Second Bite at the Apple
from an unidentified English paper - By Chris Brazier
The Clash's first album is at last being released in the States. If you can legitimately refer to it as their first album, that is. Despite the identical
cover (except that, in line with American marketing policy, the title has been moved from bottom to top) this is a very different album from the
one released over here in the summer of '77 as punk took hold and the rebellion seemed real. In concept, this record resembles those early
American Beatles albums such as "Meet The .. " which were a confused melange of LP tracks with singles. Developing fast enough though the
Beatles were at that time, as long as they they were still at the hand-holding stage such chronological confusion mattered little. With the Clash, it
matters, partly because rock/pop now has such a short attention-span, and partly because of the way they've changed.
Their debut was, as far as I'm concerned the punk album -- a classic, even if it's more dated (because it was so relevant at the time) -- than
other contemporaneous classics such as, say, "Born to Run". It emerged at a time when everyone (well, everyone with some wit) was trying to
understand what punk was saying, and when some of us, already excited by the youth and the music, were fervently hoping that the rebellion
would turn out to have direction and meaning beyond the mere replacement of wrinkled superstars with acned ones.
"The Clash", then, was not only magnificent for its encapsulation of punk-as-rock (far rawer and faster than the Pistols' first records had been,
angrier but less cynical, and thus a more accurate reflection of the initial spirit), but also for its determination to show the social background of
the "insurrection". Here the rage is righteous and just the inarticulate flailing mass of undirected masculine aggression that people read it as, that
punk all too soon became.
This anger had clear orgins and clear targets. "The Clash" was the response of the young victim to the callous failure of capitalism to create a
fair, caring society.
In "Career Opportunities" the kid is offered the filthiest jobs with no other alternatives but the armed forces or crime (unless you include rock
'n' roll, the Clash's actual escape-route); in "Janie Jones " the boredom of the office job is deadly and the message "let them (i.e. employers, the
Establishment) know exactly how you feel"; in "Remote Control" the singer is conditioaed into accepting his lot, his own humanity discarded,
and the source of this "repression" is isolated.
Okay, so these aren't mature political responses, developed and articulate -- that wasn't the point. But as a response to an unjust world it
certainly penetrated deeper than the "Money. Fun. Boilers." reactionary hedonism that rock always slips into so easily.
Besides, its claim to come fran a deprived street level, so unfashionable now, made it all the more moving at the time. The picture conjured up
in "London's Burning" of the kid running through the concrete wasteland of the housing estate, with cars racing around him and televisions
mesmerising the tower blocks above him, was unforgettable -- if punk had a visual backdrop, this alienating urban scene was it: "Now l'm in
the subway and l'm looking for the flat / This one leads to this block and this one leads to that / The wind howls through the empty block
looking for a home / But I run through the empty block because I'm all alone."
Just as affecting was "Garageland", which seemed to me somehow to incorporate everything that rock had ever meant end could mean in its
thin whining harmonica, and to translate it all into the words: "I don't wanna hear about what the rich are doing / I don't wanna go to where the
rich are going / They think they're so clever, they think they're so right / but the truth is only known by guttersnipes."
All of these are included on the American album, together with "Police and Thieves", "What's My Name", "Hate And War", and "I'm So Bored
With The USA" (the last being another illustration of the Clash's great value -- the rant at TV cop culture is predictable, but no one else at the
time would have used such a song to attack America's support for the world's right wing dictators).
But they are jumbled around to accommodate four of the group's singles since I977, so that the first side begins with "Clash City Rockers " and
travels via "Complete Control" and "White Man in The Hammersmith Palais" to arrive at "I Fought The Law".
The wisdom of all this is dubious, since the original album was punk's quintessential document, and the few Americans who want to understand
what it meant will hardly be aided by this infusion into it of later Clash themes and attitudes. But then CBS obviously have other reasons for
preferring the "cleaner", more developed music.
And the middle of the reconstituted first side is nothing short of devastating, containing as it does The Clash's two greatest individual
achievements, the magnificent "Complete Control" (ironically juxteposed with "Remote Control", to great effect) and "White Man ", as well as
"White Riot" and "London's Burning".
Powerful stuff, and l'm glad of my copy of that, yet the end of the side undermines the whole album. The closer is Sonny Curtis' "I Fought the
Law", which is attractive enough musically but is nothing more really than a piece of outlaw chic.
"The Clash " was fond of dwelling on the battle with the law, but in its honesty it transcended the level of mere chic. The inclusion of "I Fought
The Law" on this pseudo-debut mars it seriously at the same time as it asks the Clash an uncomfortable question: Did they get lost in the myths
about rock 'n' roll heros that pervade the self-congratulatory "Clash City Rockers" and "Jail Guitar Doors" (the latter unworthy of a place here,
since it's strictly a B-side), or will they come out the other side still fighting? I'm still hoping.