Speaking King’s English In Quotation: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Clash’s Combat Rock

Joe Strummer’s 70th birthday was August 21st. In belated celebration, a multi-part look back at the album that made The Clash the biggest band in the world for a moment, before slowly destroying them.

Outtake from Pennie Smith’s session for the Combat Rock sleeve, courtesy Legacy Records/

“We wanna be as big as Van Halen – that’s the goal.”

Mick Jones calmly dropped that bon mot at the end of a 1981 Rolling Stone news item about The Clash’s doings in wake of their sprawling triple-album Sandinista!, six sides barely containing a note of the furious punk rock that made their name. Reggae, jazz, rockabilly, gospel, even nods to this new rap music just becoming a national and international rumor leaking from New York City – Sandinista!  was a confusingly new and different Clash than presented by their first three LPs. Only two tracks resembled the furiously downstroked powerchord Clash of aulde: “Police On My Back,” originally essayed by multi-racial late ‘60s British pop group The Equals (whose Eddy Grant would stage a solo comeback soon enough via “Electric Avenue”); and “Somebody Got Murdered,” written for Martin Scorcese’s The King Of Comedy and subsequently unused (though The Clash had a cameo in the film). 

The lead guitarist/co-songwriter/genius arranger’s naked ambition seemed strange. Especially considering how earlier in the piece, bassist/heartthrob Paul Simonon shrugged to the Rolling Stone reporter that he now earned enough to pay his rent and buy a record or a pair of trousers now and again, and it suited him fine. Which sounds perfectly punk in its modesty and practicality. So reading Jones’ blatant admission that at least he wouldn’t mind enjoying David Lee Roth and company’s record sales, even if he swiftly added “so we’d force all the other cunts out there to live up to our standard,” was quite jarring. It seemed oddly un-Clash-like.

Little did any of us put off by The Clash’s new music –  especially as bands like Black Flag, Circle Jerks and Bad Brains were making punk more fundamentalist, aggressive and anti-commercial under the hardcore rubric – know they would be global superstars within two years. All due to an album that both embraced What Made The Clash, The Clash, and simultaneously began their path to implosion. 

The year between Sandinista! and Combat Rock was bizarre for anyone in thrall to London Calling and the granite-hard punk of their previous records. The reggae numbers proved the most palatable – The Clash were already doing God’s work, training ears accustomed to rock ‘n’ roll to appreciate the deep, mysterious sounds of Jamaica. You started hearing it on US radio that year, both via British rock assimilators such as The Police and through the pop-oriented riddims of Musical Youth. Then you read stories of how they wouldn’t tour the US, instead preferring to set up for eight nights in a Times Square dance club called Bond’s International Casino. But ticket overselling brought the wrath of the New York Fire Department, resulting in The Clash agreeing to a 17-date run! The Only Band That Matters shut down Times Square, landing on all three local TV affiliates’ evening news programs, as well as on Tom Snyder’s Tomorrow Show. It felt like The Clash had arrived.

But had they? That Tomorrow appearance felt confused, disjointed, especially after their wired and commanding American TV debut the year before, roaring through four London Calling highlights on ABC’s SNL knockoff Fridays. At 30 Rockefeller Center, they concentrated on loud funk - Sandinista!’s “The Magnificent Seven” and a newly recorded single, “This Is Radio Clash.” Mick Jones seemed more interested in playing effects boxes than his Les Paul. He seemingly had all ten of his MXR pedals turned on, plus a Roland Space Echo. It was hard to hear a Gibson coming out of his Mesa Boogies, as whoever was at the mixing desk applied more slapback on the vocals than on the entirety of Elvis Presley’s Sun Records catalog. 

Would this band ever play “White Riot” again?

Hard to tell if the bridge-and-tunnel rawk fans filling Bond’s because they heard “Train In Vain” – Mick Jones’ paen to his painful breakup with The Slits’ Viv Albertine, which went Top 20 in the US when spun off of London Calling – asked the same question. They certainly did not appreciate the eclectic mix of opening acts gamely fending off verbal abuse and projectiles before The Clash walked onstage to the theme from A Few Dollars More. But how would suburban Scorpions and AC/DC fans, casually turned onto The Clash by Mick’s driving Motown pastiche, react to the likes of Lee “Scratch” Perry, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, The Treacherous Three and The Slits, except with incomprehension and hostility? 

Then Joe Strummer complained to Rolling Stone that Sandinista!’s more experimental tracks were proving hard to reproduce live. Wellll….

So now, another year’d passed. The Clash had done a tour of residencies similar to the Bond’s stand in seemingly every international capitol, to accommodate the huge crowds now clamoring to see them, though they were making the least commercial music of their lives. Stories surfaced of Joe, Mick, Paul and Topper going straight from the recording sessions for what was then called Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg to Australia for another tour. Mick, the album’s producer, had the Mensa-worthy brainstorm that he’d mix the record in his hotel room each night, after blowing his ears out with 120 dBs of MXR effects boxes, all knobs on 10 through a Mesa Boogie! The project got more and more untenable, as the lead guitarist indulged every stoned vision blazing beneath his pompadour, until The Clash had another two-record set on their hands. Both the band and the label put their foot down: “ENOUGH, MICK! We’re bringing in Glyn Johns to remix and edit, and this is coming out as a nice, trim single LP!”

Meanwhile, England felt increasingly snubbed by The Clash as they concentrated on breaking America, and seemingly Every Country On Jah’s Green Planet Except The UK. Blame this partly on the band, partly on the increasingly flaky advice of returning manager Bernie Rhodes, an epic, criminal buffoon who, much like Col. Tom Parker and Malcolm McLaren, should likely have been sent straight to the unemployment office after making the band famous. Except they had already done that in 1978, in wake of his increasingly destructive schemes. Now they welcomed him back with open arms at the insistence of Joe Strummer, who apparently had about as much of a head for sound business strategies as Donald Trump had for managing a public health emergency. And here Rhodes was, back in the driver's seat. Groovy. And the NME, who once anointed The Clash’s overly scuffed Doc Martens with precious herbs and essential oils, couldn’t let a week pass without taking a potshot at ‘em — Shitposting 1982.

Mick to Joe: “Wot d’ya mean my mix sucks?!”

The clerk at Alice, Texas’s sole record store Sound Town was waving that green camouflage sleeve at me through the window. Combat Rock had arrived. I spent at least an hour there every day after school, turning the corner at the Orange Julius and the TG&Y after entering the Sagewood Mall. I bought every one of The Clash’s albums to date there, having to special order The Clash  and Give ‘Em Enough Rope after wearing out my first copy of London Calling. All my initial punk and new wave albums were purchased there, too – Sex Pistols, Ramones, The Jam, The Cramps, Psychedelic Furs, Elvis Costello, Buzzcocks, on down the line. Roughly half had to be special ordered, as well. Sound Town was better equipped to sell you the new Judas Priest 8-track than anything not getting played on C101. As for the new hardcore bands? I had to mail order all that stuff, or buy it in Corpus Christi. It was not easy being the sum total of Alice’s punk scene….

First thing I thought was, “Oh, thank Jah! It’s a single LP – no room for wanking!” Then there were the graphics, which were delightfully militaristic and hard-edged, ala Clash graphics of not too long ago, down to the simulated stenciled band logo and album title. I bought it without hearing a note, then insisted the clerk put it on the shop hi-fi – NOW!

Four songs into Side One, despite the promise of driving Clash-a-billy opener “Know Your Rights” and Mick Jones’ two-chord garage punk masterpiece “Should I Stay Or Should I Go,” I asked for my money back. I mean, what was this…this…disco song about rocking the Casbah?! I went home and blasted “Janie Jones,” to remind myself what The Clash sounded like when I loved them. I guess I still did, but Combat Rock was breaking my heart.

That fall, it seemed every last one of my classmates was asking me if I’d heard this great new band called The Clash. The same ripple-and-reds soaked hydro encephaloids who shrugged me off when I came back from Austin in 1979, raving about this band I had just seen who had changed my life called The Clash. 

I was in Hell.

End of Part One. Tune in Thursday, as we examine Combat Rock and its fraught genesis  more fully, and how success took a sledgehammer to the fissures in The Clash, rendering them rather chasm-like. Please share, and remember that paid subscriptions are the best way to support unfettered punk journalism like this.

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