Slaughtering Sacred Cows: The Clash
'I think the Clash defeated their political message... I think they just looked for the lowest common denominator, and I think they defeated their message. Nobody believed them.' Mike Watt, The Minutemen
'It was a real battle. We were fighting against the conservatism that had crept into the punk movement. The Clash... were actually quite ordinary as far as the music was concerned.' Gareth Sager, The Pop Group
'"No more Rolling Stones," and they sound just like The Rolling Stones, only not as good... Very disappointing.' Charles Bullen, This Heat
That significant architects of three of the most innovative and forward-thinking bands of the post-punk era feel so uninspired by The Clash should tell you something. For some reason, The Clash find themselves in a position that doesn't really reflect their rather mundane music, and ever since Joe Strummer's death, the band have become unassailable: they were a band of the people; they dealt with relevant political concerns in an intelligent, passionate and humane fashion; they made timeless, great music; they were the sound of British youth in 77. However, if you actually listen to their music, the only one of those statements that isn't palpably rubbish is the final one - something that has never had anything to do with quality, which you can easily prove by giving the Arctic Monkeys a listen.
The reason that The Clash earned the scorn of many post-punk groups is two-fold. Firstly, as Charles Bullen and Gareth Sager quite rightly point out, they were musically very reactionary. That Joe Strummer came from a pub-rock background with the 101ers is evident from The Clash's earliest material. '1977', 'Complete Control', 'Janie Jones', all of the early 'classics' are nothing more then pub rock sped up. By 'London Calling', they'd stopped even bothering to speed it up and embraced pub rock in all its turgid blandness. Excepting the glorious title track, one of the band's few moments of clarity, the album is an embarrassing collection of generic run-throughs closer to ham-fisted parody then the real thing: try listening to 'Jimmy Jazz' (er... jazz) 'Revolution Rock' (a pathetic attempt at fusing reggae and punk) and their mind-numbingly dull cover of 'Brand New Cadillac' (rockabilly) for just a couple of examples. This is especially striking when you compare The Clash to their post-punk contempories: bands like Public Image Limited, Gang Of Four, The Fall and many others were taking popular music way beyond the limits whilst Everybody's Favourite Punks were pedalling backwards faster and faster. The less said about the ridiculous messes that were 'Sandinista!' and 'Cut The Crap' the better - I'm hardly going to kick the band while they're down - but the fact remains that The Clash's strongest album after 'London Calling' is 'Combat Rock', a full-on embracing of stadium rock and all its trappings. Hardly the move of a band with integrity, but more to the point, the music is staggeringly awful, apart from the standard pub-rock-Clash fare of 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go'.
The second issue with The Clash's music is their lyrics: whilst these days they are often praised for simply having a political stance, back in the day with bands like Gang Of Four and The Minutemen finding new ways to talk about politics that didn't patronise the listener with the hackneyed soap-box slogans that The Clash favoured, you can see why Mike Watt feels that The Clash devalued their own political message by reducing it to easy-to-wear slogans. Most bands who talk about politics these days have unfortunately drawn from The Clash's method of politicising rather then treating the issues with the thought and concern they deserve. The main effect is, of course, that you simply wind up preaching to the converted and not really doing your cause any measurable good - people should believe something because they have thought about it and understood it, not because Joe Strummer says so.
But the main problem that I have with The Clash is that at the end of the day, their music is DULL. Yes, dull. For all the talk of excitement, 'The Clash sound like a kick in the head', 'Most important and vital bands of their generation' I can't hear it. All I hear is a guy with a fairly cool voice singing clichéd lyrics over a band that desperately want to sound like The Rolling Stones, but can't quite make it. Now, shoot me, but if that's the most exciting band in the history of rock 'n' roll, then the history clearly needs rewriting.
'It was a real battle. We were fighting against the conservatism that had crept into the punk movement. The Clash... were actually quite ordinary as far as the music was concerned.' Gareth Sager, The Pop Group
'"No more Rolling Stones," and they sound just like The Rolling Stones, only not as good... Very disappointing.' Charles Bullen, This Heat
That significant architects of three of the most innovative and forward-thinking bands of the post-punk era feel so uninspired by The Clash should tell you something. For some reason, The Clash find themselves in a position that doesn't really reflect their rather mundane music, and ever since Joe Strummer's death, the band have become unassailable: they were a band of the people; they dealt with relevant political concerns in an intelligent, passionate and humane fashion; they made timeless, great music; they were the sound of British youth in 77. However, if you actually listen to their music, the only one of those statements that isn't palpably rubbish is the final one - something that has never had anything to do with quality, which you can easily prove by giving the Arctic Monkeys a listen.
The reason that The Clash earned the scorn of many post-punk groups is two-fold. Firstly, as Charles Bullen and Gareth Sager quite rightly point out, they were musically very reactionary. That Joe Strummer came from a pub-rock background with the 101ers is evident from The Clash's earliest material. '1977', 'Complete Control', 'Janie Jones', all of the early 'classics' are nothing more then pub rock sped up. By 'London Calling', they'd stopped even bothering to speed it up and embraced pub rock in all its turgid blandness. Excepting the glorious title track, one of the band's few moments of clarity, the album is an embarrassing collection of generic run-throughs closer to ham-fisted parody then the real thing: try listening to 'Jimmy Jazz' (er... jazz) 'Revolution Rock' (a pathetic attempt at fusing reggae and punk) and their mind-numbingly dull cover of 'Brand New Cadillac' (rockabilly) for just a couple of examples. This is especially striking when you compare The Clash to their post-punk contempories: bands like Public Image Limited, Gang Of Four, The Fall and many others were taking popular music way beyond the limits whilst Everybody's Favourite Punks were pedalling backwards faster and faster. The less said about the ridiculous messes that were 'Sandinista!' and 'Cut The Crap' the better - I'm hardly going to kick the band while they're down - but the fact remains that The Clash's strongest album after 'London Calling' is 'Combat Rock', a full-on embracing of stadium rock and all its trappings. Hardly the move of a band with integrity, but more to the point, the music is staggeringly awful, apart from the standard pub-rock-Clash fare of 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go'.
The second issue with The Clash's music is their lyrics: whilst these days they are often praised for simply having a political stance, back in the day with bands like Gang Of Four and The Minutemen finding new ways to talk about politics that didn't patronise the listener with the hackneyed soap-box slogans that The Clash favoured, you can see why Mike Watt feels that The Clash devalued their own political message by reducing it to easy-to-wear slogans. Most bands who talk about politics these days have unfortunately drawn from The Clash's method of politicising rather then treating the issues with the thought and concern they deserve. The main effect is, of course, that you simply wind up preaching to the converted and not really doing your cause any measurable good - people should believe something because they have thought about it and understood it, not because Joe Strummer says so.
But the main problem that I have with The Clash is that at the end of the day, their music is DULL. Yes, dull. For all the talk of excitement, 'The Clash sound like a kick in the head', 'Most important and vital bands of their generation' I can't hear it. All I hear is a guy with a fairly cool voice singing clichéd lyrics over a band that desperately want to sound like The Rolling Stones, but can't quite make it. Now, shoot me, but if that's the most exciting band in the history of rock 'n' roll, then the history clearly needs rewriting.
posted by Jonathan Thornton at 6:33 pm
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