THE CLASH. A RELEVANT REBELLION: CAROLINE COON BOX SET 2

To lurch out of the past into a new era, what was needed was a catalyst. The Sex Pistols were it. As Joe Strummer put it to me: “Yesterday I thought I was a crud. Then I saw the Sex Pistols and I became a king and I decide to move into the future.” Some days later, Strummer was walking along Golborne Road in West London, a few blocks away from where he was squatting, and he bumped into Mick Jones and Paul Simonon. They checked each other over, recognised kindred spirits and… formed The Clash.

When I first saw The Clash in rehearsal, before their first public performance, it was their exceptional musical talent and their charisma that jolted me. Before my eyes and ears was the kind of appeal that I immediately knew had a WOW! Factor.

In 1976, everything about the power and consciousness of the way that The Clash presented themselves - their words, music and style - seemed to be exactly what the moment needed. From the start of what has become mythologised as The Clash story, the band acknowledged that it was their politically aware, socialist manager, Bernard Rhodes, who suggested they abjure typical pop love songs and instead write about the world around them.

For Joe Strummer, writing prose and poetry as song lyrics was second nature. Rhodes’ suggestion seemed to liberate him from the stasis that he had fallen into with his r’n’b band, the 101ers, good as they were. In collaboration with Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Topper Headon (who replaced drummer Terry Chimes), Strummer set about writing social realism. How perfectly these songs capture the alienation and anger that 1970s youth was feeling as they were expected to endure and pay for the economic incompetence of global financiers! Strummer was able to express exactly the dour spirit of the times. He told me: “Every year everything gets screwed down a bit more. You can feel it, like being in a room with the walls and ceilings coming in.”

The Clash represented hope. A relief from misery. They drew in fans like iron filings to a magnet. They created music that embodied the rebellion of the time and that is just as meaningful for us today as it was then.

Caroline Coon, 2023