Johnny Green and Garry Barker

Faber and Faber, Inc.

Despite the myth, the musical legacy and all the hoopla of the past 20 years, it’s nice to see someone at least try to paint the Clash as complex people rather than as individual cogs in the punk era’s most successful rock factory.

The attempt to inject a human element into the now-legendary foursome sets A Riot of Our Own apart from many of the previous works devoted to the Last Angry Band, though the bulk of former Clash road manager Johnny Green’s attempts to profile the band end up walking the same lines as Clash mythology and press clippings. Mick Jones comes off as the band’s self-centered, drug-dependent rock-star guitar hero, Topper Headon as the high-strung drummer, Paul Simonon as the earnest, yet quiet artist-cum-bass man and Joe Strummer as the ardent and passionately salt-of-the-earth front man.

Though never truly breaking away from clichés and mythology, Green does succeed at providing glimpses into the band’s personal side at times, from detailed conversations with Strummer (who Green seems to understand the best) to Jones’ passion for excellence in the band’s music. Perhaps Green’s dependence upon cliché only illustrates the persistence the band’s mythology permeates all things Clash, even soaking in to color the memories of those most intimately involved with the four horsemen.

Surprisingly, Green avoids the condescending or worshipping tone expected in a book written by one so closely connected to its subjects. Green dishes the good with the bad, matching tales of Simonon stripping down to his underwear in a winter night to persuade a driver to let fans catch a ride with the bassist’s arrogant requests for laundry service. Nobody, save Strummer, comes out of Riot completely clean of mud, giving fans a more intimate and a decidedly more personal outlook on the band than other books.

Much like the Clash’s career, this book hurls ahead with a chaotic inertia, more bent on honesty than composure, which is both the book’s strongest and weakest points. Green’s personal glimpses of the band offer a rare look outside of newsreel- and press clipping-based accounts of the band, though the book lacks structure, especially the later half, which skims over the rich details of the first section, as if Green lost interest in his project midway or simply, in true Clash fashion, left the details of deadlines fall through the cracks, rushing the final pages.

Courtesy of Aversion.com

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