A man of many bands (The Damned, Maniacs, Physicals, Rings and too many more to count), guitarist Alan Lee Shaw may well come off to some chroniclers as a rock 'n' rollin' Zelig, of sorts...but, as usual, the story's a bit more involved than that.
Certainly, song-wise, Alan has contributed his share of nuggets to the punk 'n' roll canon. If you've ever felt like slapping a card-carrying member of the international art school jet set around, "Chelsea '77" (The Maniacs) offers the ideal soundtrack ("I'm not one of the young and rich, young and riiiich!"). Ditto for the Physicals' "Be Like Me," surely among the best non-Pistols tracks that could have come from the bollockin' boys themselves (and benefits from the co-conspiratorial hand of drummer Paul Cook, surprise surprise: for an embarassment of riches, see the Physicals' SKULDUGGERY CD).
I first interviewed Alan about his involvement in these sundry ventures for a VINTAGE GUITAR article (circa 2000), and sufficiently enjoyed the experience to repeat it several times since. Like the ever-movin' shark, I'm circling back to the good stuff, as this archival blast proves (9/17/06)...which came about as I revived my Indiana Jones-style quest for a Clash book that truly matters. I emailed Alan some questions, and got the answers that weekend -- so here they are now.
CHAIRMAN RALPH (CR): What are the forces you'd credit with getting you into a) punk rock, and b) becoming a musician? Who would point to as your chief inspirations?
ALAN LEE SHAW (ALS): I got into music like a lot of musicians, from Art School. I was at Art School in the '70s studying Graphic Design in Cambridge.I teamed up with an old buddy of mine, Rod Latter and started to play in college bands. Music at that time, mid '70s was pretty bland, what with Prog Rock and Glam Pop and what seemed like a never-ending list of old Hippy bands from the '60s still making records. I, at the time was into left field, raw high energy music. I had seen the Pink Fairies, MC5, The Doors and Velvet Underground and was a big fan of The New York Dolls and Iggy Pop, also some '60s bands like The Pretty Things.Yardbirds and The Who.
I left Art School and moved to London, with Rod in '75. Pub Rock was the thing in London at that time but we arrived just as Punk Rock was about to break. We put the Maniacs together and started to ride the wave! For me Punk Rock was like I had found home.I had a voice, it was raw, Loud and angry and got up peoples noses. Also, itS do it yourself attitude appealed, anyone could form a band and make records! Which was revolutionary at the time
CR: Which venues were 'most happening' when punk rock started, and why? Which ones were good for you to play, particularly?
ALS: Punk Rock was played at the time in a lot of the old pub and club venues like The Nashville Rooms,The Greyhound, Red Cow, Hope and Anchor, Man in the Moon, The Marquee and The 100 Club but Punk did open its own new breeding ground venues, such as The Roxy and the Vortex. All of these venues were pretty small 100 to 300 max. They all had small stages and it could get very, very hot and crazy with a full house. The Vortex was good, we (The Maniacs) were on the Live at the Vortex album.
CR: Did the press focus on those deemed to be "the heavies" (Clash, Jam, Pistols) tend to diminish bands like yours? If so, how has the passage of time changed this equation?
ALS: The Press at that time became very precious and snobby about what bands were considered to be real Punk or not. The Clash. Sex Pistols and the Damned were the Holy Grail and the Buzzcocks and the Jam were let in the gang, and of course others followed as New Wave took over, but in general most new Punk bands were viewed with suspicion by the Press and called bandwagon jumpers. In retrospect this now seems a bit harsh as the idea of Punk was that anybody could play and form a band. A lot of acts suffered because of this but time has made them into collectors items in the big Punk Rock picture, enjoyed by many!
CR: Do you feel there's more of a connection between the pub and early punk scenes than folks admit, given that entities like the Albion agency were significant players, in getting gigs for bands? What's your take on this?
ALS: Yes I think there was a sort of affinity between Pub Rock and Punk Rock. Most of the venues and then the promoters were the same and Pub Rock was low key and unpretentious, The Stranglers came from Pub Rock, the founders of Stiff and Chiswick records had their roots in Pub Rock. So there is a connection, but the raw attitude and noise of Punk Rock was not liked by the laidback musos of Pub Rock. So there was a marked difference.
CR: And, yeah, since you mentioned Mont de Marsan: take me back to that day. How'd you end up on the bill in the place described as "a sleepy little French border town"...
ALS: Mon de Marsan was a dusty sleepy town in the south of France near the Spanish border, hence the bullring that the festival was held in. We (the Maniacs) were invited to play by Marc [Zermati], the French promoter who had a record shop and label (Skydog) in London. He put us on the bill. We went down on a bus along with The Police,The Boys, The Sean Tyla Gang, all the Music Press and Photographers.
It was a long ride and I got to know Stewart [Copeland] and Sting quite well. The festival was over two days with all the bands staying mostly in the same hotel and bars. Speed was the drug of choice in those days so things went in a bit of a haze, but I do remember that all the bands played really well, the Clash, I do remember, played a great gig!
CR; What was the festival's significance, if any, in terms of the punk rock scene, and how did it help the bands involved? What were your lasting impressions of the day?
ALS: This was the second Punk Rock festival at Mont de Marsan. The bands and Punk in general had now reached its peak and was just about to implode and morph into New Wave. So in some ways, in retrospect this was the last hurrah, so to speak. I myself spilt up the Maniacs to form the Physicals in Jan '78, thinking that Punk was over and what's next. l had no idea that 30 years later I would still be talking about it and how it has influenced generations. That gets a bit scary.
All I know is Punk felt perfect at the time and that we were at the centre of a powerful change in music. It was only sometime later that I realised how powerful that change was.I was and am pleased and in a kind of way, proud to have been there. You can't buy this stuff!
ALAN LEE SHAW (THIS IS YOUR LIFE, MAAAN...)
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NOT YOUR TYPICAL GIRL: THE VIV ALBERTINE INTERVIEW, TAKE THREE (10/09/09)
CHAIRMAN RALPH (CR): So what you do think the definitive Slits recording would be?
VIV ALBERTINE (VA): Oh, definitely CUT, yeah.
CR: Because it seemed, by then, you had gelled as a band, and had a sympathetic producer [in Dennis Bovell], as well.
VA: Yeah, a fantastic and steady producer, who could go right out there mentally. That's just what we really needed: someone who not only could ground us, but could mentally flip out, as well.
CR: Right, somebody who could encourage you...
VA: Yeah. You know “Newtown?” He did a rhythm track in there, where he just laid out a box of matches, a glass, a spoon, and a few other bits and pieces. He would do wild things like that, which was fantastic. You'd hear the matchbox shaking, a match being lit, and a glass [clinking] – and he made a little rhythm track out of it, which is fantastic. He just improvised it, did it in one take.
CR: Well, it's a very Jamaican way of working, isn't it? So where did it all get unstuck, you think?
VA: Well, I think, the '80s appearing, really – like I said, the careerism of music. Suddenly, it was just about making money, you know: “Let's dress nice and neat, and turn up on time for things.” It just became like a career, like any other – and, if you want to express yourself, I mean, you don't do it in a career. You might as well work at a bank.
CR: Right. Or manage property...
VA: Yeah, exactly. It wasn't a means of expression anymore, it was just slick – it became slick. But England's so small, and so faddy, that it drops one thing, and turns to the next.
CR: Oh, sure, and, of course -- the music press had a lot more influence than it does now. That had a lot to do with it [the post-punk dropoff], didn't it?
VA: Yeah, I hadn't really thought of it, but it probably did, yeah.
CR: Well, because the country is so much smaller, whereas, here – if somebody writes a bad review, you just say [makes pffft! noise], “I'll just go where I'm king.” But, it seemed to me– at least, in the scene of that time – you had a lot fewer options.
VA: Yeah, absolutely, much fewer options. So, it's like, you start going this '80s road, wearing a load of makeup, looking slick. Oh, God, no one wants to know if you were banging on about something personal, or alternative, really, or stretching your music to sound different and challenging. No one wanted to know. I did get into the improvised music scene, but it didn't really sustain me as much. It's much better now, actually – it's the most lively thing happening.
CR: Right – which brings us full circle, to where we started talking. We're back, doing what we like, when we like. There's no bigtime manager with his shirt open to his waist, and a big cigar...
VA: No...I'm here totally alone, through word of mouth – it's fantastic! To think, a year and a half ago – I couldn't play guitar. As you know, I was no virtuoso the first time around, so it's not like I had to re-learn what I knew – in a year and a half, I I taught myself guitar again, in my own way, and now, I'm doing six dates. And it's great.
CR: It is pretty amazing to think of it – so, where do we go from here?
VA: Well, I've got a band back in England – a really good band of great people, nice people, in the same mindspace as me. But I couldn't afford to bring them, 'cause, you know, have to put up hotels, and [you're] traveling...
CR: Well, by the time you do all that, you're basically paying to play...
VA: Well, I'm paying to play now, even on my own – it's still gonna cost me. But I'm hoping that, in a way, if I put in a bit at the beginning, maybe this will set me up to come back next time with my band...hopefully.
CR: Well, maybe we'll circle back to that again, hopefully, who knows? That's my own hope when I go out and play. So what is it you hope to accomplish, now that you have started back up again?
VA: My message is to work hard, and be myself. From that, I hope I can make some very honest communication and expression, which touches other people. There's no point at all to do it, if I'm just wanking off to myself.
If, after a few years, I find that it isn't touching other people, then I'll stop. It's meaningless just to do it in a bubble. I just hope to make very honest communication that somehow says something in a way that people haven't said it before, really – and that's it.
And anything else that comes from that, fine, you know. After that, it's a struggle to keep feeding yourself, be true to yourself – and it's a struggle, you know, to turn down the temptations that come, I think.
CR: Sure, because there are always going to be no lack of easy choices to make – that's just the whole thing of it.
VA: I mean, as soon as you do start getting what might be called “success,” because you're appealing to people, then the temptations come, to sell out – to just do things wrong, to not be so pure anymore. This time round, I don't want to do that.
CR: All right, and I guess that probably is a pretty good place to leave it for this afternoon.
VA: OK, brilliant.
VIV ALBERTINE (VA): Oh, definitely CUT, yeah.
CR: Because it seemed, by then, you had gelled as a band, and had a sympathetic producer [in Dennis Bovell], as well.
VA: Yeah, a fantastic and steady producer, who could go right out there mentally. That's just what we really needed: someone who not only could ground us, but could mentally flip out, as well.
CR: Right, somebody who could encourage you...
VA: Yeah. You know “Newtown?” He did a rhythm track in there, where he just laid out a box of matches, a glass, a spoon, and a few other bits and pieces. He would do wild things like that, which was fantastic. You'd hear the matchbox shaking, a match being lit, and a glass [clinking] – and he made a little rhythm track out of it, which is fantastic. He just improvised it, did it in one take.
CR: Well, it's a very Jamaican way of working, isn't it? So where did it all get unstuck, you think?
VA: Well, I think, the '80s appearing, really – like I said, the careerism of music. Suddenly, it was just about making money, you know: “Let's dress nice and neat, and turn up on time for things.” It just became like a career, like any other – and, if you want to express yourself, I mean, you don't do it in a career. You might as well work at a bank.
CR: Right. Or manage property...
VA: Yeah, exactly. It wasn't a means of expression anymore, it was just slick – it became slick. But England's so small, and so faddy, that it drops one thing, and turns to the next.
CR: Oh, sure, and, of course -- the music press had a lot more influence than it does now. That had a lot to do with it [the post-punk dropoff], didn't it?
VA: Yeah, I hadn't really thought of it, but it probably did, yeah.
CR: Well, because the country is so much smaller, whereas, here – if somebody writes a bad review, you just say [makes pffft! noise], “I'll just go where I'm king.” But, it seemed to me– at least, in the scene of that time – you had a lot fewer options.
VA: Yeah, absolutely, much fewer options. So, it's like, you start going this '80s road, wearing a load of makeup, looking slick. Oh, God, no one wants to know if you were banging on about something personal, or alternative, really, or stretching your music to sound different and challenging. No one wanted to know. I did get into the improvised music scene, but it didn't really sustain me as much. It's much better now, actually – it's the most lively thing happening.
CR: Right – which brings us full circle, to where we started talking. We're back, doing what we like, when we like. There's no bigtime manager with his shirt open to his waist, and a big cigar...
VA: No...I'm here totally alone, through word of mouth – it's fantastic! To think, a year and a half ago – I couldn't play guitar. As you know, I was no virtuoso the first time around, so it's not like I had to re-learn what I knew – in a year and a half, I I taught myself guitar again, in my own way, and now, I'm doing six dates. And it's great.
CR: It is pretty amazing to think of it – so, where do we go from here?
VA: Well, I've got a band back in England – a really good band of great people, nice people, in the same mindspace as me. But I couldn't afford to bring them, 'cause, you know, have to put up hotels, and [you're] traveling...
CR: Well, by the time you do all that, you're basically paying to play...
VA: Well, I'm paying to play now, even on my own – it's still gonna cost me. But I'm hoping that, in a way, if I put in a bit at the beginning, maybe this will set me up to come back next time with my band...hopefully.
CR: Well, maybe we'll circle back to that again, hopefully, who knows? That's my own hope when I go out and play. So what is it you hope to accomplish, now that you have started back up again?
VA: My message is to work hard, and be myself. From that, I hope I can make some very honest communication and expression, which touches other people. There's no point at all to do it, if I'm just wanking off to myself.
If, after a few years, I find that it isn't touching other people, then I'll stop. It's meaningless just to do it in a bubble. I just hope to make very honest communication that somehow says something in a way that people haven't said it before, really – and that's it.
And anything else that comes from that, fine, you know. After that, it's a struggle to keep feeding yourself, be true to yourself – and it's a struggle, you know, to turn down the temptations that come, I think.
CR: Sure, because there are always going to be no lack of easy choices to make – that's just the whole thing of it.
VA: I mean, as soon as you do start getting what might be called “success,” because you're appealing to people, then the temptations come, to sell out – to just do things wrong, to not be so pure anymore. This time round, I don't want to do that.
CR: All right, and I guess that probably is a pretty good place to leave it for this afternoon.
VA: OK, brilliant.
NOT YOUR TYPICAL GIRL: THE VIV ALBERTINE INTERVIEW, TAKE TWO (10/09/09)
CHAIRMAN RALPH (CR): Yeah, let's talk about some of the tunes that are on video at the moment – “The False Heart”, I thought, was interesting. You've got the ethereal folk sound going, but some of the dub elements that were always present in your music. Where did that one come from?
VIV ALBERTINE (VA): Well, “False Heart” is based on a four-line English poem by Hilaire Belloc: “I said to Heart, 'How goes it?' And Heart replied, 'Right as a Ribstone Pippin!' But it lied...'” A ribstone pippin is a very old English type of apple.
It's a very old English four-line poem which I was told, when I was eight years old, by my mum. And even though I knew nothing about love then, I utterly understood, the moment she told me that poem, the pain is love – I don't know why.
And it never left me, and I've always wanted to do something with it. And I did my own lines after it, as well, and just made that very simple, bleak song out of it. Actually, when I do it live, it's much bleaker, and simpler, really stripped down (laughs).
CR: And there's “I Don't Believe In Love,” which does exactly what it says on the tin.
VA: Yeah, I don't believe in love anymore -- honestly, again, since I was eight or nine, I've been looking for this great love. You know, girls are brought up to believe it's gonna happen. You're gonna meet this soulmate, this twin soul, or whatever.
I really think, this year, for the first time, I'm gonna give up on love – which is, in a way, sad, but liberating, as well. Maybe it's just a confection, and a construction, and I can be brave enough to let go of that idea, you know?
A few sad things have happened in the last year and a half to make me feel more cynical about relationships. At the same time, my dad died a year ago – we'd never been close, it'd all been messed up, due to childhood stuff. So it's quite an angry song, as well.
CR: I can definitely hear that. Tell me about “If Love”...where did that come about?
VA: “If Love” -- it's just a checklist of things, and I think, if you can tick them, then it is love. You can't just enjoy being in love anymore. It's just pulled apart, condemned, analyzed...
CR: There are too many conditions.
VA: Too many conditions -- it's all been explained away as if it doesn't matter, it doesn't exist: “You made it up, you fool.” It's a shame that it's so condemned, really, and analyzed. So, you can see, I'm actually in two minds, whether I believe in it, or not.
CR: So, when you started out – as you said, it wasn't because it [music] was a great career?
VA: No way! Don't forget, '74, '75, '76, there was not the same thought of career as there is nowadays, especially not in England. England in the '70s was so gray and bleak. The summer we started to get our band together, you couldn't work more than three days a week, because there was such a recession. The rubbish was piled high all through London, because the rubbish men were on strike. There were blackouts every night to save electricity.
CR: It was very much like a Third World country, wasn't it?
VA: We were living in a Third World country! There was nothing on TV, nothing to stay in and watch, but some of us didn't even have telephone land lines. You know, it was a whole different world. And we were like the weeds coming out the cracks in the pavement, really.
It was a natter of like-minded people coming together – people like Vivivenne Westwood, who, I think, is really more intellectual than [Sex Pistols manager] Malcolm McLaren – and a couple of the Pistols, like [singer] John [Lydon], and [bassist] Glen [Matlock]. They were people with a sort of similar mindset. It was nothing to do with money at all, maybe a thought in Malcolm's mind.
CR: So I imagine you were probably as surprised as anybody else, when people started turning up to these gigs, and they connected with what you had to say...
VA: Well, in a way, not surprised, because we did think we were great (laughs). Not in terms of, “We are great musicians,” or, “We are great songwriters.” But we thought, “We are great fucking people. We are people who've got out at our age, and done something, and said something, and shouted something, in a way that hasn't been done and said and shouted before.” And that, we felt, you know, was worthy of people coming to see us.
We looked totally different to everyone else in London – there were only a few of us.. We were like pioneers, and we knew we were pioneers. We used to get interviewed in bars, me and Sid, just because of how we looked, and we thought it was perfectly normal: “Yeah, you should come and talk to us. We are different, we have something to pull ourselves out of this bleak, Godforsaken hole”...that was London, at the time.
CR: In some ways, it was difficult being in the Slits, wasn't it? Because you seemed to have a very adversarial kind of relationship with people in the music business, and the journalists...
VA: Yeah, because, again – in the [pre-punk] music industry, it was about prettiness, and selling your girliness, and singing in high little voices. There was Fanny, there was the Runaways, but nothing for an ordinary girl who didn't feel that different to a boy.
CR: To connect to...
VA: No! So there we were – half-dressed in fetish gear, literally, from proper adult sex shops, half-dressed in construction worker boots -- and the men on the streets, the men in the industry, just didn't know how to react to us. They're one minute, attracted, one minute, repulsed, and couldn't really define where they thought. We were attacked verbally and physically many, many times -- every time we walked out, more or less.
CR: But, of course, you had your patrons from, the beginning – most notably, the Clash, with whom you went on tour. What's your most abiding memory of the “White Riot” tour experience?
VA: Firstly, that we were the rebel band on the tour, which was quite funny, and a bit upsetting to the Clash (laughs)! The bus driver had to be bribed every morning to take us on the bus.
Every time we went to the hotel, the hotels used to say, “Those girls must walk straight from the door, to the lift, to the elevator – they must not talk to anyone, and we do not want to see them again, until they leave again in the morning. Otherwise, we won't have them in the hotel”...because we looked so weird, and we had such an abundance of energy!
They were used to seeing guys in tight leather trousers, and long hour – but they weren't used to seeing girls [acting] so sexual, so provocative, so wild, you know? It just absolutely shook everyone, everywhere we went. So that was a strong memory.
And then, of course, me and [Clash guitarist] Mick [Jones] were on-off dating through that year – we'd been [dating] a couple of years before that, anyway. And that was very passionate. There was one gig, right at the end, where he's standing onstage, and it's so moving – I had a tape of it for awhile. He was shouting into the mike, “Where are you, where are you? over the music, the song. It's incredibly moving, actually.
CR: Indeed – and, I guess, you had an influence on inspiring “Train In Vain,” to read some of the accounts, right?
VA: Yeah -- [in] “Typical Girls,” there's a line: “Typical girls stand by their man,” and he's saying, “You didn't stand by me.” I [also] wrote “Ping Pong Affair” about him, which is on CUT.
VIV ALBERTINE (VA): Well, “False Heart” is based on a four-line English poem by Hilaire Belloc: “I said to Heart, 'How goes it?' And Heart replied, 'Right as a Ribstone Pippin!' But it lied...'” A ribstone pippin is a very old English type of apple.
It's a very old English four-line poem which I was told, when I was eight years old, by my mum. And even though I knew nothing about love then, I utterly understood, the moment she told me that poem, the pain is love – I don't know why.
And it never left me, and I've always wanted to do something with it. And I did my own lines after it, as well, and just made that very simple, bleak song out of it. Actually, when I do it live, it's much bleaker, and simpler, really stripped down (laughs).
CR: And there's “I Don't Believe In Love,” which does exactly what it says on the tin.
VA: Yeah, I don't believe in love anymore -- honestly, again, since I was eight or nine, I've been looking for this great love. You know, girls are brought up to believe it's gonna happen. You're gonna meet this soulmate, this twin soul, or whatever.
I really think, this year, for the first time, I'm gonna give up on love – which is, in a way, sad, but liberating, as well. Maybe it's just a confection, and a construction, and I can be brave enough to let go of that idea, you know?
A few sad things have happened in the last year and a half to make me feel more cynical about relationships. At the same time, my dad died a year ago – we'd never been close, it'd all been messed up, due to childhood stuff. So it's quite an angry song, as well.
CR: I can definitely hear that. Tell me about “If Love”...where did that come about?
VA: “If Love” -- it's just a checklist of things, and I think, if you can tick them, then it is love. You can't just enjoy being in love anymore. It's just pulled apart, condemned, analyzed...
CR: There are too many conditions.
VA: Too many conditions -- it's all been explained away as if it doesn't matter, it doesn't exist: “You made it up, you fool.” It's a shame that it's so condemned, really, and analyzed. So, you can see, I'm actually in two minds, whether I believe in it, or not.
CR: So, when you started out – as you said, it wasn't because it [music] was a great career?
VA: No way! Don't forget, '74, '75, '76, there was not the same thought of career as there is nowadays, especially not in England. England in the '70s was so gray and bleak. The summer we started to get our band together, you couldn't work more than three days a week, because there was such a recession. The rubbish was piled high all through London, because the rubbish men were on strike. There were blackouts every night to save electricity.
CR: It was very much like a Third World country, wasn't it?
VA: We were living in a Third World country! There was nothing on TV, nothing to stay in and watch, but some of us didn't even have telephone land lines. You know, it was a whole different world. And we were like the weeds coming out the cracks in the pavement, really.
It was a natter of like-minded people coming together – people like Vivivenne Westwood, who, I think, is really more intellectual than [Sex Pistols manager] Malcolm McLaren – and a couple of the Pistols, like [singer] John [Lydon], and [bassist] Glen [Matlock]. They were people with a sort of similar mindset. It was nothing to do with money at all, maybe a thought in Malcolm's mind.
CR: So I imagine you were probably as surprised as anybody else, when people started turning up to these gigs, and they connected with what you had to say...
VA: Well, in a way, not surprised, because we did think we were great (laughs). Not in terms of, “We are great musicians,” or, “We are great songwriters.” But we thought, “We are great fucking people. We are people who've got out at our age, and done something, and said something, and shouted something, in a way that hasn't been done and said and shouted before.” And that, we felt, you know, was worthy of people coming to see us.
We looked totally different to everyone else in London – there were only a few of us.. We were like pioneers, and we knew we were pioneers. We used to get interviewed in bars, me and Sid, just because of how we looked, and we thought it was perfectly normal: “Yeah, you should come and talk to us. We are different, we have something to pull ourselves out of this bleak, Godforsaken hole”...that was London, at the time.
CR: In some ways, it was difficult being in the Slits, wasn't it? Because you seemed to have a very adversarial kind of relationship with people in the music business, and the journalists...
VA: Yeah, because, again – in the [pre-punk] music industry, it was about prettiness, and selling your girliness, and singing in high little voices. There was Fanny, there was the Runaways, but nothing for an ordinary girl who didn't feel that different to a boy.
CR: To connect to...
VA: No! So there we were – half-dressed in fetish gear, literally, from proper adult sex shops, half-dressed in construction worker boots -- and the men on the streets, the men in the industry, just didn't know how to react to us. They're one minute, attracted, one minute, repulsed, and couldn't really define where they thought. We were attacked verbally and physically many, many times -- every time we walked out, more or less.
CR: But, of course, you had your patrons from, the beginning – most notably, the Clash, with whom you went on tour. What's your most abiding memory of the “White Riot” tour experience?
VA: Firstly, that we were the rebel band on the tour, which was quite funny, and a bit upsetting to the Clash (laughs)! The bus driver had to be bribed every morning to take us on the bus.
Every time we went to the hotel, the hotels used to say, “Those girls must walk straight from the door, to the lift, to the elevator – they must not talk to anyone, and we do not want to see them again, until they leave again in the morning. Otherwise, we won't have them in the hotel”...because we looked so weird, and we had such an abundance of energy!
They were used to seeing guys in tight leather trousers, and long hour – but they weren't used to seeing girls [acting] so sexual, so provocative, so wild, you know? It just absolutely shook everyone, everywhere we went. So that was a strong memory.
And then, of course, me and [Clash guitarist] Mick [Jones] were on-off dating through that year – we'd been [dating] a couple of years before that, anyway. And that was very passionate. There was one gig, right at the end, where he's standing onstage, and it's so moving – I had a tape of it for awhile. He was shouting into the mike, “Where are you, where are you? over the music, the song. It's incredibly moving, actually.
CR: Indeed – and, I guess, you had an influence on inspiring “Train In Vain,” to read some of the accounts, right?
VA: Yeah -- [in] “Typical Girls,” there's a line: “Typical girls stand by their man,” and he's saying, “You didn't stand by me.” I [also] wrote “Ping Pong Affair” about him, which is on CUT.
NOT YOUR TYPICAL GIRL: THE VIV ALBERTINE INTERVIEW, TAKE ONE (10/09/09)
“There's no money in any of it, is there, really? But it's still better than a proper job.”
Viv Albertine's statement offers a fitting epitaph for the directing career that she pursued following the messy demise of her former band, The Slits, in 1982. Along the way, she also had a daughter, so music inevitably fell by the wayside (“I actually kind of turned out like a lioness, and I just wanted to bring up my baby”). For a decade, her directing career hummed along, “but there's so much money involved, as you know,” she declares. “And it is about compromise, so much.”
Now she's back, armed with only a guitar and a dream, touring solo with a fresh batch of starkly personal songs (“I Don't Believe In Love,” “If Love,” “The False Heart”) that are light years apart – sonically-- from the Slits' glorious crash-bang-wallop attack. (A single or EP is expected shortly from the Los Angeles-based indie label, Manimal Vinyl...for updates, check back on Viv's official site, www.vivalbertine.com/)
Then again, as I laughingly inform Viv, it's impossible not to read anything about the Slits without the words “crude” or “primitive” somewhere in close proximity. From 1976 through 1982, the Slits' classic lineup (Viv, drummer Palmolive, bassist Tessa Pollitt, and singer Ari Up) polarized audiences like few bands, then or now.
Depending on which account you read, the Slits either come across as gimmicky racketmongers (Glen Matlock: I WAS A TEENAGE SEX PISTOL), or club-footed geniuses. (John Lydon: NO IRISH, NO BLACKS, NO DOGS). To these ears, neither hits the mark, as one listen to CUT (1979) – their certified consensus classic album – should immediately establish.
Viv's six-city US tour – her first ever – continues at 7 p.m. tonight at Schuba's (Chicago, IL), then rolls on through Austin (Thursday), and New York's Knitting Factory (Friday). Then it's back over to London, and into unknown territory, which suits Viv just fine: “I just feel like Bob Dylan, or some old blues guy going around the country now with my guitar, singing my songs – and it's back to how it used to be. That's what I like about the music industry, or the lack of it.”
CHAIRMAN RALPH (RH): Let's start with the obvious question...what brings you back, after all this time? The last time I read of you, you were working in television.
VIV ALBERTINE (VA): Well, after the Slits broke up – you know, it was kind of like breaking up from three husbands at once, so traumatic (laughs)...I gave it everything – I gave it my heart and soul. I was Viv Slit...I had to go back to rock bottom, and rebuild who I was, because I had that persona. Many people were not interested anymore – you know what happens, when you lose that position.
And then, it just seemed like all the planets lined up, and it became time again. And the Slits contacted me for a second time to say, did I wanna play with them? I thought, “Oh, if I pick up a guitar, I wonder if I could possibly ever...in six months...” 'Cause they had a tour coming up – in six months, could I learn to play the guitar again? I hadn't touched it for 30 years!
And I was struggling at the kitchen table, trying to hold down barre chords– and the strangest thing started happening, after about three weeks, or so...songs started coming out! And this style of guitar playing started to come out – not the same [style], but an odd style of guitar playing. So I dropped all those bloody barre chords, and just went down the road again of my own made-up style. And then, this passion came forth, you know -- the songwriting, and the playing, and it's not stopped ever since. That's about a year and a half ago.
CR: Right, you're self-taught then...so, as you say, all the planets aligned up, but –- as fate would have it -- not with the reunited Slits, right?
VA: Well, no -- I said, “I'll do a couple of shows, and we'll all see how we feel about it,” because they'd been going about three or four years, by now. And I did a couple of shows [in Barcelona, and Manchester]-- I'd already been doing my own stuff, just in little bars, and I didn't feel awkward doing that. It wasn't about being onstage, it was about doing the old material.
CR: So you didn't feel emotionally connected to it anymore?
VA: No, not at all. Not at all.
CR: And, as you note on your Myspace entries, it had sort of become, I guess, “Ari, plus a cast of thousands”?
VA: Yeah (laughs), yeah, you know -- exactly...Ari heading the band, which is fine – she's kind of like a James Brown-type leader who knows what she wants, which is great. But I couldn't revisit it, I couldn't go back to it as someone who wasn't equally inputting – it had just gone too far down the road of Ari's band, now, really.
CR: Yeah. I listened to a couple of those clips [from the reunited Slits], and I thought, “Dare I say, it almost sounds professional”? (Viv laughs).
VA: Exactly --– you know, if I hadn't started going down the route of doing my own material, maybe I wouldn't have known there was something different. And I just had to say, “Well, no, no, I can't do it.” For me, I felt it was quite a brave decision, because I could have toured the world with them...
CR: Sure, and trade on that name again...
VA: Trade on the name, or, “ I was in a bar in front of a farmer, a fisherman, and an older lady in a bobble hat, down on the south coast of England”...not round London, you know? I was utterly rock bottom, really. I had nothing. I said “yes” to nothing, and “no” to something, but here I am.
CR: And, of course, it seems like nostalgia's almost become a cottage industry, hasn't it, 'cause everybody's re-forming...
VA: It just says everything about the people in the band, that they have to use the old name, in a way.
CR: Right, and it's all kind of one baby step at a time...
VA: Exactly, but I like that. It's just literally all over the last year and a half, that's how that's happened, just organically -- started writing my songs, and I went to a bar, and sang them out of tune – you know, to nobody who knew me – then, bit by bit, I got better.
Then I could do three at a time, now, I could do a half-hour set. It's just built and built, and then someone heard it, and said, “Come do this gig.” Then Manimal heard it, you know – it's literally built and built.
I've done four tracks now, mixed by Dennis Bovell, who's mixed CUT – so I've worked with him again, but other new people, as well, some great musicians.. It's happening organically, it's not that career path, again, that it used to be. Again, it's just happening normally. And if I build a little audience, that'll be fantastic. We'll see what happens.
Viv Albertine's statement offers a fitting epitaph for the directing career that she pursued following the messy demise of her former band, The Slits, in 1982. Along the way, she also had a daughter, so music inevitably fell by the wayside (“I actually kind of turned out like a lioness, and I just wanted to bring up my baby”). For a decade, her directing career hummed along, “but there's so much money involved, as you know,” she declares. “And it is about compromise, so much.”
Now she's back, armed with only a guitar and a dream, touring solo with a fresh batch of starkly personal songs (“I Don't Believe In Love,” “If Love,” “The False Heart”) that are light years apart – sonically-- from the Slits' glorious crash-bang-wallop attack. (A single or EP is expected shortly from the Los Angeles-based indie label, Manimal Vinyl...for updates, check back on Viv's official site, www.vivalbertine.com/)
Then again, as I laughingly inform Viv, it's impossible not to read anything about the Slits without the words “crude” or “primitive” somewhere in close proximity. From 1976 through 1982, the Slits' classic lineup (Viv, drummer Palmolive, bassist Tessa Pollitt, and singer Ari Up) polarized audiences like few bands, then or now.
Depending on which account you read, the Slits either come across as gimmicky racketmongers (Glen Matlock: I WAS A TEENAGE SEX PISTOL), or club-footed geniuses. (John Lydon: NO IRISH, NO BLACKS, NO DOGS). To these ears, neither hits the mark, as one listen to CUT (1979) – their certified consensus classic album – should immediately establish.
Viv's six-city US tour – her first ever – continues at 7 p.m. tonight at Schuba's (Chicago, IL), then rolls on through Austin (Thursday), and New York's Knitting Factory (Friday). Then it's back over to London, and into unknown territory, which suits Viv just fine: “I just feel like Bob Dylan, or some old blues guy going around the country now with my guitar, singing my songs – and it's back to how it used to be. That's what I like about the music industry, or the lack of it.”
CHAIRMAN RALPH (RH): Let's start with the obvious question...what brings you back, after all this time? The last time I read of you, you were working in television.
VIV ALBERTINE (VA): Well, after the Slits broke up – you know, it was kind of like breaking up from three husbands at once, so traumatic (laughs)...I gave it everything – I gave it my heart and soul. I was Viv Slit...I had to go back to rock bottom, and rebuild who I was, because I had that persona. Many people were not interested anymore – you know what happens, when you lose that position.
And then, it just seemed like all the planets lined up, and it became time again. And the Slits contacted me for a second time to say, did I wanna play with them? I thought, “Oh, if I pick up a guitar, I wonder if I could possibly ever...in six months...” 'Cause they had a tour coming up – in six months, could I learn to play the guitar again? I hadn't touched it for 30 years!
And I was struggling at the kitchen table, trying to hold down barre chords– and the strangest thing started happening, after about three weeks, or so...songs started coming out! And this style of guitar playing started to come out – not the same [style], but an odd style of guitar playing. So I dropped all those bloody barre chords, and just went down the road again of my own made-up style. And then, this passion came forth, you know -- the songwriting, and the playing, and it's not stopped ever since. That's about a year and a half ago.
CR: Right, you're self-taught then...so, as you say, all the planets aligned up, but –- as fate would have it -- not with the reunited Slits, right?
VA: Well, no -- I said, “I'll do a couple of shows, and we'll all see how we feel about it,” because they'd been going about three or four years, by now. And I did a couple of shows [in Barcelona, and Manchester]-- I'd already been doing my own stuff, just in little bars, and I didn't feel awkward doing that. It wasn't about being onstage, it was about doing the old material.
CR: So you didn't feel emotionally connected to it anymore?
VA: No, not at all. Not at all.
CR: And, as you note on your Myspace entries, it had sort of become, I guess, “Ari, plus a cast of thousands”?
VA: Yeah (laughs), yeah, you know -- exactly...Ari heading the band, which is fine – she's kind of like a James Brown-type leader who knows what she wants, which is great. But I couldn't revisit it, I couldn't go back to it as someone who wasn't equally inputting – it had just gone too far down the road of Ari's band, now, really.
CR: Yeah. I listened to a couple of those clips [from the reunited Slits], and I thought, “Dare I say, it almost sounds professional”? (Viv laughs).
VA: Exactly --– you know, if I hadn't started going down the route of doing my own material, maybe I wouldn't have known there was something different. And I just had to say, “Well, no, no, I can't do it.” For me, I felt it was quite a brave decision, because I could have toured the world with them...
CR: Sure, and trade on that name again...
VA: Trade on the name, or, “ I was in a bar in front of a farmer, a fisherman, and an older lady in a bobble hat, down on the south coast of England”...not round London, you know? I was utterly rock bottom, really. I had nothing. I said “yes” to nothing, and “no” to something, but here I am.
CR: And, of course, it seems like nostalgia's almost become a cottage industry, hasn't it, 'cause everybody's re-forming...
VA: It just says everything about the people in the band, that they have to use the old name, in a way.
CR: Right, and it's all kind of one baby step at a time...
VA: Exactly, but I like that. It's just literally all over the last year and a half, that's how that's happened, just organically -- started writing my songs, and I went to a bar, and sang them out of tune – you know, to nobody who knew me – then, bit by bit, I got better.
Then I could do three at a time, now, I could do a half-hour set. It's just built and built, and then someone heard it, and said, “Come do this gig.” Then Manimal heard it, you know – it's literally built and built.
I've done four tracks now, mixed by Dennis Bovell, who's mixed CUT – so I've worked with him again, but other new people, as well, some great musicians.. It's happening organically, it's not that career path, again, that it used to be. Again, it's just happening normally. And if I build a little audience, that'll be fantastic. We'll see what happens.
A CONVERSATION WITH VINCE WHITE (EXTENDED STYLE, 7/02/07)
Few letdowns have felt harsher than the Clash's last album, CUT THE CRAP(1985), which lead singer Joe Strummer had deemed necessary to purge the sulking-is-pop-star-ism excesses of his ex-partner, guitarist Mick Jones. Instead of Peter Howard's percussive thunder came clattering drum machines, while synthed-up slickness and intrusive Oi! choir vocals muzzled Nick Sheppard's and Vince White's snub-nosed guitar fire (the defining element of those never-ending European, UK and US tours of January to June '84).
So what did we get? Not magnificence, surely, just clash shitty rockers, a feeling that Vince knows well: “When I actually got a copy of that record, and put it on my own turntable at home, I just knew the game was up it was absolutely terrible.”
However, few details seeped out about the Jones-less crusade, certainly not in the group-sanctioned accounts, like Westway To The World. A similar fog extended to the CD reissues, lately broken by inclusion of CUT THE CRAP's leadoff single, “This Is England,” on The Singles Box Set (2006).
As Billy Bragg once observed, however, “there's two sides to every story,” which leads to my conservation with Vince about his new book, OUT OF CONTROL: THE LAST DAYS OF THE CLASH. In 1994, I'd originally interviewed Vince for my own book, COMPLETE CONTROL: A SECRET HISTORY OF THE CLASH, a project that refuses to die -- like the Jones-less era, it seems. (As the saying goes: "Watch this space.")
First things first: why now, after 20-odd years?
“I can only answer, 'I don't know, I just felt like doing it,'” Vince responds. “I sensed the idea of writing a book, and it [his Clash experience] seemed like a good place to start.” Armed with an agent, those first slogs through the publishing trenches persuaded Vince to self-publish: “The constant thing I got was, 'Oh, the writing's really great, but we don't think we can compete with [the Strummer biography] REDEMPTION SONG.'”
Initially, Vince felt reluctant to revisit his experience, thinking that “what I had to say wasn't what anybody wanted to hear,” he laughs. As if that weren't enough, he weighed the impact of Strummer's 2002 death (“People don't like you to speak ill of the dead, you know?”), and the fallout from the breakup (“I thought, 'Well, the public perception is really CUT THE CRAP, and there's not much I can do about that'”). Yet writing OUT OF CONTROL exerted a cathartic effect.
That feeling grew more pronounced when Vince recalled why'd he been so reluctant. “In a way, I see it as a bit of a conspiracy – it's in everyone's interest to airbrush the past out, keep this myth, and swallow it,” he asserts. “I mean, fans wanna keep it – they want to believe in what they want to believe. Sony makes money from compilations, and you can't go to a newsagent's [stand] without a cover of the Clash on a magazine, 'cause it sells.”
Since its publication, reviewers have focused on OUT OF CONTROL's more gut-wrenching images, of which there are plenty – such as the band's November '85 twilight period, as its last definitive song (“This Is England”) enters the charts, and Vince decides to inquire if he's entitled to more than £150 per week.
“What about royalties?” Vince writes. “It turns out that as I'm not signed to anything then all I'm entitled to is union rates. What's that? £8 an hour for the time spent recording. Fuck all, really.” Eventually, inevitably, the weekly wages are cut off, leaving no other choice but to apply for welfare benefits. Hardly the stuff of rock 'n' roll dreams, is it?
“I tried to take it from a very objective point of view, so it's not like, one long whinge,” Vince says. “People have said that I'm bitter, which I don't really see. They're just projecting what they think I ought to feel, considering the events.” In hindsight, many situations took a black-humored tinge, such as when Bernie Rhodes (the group's larger-than-life manager), reckoned that Vince's actual first name (Gregory) sounded too Americanized.
“I really was 'working for the clampdown,' and Bernie had 'complete control'”, Vince says. “Well, it was a tyranny, with Bernie intimidating and coercing everyone. A real head fuck. But it opened up a big can of worms about the band's integrity, for me, you know, and whether it really matters.”
Long before the Rhodes regime of head-spinning meetings left its mark, Vince maintains that he felt like an outsider in his own band: “The biggest shock, for me, was the discrepancy between the image that I had, and the reality of who these people were.”
“On the one hand, you're represented as a member of the Clash,” he continues. “This is how everyone is perceiving you, when, in reality, I had almost zero control, or any power in what went on, apart from when we played live, or rehearsed in soundchecks. I think that's where we were a band, as a live unit.”
Those feelings deepened in January 1985, when work began on the new album -- which, Vince and Pete discovered, had largely been completed by the time they arrived in Munich, Germany. The five-piece band only played on two B-sides (“Do It Now,”Sex Mad Roar”), leading Vince to comment: “It wasn't really a Clash record, although it had the label, and it's got my picture on the back.”
A great deal of ink has been expended on the tortured logic that produced Cut The Crap – how songs that worked so well onstage (“In The Pouring, Pouring Rain,” and “Ammunition”) languished in the can, while sub-par material (“Play To Win,” “Life Is Wild,” anyone?) carried the day on vinyl. Still, as far as the rank and file knew, they were proceeding along the “back to basics” blueprint.
After all, he clumsily programmed drum machines, and massed backup vocals – two elements singled out for derision in virtually every review – were nowhere in evidence...at first, anyway...but once they were immortalized, reviewers weren't shy about passing judgment, as this nugget from PEOPLE makes plain: “The group eschews harmonies in favor of ragged choruses shouted in unison as if a drunken soccer crowd had wandered into the recording session.”
By then, the die had been well and truly cast, as far as Vince was concerned. “Well, it was just a gradual, progressive degeneration, you know,” he says. “I mean, I didn't really know what to think. I got cast into this role as 'the lone operator,' so I had to keep my mouth shut a bit, and go along with things. Otherwise, it was just getting too painful.”
There would be one more reprieve in the so-called busking tour (May 2-17, 1985) of free impromptu acoustic shows in northern Britain (Leeds, Newcastle, Nottingham, York), and Scotland (Edinburgh, Glasgow). Any public place was fair game, from parks, to pubs, shopping centers, even patrons outside the Alarm's own May 7 show, at Leeds University.
For Vince, the trip made a welcome contrast to the fragmented, piecemeal recording madness that held sway in Munich. “I can't think of any superstar bands going out, and doing that. It put us in touch with reality, with where we were,” Vince says. “It was just five of us on the road, and that really put Joe in his element. So it affected us all in a good way.” On returning to London, “it was just back to the old story, again,” Vince says, “so whatever we'd achieved, it quickly evaporated.”
Following some conventional festival appearances in Denmark (June 29), France (July 13), and Greece (August 27), Strummer made one final, unsuccessful pitch to Jones about regrouping the old lineup. During the fall of 1985, Strummer called a sitdown at his home, telling the new boys he'd had enough; there wouldn't be a Clash for anyone to kick around anymore.
By that point, however, keeping track of the intra-band politics required an increasingly hefty scorecard. All those thoughts of “outworking heavy metal bands,” as Joe so colorfully promised in early '84, seemed long forgotten. “You know, Bernie was off here, and off there, and Joe was [off] somewhere – you just never knew what the truth was,” Vince recalls. “Bernie would say one thing, Joe would say something else, you'd meet up with Paul, and Paul would have some other version of events...I swear, this is the truth!”
In later years, depending on his mood, or the interviewer, Joe chalked up the events to an overly-involved Rhodes, or lack of chemistry, compared to the old group. The latter statements rang false to Vince, “because no chemistry was allowed to develop,” he maintains, “and the reality is that he'd given all the control of the band over to Bernie.”
Time and mystique have a funny way of ensuring that all sins are forgiven. Unlike many of their punk-era peers, the Clash never got around to re-forming, a factor that allows people to read whatever they want between the lines. “Obviously, he [Strummer] wanted to keep his place in history – I think that's what was more important to them, than anything, really,” Vince observes. “If they'd have reformed, they would have ruined the myth.”
Rhodes himself has remained characteristically unrepentant about his role – both in the handful of interviews that he's granted since the Clash's demise, and his website, which claims CUT THE CRAP as a victim of censorship. The accompanying evidence is an array of positive reviews, culled primarily from amazon.com, and squeezed together in all their eye-straining glory. So what's going on there, exactly?
“You know, the thing about Bernie is, he's kind of like an agitator – he has a lot of questions, but very little [in terms of answers],” says Vince, of the former Clash boss's website. “But I don't really know what he stands for, see what I mean? There's a lot of smoke and mirrors, but it's just a lot of vague ideas and words that people can take or make their own kind of conclusions from...”
No prizes, then, for guessing this particular story's moral ... “Well, I think that good things happen in freedom. When there's an atmosphere of freedom, then things tend to value the creative [process],” Vince says.
Vince continued playing after the Clash's demise, although his current priorities are promoting Out Of Control, developing his art (“there's something about someone at 47 holding a Les Paul, trying to be 18. It ain't too cute. Know what I mean?”), and writing more books, too.
And what about those fans who'll never accept Vince as a fully-fledged rocker from Clash City?
“There are hundreds of Clash books out there, blue pills that tell people exactly what they wanna hear, and that's fine,” Vince retorts. "They can be easily found in the religious new age section under 'Church of Joe'. If people think that I'm bitter, or whatever conclusions they wanna make of it, that's their business. The average music fan is so soft, brainwashed and downright pathetic these days anyway that it really makes no difference to me. I don't care. I'd rather they didn't buy my book. They don't deserve it. I'd rather they just bought something to make them happy. You know, like a nice, romantic comedy with a sunset ending!"
* * * For another snapshot from Ralph's projected book on The Only Band That Matters, please check out "Recording Cut The Crap", at blackmarketclash.com. (Go to the 1984 tour dates, then click the "Out Of Control Italy" or "Striking Miners' Benefit Gigs" sections.) * * *
So what did we get? Not magnificence, surely, just clash shitty rockers, a feeling that Vince knows well: “When I actually got a copy of that record, and put it on my own turntable at home, I just knew the game was up it was absolutely terrible.”
However, few details seeped out about the Jones-less crusade, certainly not in the group-sanctioned accounts, like Westway To The World. A similar fog extended to the CD reissues, lately broken by inclusion of CUT THE CRAP's leadoff single, “This Is England,” on The Singles Box Set (2006).
As Billy Bragg once observed, however, “there's two sides to every story,” which leads to my conservation with Vince about his new book, OUT OF CONTROL: THE LAST DAYS OF THE CLASH. In 1994, I'd originally interviewed Vince for my own book, COMPLETE CONTROL: A SECRET HISTORY OF THE CLASH, a project that refuses to die -- like the Jones-less era, it seems. (As the saying goes: "Watch this space.")
First things first: why now, after 20-odd years?
“I can only answer, 'I don't know, I just felt like doing it,'” Vince responds. “I sensed the idea of writing a book, and it [his Clash experience] seemed like a good place to start.” Armed with an agent, those first slogs through the publishing trenches persuaded Vince to self-publish: “The constant thing I got was, 'Oh, the writing's really great, but we don't think we can compete with [the Strummer biography] REDEMPTION SONG.'”
Initially, Vince felt reluctant to revisit his experience, thinking that “what I had to say wasn't what anybody wanted to hear,” he laughs. As if that weren't enough, he weighed the impact of Strummer's 2002 death (“People don't like you to speak ill of the dead, you know?”), and the fallout from the breakup (“I thought, 'Well, the public perception is really CUT THE CRAP, and there's not much I can do about that'”). Yet writing OUT OF CONTROL exerted a cathartic effect.
That feeling grew more pronounced when Vince recalled why'd he been so reluctant. “In a way, I see it as a bit of a conspiracy – it's in everyone's interest to airbrush the past out, keep this myth, and swallow it,” he asserts. “I mean, fans wanna keep it – they want to believe in what they want to believe. Sony makes money from compilations, and you can't go to a newsagent's [stand] without a cover of the Clash on a magazine, 'cause it sells.”
Since its publication, reviewers have focused on OUT OF CONTROL's more gut-wrenching images, of which there are plenty – such as the band's November '85 twilight period, as its last definitive song (“This Is England”) enters the charts, and Vince decides to inquire if he's entitled to more than £150 per week.
“What about royalties?” Vince writes. “It turns out that as I'm not signed to anything then all I'm entitled to is union rates. What's that? £8 an hour for the time spent recording. Fuck all, really.” Eventually, inevitably, the weekly wages are cut off, leaving no other choice but to apply for welfare benefits. Hardly the stuff of rock 'n' roll dreams, is it?
“I tried to take it from a very objective point of view, so it's not like, one long whinge,” Vince says. “People have said that I'm bitter, which I don't really see. They're just projecting what they think I ought to feel, considering the events.” In hindsight, many situations took a black-humored tinge, such as when Bernie Rhodes (the group's larger-than-life manager), reckoned that Vince's actual first name (Gregory) sounded too Americanized.
“I really was 'working for the clampdown,' and Bernie had 'complete control'”, Vince says. “Well, it was a tyranny, with Bernie intimidating and coercing everyone. A real head fuck. But it opened up a big can of worms about the band's integrity, for me, you know, and whether it really matters.”
Long before the Rhodes regime of head-spinning meetings left its mark, Vince maintains that he felt like an outsider in his own band: “The biggest shock, for me, was the discrepancy between the image that I had, and the reality of who these people were.”
“On the one hand, you're represented as a member of the Clash,” he continues. “This is how everyone is perceiving you, when, in reality, I had almost zero control, or any power in what went on, apart from when we played live, or rehearsed in soundchecks. I think that's where we were a band, as a live unit.”
Those feelings deepened in January 1985, when work began on the new album -- which, Vince and Pete discovered, had largely been completed by the time they arrived in Munich, Germany. The five-piece band only played on two B-sides (“Do It Now,”Sex Mad Roar”), leading Vince to comment: “It wasn't really a Clash record, although it had the label, and it's got my picture on the back.”
A great deal of ink has been expended on the tortured logic that produced Cut The Crap – how songs that worked so well onstage (“In The Pouring, Pouring Rain,” and “Ammunition”) languished in the can, while sub-par material (“Play To Win,” “Life Is Wild,” anyone?) carried the day on vinyl. Still, as far as the rank and file knew, they were proceeding along the “back to basics” blueprint.
After all, he clumsily programmed drum machines, and massed backup vocals – two elements singled out for derision in virtually every review – were nowhere in evidence...at first, anyway...but once they were immortalized, reviewers weren't shy about passing judgment, as this nugget from PEOPLE makes plain: “The group eschews harmonies in favor of ragged choruses shouted in unison as if a drunken soccer crowd had wandered into the recording session.”
By then, the die had been well and truly cast, as far as Vince was concerned. “Well, it was just a gradual, progressive degeneration, you know,” he says. “I mean, I didn't really know what to think. I got cast into this role as 'the lone operator,' so I had to keep my mouth shut a bit, and go along with things. Otherwise, it was just getting too painful.”
There would be one more reprieve in the so-called busking tour (May 2-17, 1985) of free impromptu acoustic shows in northern Britain (Leeds, Newcastle, Nottingham, York), and Scotland (Edinburgh, Glasgow). Any public place was fair game, from parks, to pubs, shopping centers, even patrons outside the Alarm's own May 7 show, at Leeds University.
For Vince, the trip made a welcome contrast to the fragmented, piecemeal recording madness that held sway in Munich. “I can't think of any superstar bands going out, and doing that. It put us in touch with reality, with where we were,” Vince says. “It was just five of us on the road, and that really put Joe in his element. So it affected us all in a good way.” On returning to London, “it was just back to the old story, again,” Vince says, “so whatever we'd achieved, it quickly evaporated.”
Following some conventional festival appearances in Denmark (June 29), France (July 13), and Greece (August 27), Strummer made one final, unsuccessful pitch to Jones about regrouping the old lineup. During the fall of 1985, Strummer called a sitdown at his home, telling the new boys he'd had enough; there wouldn't be a Clash for anyone to kick around anymore.
By that point, however, keeping track of the intra-band politics required an increasingly hefty scorecard. All those thoughts of “outworking heavy metal bands,” as Joe so colorfully promised in early '84, seemed long forgotten. “You know, Bernie was off here, and off there, and Joe was [off] somewhere – you just never knew what the truth was,” Vince recalls. “Bernie would say one thing, Joe would say something else, you'd meet up with Paul, and Paul would have some other version of events...I swear, this is the truth!”
In later years, depending on his mood, or the interviewer, Joe chalked up the events to an overly-involved Rhodes, or lack of chemistry, compared to the old group. The latter statements rang false to Vince, “because no chemistry was allowed to develop,” he maintains, “and the reality is that he'd given all the control of the band over to Bernie.”
Time and mystique have a funny way of ensuring that all sins are forgiven. Unlike many of their punk-era peers, the Clash never got around to re-forming, a factor that allows people to read whatever they want between the lines. “Obviously, he [Strummer] wanted to keep his place in history – I think that's what was more important to them, than anything, really,” Vince observes. “If they'd have reformed, they would have ruined the myth.”
Rhodes himself has remained characteristically unrepentant about his role – both in the handful of interviews that he's granted since the Clash's demise, and his website, which claims CUT THE CRAP as a victim of censorship. The accompanying evidence is an array of positive reviews, culled primarily from amazon.com, and squeezed together in all their eye-straining glory. So what's going on there, exactly?
“You know, the thing about Bernie is, he's kind of like an agitator – he has a lot of questions, but very little [in terms of answers],” says Vince, of the former Clash boss's website. “But I don't really know what he stands for, see what I mean? There's a lot of smoke and mirrors, but it's just a lot of vague ideas and words that people can take or make their own kind of conclusions from...”
No prizes, then, for guessing this particular story's moral ... “Well, I think that good things happen in freedom. When there's an atmosphere of freedom, then things tend to value the creative [process],” Vince says.
Vince continued playing after the Clash's demise, although his current priorities are promoting Out Of Control, developing his art (“there's something about someone at 47 holding a Les Paul, trying to be 18. It ain't too cute. Know what I mean?”), and writing more books, too.
And what about those fans who'll never accept Vince as a fully-fledged rocker from Clash City?
“There are hundreds of Clash books out there, blue pills that tell people exactly what they wanna hear, and that's fine,” Vince retorts. "They can be easily found in the religious new age section under 'Church of Joe'. If people think that I'm bitter, or whatever conclusions they wanna make of it, that's their business. The average music fan is so soft, brainwashed and downright pathetic these days anyway that it really makes no difference to me. I don't care. I'd rather they didn't buy my book. They don't deserve it. I'd rather they just bought something to make them happy. You know, like a nice, romantic comedy with a sunset ending!"
* * * For another snapshot from Ralph's projected book on The Only Band That Matters, please check out "Recording Cut The Crap", at blackmarketclash.com. (Go to the 1984 tour dates, then click the "Out Of Control Italy" or "Striking Miners' Benefit Gigs" sections.) * * *