The Clash are a truly ideal subject for Tempo, a series that aims to set the legacy of recording artists in a wider sociological context.
Today, The Clash are universally recognized as one of the greatest, most exhilarating bands ever to either make use of recording tape or step on a stage. Their works regularly appear in high positions in critics’ polls to find the greatest albums in history. However, they were more than just a great rock band. The Clash were convinced that they could change the world with their art, and their art itself sprang from the uniquely interesting and fractious social conditions and politics of Britain in the Seventies and Eighties.
The fond regard in which they are held, therefore, is not merely the normal gratitude felt by those for whom artists have provided aural pleasure. They were a group whose music was, and is, special to their audience because that music insisted on addressing the conditions of poverty, petty injustice, and mundane life experienced by the people who bought their records. Moreover, although their rebel stances were often no more than posturing, from The Clash’s stubborn principles came a fundamental change in the perception of what is possible in the music industry, from subject matter to authenticity to quality control to price ceilings.
Yet The Clash’s high standing was not ever thus. The slogan “The Only Band That Matters” was devised by The Clash’s American record label Epic. The Clash began to resent it, but it was deemed accurate (and snappy) by enough people to be quickly and widely taken up. It was a slogan that summed them up, not just in terms of the social relevance of their songs but their penchant for self-mythologizing. Initially, critics and fans accepted, even loved, their endless self-aggrandizement. However, their multiple vainglorious anthems about themselves began to grate when The Clash started to be perceived as losing relevance and even selling out. From day one, The Clash had made proclamations to the music press about their integrity—which encompassed promises to spread around any wealth they made, to keep their ticket and record prices below certain levels, to spurn crass commercialism, and to remain in touch with their fans. Unfortunately, a function of the global success engendered by their excellent music meant the betrayal of some of those promises, with an inevitable backlash. The increasing frequency of substandard product didn’t help either.
Having clawed back some respectability with their best-selling 1982 Combat Rock album, band dissension and egotistical behavior unseemly for people with collectivist ideals produced a rupture in their ranks. A new version of The Clash released in 1985 Cut the Crap, an album whose self-parody made it a sad finale.
After the dust had settled and the purist punk credo receded into history, The Clash’s catalog could be assessed in more objective terms. The consensus is that it is mostly superb.
This book seeks to explore both why The Clash’s music was so powerful and to give an idea of why The Clash aroused passions, pro and anti, for reasons that often had nothing directly to do with their music.