about the authors

Ralph Heibutzki saw The Clash Mark II on May 10, 1984, at Michigan State University. Since he had not witnessed the classic lineup, the backstage drama of Mick Jones’s departure hardly kept him away. If anything, the pro- and anti-Jones debates playing out in the music press spurred him to buy a ticket for the gig at one of the many midsize college venues that were the band’s theater of battle on their “Out of Control” tour—or “campaign,” in Clash-speak—that spring.

Energized by the razor-sharp, heartfelt performance and potent original songs, Ralph touted the new Clash to all who would listen, eagerly awaiting an album that had the potential to match the raw, jagged brilliance of their first record. When Creem ran an article questioning the new lineup’s promise, Ralph did what came naturally to any die-hard Clash fan: he called the magazine’s Detroit headquarters and spent forty minutes debating with the author, Bill Holdship.

The wait for the promised new record turned out to be agonizingly long. Weeks turned to months turned to a year, and no album appeared. When Cut the Crap finally did materialize—nearly a year and half after Strummer had vowed to “go into the studio and bang it out”—the results initially left Ralph confused and disappointed, so distant were they from his expectations. Nonetheless, the excitement, passion, and meaning of the 1984 live shows stayed with him.

In addition, the yawning distance between Strummer’s words and the record’s reality piqued his curiosity. Several years later, Ralph would become the first writer to seriously excavate that era with a series of articles based on interviews with most of the key players. Bit by bit, an alternative Clash Mark II history emerged from Ralph’s first foray into punk rock archeology.

As Ralph dug deeper, he found much to admire—from the combustive intensity of the new material, to the band’s reborn political engagement and brash underdog gestures like its busking tour of northern England and Scotland. Only The Clash—armed with little more than some acoustic guitars and Pete Howard’s drumsticks—would play for free in any available public space without sitting down for a formal press interview, let alone any new record to promote.

One idea runs through all of this like a red thread: the notion, as Joe Strummer constantly declared throughout the whole impromptu exercise, that the performer onstage is essentially no different and surely no more important than the people in the audience. This credo lies at the core of punk rock, an ethic that Ralph took to heart when he soon began taking up the guitar and performing himself.

Those initial forays to London to ferret out the lost history of The Clash formed an essential backdrop to Ralph’s ventures into folk-punk music, spoken-word performance, and political activism through his involvement in groups like the Hillsdale County Coalition for Peace and Justice.

Those ideals also motivated Ralph’s first book, Unfinished Business: The Life and Times of Danny Gatton, and is a driving force in all the projects that he has pursued since then, based on the immortal dictum reportedly handed down by Rhodes at the outset of The Clash’s existence: “Look about your situation, and sing about what really matters.”

If anything, the neo-Clash era had an even more powerful impact on Mark Andersen, if in a somewhat different way. Having grown up feeling trapped by rural working-class life in Sheridan County, Montana, Mark first encountered photos and lyrics of The Clash in Rock Scene magazine as a teenager in 1977. It quickly became his favorite band, and helped inspire him to leave farm/ranch work behind to attend Montana State University and become a radical activist there.

Having excelled as a student, Mark was accepted into the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, in 1983. It was a heady moment for a kid from nowhere. Massive loans were assembled to pay for a degree that was a ticket into the lower echelons of the American ruling class.

However gratifying in some ways, the career path that loomed—and the cost at which it came—unsettled Mark. When he read interviews in 1984 with Joe Strummer that questioned The Clash’s past direction, despite their Top 10 success, and called for a return to punk roots, it resonated deeply with him.

While Mark never saw this version of The Clash live, the interviews, photos, and bootleg recordings he tirelessly sought out helped to catalyze a second personal revolution. Heartened by the band’s example, Mark abandoned his elite-oriented career path, spending time in war-torn Central America, including as a “brigadista” helping harvest coffee in Sandinista Nicaragua in defiance of US policy. At the same time, he dove into the DC punk underground, cofounding the activist collective Positive Force DC in the “Revolution Summer” of 1985.

Mark’s immersion in this fertile, influential, and legendarily anticommercial DIY scene—which gave birth to phenomena like straight edge, Riot Grrrl, and emo while nurturing bands such as Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Fugazi, Bikini Kill, and Nation of Ulysses—would lead to cowriting Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation’s Capital and authoring All the Power: Revolution Without Illusion. Driven by that initial spark, Mark has done inner-city outreach, organizing, and advocacy for over thirty years, most recently with We Are Family DC. (For more information, visit wearefamilydc.org or email info@wearefamilydc.org.)

 

Ralph Heibutzki photo by Lisa Quinlan Heibutzki.

Mark Andersen photo by James Lathos.

Flyer design by Mark Andersen, photo by Bob Gruen.