Punk: Attitude Page #6

and courtesy of that Horrible girl,

Nancy Spunge...

I just saw him

completely change.

I'm too tired

I'll do it tomorrow

I loved the Pistols

because of their...

again like The Ramones...

although in a very

not American way...

the Pistols were very incredibly

reductive to emotions, anger...

3 chords, you know,

just the kind of damaged...

sound of rock 'n' roll

being very reduced...

was so beautiful to me.

It became clear that lyrics were very

important to these bands you know...

they were dealing with...

you know,

every day matters...

in a very...

erudite and poetic

fashion I thought...

especially when

you'd got to read...

Joe Strummer's lyrics

and things like that, you know.

Steel shoes on the

stone cold floor

I hear the screws screaming

In the corridor

The bad news

And the slamming of the door

The what did I dos

And the what am I here fors?

I took my existing poems and read

them at break-neck speed, you know...

because it seemed

to me that it was part of...

part of the house style

of punk was fast...

you know,

you had to be fast.

There's a tower in

the heart of London

With a radio station

right at the top

They don't make

the city beat

They're making all

the action stop

A lot of the influences for the

English punk scene were really...

mostly home grown, really.

The kind of glam bands,

like the Ziggy Stardust...

which was really David Bowie

& The Spiders From Mars...

Mott The Hoople and

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band.

White youth, black youth

Better find another solution

Tony James and I had a band

called London SS.

That was like kinda

before The Clash...

and we used to put an advert

in Melody Maker every week...

saying that anybody

that was into The Stooges...

the MC5 and

The New York Dolls...

should get in touch with us.

Bernie brought in

this kid one day...

too good looking I thought

to be in the band...

and was an art student...

and it was Paul Simonon

and I thought...

I looked at Paul and Mick

together and I thought...

"I've got to get

out of this now"...

cos I could see they were

made for each other.

It was essentially Tony James

playing bass, Mick Jones guitar...

and Brian James on guitar.

And they formed bands like The Damned,

Generation X, The Pretenders...

and of course, The Clash.

So don't complain

About your useless

employment

Jack it in

Forever tonight

We started the

first Clash album...

we really didn't want to know anything

and so we just did what we thought...

we played our tracks that we had,

a few tracks that we had...

basically our set before

we made our record.

All across the town

All across the night

Everybody's driving

With full headlights

Black or white turn it on

Face the new religion

Everybody's sitting round

Watching television!

London's burning

with boredom now

London's burning dial 99999

Everyone sees the second record,

given them enough rope...

as a transitional record...

and in that time we would go to loads

of places we had never been before...

and see a lot of the world

that we hadn't seen before...

and all that goes in towards our

third record, "London Calling"...

which is sort of like when

we come into our own.

London Calling

To the faraway towns

Now that war is declared

And battle come down

The Pistols were like really angry

and loud and just yelling about it...

whereas The Clash were angry and loud,

but questioning about it...

and whereas the

Pistols would just like...

scream about how, you know,

something was wrong...

the Clash would kinda say...

well this is wrong,

but what are you gonna do about it.

We're a garage band

We come from garageland

I remember there were a lot of places

that wouldn't let us play up...

and down the country,

universities...

and was probably something they read

that we had a song called "White Riot".

White Riot

White Riot

White Riot

White Riot

They thought that we were some sort

of National Front group...

whereas really...

the song was about white people getting

up and doing it for themselves...

as our black neighbours were doing

it for themselves insofar as the riots...

so it was time for the white people

to get on with their own situation.

Things got a bit serious after

a couple of years...

when Martin Webster's

National Front...

started coming to punk gigs

and trying to recruit people.

I think that's why we played

the Rock Against Racism gig...

just too sort of make

it clear that we're actually...

we're on this side of the fence,

we're not over there.

What people called the

politicisation of The Clash...

came from 2 things.

I would say that Bernard

said to us that we should...

write about

what we know about...

and the second thing was

the way that Joe was...

and he was always

thinking about things like that.

Strummer thought about the

world and the potential of music...

as like you know, he's always making

references to radio broadcasts...

and, you know, this one's

going out to the world.

He had that kind

of Woody Guthrie thing...

or a kind of thing that Dylan had

and Bob Marley had...

and sometimes

John Lennon had...

where they were aware of that power,

but weren't egotistical about it.

And he had this sense

and he knew and it was true...

that something he'd think of in a small,

in his basement in Ladbroke Grove...

had the potential of affecting,

you know, young people particularly...

all over the planet.

Know your rights

These are your rights

Know your rights

These are your rights

Well you're

a loudmouth baby

You better shut it up

In July of 76 we

went to London...

and we played

The Roundhouse.

I couldn't believe it.

I said, this is the audience

that The Ramones deserve.

This is the audience that this music

needs. This is the other half.

It was just

like totally like...

really short songs,

really hard attack...

no nonsense

and it was just like...

cut down bare to the bones,

you know...

and that was inspiring.

There were members of The Clash,

the Sex Pistols.

Sid Vicious learnt how to play the

guitar by listening to The Ramones...

and just staying up

for 3 nights on speed...

and playing along

to The Ramones records...

and The Ramones were

the one band I think that...

the English punks

kind of looked up to.

And I remember saying to Joey,

and he was like...

"Oh, they really liked

us in England"...

but I was like but who cares,

its England, you know.

Why don't we just get?

Why don't we have that?

Why don't we have

The first rehearsal I went to, we had

hardly had no songs, we could hardly play,

and we started with a Ramones song,

Blitz, "Blitzkrieg Bop".

Typical girls

Get upset too quickly

Typical girls

Typical girls can't control themselves

Typical girls

The Slits were one of the

best bands in the punk scene...

for my money and again

they were just so makeshift.

We were different from other

girls because of our lyrics...

and because of our, the way we dressed

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