One day is fine, the next is black: How The Clash ripped themselves apart the moment they stepped into stardom

Part 3 of my seemingly endless look at Combat Rock, the album that both made The Clash international rock stars and essentially destroyed them. Happy 70th birthday, Joe Strummer….and happy 57th to me.

The classic Clash lineup in happier times, though you can’t tell by the expressions.

And I’m So Grateful To Be Nowhere

Joe Strummer returned from Paris – from the “runner” manager Bernie Rhodes advised him to take, so he could cancel the English tour – and  fired Topper Headon from The Clash.

“Without Topper…, we’d have died with punk,” Strummer remarked years later. True enough. Had Terry Chimes gotten his E-type Jaguar, braved the continual political debates, and stayed with The Clash past their debut album, they likely wouldn’t have lasted much past The Clash. He was stiffer than the inhabitants of ten morgues and had all the swing of a day laborer hammering nails.

Nicky Headon apprenticed in jazz groups, particularly swayed by Billy Cobham’s phenomenal chops, and had manned the tubs for both Canadian hard rocker Pat Travers and an opening act for The Temptations. He brought to The Clash “a massive, orchestral drum framework,” in writer Mikal Gilmore’s memorable phrase. This enabled them a mastery not only of their beloved reggae, but also jazz, soul, r&b, rockabilly, funk, New Orleans’ myriad grooves, and the hip hop obsessing Mick Jones. No wonder Give ‘Em Enough Rope producer Sandy Pearlman beknighted Headon “the human drum machine.”

But The Human Drum Machine was a junkie.

Topper in Tokyo: “Maybe I should’ve run off to Paris!”

“Oh, anything I want, he gives it to me,” Strummer wrote and sang on London Calling’s “Hateful.” “Anything I want, he gives it, but not for free/It's hateful/And it's paid for/And I'm so grateful to be nowhere.” Was he writing about Topper? 

“Topper’s habits and what he was up to made a mockery of what the group was about and what Joe was writing about,” Paul Simonon surmised 18 years later. “And the two didn’t go together. We did what we could with Topper, but it just got to be too much, really.”

“If your drummer is falling apart, then no matter what you’re putting on top, it’s going to fall apart,” grieved Strummer around the same time. “Like a house without any foundations.”

“I lost it, really, on the tour of the Far East,” Headon admitted concurrently with his bandmates’ recollections. “I was standing in a lift with Joe and he’s saying, ‘How can I sing all these anti-drug songs with you stoned out of your head behind me?’”

Well, Joe, the same way you could when the entire band smoked more ganja than Bob Marley’s road crew. Or snorted endless lines of sulfate – cocaine, in Jones’ case.

The Clash’s own endless contradictions aside, they had a point. Rock ‘n’ roll bands are only as good as their drummer, and when your engine is running on heroin, your timing is thrown and the sheer physicality the job requires dissipates. 

“I don’t hold any grudges, you know, because I was out of control,” Headon concluded. “I was a liability to the band. I was given an ultimatum, and I couldn’t live up to it.

“I lost the plot.”

Then there was the elephant in the room – Headon wrote “Rock The Casbah,” which was blowing up MTV, radio and sales charts worldwide. The Clash were now an Official Big Deal, and the breakthrough hit was written by the drummer they’d just fired. That had to smell like a particularly rancid fart to Jones’ rapidly expanding ego.

Future chiropractor Terry Chimes: “Who yelled ‘Tory Crimes’?!”

So with tour dates booked and an instant drummer needed, The Clash rehired Terry Chimes, the world’s stiffest drummer, to tour behind their most rhythmically elastic record. Which had to rank up there in the annals of great decision-making with the day G. Gordon Liddy elbowed H.R. Haldeman in the ribs and suggested, “Hey, wouldn’t it be fun to break into the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel?”

If I Go, There Will Be Trouble….

Listening to Epic/Legacy’s new 40th Anniversary triple-LP version of Combat Rock, it’s easy to see how wrong those of us were who dissed it in favor of, say, Circle Jerks’ Wild In The Streets, or the Americanized first LP Clashisms of the Red Rockers’ Condition Red. It honestly should have been called The Clash For Everyone, as the lads offered flavors to tickle every taste bud.

You could be fooled into thinking Strummer got his wish and got his back-to-basics rock ‘n’ roll record, going by the three opening tracks. Take, for example, “Know Your Rights”: How could anything not rock that opens with a shouted declaration that this was “a public service announcement…WITH GUITAR!!”? Of course, that minor key blast of Middle-Eastern agitprop Clashabilly, complete with Jones channeling the lost spirits of Duane Eddy/Hank Marvin/Vic Flick with his greasy whammy bar abuse. “Car Jamming” is just about the most relaxed take on the Bo Diddley beat heard in a minute – pretty ironic, sandwiched between “Rights” and Jones’ agonized lover’s plea “Should I Stay Or Should I Go?”

This, of course, became an instant garage-punk standard, the best latter day retrofit of the “Little Latin Lupe Lu” riff you’ll ever hear. How many punk rock guitarists have warmed up with that instantly recognizable two chord vamp? DAH-NAH-NAH-DAH-NAH-DAH-NAH-NAH! DAH-NAH-NAH-DAH-NAH-DAH-NAH-NAH! Lord knows my fingers have squeezed it out of a few Gibsons, over the years. As for that lyric? It’s obvious to these ears that Jones was still working out some angst over the breakup with The Slits’ Viv Albertine three years back, Combat Rock’s lyrical update on “Train In Vain.” Yet most have other ideas….

It wasn't about anybody specific, and it wasn’t pre-empting my leaving The Clash,” Jones has demurred in more recent times. “It was just a good rockin’ song, our attempt at writing a classic. When we were just playing, that was the sort of stuff we’d play.”

So why didn’t you just play some more, Mick? We could’ve stood nine more attempts at writing a classic, if this is the result!

But had they done so, they’d have never rocked the Casbah.

Love it or leave it, Track 4 Side 1 of Combat Rock is what permanently cemented The Clash into the general public’s imagination. And I have to shout down 17-year-old Tim everytime that jacked-up Afro Cuban beat kicks in: “NO, IT’S NOT A FUCKING DISCO SONG, YOU DICK! SHADDUP AND PLAY DAMAGED ONE MORE TIME!” Simonon’s militant reggae jam “Red Angel Dragnet” follows, stiff enough for Terry Chimes to play it brilliantly I’m sure, and suffused with enough dread to fuel a few psychotherapy sessions.

But you soon forget that crazy Casbah jive and mohawks in front of pump jacks the minute “Straight To Hell” comes on.

Is it reggae? Is it a samba? What the Hell is it?! Who knows? Who cares? None of it matters. What does, is this is the most beautiful Clash song ever, the breathtaking proper followup to “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais." Over what has to be Tymon Dogg’s eerie violin (though he’s only credited with piano on “Death Is A Star”) and those rattling drums and Simonon’s rumbling dub bass, Strummer whispers this heartbreaking tale of English working class rage and empathy for the bastard half-Asian/half-American children left behind by G.I.s following the Vietnam War: “Kiddie say papa papa papa papa papa-san take me home/See me got photo, photo, photograph of you/And mamma mamma mamma-san…Lemme tell ya 'bout your blood, bamboo kid/It ain't Coca-Cola, it's rice/Straight to hell,boys/Go straight to hell, boy….”

“Straight To Hell” is not the last great Clash song – that would be “This Is England,” from the bastard mongrel post-Mick Jones LP Cut The Crap that no one wants to consider a proper Clash record. But it is Combat Rock’s standout track, and must absolutely be included in any proper discussion of The Clash’s greatest achievements.

Side One is as solid a side of plastic as The Clash ever recorded. Side Two is nowhere near as substantial. But it is the basis of all those theories that Combat Rock was their most New York record, and where their hip hop experimentation truly gelled. It’s the side where ol’ Whack Attack was given absolute dominion. It was a more focused take on Sandinista!’s wild-ass experimentation, condensed to one side. You can likely lay that at Glyn Johns’ feet. He acted as an editor, reigning in Jones’ excesses, clarifying the mixes, stripping out the fat. And while there was a memorable cameo from King Daddy beat poet Allen Ginsberg as the “voice of God” on “Ghetto Defendant,” none of Side Two’s songs could be confused for being memorable. 

Combat Rock was hardly the greatest Clash album. But it was the one that  went double platinum in the U.S.

The original 1976 Clash, back together: “Mah bay-beh drove up in a brand new Cadillac!”

End of Part Three. Yes, I intended this to be the conclusion of this multipart examination of Combat Rock. But this needs a fourth installment to witness The Clash tearing themselves apart on the road promoting their 2xplatinum album, essentially imploding onstage at the US Festival with their 3rd drummer in a year. Bear with me. 

Also, today is my 57th birthday.  Please celebrate by sharing this piece, and supporting The Tim “Napalm” Stegall Substack with a free or paid subscription. And remember: You pay more for coffee each day than a five dollar monthly subscription to this site.

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