pete and, I think, Mickey Gallagher.

We got together with Joe to do a bit of jamming

in the studio in Camden.

And what do you know?

I was playing a Hammond. Joe wanted me to play a Hammond.

But when we went in and listened to it,

it did sound a bit Dylanish, you know?

So Bernie was in the control room,

and he wanted to change it, make it different,

so he put the organ out of phase with everything else.

So I walk in the studio, and I go, "What's going on? What's going on?"

And he was just, "Just trying to make it different, make it different. "

And I heard them rehearsing,

and they sounded bloody awful.

They sounded like pub rock. It was awful.

So that didn't happen.

That was the last I heard. When I did that session,

I didn't get asked back, so, you know...

I just took it that he didn't like it, you know?

And Joe was doing everything that Bernie said at the time.

Yeah, that was the kind of thing I noticed

when I went out to Munich with Joe.

Joe changed when he was around Bernie.

He kind of, like, was, "Yes sir, no, sir," to Bernie.

I don't think Joe became a yes-man to Bernie.

I think that he decided

on a course of action to take with Bernie

without realizing Bernie's ulterior motive,

which was to become a member of The Clash.

And I think by the time we got to make the record,

he had realized that that was going on,

and it didn't sit well with him.

But it was too late to go back.

He had to believe in what he was doing, and he told me that.

He said to me in Munich,

"I have to believe that this is the right thing to do. "

Joe deduces that Bernie Rhodes,

having seen the success Malcolm McLaren has had,

actually globally, with records like "Buffalo Gals"

and the Duck thing,

wants yet again to emulate his former partner

and become a star himself.

The decision was taken

that they would use this producer

called Jose Unidos, who didn't actually exist.

It was basically Bernie Rhodes

and Joe.

I wasn't surprised that Bernie was producing the record.

He's a megalomaniac.

He wanted to be in The Clash.

But it wasn't The Clash. It wasn't really The Clash.

You know, it was Joe trying to keep the thing going on his own.

He was obviously under an immense amount of pressure

to come up with new material that would fit the vein.

Once Mick had gone, that took the music out of the band.

And who was gonna do it now?

Bernie, with his drum machine?

You know?

I was never privy to the conversation

about using a drum machine on it

and getting Fayney to program the drums.

In an attempt to make it more contemporary? I don't know.

The new Clash album was actually an electronic album.

I did, you know, the majority of the drum programming on it.

And it was, I suppose...

It was supposed to be a new departure.

It was supposed to be a fresher, newer, bolder Clash.

That's what it was meant to be.

Well, the whole recording is a farce, you know?

The band aren't on it. It was done in different sessions.

You got session musicians playing on it.

Songs aren't very good.

Well, the only thing I ever did was to sit in a drum booth with the track

and told to play like I was throwing the drum kit

down the stairs, or...

Yeah.

It was hard work in the studio.

It was harder than I thought it was gonna be,

because the vibe wasn't there.

The busking tour

was a decision that me and Joe made in Munich

at the end of the recording,

after a conversation with Kosmo

about taking the band and doing something as a band.

Like, reconnecting as a band.

They seemed to think it was the best tour that they ever did.

They kind of set off, allegedly, with no money,

although Paul had a credit card.

We stood by the side of the motorway-

all of us dressed in, like, leather jackets

and leather jeans and T-shirts,

with our hair done nice, you know?

They had guitars, and I had a pair of drumsticks,

and I was supposed to find something to hit,

which was invariably a dustbin or a plastic chair.

That was really good fun. Some really, really good fun.

It was really believable, and Joe was fearless.

Absolutely fucking fearless about what he did.

And they kind of traversed the country for a bit.

A couple of weeks or so. And it seems to be quite successful.

By the time they get into Scotland, people have heard of this,

and, you know, they're getting quite big crowds.

Very quickly, as soon as people knew who we were,

there were thousands of people standing around.

We'd hand around the hat, and you'd get phone numbers

and drugs and money

and, you know, sexual invitations and stuff.

And it was all really good fun.

Eventually, I think that Joe lost his voice, I think,

and they'd basically come back to London,

much to Bernie's anger,

who felt that they should have kept going much longer.

Eight months later, he came from Munich, I think,

and he was really frustrated with the new record and said,

"That fucking Bernie Rhodes. I don't want to be more his toy. "

I said, "What's happening?" He said, "The Clash is over.

I don't want to know anything about Bernie, the band"...

And no more comments.

This is when we played in Roskilde.

We were on the bus going to the festival.

Bernie was giving it some at the front,

and I saw Joe shoot him a look of pure hate.

And that was kind of when I first realized

that this shit

was gonna hit the fan.

Obviously Joe had stopped believing.

In July that year,

I ran into Joe on the street, and he said,

"Come have a drink with me tonight,"

and I went to a place called 192 in Notting Hill.

And about midnight, he says, "I've got a big problem.

Mick was right about Bernie. "

Joe came up to me and said what a stupid mistake he made

and he shouldn't have never followed Bernie.

In tears. He just broke down.

He knew he'd made a mistake.

But by that time, Mick had started Big Audio Dynamite.

And he goes around to see Mick,

and Mick is actually waiting for a cab to take him to the airport,

'cause he's finished the first B.A. D. album.

And he's exhausted. He's going on holiday.

He's going to Nassau.

And so they have a spliff,

and then the cab comes after about five minutes.

Then the next thing, Joe gets on a plane and goes out to Nassau.

Doesn't know where he is.

When I arrived there, it was about 11:00 at night.

And I turned up to their villa,

and there was a guy in the swimming pool,

splashing around in the middle of the night, completely drunk.

It was Joe Strummer, and I learned

that he'd actually hired a bicycle

and cycled around the island for three days,

knocking on random doors,

trying to find Mick,

because he'd come there with a mission

of asking him to reform The Clash.

I mean, it was too late.

It was too late. You know, B.A. D. had started,

and all these characters were involved and up and running, and it was going,

and it was like, well, there was no way that that was gonna happen.

And I could see that Joe-

He was in pain at that point, you know?

He...

His life had gone out of kilter.

I'll tell you, the thing about Cut the Crap

is that you gotta put it in the context

of what was happening in Joe's life.

I mean, Joe, at that time was Bernie's foil.

I mean, he's the guy who's got the opportunity

to take control of this,

but he was having to deal with pretty bad issues

in his private life.

When Cut the Crap came out,

I listened to it with an open mind,

but...

to be honest,

it was in the title.

"This is England" was a good song.

I mean, it's really hard to fucking...

It's just really depressing, because "This is England"

is just such a tremendous song,

because it just represents what's going down, you know?

We don't have a fucking England anymore.

Everything is gone, is down the tubes, you know?

And it...

I heard it when it first came out, but I just couldn't stand it.

Considering the lyrical peaks

that Joe had reached on Combat Rock,

I just thought, "What's he done?"

Bernie thinks that, you know, he's, like, spotted a genre,

which is sort of electro, sort of hip-hop,

sort of cut-up stuff.

The idea hadn't worked- the drum machine idea.

I don't know what Fayney knew about it,

but it didn't exactly swing like a drum machine does, you know?

That's why you use them.

Because they keep time.

It wasn't the intention to go in and make a half-hearted record.

We genuinely wanted to make something

that people would go, "Wow. "

The thing is, that Joe and Bernie

were the kind of guys that if you said,

"Let's go crazy and do something completely off the wall,"

they'd go, "Yeah, let's do it. "

They needed someone to say, "Hang on. That won't work. "

But there's no one there to say that, 'cause without Mick there-

Mick would've said, "Well, that won't work. "

But without him there,

they could do something completely crazy,

and they wouldn't realize what a mistake it was

until it was out in the shops and, you know, too late.

I don't really remember, like, the bad reviews came out,

and Joe went, "Aw, fuck it. I'm out of here. "

I don't remember it like that.

I think that he pretty much was disgruntled

with the band and the record,

and then when the bad reviews came out,

it was probably the icing on the cake.

If there was a mistake, I've made it.

So, it's, like, November, December '85.

It finally disintegrates.

The last meeting that we had, you know, like, as a group...

We went into Joe's house, and he said, "I'm not gonna carry on,"

and he asked us not to carry on either,

and we all said that we wouldn't.

I think by that time, I don't think anyone really, really could give a fuck.

It was just flogging a dead horse.

I remember Pete saying, "You know, what you should do

is take out a retraction, if you like, in the papers- an open letter-

and we should go and record the album as a band. "

But, obviously, by the time that Joe had called this meeting,

that wasn't an option as far as he was concerned.

He was going to pay for a page

in every broadsheet newspaper and all the tabloids to have it printed,

saying, "Crap-cutting commencing,"

with this kind of public broadcast

of how the band

had basically been hoodwinked

by a political dictator-

Bernie.

They gave us 1,000 pounds in a sweaty envelope each,

and that was that, really.

That was the end of it, you know?

It should've ended considerably earlier than that,

but it just didn't.

I mean, I think everyone was very reluctant to let it go.

Bernie then saw The Clash as a brand-

brand Clash- which meant that you wouldn't

even have to have any members of The Clash in it.

When Joe said he was gonna leave, Bernie was gonna get a new singer.

Brand Clash.

I witnessed the auditions.

I went to the auditions for new singers,

because I thought I might find someone

that I could work with outside of that situation.

You know, or maybe have something to do with that situation,

but not as The Clash.

I know for a fact that Paul would never have been the lead singer of The Clash.

It was more Bernie, and possibly Kosmo,

trying to say, "Look, let's keep this going if you want to. "

"Do you want to do this?" and "Do you want to do that?"

And then I think Paul pretty much just said no.

The talk of the time with Bernie and Kosmo,

when we were auditioning for singers and stuff, was-

They were talking about football teams

and how players left and players came back.

That was the kind of rationale that they were using,

but it was patently bullshit.

But does he own the name "The Clash"?

He can't do it, 'cause otherwise he probably would do that, wouldn't he?

He'd have a version out there now, touring,

you know, if he owned the name.

Being in a band like The Clash,

you're in a situation that is full of extreme contradictions.

Now, The Clash actually were a manufactured band.

This is the paradox of it.

There can't be that many manufactured bands

that go on to get not just the recognition,

but to be considered one of the bands with the most integrity.

So, they did pretty well to survive.

The Clash that I played in was a fabrication, you know?

It was this me, and it was this guy, and it was this drummer.

But the school of thought is that The Clash were always a fabrication.

They were a band that was kind of made by, you know-

Well, if you'd listened to Bernie, he invented the world,

but he certainly takes this credit

for getting Joe and putting him with Mick.

I think The Clash, as a band,

were doomed by virtue of Bernie's interference

and Topper's drug problem.

I don't think there was ever gonna be a way

that you would be able to reconcile those things.

But I think that was the band it was supposed to be.

I think the musical aspect is key to the whole thing,

because, at the end of the day, they were a band.

And I think once a bunch of guys can't get into the same room together

and make the same sort of music that everyone likes, you know,

it's gonna fall apart very quickly, which is exactly what happened.

What happened, you know, when Mick Jones left?

Not a lot. Just happened. It was the same thing.

Running around onstage like a fucking monkey,

playing it, and making a loud guitar sound.

Much later on, you sort of think,

"Oh, yeah, I would have done it different. "

You may have done it different,

but I don't think the outcome would have been any different

even if you had, 'cause it's inevitable.

It's just a natural progression

that at the beginning, it was brilliant,

and then at the end, they were grabbing at different straws

to try to keep the band going,

'cause Joe and Paul really wanted to.

And it didn't really work, but they tried.

But I don't see it as so much a mystery

that, you know, when a new band, new movement-

punk was new-

that when you get a little bit older,

you just can't be a fucking crazy-ass punk

unless you're, you know, a loser.

It's funny how society takes something, absorbs it,

and sort of devalues it, and takes all the sort of "oomph" out of it

and makes it banal.

And that kind of happened with punk, and it had to happen with punk.

But I think you can see, over the last 30 years,

that the sort of real core of it has influenced a lot of people,

a lot of young people.

It's lasted because of the great truths in that music,

and also, you know, the wit with which those lyrics

and music is delivered.

And it kind of, you know, makes you smile.

And great truths, you know, told with a joke, tend to last.

The Clash, to me, was the best rock'n'roll band-

live band- when they were hot.

They spoke for the working class,

and they spoke for human rights.

Extraordinary group.

As Bernie Rhodes did say, "This is a very creative situation,"

and it was.

They did what they did,

and I think people should be grateful for that.

Most of the people I know will tell you that that band changed their lives.

Yes, so we did something good, obviously,

and that's why we should leave it at that.

When groups break up,

it's often very difficult for the various members,

and it often takes them years to come down from it,

and sometimes they don't succeed at all.

So, Joe certainly has got that going,

but also his terrible guilt for having kicked Mick out.

You know, "I was the one who blew it through classic hubris. "

Plus, his parents have both died in quick succession.

And he's prone to depression anyway.

And, basically, he really goes into one.

But Joe does still want, you know, in his heart of hearts,

to get The Clash back together.

Three weeks before Joe died,

he played a benefit gig in aid of the Fire Brigades Union.

It was at this show, in Acton, West London,

that for the first time in 20 years, Mick joined him onstage.

Obviously the truth will always remain an entirely subjective entity.

But, just perhaps, Joe had it sussed when he sang,

"The truth is only known by guttersnipes. "