The Clash

When people talk about the punk period many will mention that Sex pistols were the face of punk but many forget that there were others groups such as the Adverts and The Clash who were a prominent voice in the Punk era.

The band were made up of Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Topper Headon. The Clash burst onto the scene in 1977 with singles 'Complete Control' and 'White riot' and the social message of frustration and disenchantement continued in there debut album aptly named 'The Clash'.

Although there was frustration there was positive messages such as there anti-racism messages. There start as like most punk bands what they lacked in the musical skill department they more than made up for it on there on the raw energy and loudness that the younger generation responded to and the older generation didn't understand.

Despite there punk background they went on to be on the most influential rock bands of there generation. The debut album 'The Clash' remains one of the most key albums and opened the doors for the likes of The Jam,The Damned, The Stranglers and The Buzzcocks to put there variations of the old punk image. Following the success of the album, the Clash were able to develop there musical range and there efforts culminated in the release of 'London calling' the sound included influences such as rockabilly, reggae, ska and hard rock.

The success of the album in the UK was now spreading afar to America and the release of 'Sandinista' cement there position as one of the leading rock bands. They followed that up with the release of 'Combat Rock' which was stripped back to basics. The result of this saw there two biggest selling singles 'should I stay or should I go' and 'rock the casbah'. Instead of capitalising on this success, the band suffered some internal issues mainly between Strummer and Jones and although they continued touring America as support for The Who, Mick Jones was eventually sacked by the band. Prior to that Topper Headon was also removed from duty due to his drug abuse and the list of replacements was beginning to show as the band were beginning to lose it's original appeal.

Rather than be idle Mick Jones went on to form Big Audio Dynamite who had a huge hit with E=mc2. Although Strummer and Jones made up with Strummer writing some material for Mick Jones band and Jones returning the compliment for Strummer on the Sid and Nancy soundtrack he was working on.

The band eventually split in 1986 but it wasn't until 1991 that they saw there first and only number one on the UK singles chart, Should I stay or should I go was released and hit the top. There were constant rumours that the band would reform but in 2002 Joe Strummer died suddenly.

There rebellious outlook had a big influence on the rock scene and were widely referred mainly by there record label CBS as the only band that matters. They were a band that mixed everything from rock to reggae and somehow it worked. Influential and popular and a very hard band to imitate. Recommended listening