Contributing Editor Eric Arnum
NEW YORK — The Clash may have been a British punk band, but the new Don Letts documentary about the group concludes that their greatest moments almost always happened on the streets of New York.
"Westway to the World" — not yet scheduled for U.S. release, but set to air Oct. 3 on British TV — documents the band's 1976-83 heyday through the eyes of director Don Letts. The filmmaker was a DJ, a friend of the band, a home-movie maker and a Rastaman-wannabe who later went on to join Clash guitarist Mick Jones in the rock group Big Audio Dynamite.
"We were turning each other on through our cultures," Letts told a select group of CMJ badge-holders who attended a preview screening of the film Friday in New York.
Speaking at a post-viewing question-and-answer session, Letts said he began taking footage of the Clash at the band's first gig — July 4, 1976 at London's Swan club.
At the time, Letts said, he was the DJ at London's red-hot Roxy club who spun reggae tracks that punks came to hear every night. In Letts' film, Clash guitarist Joe Strummer says the Rasta-punk crossover was what defined the London music scene of the era, implying that Letts and his vinyl collection were somehow the catalyst.
Instead of picking up a guitar as many of his peers did, Letts picked up a Super 8 camera. He ended up with vintage Clash performances that he's spliced together with interview footage to create a 90-minute retrospective.
London was the Clash's home, but New York inspired them, according to Letts' film. It was on the Big Apple's street corners that Strummer and Jones experienced the birth of hip-hop, hearing the music on the boom boxes that blasted WBLS-FM all over the city in the early '80s. When they remixed "The Magnificent Seven" (RealAudio excerpt) into a dance-oriented 12-inch single, it was with the intention of having one of their songs programmed on the station.
In the film, Strummer says this was a great thrill, to hear their music taken seriously by the urban-dance station they always tuned in on their visits here.
But in May 1981, New York played host to what the bandmembers say was the low point of their career: their "week" at Bonds in Times Square.
"It nearly killed us," Strummer said of the debacle. "It just escalated beyond control."
Seven scheduled shows were so oversold the fire marshal closed them down. The band had to spread ticketholders over 16 shows to play for them all. "We even played matinees," Strummer said. Still, the Clash were thrilled to see themselves on the evening news in the media capital of the world.
Things were different the next year, when New York hosted their Sept. 22 gig, opening for the Who at a sold-out Shea Stadium. At the time, the Letts-directed video for "Rock the Casbah" (RealAudio excerpt) was all over MTV, and the song climbed into the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.
Shea was their crowning moment, Strummer and Jones say in the documentary, even more than their subsequent performance before 200,000 at the US Festival, or their rendition of "Straight to Hell" on "Saturday Night Live."
In the film, Strummer, Jones and bassist Paul Simonon do most of the talking; drummer Topper Headon's comments occupy only a few minutes of screen time. Photographer Pennie Smith — one of the few voices other than the four bandmembers to narrate parts of the story — describes capturing a slightly blurry image of Simonon smashing the neck of his bass into the stage of the Palladium. The shot later became the cover art for the 1979 album London Calling.
Strummer admits the band's 1980 triple album, Sandinista, "would probably have been better as a double album, or single, or even as an EP." Nevertheless, he added, "I wouldn't change it even if I could," because it precisely documents the sounds the Clash heard outside in Greenwich Village during the three weeks they spent recording the album at Electric Ladyland Studio.
After the screening, many in the audience wanted to know why the band broke up at its peak — a subject Letts' movie never nails down exactly.
"Part of being a great band is knowing when to stop," Letts said. For the Clash, "longevity was never the point," he added.
His film does offer some clues. Headon admits to substance abuse. Strummer more specifically says that heroin is bad for drummers, but good for saxophone players. Either way, Headon was bottoming out right around the time Smith took the cover photo for "Combat Rock" on a railway track in Thailand.
Strummer said he hated the post-"Casbah" limelight and retreated to France to avoid it. When Strummer and Jones were together, they argued endlessly, he said. "When he did show up," Strummer says of Jones, "he was like Liz Taylor in a bad mood."
Letts said Strummer was disengaged; Headon got sacked; Simonon was always looking in the mirror, and Jones quit. The band's follow-up album without him tanked, and the Clash evaporated into history.
But now rumors of a reunion are proliferating because of the imminent release of a live Clash album, From Here to Eternity, which features tracks recorded at the Shea gig.
"Why do they have to do it again?" Letts responded angrily, when a fan insisted that Strummer and Jones were the John Lennon and Paul McCartney of their era and that they could come back to rescue the world from the proliferation of boy bands.
Letts said he lost all respect for the Sex Pistols when they did their nostalgia tour, and he'd never want to see the Clash follow that path.
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