Good morning, I’ll be a little short with the early post as it’s the anniversary date of when I met Ms. Clashblog (the woman who performed miracles to make the site look how I’d hoped) so I need to be at my best.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this but Jean-Jacques Burnel is still insisting that Joe Strummer was keeping an eye on the Stranglers for ideas back in 1976. I didn’t give that statement much credence when I first heard it and he’s still regurgitating it 30 years later. I know Strummer attended early Stranglers concerts and the 101′ers even shared the bill. Don’t neglect the fact that the Stranglers did get an earlier start and a following than other bands on the scene that was yet to come . The correlation between seeing them live and it being inspiration for The Clash (or Joe in particular) is beyond me. Perhaps I’m missing something. I’ve been to Guildford many times, it’s a beautiful even pastoral town. The kind of place I’d like to retire or attend a church jumble sale, it’s not the birthplace of punk.

The birthplace of Punk...or not?

I always saw a clear association between the sound/energy  between the Clash and The Damned, Buzzcocks and to a certain extent the Sex Pistols. Not so with the Stranglers. The entire London scene including the periphery and fans was a very small number of people during the initial months. As you look at the earliest days of Mick Jones writing music and the people he was spending time with; it was a fairly limited list of names. If you saw a similar formative scene in your own town you’d have hardly noticed it. In a city the size of London it was a select group. I’ll write more in the weeks and months ahead about those links and connections in 75-77 and when you weave the thread it emphasises the unique circumstances that  created what was to follow.

Back to the Stranglers, I always saw them as a pub rock band who morphed into punk when it was ideal. That sounds very simplistic but the same has been leveled at Joe Strummer over the years. Pub rock spearheaded by Dr. Feelgood was a good old rock and roll blues based sound that while offering entertainment value in a live setting wasn’t exactly breaking any new ground. You also have to remember that the origins of the Stranglers go back to 1974-75  and 2 years was a lifetime in the music circuit back then. Strummer was often labelled as ‘too old to be punk‘ often lied about his age and/or downplayed it.

Strummer was 24 when he met Mick and Paul and 25 when the wheels started turning. Burnel of the Stranglers was born the same year as Joe (The Strangler being 8 months older) and Hugh Cornwell was 3 years the senior of both of them. The Stranglers found themselves supporting Patti Smith and The Ramones in the UK prior to being categorised as punk, and not the other way round. There’s also alleged bad blood between the bands stemming back to the very early days, a cynic might say that issue leads Clash fans to be be a dismissive about the Stranglers. Not true, I found their music to be uninspiring long before I knew some of those inside stories of the punk scene.

Maybe it was those keyboards, maybe it was the vocals or maybe it’s perpetuated by the belief that they were leading the charge of the new wave in London. Burnel certainly is keen to keep banging this drum.

I didn’t mean for this to become a Stranglers rant but after years of hearing who inspired who I wanted to dig a bit deeper. Strummer as a songwriter and performer was never one to dismiss who influenced him, in fact it was a badge of honour. I just don’t think a band who were contemporaries of the 101′ers would ever top that list.

Tim

Right then, as promised the third and final post about Finsbury Park’s Rainbow Theatre and The Clash. Part 1 & 2 covered the venue itself in more detail and focused on the White Riot tour and the appearance in May ’77.

1977 was the year that the band took hold of the youth of a nation that just 12 months earlier had been oblivious to the seeds of this newest wave of music originating from London. With the debut album finding its way into houses and flats across the country the band (as would always be the case) didn’t stop and let the grass grow under their feet. Punk was now approaching it’s pinnacle in the UK as bands seemed to appear overnight throughout the land. Despite The Clash being only in their second summer they were already at the head of the movement, a movement they’d shortly break away from.

From the White Riot tour the Clash played a series of shows throughout the continent and returned to England Oct 10th. Amazingly just 10 days later they began the Out Of Control tour a further 31 dates right through to December. Near the end of the tour the Clash rolled back to London and had 3 consecutive nights at the Rainbow Dec 13-15. Just 7 months from playing the venue the simple fact that three nights were booked tells you all you need to know about the momentum of this very special year.

Tickets went briskly at just two pounds fifty, and the Clash were home and in residence. A Rat Scabies/Levene collective and Sham 69 offered support and expectancy ran high. The Clash relationship with fans  had grown all year and these shows were no exception. Championed now by (most) of the music press  the concerts had the expected edge of aggression and chaos but when a fan was being smashed about by security (been there!) the band halted playing entirely and dragged the battered kid onto the stage. The enemy wasn’t on the stage it was the staff at the venue and The Clash made it clear. The lad famously remained on stage for the final two songs of the night and offered vocals.

The tightness of the band was building after such a hectic year and Topper Headon was now most clearly a key member. Complaints about Strummer’s

At The Rainbow December '77

voice I think are unreasonable, he’d been on stage all year long and any weakness in vocal delivery was surely offset by his growing control as a front man. The fury of ’77 meant the band had to deliver again and despite an undercurrent of violence all three nights they managed just that. Elitists were already complaining about the largeness of the venues the Clash were so quickly filling as if wanting to see a band leading the charge that changed music as we knewit should be by invitation only. The debut album was now all but exhausted as were the band, but owning the Rainbow again was the dividend for a year of hard work.

The Rainbow, well it ceased hosting concerts just 4 years later in December 1981. It sat empty for 14 long years with sporadic small exceptions until 1995 when it was taken over by a Church. I remember being a well lubricated 21 year old in May 1989 celebrating Arsenal winning the league and buzzing around different pubs near the ground. My friend and I missed the last tube home and started walking down the Seven Sisters. We got to the Rainbow about 1am and both having been too young to have seen the Clash  in ’77 there but feeling blessed by our North London experience 12 years later and a bit drunk now decided instead to sing much of the first album into the warm night air as cars drove past heading to central London.

Tim

I wanted to add a series of posts about places that are relevant to the Clash story. I decided to start with somewhere I knew well and (geographically at least) was exposed to from an early age. I grew up about 25 miles North of London and my family originates from North London on Dad’s side and my Mum was from Dublin. Finsbury Park apart from being the birthplace of Johnny Rotten is also just a few hundred yards from Arsenal Football Club’s old ground Highbury (another Clash topic).

Apart from music Arsenal were (and are) a huge part of my life. If you support someone else just bypass that fact, being loyal to your own club is something you can’t or at least shouldn’t ever change. It’s been much the

Arsenal F.C.

same with The Clash through thick and thin you have loyalty built in. However I digress, from memory I think I used to go to football regularly with my brother and Dad every home game from around the age of 5 or 6. Usually we’d drive up to London, park at Arnos Grove and take the tube down. For some matches we’d drive closer to the stadium and would always pass the large former cinema on the corner of the Seven Sisters Road.

My brother, seven years older than me and consumed by music would always say ‘There’s the Rainbow‘ as if it hadn’t been sitting there two weeks prior. I imagine it was that at age 13-15 he was longing to get up to London to see live bands and that was his reference point. If memory serves the likes of the Who and the Osmonds had played there and it was also synonymous with Bob Marley who appeared there in ’77.

The Rainbow, Finsbury Park

The Rainbow was an old art-deco cinema from 1930 with the architecture and flair you’d associate with that. The interior was a reminder of an age before sponsored marquees and plastic fascia as velvet and plush decor  were the order of the day. It held concerts in the 60′s but became a venue for live music exclusively in 1971. I’m sure my memory is more pronounced as it was a ‘new’ music venue when I was about 5 which would have made it more of a topic. On our way up to football all it meant to me was we were near the ground, little did I know it would become somewhere forever associated with the Clash.

In May 1977 The Clash appeared at the Rainbow along with The Jam, The Buzzcocks and The Subway Sect. Since the previous Summer punk had grown from a scattered idea to a real movement and damnation from the tabloid press. Centred in London the energy of this new wave was also spreading throughout Britain although London was still the eye of the storm. Less than a year earlier a punk concert wouldn’t have filled the foyer of the Rainbow and yet by then the 3,100 capacity of the venue was met.

Interior after conversion to a Church

It was the night that The Clash arrived and was well documented by Sounds the now defunct music weekly. I’ll write about it and the other shows by the Clash there in the next installment later this week.

Tim