THE CLASH

The Sex Pistols may have been the first British punk rock band, but the Clash were the definitive British punk rockers. Where the Pistols were nihlistic, the Clash were fiery and idealistic, charged with righteousness and a leftist political ideology. From the outset, the band was more musically adventurous, expanding their hard rock & roll with reggae, dub, and rap rockabilly among other roots musics.

For a band that constantly sang about revolution and the working class, the Clash had surprisingly traditional roots. Joe Strummer was the son of a British diplomat. Mick Jones was leading a hard rock group called the London SS. Unlike Strummer, Jones came from a working class background in Brixton. Throughout his teens, he was fascinated with rock & roll, and he had formed the London SS with the intent of replicating the hard-driving sound of Mott the Hoople and Faces.

Jones' childhood friend Paul Simonon (b. December 15, 1956) joined the group as a bassist in 1976 after hearing the Sex Pistols; he replaced Tony James, who would later join Generation X and Sigue Sigue Sputnik. At the time, the band also featured drummer Tory Crimes who had recently replaced Topper Headon.

The Clash performed its first concert in the summer of 1976, supporting the Sex Pistols in London. Hiring Bernard Rhodes, a former business associate of the Sex Pistols' manager Malcolm McLaren, as their manager, the Clash set out on the Pistols' notorious "Anarchy Tour" late in 1976. The Clash's first single "White Riot" and eponymous debut album were released to great critical acclaim and sales in the UK, peaking at number 12 on the charts.

Shortly after the UK release of The Clash, the band set out on the whirlwind "White Riot" tour supported by the Jam and the Buzzcocks; the tour was highlighted by a date at London's Rainbow Theatre, when the audience tore the seats out of the venue. During the "White Riot" tour, CBS pulled "Complete Control" off of the album as a single, and as a response, the Clash recorded "Complete Control" with reggae icon Lee "Scratch" Perry.

Although the Clash were at the height of their commercial powers in 1983, the band was began to fall apart. During the summer, the band headlined the US Festival in California; it would be their last major appearance. In September, Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon fired Mick Jones becuase he "drifted apart from the original idea of the Clash." Jones formed Big Audio Dynamite the following year.

Early in 1986, Strummer and Simonon decided to permanently disband the Clash. After reuniting with Jones to write songs for Big Audio Dynamite's second album, 1986's No. 10 Upping Street, Strummer drifted between a musical and a film career. Strummer released a solo album, Earthquake Weather, in 1989. Shortly afterward, he joined the Pogues as a touring rhythm guitarist and vocalist. By 1991, he had quietly drifted away from the spotlight. For the remainder of the decade, Strummer was quiet, appearing on only one other recording - Black Grape's 1996 Top Ten hit, "England's Irie."

Though Strummer and Simonon were both quiet, and Jones was busy with various incarnations of Big Audio Dynamite, rumors of a Clash reunion continued to circulate throughout the '90s. When "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" appeared in a Levi's television commercial in 1992, the song was re-released in the UK by CBS and it shot to number one, fueling reunion speculation. The rumors appeared again in 1995 and 1996, when the Sex Pistols decided to reunite, but the Clash remained quiet. Live: From Here To Eternity, assembling material recorded between 1978 and 1982, was released in 1999, shortly followed by the documentary film Westway to the World.