DISGRACELAND - The Clash: Guns on the Roof, Chased out of Kingston, and a Riot in Times Square

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

The Clash were once described by their manager as a news organization first, and entertainers second. They were, as their record label put it, “the only band that matters.” They were on the front lines at the dawn of punk rock, but were adventurous enough to quickly branch out into reggae, dub, and hip-hop. They were arrested on suspicion of terrorism in London. Chased out of Jamaica by local drug lords armed to the teeth. Caused a near riot in Times Square when their week-long takeover of a disco was shut down by the city after night one. For Joe Strummer, one of the Clash’s two songwriters and the group’s political avatar, all this insanity came with the territory when you were disrupting the status quo. But the weight of it all, the importance of the only band that mattered, became too much to bear, and at the height of the band’s commercial success…their frontman went missing. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠. This episode was originally published on February 13, 2024. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠X⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ ⁠TikTok  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes a suspect is found guilty before a verdict is ever read in court.

On the Wicked Words podcast, I talk with the writers who dig deep into the cases that changed history, including Marsha Clark, who went from prosecuting one of the most famous murder cases to writing crime fiction. It doesn't matter that you didn't take part in the murder. If you were at the scene at all, you're guilty of murder. Every week, the real story is revealed. Join us every Monday for new episodes of Wicked Words. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about the clash are insane. They were arrested on suspense. of terrorism after shooting guns off of a roof. They were chased out of Jamaica by local drug lords armed to the teeth. They caused a near riot in Times Square when their week-long takeover of a disco was shut down by the city after one night. They were famously described as the only band that matters.

A description that weighed so heavy, it caused one of the members of the band to disappear at their commercial peak. Long before they reached that peak, the clash. were making great music. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called the Illustrius 7, MK2.

I played you that clip because I can't afford the rights to a clip from Betty Davis' eyes by Kim Carnes. And why would I play you that specific slice of tease you just to please you cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on May 28, 1981. And that was the day that the clash's seven-night stand at Bond International Casino came to a screeching halt

when it was discovered that the promoters had oversold every show by double, initiating a standoff between the band, the fire department, the police, rival club owners, and angry fans. On this episode, Guns on the Roof, Jamaican drug lords, a Times Square riot and the only band that matters, The Clash. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. The Clash's manager, Bernie Rhodes, once described the band as a news organization first, an entertainer second. Or, as the Clash's own Joe Strummer put it, a public service announcement with guitar. Joe, Mick Jones, Paul Simmonin, and Topper Heeden were on the front lines of a world that was ripping apart at the seams. Hate and war, racism and greed, corruption, inequality.

But over 40 years ago, when the clash were the only band that matters to quote their record company, they reported on that world with music on the cutting edge. The clash were a punk band at a time when the word punk actually meant something. key players at the dawn of a movement that didn't want to top the charts. Nope. Punk wanted the charts torn down. Charts, just like every other pecking order in life, were meaningless. Punk rock's meaning was to gnaws everything up, to use a joisturmerism, that is,

to fuck with the order of things, to challenge the status quo. Punk rock wanted no charts. Which isn't the same as no future. The buzzphrase of the Clash is contemporaries, the sex pistol. And never mind those bollocks, Joe Strummer, for one, could see the future. It was unwritten, there for the taking. Allow the wrong people to take it, and there will be trouble. Stand by and do nothing, and there will be double.

And Joe Sturmer wasn't about to stand by while the world clashed. The haves and the have-nots, police and thieves, high and low culture. 1977 was quote-unquote Armagedean time. And there was no chaos on 7-7-1977 as prophesied by Marcus Garvey and soundtracked by the Roots Reggae Group culture on their hit 2-7s clash. But one year prior, war was declared in battle-come-down. Long-simmering tensions between the West London Black community and the local police boiled over.

The cops at the annual carnival celebration in Notting Hill weren't there to celebrate, but to remind everyone of their authority. To demonstrate complete control, instead, the ruled rose up against the rulers. It started small, an alleged pickpocket being roughed up by a cop with a truncheon. A Coke can tossed at a phalanx of Bobby's out of frustration. And then, mayhem. Police charging through the streets. Black men and women attacked, arrested men and women with nothing more than an axe to grind and the guts to do something about it.

That's according to Joe Strummer. who should know because he was there on the front lines, fighting the fight, trying in vain to set a car on fire while Paul Simmons and the Clash's bass player tossed bricks at police in solidarity. Joe Strummer couldn't set a car on fire, but he could write a song.

White Riot was the Clash's first single released in March of 1977 when the Notting Hill melee was still fresh. White Riot was a call to action in two snarling minutes. Joe Strummer intended for the song to encourage white people like himself to get involved in the fight against authority

and to help grind that axe. And fuck those jackboot heels pressed tight against the necks of the disenfranchised. But those heels were powerful. Authority was powerful. A song was not enough, especially when a song could easily be misconstrued as White Riot was

when it was quickly co-opted by the National Front. Now, a few years later, Joe Strummer was back to the drawing board, back to a corner of the recording studio, surrounded by road cases. Deep inside, his self-constructed spliff bunker, a makeshift hiding place where one could smoke huge joints and plot the next big thing while not disturbing the engineers and musicians as they worked, because one must have order. Punk was not chaos. and by 1981, the clash were not punk. Punk was dead, just like the fanzine said. It died the day the clash signed to CBS records. If punk was indeed yesterday's papers,

as Joe Stormer suspected it was, when he once again looked to the future, that meant the clash had to adapt or die. First, they traded punk for Rockabilly, Sky, even Pot. London calling their double L.P. masterpiece sold hundreds of thousands of copies and found its way under those ridiculous charts. And their new record was going to be even bigger, if not in sales, and at least in scope. Sandinista was a triple LP, yet the band demanded it be priced at just a little more than a single

album much to their record label CBS's chagrin. Sandinista got even further away from punk, into dub, reggae, R&B, and most importantly, a new sound coming from the streets of New York City. Hip-hop had the new punk attitude, was the future. Joe Strummer planned his next move from the sanctity of his spliff bunker. The clash were ones to take a stand, against apathy, clampdowns, Spanish bombs, Tommy guns. Sometimes the stand wasn't political, but rather about love, about standing by your man, like in Mick Jones's great pop song, Train in Vane.

Right now, Joe wasn't thinking about making the world a little less miserable with a song. He was thinking about doing it by making a stand. A seven-night stand, in New York City, to be exact. Ground Zero for hip-hop, the nucleus of the future. A massive undertaking. But not massive, like Madison Square Garden as they were originally offered. More money for less effort. defeated the purpose. The Grateful Dead, Rush, sticks, fucking rolling stones, those bloated dinosaurs,

they could have Madison Square Garden. The clash wanted to be at street level, with the graffiti artists and the B-boys and the boom boxes banging out that crooked, crooked beat. The plan was to play seven nights at Bond International Casino in Times Square, aka Bonds, which wasn't an actual casino, but a one-time restaurant turned haberdashery left vacant for years like the buildings gone to rot back in Camden Town, the ones that Joe squatted in before he joined the clash and had the opportunity to play music in as a faraway place as Times Square. Tickets here in Times Square at Bonds were $10, and the all-ages matinee shows were only five. That was $11 less than the cost to see Mick Jagger embarrass himself at Madison Square Garden.

But it wasn't just the price. It was the opportunity. The shows at Bonds were the Clash's only scheduled performances in North America that year. New Yorkers flocked down to 45th in Broadway. They slept on the sidewalk overnight to be the first in line when the box office opened. Outside the city, fans flooded the phone lines at Ticketron, a.k.a. Ticketmaster before Ticketmaster was Ticketmaster. And all seven shows quickly sold out.

New York City was all of the time. sudden, Clash Central. Kids on the street sang Joe Rap from The Magnificent Seven. WBLS played the extended 12-inch remix, The Magnificent Dance on repeat. WNEW declared Clash Week in New York City, and the hype was palpable, as palpable as the heat. Over 100 degrees on night one. Thursday, May 28th. Inside Bonds, the clash were equally hot.

Joe Strummer attacking his telecaster with a jackhammer arm and gritted teeth. Mick Jones moving non-stop, bouncing, trading songs with Joe. Paul Simmonin is based a low-slung weapon of truth. Topperhidden, overpowered by funk, images as arresting as the music projected on the wall behind them. Tanks, soldiers, handguns, gas masks, napalm babies. The clash, true to their manager's word, were a news organization first, entertainers second. But not everybody was entertained.

Before the Clash even took the stage, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five at the forefront of New York hip-hop, handpicked by the clash to open the show, were booed and pelted with trash. And then when the show ended, and the front door opened up, a group of New York firefighters rushed inside.

And Joe Strummer felt a sudden panic. Where's the fire? There was no fire. But there were 3,600 people inside, nearly twice as much as was legally allowed for the city's fire code. The clash had created a death trap, or so said the person who called the fire department to complain. A concerned citizen? Think again. More likely a rival club or promoter pissed that the clash were taking away business from every other spot in Manhattan.

Pissed that the promoters of this unprecedented seven-night stand at Bonds had oversold the show by double. And not just the first night, every night. Now there would be no more nights. The clash were done. Meanwhile, the greedy promoters were counting their thousands. Fans left holding tickets were a shit out of luck. And the prevailing authority that was the city of New York was in complete control. There's two golden rules that any man should live by.

Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And Rule 2, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck.

I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe.

On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an act or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb.

And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance. Like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion

or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over?

Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena, Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Child on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us.

I'm Millie to Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast. Dear Movies I Love You from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion Clause? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay.

That's another film. I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites.

New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. work. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When it came to complete control, everyone wanted it. Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, the Clash's manager, Bernie Rhodes. But it was their label, CBS Records, who were the ones really calling the shots. CBS could release music by The Clash whether the band wanted them to or not. And that pissed Joe off enough that he wrote a song about it. But Joe and the boys should have known better. CBS wasn't some charitable foundation for artists, it was a business run by businessmen. Men like Maurice Oberstein, CBS's chairman, who thought the Clash's new song, Bank Robber,

sounded like David Bowie backwards, whatever that meant. Maurice didn't get it. It was 1980. Just three years since the Clash's debut. Already they were confusing the suit in the corner office. The guy was complete control. Bank robber was drenched in the game. echo and reverb, with a groove as knocked out loaded as one of the splits Joe smoked in his bunker.

He was blessed with the fingerprints of Mikey Dred, legendary Jamaican DJ, dub, and reggae guru, who had become friendly with the band and was fully on board with the musical hybrid they were now eager to pursue. Marisse would catch up soon enough. The clash, Mikey Dred, they'd all be waiting for him in the future. But until then, the clash weren't waiting around. Not from Maurice Oberstein's approval or for his money. With the help of Paul Simmonin's girlfriend's Amex card, the clash flew to Jamaica to Studio 1 in Kingston, where Mikey Dread was waiting to work with them again.

This time, for Sandinista, which was quickly becoming a 3-LP indulgence in just about any and every idea the band had. Like Junk of Partner, an old blues tune that Joe's former band, the 101ers, used to play. But they didn't play at 101ers' style. This wasn't pub rock. This was radio clash.

Pirate satellite, Kingston dub, punk in spirit, if not in sound. Joe sat at the old piano inside Studio One. It was out of tune, but in the best way possible. He fumbled his fingers across the keys and worked out the song's chord progression. A fiddler wandered in from outside and began to play along. The dreads from Roots Eratics, Studio One session players who hung around the margins and chewed the scenery. The vibe inside the little studio was as strong as the gonger that was currently making the rounds. Joe felt a tapping at his shoulder.

He stopped playing and spun around. It was Mikey. Joe, come on, man, quick. We must go. What? Joe was confused. What hell was going on? What was Mikey even talking about? Now, Mikey shouted.

They're coming to kill us all. By they, Mikey men, drugmen, hustlers, armed to the teeth, on their way to the studio to collect payment, protection money, you're not from around here money, the kind that even the Rolling Stones coughed up when they came to Kingston to make Goatshead soup. But the clash weren't the stones. They didn't have that kind of bread.

Shit, man, the only reason they were in Kingston in the first place was because Paul's girl had room on her credit card. And if the clash came up empty, the drugmen were going to get what they thought was there is another way, with bloodshed. There was only one thing for the clash to do. They left everything behind, the old piano, the roots erratics, the killer ganja, that fiddle player, and scurried outside in Kingston's dry season. Directly across the street, local gangsters carrying automatic weapons and machetes began to emerge from the shadows.

From an alley, the locals called idlers' rest. But there was no resting on the docket for the clash. No idling, not while the world ripped apart at its seams and not today. Within seconds, Joe, Mick, Paul, and Topper were inside the car that used to get to the studio, retracing their tracks. Back down a dirt road, kicking up dust past an intersection were just hours earlier. Unbeknownst to any of them, 14 men had been shot dead as part of an ongoing civil war that, while not officially declared, was very real. And then, the car dissolved into the Jamaican sunset. The dust settled.

Kingston's drugmen didn't get their money. But they did send the clash packing. Out of Jamaica, over to New York City, where they finished making Sandinista at studios like Jimmy Hendrix's Electric Ladyland, where one year later they once again found themselves at the mercy of gangsters and hustlers looking to take complete control. This time, the gangsters were greedy promoters who had overest, sold the band's seven-night stand at Bonds and Times Square.

The hustlers were other vindictive club owners from around the way, eager to punish the clash for their hubris. And their own contemporaries were using this moment to call the clash out, forgetting on the charts, forgetting bloated, just like the rock dinosaurs playing Madison Square Garden. Look at them, that clash, a bunch of corporate shills. The little guy reporting from the front lines, horseshit.

Try this on for size instead. Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, the whole lot. They pretended to be enraged by the actions of a guy like Maurice Oberstein at the multi-conclomerate mass market cluster fuck that was CBS Records. But in reality, the four of them were no different. At a press conference immediately before night one, before the show that got them shut down, the clash were told that Paul Weller of the jam had just called them sellouts.

What constitutes a sellout in the eyes of the clash, the reporter wondered? Mick Jones couldn't resist. What happens is that all the tickets go on sale for a concert and all the people who want to go go and buy them as there are tickets that constitutes a sellout. Fuck all mod cons. Paul Weller and the jam were living in the past. Bittered that their music wasn't reaching the same number of people.

People now flooding into Times Square because of one band and one band only. The clash. Outside bonds, it was chaos. Cops kicking gypsies on the pavement and all that while yellow calves raced down Broadway. NYPD riding around on horseback swinging their billy clubs at the hordes of kids crowding the street.

Kids who were infuriated that they stood in line for hours, slept on the pavement overnight, and in many cases spent a great deal of money and traveled a great distance just to secure tickets to shows that were now canceled. But Joe Strummer wasn't about to accept that tens of thousands of fans were now getting turned away. He also wasn't about to get chased out of New York,

York by club owners and firefighters, just like he'd been chased out of Kingston by men who meant to do him harm. There was a simple solution to this predicament. Honor every ticket. Even if that meant performing double the amount of shows, which is exactly what the clash did. 17 shows squeezed into nearly half a month's time. 17 shows when they were only slated to play seven. Each show with a different opening act. Punk, funk, hardcore, hip-hop, whatever was cool at the time.

Bad brains, the sirens, the slits, Joe Ely, the treacherous three, the Bloods, Bush Tetris, Funkapolitan, Lee Scratch Perry, the fall, the dead Kennedys. Every night the same energy.

Every night a new crowd eager to not miss out on music's hottest ticket. Say, isn't that? Hey, that's Robert De Niro, honey. He made his way inside bonds along with everyone else, incognito. Martin Scorsese had his side.

After the show, they took Joe and the guys up Broadway to a bar called Tin Pan Alley, where some a raging bullet been shot just two years prior. The clash as New York entourage grew. Bobby, Marty, graffiti artist, future a 2000 and Fab Five Freddy, like minds reporting the news on cinema screens and the sides of subway cars.

Men on the street, men of the people. They didn't have the answers to the world's problems, but they had the questions. questions they asked with spray paint on a wall with a flickering image on a cinema screen or in a song played with utmost urgency. Questions like, where are we going and what will happen when we get there?

What will you do if you rule the world? But in less than a year's time, the clash would be asking a different sort of question, asking not of the people on the street or the people in the audience, but of themselves. And that question, Should I stay or should I go? We'll be right back after this world, word, word.

There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.

I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an act or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? You'd rather be disappointed in. Do that.

Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. You're like, making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yellowo.

I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over?

Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu. Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie to Cherico.

And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the criterion closet? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film, grape I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore.

It's probably a store that sells, running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

you get your podcasts. The Westway, London, 1978. Paul Simonin and Topper Heaton, the Clash's rhythm section, were up on the roof. They traded a friend's air rifle back and forth. Didn't have much of a kick, but it made a decent bang.

And the aim was half decent, too. Good enough to hit a few of the pigeons cooing and shitting all over the place. Also good enough to pass the time while Mick and Joe laid down overdubs for the band's current studio effort. give him enough rope. Topper, like most drummers, found that recording an album was about 10% work and 90% downtime.

Topper was now spending that downtime looking through a rifle's scope. He honed in on the pack of flying rats. Dirty fucking animals. He pulled the trigger. The rifle snapped and the pellet exploded into the bunch sending feathers flying. One pigeon toppled over dead while the others flapped their wings and flew into the air. But they didn't go far. and they came right back.

Dirty and stupid. What a combo. Cocked the rifle again. And again, he fired. Soon, all those rifle shots drew attention. Not just people down on the streets, but cops. Cops who'd last busted a rock group up on a roof some nine years prior when the Beatles pulled that little stunt five miles due east from here atop Saville Row.

But the fabs were just being loud. Topper and Paul were shooting a gun. Killing, it turns out, not random dirty street pigeons, but racing pigeons being raised by a local mechanic. Cops didn't care about the birds. They took Topper and Paul for terrorists and booked them as such. Now, four years later in 1982, you wouldn't mistake Topper Heeden as a terrorist, even if the clash were dressing in fatigues and naming albums for Nicaraguan Freedom Fighters. Topper was a junkie, addicted to heroin. A drug that may have suited a horn player like Charlie Parker,

but for a drummer, a player who had to keep time, presented a very difficult set of challenges. And those challenges, and Topper's unrelenting habit weighed heavy on Joe Sturmer's mind. So it did as well on Mick Jones's mind. Joe's longtime songwriting partner, and they weren't doing that anymore. Mick with the music and Joe with the words.

The two were barely speaking, let alone writing. Mick just made Joe wait, He made them all wait. He was Elizabeth Taylor in a foul mood, and he was writing these big pop songs, songs that weren't ripped from the headlines, but songs that aimed directly for the charts, that meaningless pecking order that bands like the clash once revolted against.

Take Should I Stay or Should I Go, a song that wasn't about the things Joe was writing songs about, colonialism, the hangover of the Vietnam War and basic human rights. Should I stay or should I go? a song about breaking up. Joe didn't have to read between the lines. With Topper nodding off and Mick buggering about, it was already obvious that the clash,

once so tightly bound together, were, like the rest of the world, coming apart at the seams. Still, they needed each other in order to keep this thing going. Remember, they had convinced CBS to let them sell Sandinista their triple LP for the price of a single record. They did this by foregoing their royalties, which would help the label recoup the money they otherwise would have lost,

which meant that the clash had a tour non-stop to generate the revenue to maintain the lifestyles they've gotten used to a half decade into their careers. So the clash played shows constantly, and risked burnout. At Bonds, 17 nights in a row in the same city, at the same venue, on the same stage, they risked losing their minds. Before long, it was time to record a night. another album to make more money and to feed the machine. Call it a hamster wheel.

Call it a grind. Whatever it was, it wasn't what Joe Strummer signed up for. What it was, was a job. Despite all of this, Joe and the clash made the job look easy. Record number five, Combat Rock, became their best-selling album, thanks to Mick's breakup song, and Toppers rock the Casbah. A song he recorded in a rare state of sobriety, the drums, the bass, the keys, the whole damn thing, save for Mick's guitar and Joe's vocal,

knocked off in 20 minutes by Topper alone. But that kind of focus and discipline was rare for a guy in the grip of a habit. Soon, Topper was back to copying a fix. And Mick was back in his foul mood, covering his face with a mosquito mask during the Rock the Casbah video shoot, just because. Bernie Rhodes, the Clash's manager, was worried, maybe even more so than Joe.

Not about the stability of the band, about the stability of their finances. Bernie had put together an amazing U.S. tour for them in 1983. This was the tour that was going to make the band explode in the United States, bigger than the bonds run and bigger than they could ever imagine. Or so went Bernie's thinking. Given the stakes, the worst thing that could happen to the band was to head out onto the road and play to half-empty rooms. It would be a signal to the rest of the record buying public that the clash was no longer

an assent, but was instead on a downward spiral. And this could not happen. So, the Clash's conniving manager got an idea. What if the Clash had to cancel their tour, but for reasons that were beyond their control? What if they couldn't find one of their band members? And what if that band member was indispensable? What if the Clash's Joe Strummer went missing? The plan could have been hatched in a spliff bunker. It was that simple and brilliant. It went like this. Joe disappears for three days. Management, meanwhile, gins up a bunch of quick press. Joe's missing. Joe's dead. Sympathy pours in from the fans. The band reaches a peak of popularity as those first few undersold shows are canceled. And then, Joe miraculously reappears. And that fever pitch of interest in his disappearance

and sudden reappearance causes a huge spike in ticket sales. Bing, bang, boom. But Joe couldn't hide out in London. He was too well known there. So the plan was to head to Texas, of all places, and chill with Joe Ely, the honky-tong singer who toured with the clash

back in their early days and opened one of their nights at Bonds. Bernie told Joe to call when he got there. But the call never came, because Joe Strummer never went to Texas. Joe Strummer stood in the middle of a cemetery outside Paris. At his feet, the final resting place of Arthur Rambo. The poet had been dead for nearly a hundred years, but his spirit was very much still alive.

It was there in the words of American beat poet Alan Ginsberg, who guessed it on the clashes song. ghetto defendant, a deep cut on the combat rock album, an album which had just been released, at the very moment that Joe Strummer, the band's frontman, went missing. Not missing like Bernie Rhodes had plotted. Joe Strummer changed the plan and didn't tell a soul. Only his girlfriend knew that he was here, in France, wandering around cemeteries, grabbing pints at the pub, and running anonymously in the Paris Marathon.

That's right, Joe Strummer, singer of the clash. running anonymously in the Paris Marathon. And somehow, despite that, Joe Strummer's disappearance was no longer fake, but very real. Just as real as the love that Combat Rock was now receiving, especially in the United States where it cracked the top 10. But again, Joe didn't care about the charts, never had and never would. He didn't want to think about charts or about Combat Rock. He was sick of the headache of leading the clash in a battle,

a battle that Mick didn't seem to want to fight anymore, and he was sick of pissed off guitar players, junkie drummers, ticket sales, record sales, record prices. Here, in Paris, you could forget about it all. But back in London, his disappearance was all anyone could talk about. Bernie's plan had backfired. Ticket sales for the tour weren't increasing. In fact, they were plummeting. Venues started canceling gigs.

Bernie was pissed. The clash were pissed. Fans were confused. The New Music Express, NME, the biggest music paper in Britain, began a weekly Strummer watch column. Anonymous tips poured in. Joe Strummer was on safari in Southern Africa. Joe Strummer was fighting with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Joe Strummer was a joke just like this column and the joke was getting old. In Paris, Joe wasn't a joke. He was a treasure. The small beard he'd grown couldn't hide his identity for long. Every French punk had a Joe storm reciting, but the French fans were willing to keep his secret. Joe thought he could disappear forever, and live off baguettes, pints, and Serge Gainsburg, Musk. But that wasn't a reality as management or his band were going to accept.

If Joe stayed in Paris, if the clash were forced to cancel their U.S. tour, there would be no money, and no cash to feed the constantly starving beast of a rock and roll machine that their business had become. They'd go bankrupt. They'd be finished. The clash tried to keep going without Joe. Ticket sales for a warm-up gig in the Netherlands were sparse. Dutch punks wondered whether it was worth forking over their hard-earned cash to see only three-fourths of the only band that mattered. And the promoter was on the verge of canceling the concert.

And then, he got a call from Paris. It was a Dutch journalist on assignment in France. Joe Strummer is here, he told the promoter. In Paris, I just had a pint with him. The promoter hung up the phone and called Bernie Rhodes. Bernie sent a heavy to Paris to find Joe, grab Joe, and bring Joe back to the clash. The heavy was a guy named Cosmo Vinyl, an old London punk rocker who was friends with Joe, and whose ex-girlfriend, Pearl Harbor, was now dating Joe's bassist Paul Simon.

But when Cosmo arrived in Paris, the city clammed up. The people went into protection mode. They didn't want their secret taken away from them. They didn't want their new rock star exported back onto the rock star hamster wheel. But Cosmo was persistent. He found Joe, drinking in a half-empty Paris pub, alone. His gait was familiar, but his appearance was off. He seemed skinnier than Joe Strummer, if that was even possible.

And he had a beard, like a punk rock Fidel Castro. Cosmo put his hand on the guy's shoulder and said, Hey, Fidel. Joe Strummer turned around and saw his old friend. He'd been found. Every gig has to end. Even the disappearing kind. Joe Strummer gave up his ghost,

finished his pint, threw his arm over his friend's shoulder, and left. The clash were back together and back on the road. That fall, Joe stood in the wings at Buffalo's rich stadium waiting to go on stage. His head shaved into a mohawk, camouflage pants,

combat boots, ready for battle to come down. The clash were opening for the who, one-time titans of the British rock scene. The first opener was David Johansson, former frontman of the New York Dolls. The New York Dolls predated punk rock. They were weird, fast, and dangerous. And now David Johansson was crooning, reach out, I'll be there, and trudging through a medley of British invasion classics. David Johansson used to be a punk legend. And now, here, in Buffalo, in the stadium, David Johansson seemed more like a joke. Next to Joe Strummer on the side of the stage, the who's Pete Townsend nodded approvingly at David Johansson and his tight leather jacket and ridiculous headband. Pete Townsend looked like someone's dad dressed as a punk rocker for Halloween.

At the time, Pete was pushing 40, ancient and rock ears. Between Pete Townsend and David Johansen on the bill that night was the only band that used to matter, because Joe Strummer had made the decision. The future was no longer unwritten. The future had written off the clash. Such disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this.

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and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at Disgracelandpod. Rock a roll. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that, trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia clerk. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever.

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Camilla Morone. Carrie Kenny Silver and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway

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