Project 1001: The Clash by The Clash
Can't make no progress / Can't get ahead / Can't stop the regress / Don't wanna be dead
If you like punk, The Clash has to be one of the foundational albums that grew the genre into the commercial and critical monster it became. Even five decades later, the youthful anger and confusion about conditions in mid-70s Britain come through loud and clear. In my memory things in the UK at that time were quite bleak. It seemed like any news from there that I saw was all bad. For a young person just starting out on their adult journey the future must have seemed a scary place absent anything but frustrating despair and grim pessimism. The country was suffering from a general economic failure with high inflation and unemployment, the dreaded stagflation. Also high were the piles of uncollected garbage.
Piles of trash accumulating in the streets in the UK in the 1970s by Paul Townsend – Flickr1
And the IRA was wreaking havoc in Northern Ireland and also carried out terrorist attacks in England.2 How could a young person facing all this be optimistic about their future?
From this milieu of misery punk music emerged and The Clash were right there at the beginning. The Clash is a musically simple record yet powerful in the emotions it stirs with energy and lyrical content. For me it retains most of the power I imagine it must have had on the record-buying public of the late 1970s.
Note: it wasn’t all doom ‘n’ gloom. Some exciting and significant things happened for the UK in the 70s including civil rights gains for women and gay people, the first flight of the Concorde, and the Queen’s Silver Jubilee (which I remember watching on TV in 1977).3
My Rating:
Spin magazine named The Clash the third most essential punk album.
“Here’s where we baptize the world in spittle: punk as alienated rage, as anticorporate blather, as joyous racial confusion, as evangelic outreach and white knuckles and haywire impulses. Life as a dose of electrical shockers, and community as a riot of our own.”4
Robert Christgau for The Village Voice:
“The U.K. version of The Clash is the greatest rock and roll album ever manufactured anywhere in some small part because its innocence is of a piece--it never stops snarling, it's always threatening to blow up in your face.”
How much did The Clash change rock/pop music? Debatable, but they were a key influencer to be sure. “The Clash were largely to blame for punk’s Maoist “year zero” take on pop history. A few older acts - The Velvet Underground, Stooges, Flamin’ Groovies - were permissible, but even a sonic reducer like Neil Young was locked out of the love-in, presumably on the grounds of his long hair. Soon, even the pub-rock R&B acts who paved the way for punk, like Eddie and the Hot Rods, were expelled from the party - they wore flares. ‘Like trousers, like brain,’ said (guitarist and singer Joe) Strummer. This was pop’s own Cultural Revolution - the present was all that mattered. ‘No Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones in 1977,’ sang Strummer. By 1978 there were no Sex Pistols either, which left the Clash as the punk movement’s unelected figureheads.”5
In 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, Ali MacQueen wrote:
“Often taking second place - undeservedly so - to the Sex Pistols, The Clash eschewed the self-destructive ethos and instead opted for edgy political songs, catchy slogans, and clothes from a decorator’s van.
Coming from west London, they were right in the middle of a multicultural melting pot. Surrounded by reggae, ska, and rock steady influences, the band had a political and musical vision that reached a good way beyond the myopic outlook of their punk contemporaries.
The Clash’s incendiary style and exhortations to action can still be heard today in groups such as The Libertines whose second (and final) album was produced by Mick Jones. What goes around…” 6
Charts
• Peak on Billboard 200 album chart: #1267
• Singles on Billboard Hot 100 chart: n/a
• RIAA certification: Gold | November 12, 19918
Released on April 8, 1977 (UK version, which is the version I listened to. The US version was released July 26, 1979). Here’s what else was happening:
Pop Culture
• Number one song: “Rich Girl” by Hall & Oates9
• Number one album: Rumours by Fleetwood Mac10
• Number one movie: Rocky by John Avildson11
• Most watched TV programs: Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, M*A*S*H, Charlie’s Angels, The Six Million Dollar Man12
• NYT bestseller, fiction: Trinity by Leon Uris13
• NYT bestseller, non-fiction: Roots by Alex Haley14
Other albums released that month
• Even in the Quietest Moments by Supertramp
• Sin After Sin by Judas Priest
• Love You by The Beach Boys
• Celebrate Me Home by Kenny Loggins
• Rattus Norvegicus by The Stranglers
• Lace and Whiskey by Alice Cooper
• Caught Live + 5 by The Moody Blues
• Future Games by Spirit
• Izitso by Cat Stevens
• Ol' Waylon by Waylon Jennings
• A Period of Transition by Van Morrison
• VSOP by Herbie Hancock15
Sport
• Apr 2 Montreal Canadiens rout the Washington Capitals, 11-0 at the Montreal Forum to set an NHL record of 34 straight home games without a loss.
• Apr 3 Boston Bruin Jean Ratelle scores his 1,000th NHL point.
• Apr 6 Kingdome opens, Seattle Mariners 1st game, loses to Angels 7-0.
• Apr 7 MLB Toronto Blue Jays 1st game, they beat Chicago 9-5.
• Apr 10 Tom Watson wins the first of his 2 Masters, 2 strokes ahead of runner-up Jack Nicklaus.
• Apr 15 1st baseball game at Montreal's Olympic Stadium.16
Notable Births
• Apr 2 Michael Fassbender, Irish-German actor (Shame: X-Men), born in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg.
• Apr 4 Adam Dutkiewicz, American guitarist (Killswitch Engage), born in Westhampton, Massachusetts.
• Apr 9 Gerard Way, American singer-songwriter (My Chemical Romance - "Welcome To The Black Parade"), born in Summit, New Jersey.
• Apr 12 Jordana Spiro, American actress, born in Manhattan, New York.
• Apr 14 Sarah Michelle Gellar, American actress (Kendall-All My Children, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), born in New York City.17
Historical Events
• Apr 3 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's 1st meeting with US President Jimmy Carter.
• Apr 8 Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin resigns.
• Apr 9 Communist party in Spain legalized after 40 years.
• Apr 18 author of "Roots" awarded Pulitzer Prize.18
Notable Deaths
• Apr 12 Philip K Wrigley, American baseball executive (owner Chicago Cubs 1932-77), dies of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage at 82.
• Apr 21 Milton "Gummo" Marx, American comic (Marx Brothers), dies at 84.19
Enjoy and listen without prejudice. Cheers!
Prime: 140. The Clash by The Clash
Full video playlist: You're Welcome 140; The Clash by The Clash
Stanley, Bob, Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé, p. 328.
MacQueen, Ali, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, ed. by Robert Dimery, p. 378.
Ibid.