Been a while since I've posted a blog here, or indeed anywhere. And rather than it be a bitch or a whine, I thought I should write about something that I love and can't do without, musically.
The Clash will likely always be my favourite band, and though I tend to fall in and out of love with several of their songs as time passes, the top of a very impressive heap, will always be "(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais". This is one of those songs you either get or you don't. If you do, you'll clutch it very tightly to your heart, and if you don't...it's cool. The Clash are probably fortunate not to be branded racist now by alarmist, hand-wringing Lefties, what with song titles such as "White Riot" and then "(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais", but it should be recognised that both of those songs are written from the perspective of envy. In these songs, Strummer saw what black people in his community were doing and wished people of his own colour were that savvy, that angry, and that switched on and up for change.
The track starts with a count in and an accidental guitar sound, which serves to convince you that this is a live take, before juxtaposing an angry and abrasive guitar with Jones' reverb-drenched, high-pitched 'ooo'-ing melody line. It then kicks off into a, what is now a by-the-numbers, white-boy reggae riff. But back then, and for a band like The Clash, this was anything but by-the-numbers. This approach was among the first to knit punk and reggae together. The brick-through-a-window rage of earlier tracks such as White Riot and Career Opportunities were ostensibly missing, but a few listens to this track showed that it was still there but had been replaced by an anger more subtle, as Strummer and Jones stretched their songwriting chops, and each band member started to come into their own, musically. Take Paul Simonon, for example. The Clash's bass player was a massive influence on their appearance due to his affinity with art and a paint brush, but when the band started he was so inept at the bass that he took to writing the notes on the fretboard. This is so that when Jones told everyone it was "Going to a G there...", for example, Simonon knew where to put his fingers. To go from that to the sparse, less-is-more, massively effective bass line in this song, is quite something.
It is this musicality that set The Clash aside from other punk bands of the time. American psychologist Abraham Maslow, who devised the Hierarchy of Needs, once said that if the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. The Clash had started angry, and they were still really pissed off, but they were developing new tools and finding, through their influences, different ways to use them. Sometimes if you project your anger with a calm disposition, you can be way more affecting - and effective - than shouting and screaming the whole place down. By taking a different path, The Clash were ensuring that once punk had passed they would still be around. There's a saying, "The more now you are, the more then you'll be", which emos and chavs will no doubt wish they were mindful of when they look back on pictures of themselves in 20 years time. The Clash knew it, though. And they knew that by staying within the 3-chord-and-fuck-the-system mould of every other Sex Pistols wannabe, you were doomed to be a part of the past rather than forging the future.
In the first verse of the song, Strummer speaks of attending a concert to see, among others, Delroy Wilson and Leroy Smart. Hoping for a good show, he instead leaves disappointed, as these acts seem to have succumbed to commercialism. This initial disappointment bleeds into the rest of the song, which covers topics from the state of the country to the state of punk rock. This is impressive, to me. Strummer has highlighted, in a punk rock song, an unfortunate process which can sometimes occur - one disappointment can make you pay more attention to the other disappointments you were trying to ignore. One piss off and you suddenly become the world's biggest cynic. It snowballs. Cascades. I picture Strummer walking away from the concert, through the rainy streets of London, head down and collar up, heavy in disappointment and contemplation. He had been let down by the non-event of something that he had hoped would lift him. So he started to project his disappointment on to everything else he was thinking about and that was happening around him. The song is therefore quite cynical, but as George Carlin said, "Scratch any cynic and you'll find a disappointed idealist".
Certainly, the idealism of the punk movement that The Clash had helped to create, had withered, and this had disappointed Joe by the time he wrote the song. In one verse he sings, "Punk rocker in the UK; They won't notice anyway: They're all too busy fighting; For a good place under the lighting". The punk movement, what was once something honest, that was to be a force for change, had descended into mindless violence and a misunderstanding of the ethos of the movement itself. Strummer suggests here that he is done with it. This is reinforced with the next few lines, "The new groups are not concerned; With what there is to be learned; They got Burton suits, they think it's funny; Turning rebellion into money". This last line was thought to be a dig at The Jam, who never really fitted in as punk rockers. Regardless of intended target, it shows that Strummer believed passionately in the potential of punk rock for change, and was crushed at the way it had been hijacked by the mainstream and then diluted, the ready money and easy fame draining it of its previous power and energy. The Pistols and The Clash had lived in squats and had no money. They were driven by creativity and passion, not the expectation of record deals, groupies, and sports cars. These new groups, they hadn't earned it. They were being soaked up by record labels desperate to jump on the punk-rock bandwagon, and were handed big advances to produce second-rate albums which could be sold to the kids who were caught up in a fad.
This is a common occurrence - money infecting a movement. Things that are pure and original and inspiring are that way because their originators have been through hell to get there. Movements like punk rock are fueled by everything but money, really. But such is the influence of the movement that many want to become a part of it. Ultimately it becomes commonplace, bland, and vanilla. Success becomes a double-edged sword. If you want your message to be heard, you have to go mainstream, you have to use the biggest platform you can find. People would slate Rage Against The Machine for signing to Epic Records and being label mates with Michael Jackson. But it's analogous to either appearing on the 6 o' clock news to communicate your ideas, or tweeting them out to 120 followers, hoping you'll go viral. Playing the corporate game then becomes a necessary evil. You give away credibility, but you take the opportunity for mass communication you now have. Strummer would have known this surely, but he no doubt hoped it would go another way. Additionally, in the case of The Clash, the rumour is that any money they made from their record deal was absorbed by the bank account of their manager, Bernie Rhodes. Maybe Rhodes could defend his thievery as a way of keeping his band hungry, angry, and passionate.
What strikes me most about some of the final lyrics are the way they are still relevant, "All over, people changing their votes; Along with their overcoats; If Adolf Hitler, flew in here today; They'd send a limousine anyway". In just those few lines, Strummer says enough for a lifetime. Certainly today in the UK, as the Tories and Labour became pretty much the same party in the 90s, and people are now more likely to say that no political party represents their beliefs, voters are flitting between political allegiances depending on the scandal or the soundbite. Fundamentally though, Strummer is right with his line about Hitler. Hitler was a man responsible for attempted genocide and is rightly considered one of the most heinous individuals who ever came to power. But do we not have equally reprehensible leaders now? Have the UN not ignored other genocides that have been committed? And do we not ensure that the perpetrators live in protected opulence when they visit the UK? An entire book could be written on the significance of those last two lines, as they are philosophically, psychologically, and politically poignant.
The last line which Strummer repeats, is that he is "Only looking for fun". This suggests that he has given up on pursuing his dreams of change. That the groups described in the song, the people who populate them, and the attitudes they carry, have ground him down. These fakers and chancers, these politicians and the fickle who flit between political parties, this respect we give to monsters who treat people like vermin. So he's going to stop trying to fix the world and just try to enjoy his life, perhaps through artificial means, as he earlier calls himself the "All night drug prowling wolf". But is apathy, and giving up, not a natural and understandable reaction when you have the kind of night Strummer is describing? 'Fuck this' is a go-to response these days. Fuck this. He tried, but people just didn't get it. So, fuck this. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Do people not use recreational drugs or alcohol to burn their problems? A temporary fix, sure, but an effective one nonetheless.
Strummer is describing a dark night of the soul, and we all have them, and most of us recover. We wake up arguably more determined to put things right in our lives, and sometimes in society, too. Certainly, The Clash found determination from this change in musical direction. The musical output that was to follow, from the focused brilliance of London Calling to the sprawling mess of Sandinsta!, likely found seed in this one track where two musical styles, seemingly at odds with each other, were pushed together to create something fresh and affecting. To see just how affecting it can be, cast your eyes over the footage below. Though not The Clash, this is Strummer singing his song with the Mescaleros in London. Watch Strummer's face as the crowd sing the first line, you'll see a flicker of a smile before he gets back to back to being angry:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBbxRtnHp-A
