FIRST INTERVIEW YOU'RE GONNA write where I live ain't you? I've had enough of this white mansion rubbish." Joe's sitting on the other side of table surrounded by various kinds of devris including a half-empty can of paint. Given the time and circumstances, he's playing the perfect host, making me a cup of tea and finding a tin lid for me to use as an ashtray. But it's still a long way from any white mansion. A squat he shares with Boogie, who used to manage him in the 101'ers and now works with Malcolm McLaren, it's about as glamorous as leprosy. I certainly wouldn't live there, even if it does have the advantage of an all-night cafe round the corner. While we're settling down and I'm sorting out my tape machine, Joe shows me the Brigade Rosse t-shirt he made for the Anti-Nazi league gig. Clearly proud of it, he was surprised that no-one at the gig even so much as noticed what it had on it. He places the blame for that on the English daily papers. When Moro was shot, it was like them killing Winston Churchill, the Italian equivalent of Winston Churchill or someone like that. The papers don't exactly give it as much coverage as Joyce McKinney, do they? They just keep out anything that's a bit dodgy." Leaving aside the international politics for the moment, I asked about the internal politics of the album. How did they come to be using Pearlman? "Me and Mick met him and we went into the toilet and said "What do you reckon'' and we said "Let's give it a whirl". Originally, someone introduced us. I think Bernie (Bernard Rhodes, Clash manager) did. "One day I was in Bernie's car and he was playing Blue Oyster Cult and I said 'What are you playing this shit for?'. . .'cos he's usually got some doo-wop or some reggae or something and he goes 'Oh, it's well produced' and I said 'So what? It's a load of shit.' 'But I'm listening to the production' he said. He was checking it out..."

PART TWO

Wasn't using them as much what the record company wanted as what you wanted? "They definitely thought it was a good idea that we had someone who could produce well." I'd noticed in the studio that they were re-recording the next single, 'White Man In Hammersmith Palais' and wondered if they'd junked the original recording. "No. It was just that Pearlman likes it so much that he begged us for a go on it. We've got a lot of stuff that hasn't come out. 'Pressure Drop'. We've done some Memphis stuff. We done another Clash song that never came out - 'Crush On You'. It's got some sax on it and piano." I'd heard that they'd dropped 'Crush' because the press hated it. "Nah, we dropped it 'cos there was no room for it. Like we dropped 'Shitting At The Party' and 'Flies' which was about all those flies in the basement of Orsett Terrace (where he lived in the 101'ersdays). "I lost all my stuff at the ice-cream factory, just underneath Mick's tower block where I lived. Some guy went and threw it on the skip. Everything . . . even my suit. . . still in its paper from the dry cleaners. I've got nothing left from the 101'ers, not a tape, a poster, even a photograph. Everyone got something out of that group except me. Snakes got a drumkit. Evil got an SG and Dan got a bass amp. I got nothing.'' I'd seen Snakes, the drummer, recently and he'd mentioned that he had some tapes of the 101'ers and he planned to put them together as a proper album if he could get Joe's permission. "He's a fool. If you do it as a proper album, you don't get any money out of it. If you do it as a bootleg, you're rolling in it. That's the truth." Most bands see bootlegs as rip-offs. "I dunno. That 'White Riot' one in Manchester don't sound as bad as you could expect. You expect it to sound a lot worse than that. . . When Pearlman came to see us, he was appalled, horrified at the equipment and the result that we achieved." OUR CHAT went on for another half hour or so. Unfortunately, the unthinkable happened. My batteries had gone flat and I didn't notice till the tape machine stopped running altogether. Joe was pleased to be left alone so he could get some sleep but, as I was walking away, he couldn't resist leaning out of the window and asking for the name of the Sounds editor. Laughing with embarrassment, I told him. "Right. Tomorrow I'll phone him up and tell him to sack you."

PARIS THE BAND'S decision to play Paris was almost as sudden as mine to go. They'd cancelled out of the gig weeks before but the promoter had gone ahead regardless and spattered the city with posters announcing the appearance of le Clash. The replacement band, Subway Sect, also managed by Bernie Rhodes, understandably fearing a riot, refused to play it when they realised there'd be six thousand odd Parisians expecting the Clash. So, with only twenty-four hours notice, the Clash organisation was at a higher pitch of streamlined efficiency than ever. When I arrived at the meeting point - somewhat delayed by the roadie being forty-five minutes late and Topper having to buy salt tablets, hair-spray and vitamin pills - Bernie had just done a runner on the band, taking with him not only the car but all their passports. Paul had irked him by painting his naked portrait on a blank white wall and then drenching him with a hose. When he returned he explained he'd only gone to get some petrol anyway. Naturally the journey out to Heathrow in the Clash-mobile was rather tense, enlivened only by Paul's incessant practical jokes at Bernie's unwitting expense and Mick pointing out the famed Westway tower-block -''That's where some of our best songs were written" - and the rest of them joining in with gobbledegook choruses of 'London's Burning'.

MICK JONES AND JOE STRUMMER ENTERTAIN THE MASSSES DESPITE THE STREAMLINED EFFICIENCY.

RUNNING STRICTLY according to Clash schedules, they landed in Paris ten minutes before they were supposed to be onstage. Not that they knew that till after they left the stage. The promoter who met them was so out of it that it took him several attempts to find the car he came in. "See, that's how you' I'll end up if you keep on smoking dope", announced Bernie to no-one in particular. The promoter, his eyes surrounded by heavy layers of silver glitter, grinned wildly and had another go at trying to find his car keys. The gig was the showpiece of the last night of a festival celebrating the tenth anniversary of the French uprising in May 1968. Organised by the largest French Trotskyist organisation, the Ligue Communiste Revolutionaire, it was held in the Hippodrome which is normally used as a circus. The Subway Sect really needn't have worried about a riot. They would've got it anyway. Just before the band were about to go on, I wandered out to have a look at the crowd. I only had time to notice that rather a large number of people were wearing crash helmets before a Clash roadie pushed me back to the dressing room with a shout of "Ammonia". As far as I can make out, there's a French political faction, les Autonomes, who consider all forms of political organisation to be intrinsically bourgeois. So they break up everyone else's meetings. However, as they were heavily outnumbered, they were soon forced out and the rest of the crowd broke into a couple of verses of the Internationale to clear the air and psyche themselves up for a touch of le vrai punk politique. With the odd bottle still flying at the stage and the sound onstage being about as good as a ten quid tranny's, the show was the Clash at their most disorganised. The highpoint was Topper and Mick's duet version of 'White Riot' - Paul had dropped his bass and Joe had knocked over his mike and thrown down his guitar in disgust. What they couldn't understand was why the crowd were threatening another riot if they didn't do an encore. Almost unable to speak for laughing, they told the promoter: "If you can't get 'em to leave, tell 'em we're coming back again." Only later did they find out that the sound in the hall itself had been excellent and the French hadn't totally lost their senses when they demanded more. Still, as one of them said: "The way we played tonight, Don Revie. . . he'd transfer us." For the 3rd and final part of The Clash interview go here....