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Revisiting The Clash's 'Combat Rock' At 40: Why They Stay And Have Never Gone

The influential UK punk rock act's most successful album is being reissued 40 years after its original release. To celebrate, GRAMMY.com unpacks the complicated, genre-bending history of the Clash's fifth record.

The mystique of the Clash is still so powerful that when IT Specialist Craig Giffen found himself in Bangkok, Thailand a few years ago, he decided to locate the exact spot where the cover of the group’s fifth album, 1982's Combat Rock , had been photographed.

"The photo was taken in March 1982 by Pennie Smith," says Giffen, a Portland, Oregon based music fan. "The band stayed at the Bangkok Palace Hotel. The general consensus was that the train line on the album cover was the one that was east of the Makkasan Train station, about 30 minutes from the core of downtown. I think I found the right area, but Pennie might laugh."

At the time, the British quartet was nearing the end of a month-long Asian tour, one that saw them perform in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong and Bangkok at the beginning of that year. This came on the heels of recording "Straight To Hell" in New York on New Year’s Eve, which would be the last song on Combat Rock . Though the group was hopeful about the upcoming release, there was trouble brewing. Drummer Topper Headon was battling a heroin addiction, while co-songwriters and singers Joe Strummer and Mick Jones were increasingly having creative differences about the group’s sound. 

Smith saw the storm clouds through her lens midway through the cover shoot. "Halfway through the shoot, something just happened," she said in the 2000 documentary The Clash: Westway To The World . "Somehow they dissolved in front of my eyes."

The catch is, the group still had to release Combat Rock , which is getting re-released four decades later this month with several previously unheard recordings. 

When they formed in 1976, the London-based quartet quickly went to the head of the class as a leading punk act. But their ambition to be one of the best bands in the world, combined with a stifling record deal (the group signed a 10 record contract) meant that they wrote songs at a blistering pace — recording 100 songs in just six years. "We always did it on our own terms," bassist Paul Simonon told GQ magazine .   "And that's the magic of the Clash, right or wrong, it was on our own terms." It also meant that the group’s collective capabilities blew right past punk and explored a dizzying array of genres.

"They combined rough-hewn punk with ‘50s rock, reggae, disco and even some music-hall crooning," says Mike Sauter, VP of Broadcasting at WYEP in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. "It’s hard to overstate the Clash’s importance to rock’s evolution in the US. The band was among the key acts feeding into the rise of college radio’s musical approach in the 1980s, which grew into the alternative rock that became fairly dominant in the rock world by the mid-1990s."

Fresh off their sprawling 36 song, triple album Sandinista and an exhausting 17 date residency in New York City, the group watched from afar as political frustrations built up in the UK and hunkered down in NYC’s Electric Lady Studios. At the time, hip-hop was emerging as a new, exciting music form — and following their successful dance single,"This Is Radio Clash," the group set about recording their upcoming album with an infusion of the vibrant elements they were hearing.

"I want the Clash to get bigger because you want people to hear your songs, you want to be successful," Joe Strummer told journalist Lisa Robinson, as quoted in Mark Andersen’s book We Are The Clash . "But on the other hand, I’m pretty wary of that, of having it get too big to handle. You always think you can handle it, but you never know."

By most accounts, recording sessions went smoothly, with Jones handling production duties and Strummer turning his lyrical gaze to such places as El Salvador, and seeing modern urban parallels with previous conflicts in Vietnam. "This is a public service announcement— with guitar!" Strummer can be heard bellowing loud and clear on the new echo-filled rendition of opening track "Know Your Rights" on the reissue (recorded at The People’s Hall on the Rolling Stones' Mobile Studio). The guitars on the new rendition have more of a jackhammer sound than ever and the chilling lyrics seem even more timely. "Get off the streets - run!" Strummer implores at the conclusion. 

Read more:    Anti-Flag, Audio Karate, Tsunami Bomb And More Discuss The Legacy Of The Clash's 'London Calling': "It Forces You To Think Bigger"

Amidst the now-obvious radio hits, several other sleeper album tracks carry more relevance. "Starved in metropolis, hooked on necropolis, addict of metropolis, do the worm on the acropolis, slamdance the cosmopolis, enlighten the populace…" Decades on, Allen Ginsberg’s seemingly throwaway poetic lines and dark delivery on the mysterious album track "Ghetto Defendant" seem to pack more of a punch today than they ever did. 

"I just turned around to him and said, ‘You’re America’s greatest living poet and you’re going on the mic now," Strummer told interviewer Joel Schalit, per  We Are The Clash . "He said, ‘Well great, what should I do?’ I said, "I want the sound of God!" I gave him two or three minutes scribbling on the piano and on paper. And then there he was, "Slam dance the cosmopolis.""

While eventual first single "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" was Jones’ self-admitted effort at creating a rock classic, eventual mega-hit "Rock The Casbah" was a studio surprise. As he waited for the rest of the group to come to the studio one day, drummer Topper Headon laid down the drums, bass and piano riff that he had been toying with. Enthused by what he heard, Strummer then played around with some lyrics he’d been writing, including one about the lengthy "ragas" their manager Bernie Rhodes had been accusing the group of making. 

"Somebody told me earlier that if you had a disco album in Tehran, you got 20 lashes," Strummer said on the recent podcast "Stay Free: The Story Of The Clash." "And if you had a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label Whisky, you got 40 lashes. I couldn’t get this out of my mind. I was trying to say that fanaticism is nowhere…there is no tenderness or humanity in fanaticism." The song would go on to become the band’s biggest ever U.S. hit, climbing to No. 8 on the Billboard singles charts in 1983.

Internally though, the group were divided on how the album was developing. While Strummer wanted a stripped back single album, with Jones producing, they were heading towards a sprawling, jam-filled 2-LP set they were calling "Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg" (several recordings from these sessions can be heard on the new reissue).

"To understand Combat Rock , you have to realize it was a salvage operation," Strummer said in the book The Clash On The Clash by Sean Egan. "I finally had to take it to Glyn Johns, an outsider, to save it. Mick’s attitude was that I ruined his music. Fifty percent of Combat Rock was great rock, but the other 50 was what Phil Spector would call 'wiggy.'"

"Rock The Casbah" and "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" became hits with the help of heavy MTV video airplay, and the album sold over two million copies. " Combat Rock went top five for us in America," said Strummer in the Westway To The World documentary. "This is unheard of for us. Our place is like 198 - and suddenly it all blew up."

But this came with plenty of mixed fortunes. Within weeks of Combat Rock ’s release, Headon was out of the band, to be replaced by former drummer Terry Chimes. Stadium dates opening for the Who followed, as well as a lucrative $500,000 gig at Southern California’s landmark US Festival, held over Memorial Day weekend in 1983. Before the end of the year though, Jones was gone from the band too. As bassist Paul Simonon and Strummer were forming a new version of the Clash, Jones started up his rock-dance hybrid group Big Audio Dynamite. Jones later called his ejection "the greatest mistake in rock and roll history" – a sentiment Strummer grew to agree with.

Still, the Clash's influence looms large, both musically as a classic and innovative punk record, and culturally. A 1991 Levi’s ad in the UK enabled "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" to go to No. 1 on the singles chart there, becoming their only chart topper. Today, the song is prominently featured in the Netflix TV series "Stranger Things." And other songs, like "Straight To Hell," have been sampled by such artists as M.I.A. (" Paper Planes ").

As Strummer was keen to note, they came, they spoke and they went. But the Clash remain as vital and as influential as ever. "With the music on Combat Rock we’re just learning to decipher things that it’s saying that we couldn’t when it came out," Steven Taylor, longtime Alan Ginsberg guitarist, told Antonino  Ambrossio in the Joe Strummer biography Let Fury Have The Hour .

"‘As railhead towns feel the steel mills, rust water froze in the generation clear as winter ice. This is your paradise,’ are the lyrics of ‘Straight To Hell’. They certainly describe the current state of things."

Living Legends: Devo Subverted The Herd Mentality Beginning In The '70s, But Their Art Punk Aesthetic Is More Relevant Than Ever

Photo: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

GRAMMY Rewind: Kendrick Lamar Honors Hip-Hop's Greats While Accepting Best Rap Album GRAMMY For 'To Pimp a Butterfly' In 2016

Upon winning the GRAMMY for Best Rap Album for 'To Pimp a Butterfly,' Kendrick Lamar thanked those that helped him get to the stage, and the artists that blazed the trail for him.

Updated Friday Oct. 13, 2023 to include info about Kendrick Lamar's most recent GRAMMY wins, as of the 2023 GRAMMYs.

A GRAMMY veteran these days, Kendrick Lamar has won 17 GRAMMYs and has received 47 GRAMMY nominations overall. A sizable chunk of his trophies came from the 58th annual GRAMMY Awards in 2016, when he walked away with five — including his first-ever win in the Best Rap Album category.

This installment of GRAMMY Rewind turns back the clock to 2016, revisiting Lamar's acceptance speech upon winning Best Rap Album for To Pimp A Butterfly . Though Lamar was alone on stage, he made it clear that he wouldn't be at the top of his game without the help of a broad support system. 

"First off, all glory to God, that's for sure," he said, kicking off a speech that went on to thank his parents, who he described as his "those who gave me the responsibility of knowing, of accepting the good with the bad."

Looking for more GRAMMYs news? The 2024 GRAMMY nominations are here!

He also extended his love and gratitude to his fiancée, Whitney Alford, and shouted out his Top Dawg Entertainment labelmates. Lamar specifically praised Top Dawg's CEO, Anthony Tiffith, for finding and developing raw talent that might not otherwise get the chance to pursue their musical dreams.

"We'd never forget that: Taking these kids out of the projects, out of Compton, and putting them right here on this stage, to be the best that they can be," Lamar — a Compton native himself — continued, leading into an impassioned conclusion spotlighting some of the cornerstone rap albums that came before To Pimp a Butterfly .

"Hip-hop. Ice Cube . This is for hip-hop," he said. "This is for Snoop Dogg , Doggystyle . This is for Illmatic , this is for Nas . We will live forever. Believe that."

To Pimp a Butterfly singles "Alright" and "These Walls" earned Lamar three more GRAMMYs that night, the former winning Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song and the latter taking Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (the song features Bilal , Anna Wise and Thundercat ). He also won Best Music Video for the remix of Taylor Swift 's "Bad Blood." 

Lamar has since won Best Rap Album two more times, taking home the golden gramophone in 2018 for his blockbuster LP DAMN ., and in 2023 for his bold fifth album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers .

Watch Lamar's full acceptance speech above, and check back at GRAMMY.com every Friday for more GRAMMY Rewind episodes. 

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Photo:  Rachel Kupfer  

A Guide To Modern Funk For The Dance Floor: L'Imperatrice, Shiro Schwarz, Franc Moody, Say She She & Moniquea

James Brown changed the sound of popular music when he found the power of the one and unleashed the funk with "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag." Today, funk lives on in many forms, including these exciting bands from across the world.

It's rare that a genre can be traced back to a single artist or group, but for funk, that was James Brown . The Godfather of Soul coined the phrase and style of playing known as "on the one," where the first downbeat is emphasized, instead of the typical second and fourth beats in pop, soul and other styles. As David Cheal eloquently explains, playing on the one "left space for phrases and riffs, often syncopated around the beat, creating an intricate, interlocking grid which could go on and on." You know a funky bassline when you hear it; its fat chords beg your body to get up and groove.

Brown's 1965 classic, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," became one of the first funk hits, and has been endlessly sampled and covered over the years, along with his other groovy tracks. Of course, many other funk acts followed in the '60s, and the genre thrived in the '70s and '80s as the disco craze came and went, and the originators of hip-hop and house music created new music from funk and disco's strong, flexible bones built for dancing.

Legendary funk bassist Bootsy Collins learned the power of the one from playing in Brown's band, and brought it to George Clinton , who created P-funk, an expansive, Afrofuturistic , psychedelic exploration of funk with his various bands and projects, including Parliament-Funkadelic . Both Collins and Clinton remain active and funkin', and have offered their timeless grooves to collabs with younger artists, including Kali Uchis , Silk Sonic , and Omar Apollo; and Kendrick Lamar , Flying Lotus , and Thundercat , respectively.

In the 1980s, electro-funk was born when artists like Afrika Bambaataa, Man Parrish, and Egyptian Lover began making futuristic beats with the Roland TR-808 drum machine — often with robotic vocals distorted through a talk box. A key distinguishing factor of electro-funk is a de-emphasis on vocals, with more phrases than choruses and verses. The sound influenced contemporaneous hip-hop, funk and electronica, along with acts around the globe, while current acts like Chromeo, DJ Stingray, and even Egyptian Lover himself keep electro-funk alive and well.

Today, funk lives in many places, with its heavy bass and syncopated grooves finding way into many nooks and crannies of music. There's nu-disco and boogie funk, nodding back to disco bands with soaring vocals and dance floor-designed instrumentation. G-funk continues to influence Los Angeles hip-hop, with innovative artists like Dam-Funk and Channel Tres bringing the funk and G-funk, into electro territory. Funk and disco-centered '70s revival is definitely having a moment, with acts like Ghost Funk Orchestra and Parcels , while its sparkly sprinklings can be heard in pop from Dua Lipa , Doja Cat , and, in full "Soul Train" character, Silk Sonic . There are also acts making dreamy, atmospheric music with a solid dose of funk, such as Khruangbin ’s global sonic collage.

There are many bands that play heavily with funk, creating lush grooves designed to get you moving. Read on for a taste of five current modern funk and nu-disco artists making band-led uptempo funk built for the dance floor. Be sure to press play on the Spotify playlist above, and check out GRAMMY.com's playlist on Apple Music , Amazon Music and Pandora .

Say She She

Aptly self-described as "discodelic soul," Brooklyn-based seven-piece Say She She make dreamy, operatic funk, led by singer-songwriters Nya Gazelle Brown, Piya Malik and Sabrina Mileo Cunningham. Their '70s girl group-inspired vocal harmonies echo, sooth and enchant as they cover poignant topics with feminist flair.

While they’ve been active in the New York scene for a few years, they’ve gained wider acclaim for the irresistible music they began releasing this year, including their debut album, Prism . Their 2022 debut single "Forget Me Not" is an ode to ground-breaking New York art collective Guerilla Girls, and " Norma " is their protest anthem in response to the news that Roe vs. Wade could be (and was) overturned. The band name is a nod to funk legend Nile Rodgers , from the "Le freak, c'est chi" exclamation in Chic's legendary tune "Le Freak."

Moniquea 's unique voice oozes confidence, yet invites you in to dance with her to the super funky boogie rhythms. The Pasadena, California artist was raised on funk music; her mom was in a cover band that would play classics like Aretha Franklin’ s "Get It Right" and Gladys Knight ’s "Love Overboard." Moniquea released her first boogie funk track at 20 and, in 2011, met local producer XL Middelton — a bonafide purveyor of funk. She's been a star artist on his MoFunk Records ever since, and they've collabed on countless tracks, channeling West Coast energy with a heavy dose of G-funk, sunny lyrics and upbeat, roller disco-ready rhythms.

Her latest release is an upbeat nod to classic West Coast funk, produced by Middleton, and follows her February 2022 groovy, collab-filled album, On Repeat .

Shiro Schwarz

Shiro Schwarz is a Mexico City-based duo, consisting of Pammela Rojas and Rafael Marfil, who helped establish a modern funk scene in the richly creative Mexican metropolis. On "Electrify" — originally released in 2016 on Fat Beats Records and reissued in 2021 by MoFunk — Shiro Schwarz's vocals playfully contrast each other, floating over an insistent, upbeat bassline and an '80s throwback electro-funk rhythm with synth flourishes.

Their music manages to be both nostalgic and futuristic — and impossible to sit still to. 2021 single "Be Kind" is sweet, mellow and groovy, perfect chic lounge funk. Shiro Schwarz’s latest track, the joyfully nostalgic "Hey DJ," is a collab with funkstress Saucy Lady and U-Key.

L'Impératrice

L'Impératrice (the empress in French) are a six-piece Parisian group serving an infectiously joyful blend of French pop, nu-disco, funk and psychedelia. Flore Benguigui's vocals are light and dreamy, yet commanding of your attention, while lyrics have a feminist touch.

During their energetic live sets, L'Impératrice members Charles de Boisseguin and Hagni Gwon (keys), David Gaugué (bass), Achille Trocellier (guitar), and Tom Daveau (drums) deliver extended instrumental jam sessions to expand and connect their music. Gaugué emphasizes the thick funky bass, and Benguigui jumps around the stage while sounding like an angel. L’Impératrice’s latest album, 2021’s Tako Tsubo , is a sunny, playful French disco journey.

Franc Moody

Franc Moody 's bio fittingly describes their music as "a soul funk and cosmic disco sound." The London outfit was birthed by friends Ned Franc and Jon Moody in the early 2010s, when they were living together and throwing parties in North London's warehouse scene. In 2017, the group grew to six members, including singer and multi-instrumentalist Amber-Simone.

Their music feels at home with other electro-pop bands like fellow Londoners Jungle and Aussie act Parcels. While much of it is upbeat and euphoric, Franc Moody also dips into the more chilled, dreamy realm, such as the vibey, sultry title track from their recently released Into the Ether .

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Photo: Steven Sebring

Living Legends: Billy Idol On Survival, Revival & Breaking Out Of The Cage

"One foot in the past and one foot into the future," Billy Idol says, describing his decade-spanning career in rock. "We’ve got the best of all possible worlds because that has been the modus operandi of Billy Idol."

Living Legends is a series that spotlights icons in music still going strong today. This week, GRAMMY.com spoke with Billy Idol about his latest EP,   Cage , and continuing to rock through decades of changing tastes.

Billy Idol is a true rock 'n' roll survivor who has persevered through cultural shifts and personal struggles. While some may think of Idol solely for "Rebel Yell" and "White Wedding," the singer's musical influences span genres and many of his tunes are less turbo-charged than his '80s hits would belie.  

Idol first made a splash in the latter half of the '70s with the British punk band Generation X. In the '80s, he went on to a solo career combining rock, pop, and punk into a distinct sound that transformed him and his musical partner, guitarist Steve Stevens, into icons. They have racked up multiple GRAMMY nominations, in addition to one gold, one double platinum, and four platinum albums thanks to hits like "Cradle Of Love," "Flesh For Fantasy," and "Eyes Without A Face." 

But, unlike many legacy artists, Idol is anything but a relic. Billy continues to produce vital Idol music by collaborating with producers and songwriters — including Miley Cyrus — who share his forward-thinking vision. He will play a five-show Vegas residency in November, and filmmaker Jonas Akerlund is working on a documentary about Idol’s life. 

His latest release is Cage , the second in a trilogy of annual four-song EPs. The title track is a classic Billy Idol banger expressing the desire to free himself from personal constraints and live a better life. Other tracks on Cage incorporate metallic riffing and funky R&B grooves. 

Idol continues to reckon with his demons — they both grappled with addiction during the '80s — and the singer is open about those struggles on the record and the page. (Idol's 2014 memoir Dancing With Myself , details a 1990 motorcycle accident that nearly claimed a leg, and how becoming a father steered him to reject hard drugs. "Bitter Taste," from his last EP, The Roadside , reflects on surviving the accident.)

Although Idol and Stevens split in the late '80s — the skilled guitarist fronted Steve Stevens & The Atomic Playboys, and collaborated with Michael Jackson, Rick Ocasek, Vince Neil, and Harold Faltermeyer (on the GRAMMY-winning "Top Gun Anthem") —  their common history and shared musical bond has been undeniable. The duo reunited in 2001 for an episode of " VH1 Storytellers " and have been back in the saddle for two decades. Their union remains one of the strongest collaborations in rock 'n roll history.

While there is recognizable personnel and a distinguishable sound throughout a lot of his work, Billy Idol has always pushed himself to try different things. Idol discusses his musical journey, his desire to constantly move forward, and the strong connection that he shares with Stevens. 

Steve has said that you like to mix up a variety of styles, yet everyone assumes you're the "Rebel Yell"/"White Wedding" guy. But if they really listen to your catalog, it's vastly different.

Yeah, that's right. With someone like Steve Stevens, and then back in the day Keith Forsey producing... [Before that] Generation X actually did move around inside punk rock. We didn't stay doing just the Ramones two-minute music. We actually did a seven-minute song. [ Laughs ]. We did always mix things up. 

Then when I got into my solo career, that was the fun of it. With someone like Steve, I knew what he could do. I could see whatever we needed to do, we could nail it. The world was my oyster musically. 

"Cage" is a classic-sounding Billy Idol rocker, then "Running From The Ghost" is almost metal, like what the Devil's Playground album was like back in the mid-2000s. "Miss Nobody" comes out of nowhere with this pop/R&B flavor. What inspired that?

We really hadn't done anything like that since something like "Flesh For Fantasy" [which] had a bit of an R&B thing about it. Back in the early days of Billy Idol, "Hot In The City" and "Mony Mony" had girls [singing] on the backgrounds. 

We always had a bit of R&B really, so it was actually fun to revisit that. We just hadn't done anything really quite like that for a long time. That was one of the reasons to work with someone like Sam Hollander [for the song "Rita Hayworth"] on The Roadside . We knew we could go [with him] into an R&B world, and he's a great songwriter and producer. That's the fun of music really, trying out these things and seeing if you can make them stick. 

I listen to new music by veteran artists and debate that with some people. I'm sure you have those fans that want their nostalgia, and then there are some people who will embrace the newer stuff. Do you find it’s a challenge to reach people with new songs?

Obviously, what we're looking for is, how do we somehow have one foot in the past and one foot into the future? We’ve got the best of all possible worlds because that has been the modus operandi of Billy Idol. 

You want to do things that are true to you, and you don't just want to try and do things that you're seeing there in the charts today. I think that we're achieving it with things like "Running From The Ghost" and "Cage" on this new EP. I think we’re managing to do both in a way. 

** Obviously, "Running From The Ghost" is about addiction, all the stuff that you went through, and in "Cage" you’re talking about  freeing yourself from a lot of personal shackles. Was there any one moment in your life that made you really thought I have to not let this weigh me down anymore ? **

I mean, things like the motorcycle accident I had, that was a bit of a wake up call way back. It was 32 years ago. But there were things like that, years ago, that gradually made me think about what I was doing with my life. I didn't want to ruin it, really. I didn't want to throw it away, and it made [me] be less cavalier. 

I had to say to myself, about the drugs and stuff, that I've been there and I've done it. There’s no point in carrying on doing it. You couldn't get any higher. You didn't want to throw your life away casually, and I was close to doing that. It took me a bit of time, but then gradually I was able to get control of myself to a certain extent [with] drugs and everything. And I think Steve's done the same thing. We're on a similar path really, which has been great because we're in the same boat in terms of lyrics and stuff. 

So a lot of things like that were wake up calls. Even having grandchildren and just watching my daughter enlarging her family and everything; it just makes you really positive about things and want to show a positive side to how you're feeling, about where you're going. We've lived with the demons so long, we've found a way to live with them. We found a way to be at peace with our demons, in a way. Maybe not completely, but certainly to where we’re enjoying what we do and excited about it.

[When writing] "Running From The Ghost" it was easy to go, what was the ghost for us? At one point, we were very drug addicted in the '80s. And Steve in particular is super sober [now]. I mean, I still vape pot and stuff. I don’t know how he’s doing it, but it’s incredible. All I want to be able to do is have a couple of glasses of wine at a restaurant or something. I can do that now.

I think working with people that are super talented, you just feel confident. That is a big reason why you open up and express yourself more because you feel comfortable with what's around you.

Did you watch Danny Boyle's recent Sex Pistols mini-series?

I did, yes.

You had a couple of cameos; well, an actor who portrayed you did. How did you react to it? How accurate do you think it was in portraying that particular time period?

I love Jonesy’s book, I thought his book was incredible. It's probably one of the best bio books really. It was incredible and so open. I was looking forward to that a lot.

It was as if [the show] kind of stayed with Steve [Jones’ memoir] about halfway through, and then departed from it. [John] Lydon, for instance, was never someone I ever saw acting out; he's more like that today. I never saw him do something like jump up in the room and run around going crazy. The only time I saw him ever do that was when they signed the recording deal with Virgin in front of Buckingham Palace. Whereas Sid Vicious was always acting out; he was always doing something in a horrible way or shouting at someone. I don't remember John being like that. I remember him being much more introverted.

But then I watched interviews with some of the actors about coming to grips with the parts they were playing. And they were saying, we knew punk rock happened but just didn't know any of the details. So I thought well, there you go . If ["Pistol" is]  informing a lot of people who wouldn't know anything about punk rock, maybe that's what's good about it.

Maybe down the road John Lydon will get the chance to do John's version of the Pistols story. Maybe someone will go a lot deeper into it and it won't be so surface. But maybe you needed this just to get people back in the flow.

We had punk and metal over here in the States, but it feels like England it was legitimately more dangerous. British society was much more rigid.

It never went [as] mega in America. It went big in England. It exploded when the Pistols did that interview with [TV host Bill] Grundy, that lorry truck driver put his boot through his own TV, and all the national papers had "the filth and the fury" [headlines].

We went from being unknown to being known overnight. We waited a year, Generation X. We even told them [record labels] no for nine months to a year. Every record company wanted their own punk rock group. So it went really mega in England, and it affected the whole country – the style, the fashions, everything. I mean, the Ramones were massive in England. Devo had a No. 1 song [in England] with "Satisfaction" in '77. Actually, Devo was as big as or bigger than the Pistols.

You were ahead of the pop-punk thing that happened in the late '90s, and a lot of it became tongue-in-cheek by then. It didn't have the same sense of rebelliousness as the original movement. It was more pop.

It had become a style. There was a famous book in England called Revolt Into Style — and that's what had happened, a revolt that turned into style which then they were able to duplicate in their own way. Even recently, Billie Joe [Armstrong] did his own version of "Gimme Some Truth," the Lennon song we covered way back in 1977.

When we initially were making [punk] music, it hadn't become accepted yet. It was still dangerous and turned into a style that people were used to. We were still breaking barriers.

You have a band called Generation Sex with Steve Jones and Paul Cook. I assume you all have an easier time playing Pistols and Gen X songs together now and not worrying about getting spit on like back in the '70s?

Yeah, definitely. When I got to America I told the group I was putting it together, "No one spits at the audience."

We had five years of being spat on [in the UK], and it was revolting. And they spat at you if they liked you. If they didn't like it they smashed your gear up. One night, I remember I saw blood on my T-shirt, and I think Joe Strummer got meningitis when spit went in his mouth.

You had to go through a lot to become successful, it wasn't like you just kind of got up there and did a couple of gigs. I don't think some young rock bands really get that today.

With punk going so mega in England, we definitely got a leg up. We still had a lot of work to get where we got to, and rightly so because you find out that you need to do that. A lot of groups in the old days would be together three to five years before they ever made a record, and that time is really important. In a way, what was great about punk rock for me was it was very much a learning period. I really learned a lot [about] recording music and being in a group and even writing songs.

Then when I came to America, it was a flow, really. I also really started to know what I wanted Billy Idol to be. It took me a little bit, but I kind of knew what I wanted Billy Idol to be. And even that took a while to let it marinate.

You and Miley Cyrus have developed a good working relationship in the last several years. How do you think her fans have responded to you, and your fans have responded to her?

I think they're into it. It's more the record company that she had didn't really get "Night Crawling"— it was one of the best songs on Plastic Hearts , and I don't think they understood that. They wanted to go with Dua Lipa, they wanted to go with the modern, young acts, and I don't think they realized that that song was resonating with her fans. Which is a shame really because, with Andrew Watt producing, it's a hit song.

But at the same time, I enjoyed doing it. It came out really good and it's very Billy Idol. In fact, I think it’s more Billy Idol than Miley Cyrus. I think it shows you where Andrew Watt was. He was excited about doing a Billy Idol track. She's fun to work with. She’s a really great person and she works at her singing — I watched her rehearsing for the Super Bowl performance she gave. She rehearsed all Saturday morning, all Saturday afternoon, and Sunday morning and it was that afternoon. I have to admire her fortitude. She really cares.

I remember when you went on " Viva La Bam "  back in 2005 and decided to give Bam Margera’s Lamborghini a new sunroof by taking a power saw to it. Did he own that car? Was that a rental?

I think it was his car.

Did he get over it later on?

He loved it. [ Laughs ] He’s got a wacky sense of humor. He’s fantastic, actually. I’m really sorry to see what he's been going through just lately. He's going through a lot, and I wish him the best. He's a fantastic person, and it's a shame that he's struggling so much with his addictions. I know what it's like. It's not easy.

Musically, what is the synergy like with you guys during the past 10 years, doing Kings and Queens of the Underground and this new stuff? What is your working relationship like now in this more sober, older, mature version of you two as opposed to what it was like back in the '80s?

In lots of ways it’s not so different because we always wrote the songs together, we always talked about what we're going to do together. It was just that we were getting high at the same time.We're just not getting [that way now] but we're doing all the same things.

We're still talking about things, still [planning] things:What are we going to do next? How are we going to find new people to work with? We want to find new producers. Let's be a little bit more timely about putting stuff out.That part of our relationship is the same, you know what I mean? That never got affected. We just happened to be overloading in the '80s.

The relationship’s… matured and it's carrying on being fruitful, and I think that's pretty amazing. Really, most people don't get to this place. Usually, they hate each other by now. [ Laughs ] We also give each other space. We're not stopping each other doing things outside of what we’re working on together. All of that enables us to carry on working together. I love and admire him. I respect him. He's been fantastic. I mean, just standing there on stage with him is always a treat. And he’s got an immensely great sense of humor. I think that's another reason why we can hang together after all this time because we've got the sense of humor to enable us to go forward.

There's a lot of fan reaction videos online, and I noticed a lot of younger women like "Rebel Yell" because, unlike a lot of other '80s alpha male rock tunes, you're talking about satisfying your lover.

It was about my girlfriend at the time, Perri Lister. It was about how great I thought she was, how much I was in love with her, and how great women are, how powerful they are.

It was a bit of a feminist anthem in a weird way. It was all about how relationships can free you and add a lot to your life. It was a cry of love, nothing to do with the Civil War or anything like that. Perri was a big part of my life, a big part of being Billy Idol. I wanted to write about it. I'm glad that's the effect.

Is there something you hope people get out of the songs you've been doing over the last 10 years? Do you find yourself putting out a message that keeps repeating?

Well, I suppose, if anything, is that you can come to terms with your life, you can keep a hold of it. You can work your dreams into reality in a way and, look, a million years later, still be enjoying it.

The only reason I'm singing about getting out of the cage is because I kicked out of the cage years ago. I joined Generation X when I said to my parents, "I'm leaving university, and I'm joining a punk rock group." And they didn't even know what a punk rock group was. Years ago, I’d write things for myself that put me on this path, so that maybe in 2022 I could sing something like "Cage" and be owning this territory and really having a good time. This is the life I wanted.

The original UK punk movement challenged societal norms. Despite all the craziness going on throughout the world, it seems like a lot of modern rock bands are afraid to do what you guys were doing. Do you think we'll see a shift in that?

Yeah.  Art usually reacts to things, so I would think eventually there will be a massive reaction to the pop music that’s taken over — the middle of the road music, and then this kind of right wing politics. There will be a massive reaction if there's not already one. I don’t know where it will come from exactly. You never know who's gonna do [it].

Living Legends: Nancy Sinatra Reflects On Creating "Power And Magic" In Studio, Developing A Legacy Beyond "Boots" & The Pop Stars She Wants To Work With

Graphic: The Recording Academy

Hear All Of The Best Country Solo Performance Nominees For The 2023 GRAMMY Awards

The 2023 GRAMMY Award nominees for Best Country Solo Performance highlight country music's newcomers and veterans, featuring hits from Kelsea Ballerini, Zach Bryan, Miranda Lambert, Maren Morris and Willie Nelson.

Country music's evolution is well represented in the 2023 GRAMMY nominees for Best Country Solo Performance. From crossover pop hooks to red-dirt outlaw roots, the genre's most celebrated elements are on full display — thanks to rising stars, leading ladies and country icons.

Longtime hitmaker Miranda Lambert delivered a soulful performance on the rootsy ballad "In His Arms," an arrangement as sparing as the windswept west Texas highlands where she co-wrote the song. Viral newcomer Zach Bryan dug into similar organic territory on the Oklahoma side of the Red River for "Something in the Orange," his voice accompanied with little more than an acoustic guitar.

Two of country's 2010s breakout stars are clearly still shining, too, as Maren Morris and Kelsea Ballerini both received Best Country Solo Performance GRAMMY nods. Morris channeled the determination that drove her leap-of-faith move from Texas to Nashville for the playful clap-along "Circles Around This Town," while Ballerini brought poppy hooks with a country edge on the infectiously upbeat "HEARTFIRST."

Rounding out the category is the one and only Willie Nelson, who paid tribute to his late friend Billy Joe Shaver with a cover of "Live Forever" — a fitting sentiment for the 89-year-old legend, who is approaching his eighth decade in the business. 

As the excitement builds for the 2023 GRAMMYs on Feb. 5, 2023, let's take a closer look at this year's nominees for Best Country Solo Performance.

Kelsea Ballerini — "HEARTFIRST"

In the tradition of Shania Twain , Faith Hill and Carrie Underwood , Kelsea Ballerini represents Nashville's sunnier side — and her single "HEARTFIRST" is a slice of bright, uptempo, confectionary country-pop for the ages.

Ballerini sings about leaning into a carefree crush with her heart on her sleeve, pushing aside her reservations and taking a risk on love at first sight. The scene plays out in a bar room and a back seat, as she sweeps nimbly through the verses and into a shimmering chorus, when the narrator decides she's ready to "wake up in your T-shirt." 

There are enough steel guitar licks to let you know you're listening to a country song, but the story and melody are universal. "HEARTFIRST" is Ballerini's third GRAMMY nod, but first in the Best Country Solo Performance category.

Zach Bryan — "Something In The Orange"

Zach Bryan blew into Music City seemingly from nowhere in 2017, when his original song "Heading South" — recorded on an iPhone — went viral. Then an active officer in the U.S. Navy, the Oklahoma native chased his muse through music during his downtime, striking a chord with country music fans on stark songs led by his acoustic guitar and affecting vocals.

After his honorable discharge in 2021, Bryan began his music career in earnest, and in 2022 released "Something in the Orange," a haunting ballad that stakes a convincing claim to the territory between Tyler Childers and Jason Isbell in both sonics and songwriting. Slashing slide guitar drives home the song's heartbreak, as Bryan pines for a lover whose tail lights have long since vanished over the horizon. 

"Something In The Orange" marks Bryan's first-ever GRAMMY nomination.

Miranda Lambert — "In His Arms"

Miranda Lambert is the rare, chart-topping contemporary country artist who does more than pay lip service to the genre's rural American roots. "In His Arms" originally surfaced on 2021's The Marfa Tapes , a casual recording Lambert made with Jack Ingram and Jon Randall in Marfa, Texas — a tiny arts enclave in the middle of the west Texas high desert.

In this proper studio version — recorded for her 2022 album, Palomino — Lambert retains the structure and organic feel of the mostly acoustic song; light percussion and soothing atmospherics keep her emotive vocals front and center. A native Texan herself, Lambert sounds fully at home on "In His Arms."

Lambert is the only Best Country Solo Performance nominee who is nominated in all four Country Field categories in 2023. To date, Miranda Lambert has won 3 GRAMMYs and received 27 nominations overall. 

Maren Morris — "Circles Around This Town"

When Maren Morris found herself uninspired and dealing with writer's block, she went back to what inspired her to move to Nashville nearly a decade ago — and out came "Circles Around This Town," the lead single from her 2022 album Humble Quest .

Written in one of her first in-person songwriting sessions since the pandemic, Morris has called "Circles Around This Town" her "most autobiographical song" to date; she even recreated her own teenage bedroom for the song's video. As she looks back to her Texas beginnings and the life she left for Nashville, Morris' voice soars over anthemic, yet easygoing production. 

Morris last won a GRAMMY for Best Country Solo Performance in 2017, when her song "My Church" earned the singer her first GRAMMY. To date, Maren Morris has won one GRAMMY and received 17 nominations overall.

Willie Nelson — "Live Forever"

Country music icon Willie Nelson is no stranger to the GRAMMYs, and this year he aims to add to his collection of 10 gramophones. He earned another three nominations for 2023 — bringing his career total to 56 — including a Best Country Solo Performance nod for "Live Forever."

Nelson's performance of "Live Forever," the lead track of the 2022 tribute album Live Forever: A Tribute to Billy Joe Shaver , is a faithful rendition of Shaver's signature song. Still, Nelson puts his own twist on the tune, recruiting Lucinda Williams for backing vocals and echoing the melody with the inimitable tone of his nylon-string Martin guitar. 

Shaver, an outlaw country pioneer who passed in 2020 at 81 years old, never had any hits of his own during his lifetime. But plenty of his songs were still heard, thanks to stars like Elvis Presley , Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings . Nelson was a longtime friend and frequent collaborator of Shaver's — and now has a GRAMMY nom to show for it.

2023 GRAMMY Nominations: See The Complete Nominees List

• 1 Revisiting The Clash's 'Combat Rock' At 40: Why They Stay And Have Never Gone
• 2 GRAMMY Rewind: Kendrick Lamar Honors Hip-Hop's Greats While Accepting Best Rap Album GRAMMY For 'To Pimp a Butterfly' In 2016
• 3 A Guide To Modern Funk For The Dance Floor: L'Imperatrice, Shiro Schwarz, Franc Moody, Say She She & Moniquea
• 4 Living Legends: Billy Idol On Survival, Revival & Breaking Out Of The Cage
• 5 Hear All Of The Best Country Solo Performance Nominees For The 2023 GRAMMY Awards

Combat Rock - The Ultimate Clash Tribute

A tribute to The Clash performing an awe-inspiring arsenal of classic Clash songs from 'White Riot' to 'Clash City Rocker', and 'Bank Robber' to more...

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• Apr 06 Sat Aberdeen, Krakatoa Combat Rock - The Ultimate Clash Tribute
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• Dec 22 2022 Glasgow, King Tut's Wah Wah Hut Joe Strummer Tribute Night Combat Rock - The Ultimate Clash Tribute, The Wages of Sin, The Zips, The Dughoose Ska Band, Rat Patrol IV…
• Oct 01 2022 Glasgow, King Tut's Wah Wah Hut Combat Rock - The Ultimate Clash Tribute
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Combat Rock

By Anna Gaca

October 24, 2021

Joe Strummer claimed he’d run the Paris Marathon in three hours and 20 minutes. Officially, he didn’t race at all—just showed up that morning in May 1982 and dodged whoever was taking names. Hardly anybody knew he was in France. Strummer was dodging them all: Clash manager Bernard Rhodes, who’d dared him to go AWOL as a publicity stunt and then had to hire a private detective when Strummer actually disappeared; songwriting partner Mick Jones, who’d been hurt when the group rejected his vision for their new album and become increasingly difficult to get ahold of; brilliant drummer Topper Headon, who was losing his friends’ trust as his drug use escalated precipitously. Only the Clash’s unflappable bassist, Paul Simonon, seemed to be doing alright.

Combat Rock, the band’s fifth album, came out that same marathon weekend. The Clash were supposed to be touring the UK, but when Strummer didn’t return, the dates had to be postponed. Maybe the Parisian vanishing act was calculated, a way to show his bandmates they couldn’t very well carry on without him. Maybe, as Strummer would tell NME ’s Charles Shaar Murray days later, he’d just gone “a bit barmy.” Wouldn’t you have to be, to gatecrash a marathon after a night out drinking and then get drunk again afterward? But compared to the Clash, Paris probably felt like a dream. Not long after the race, Clash PR rep and fixer Kosmo Vinyl tracked Strummer down at a café and hauled him back to London.

It makes a certain grim logical sense that an album heavily inspired by the aftermath of the Vietnam War and more directly by Apocalypse Now would get in deep and then start to lose the plot. The second-to-last Clash album is better than it has any right to be, considering the tension amid the people who recorded it, and the debt it owes producer Glyn Johns, who tightened an unwieldy, 16- or 17-track album into a 12-song bruiser after the band deemed Jones’ mix unsatisfactory. It wasn’t as zippy or as effortlessly brilliant as London Calling —few albums are. But it’s a good record: bracing, challenging, authentically conflicted by its own enthusiasm for military aesthetics. When Margaret Thatcher made a bid to save her re-election prospects by launching an imperialist war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands weeks ahead of its release date, Combat Rock became spiritually aligned with the anti-war cause, hit No. 2 in the UK, and made the Clash stars in America.

The Clash were an extraordinarily intertextual and self-conscious, and in that sense postmodern, punk band. You know this instinctively when Strummer says something like, “phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust,” and if listening to London Calling is like reading a book with a lot of footnotes (BBC World Service, Spanish Civil War, original “ Brand New Cadillac ”), Combat Rock is an oblique political tract that lifts off into a hallucinatory vision of a society plagued and entertained by violence. It’s all less legible than it first looks, particularly pre-internet. (“If you don’t know what’s goin’ on,” urges Strummer on the recording of that October’s concert at New York Shea Stadium , “just ask the person standing next to you.”) Combat Rock is as wrapped up with world events of the day as it is spectacularly still relevant; it holds a couple of the band’s most overexposed songs and some of their moodiest and most impenetrable material.

The history of the Clash reads like a comic strip—maybe a soap opera—where nearly all the main characters are young Englishmen, the kind of rough-and-tumble social environment where if you miss the setup, you’re about to be the punchline. The antagonist is usually Rhodes, the manager; he preferred Bernard, so naturally, the Clash always called him Bernie. Rhodes, along with guitarist and singer Mick Jones, had assembled the band in 1976, recruiting Paul Simonon, a passionate reggae fan who couldn’t yet play the bass, and Joe Strummer, the magnetic frontman of local London pub rock band the 101ers.

Rhodes, a volatile, fast-talking operator who moonlighted as a car mechanic, was undeniably a formative influence. Early on, the Clash rehearsed at his studio seven days a week. Rhodes insisted the group write songs not about their own small lives or feelings, but about real-world issues: conflict, power, protest. “Bernie was very against it being a social scene,” original drummer Terry Chimes says in Pat Gilbert’s Passion Is a Fashion: The Real Story of the Clash . “He’d say, ‘Are you here for a goal or are you here just eating a cucumber sandwich?’ He had a way of wording things to make you feel stupid, and get you to do things his way.”

Trouble was, Rhodes answered to no one, certainly not the band he worked for. “If the Clash was the Communist Party, Bernie was our Stalin,” quips Simonon in Mark Andersen’s We Are the Clash . In 1978 the band fired him, allegedly for scheming to replace Mick Jones with Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones, the latest bungled maneuver in Rhodes’ long-term frenemy drama with Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren. But the band didn’t cut him off for long.

In 1981, frustrated by public response to the sprawling triple-LP Sandinista! (with production supervised by Mick) and anxious to recapture the dynamism of London Calling , Strummer insisted the Clash take Bernie back. Mick understandably objected, but Strummer supposedly threatened to walk, and Simonon backed Strummer, so here they all were again, making Combat Rock and gradually accumulating emotional scar tissue.

Work commenced in London until Mick Jones purportedly said he’d only show up in New York City, where his girlfriend lived, so they moved to the Electric Lady recording studio. Later, he’d claim he’d been joking, but the mood was heavy: Jones appointed himself producer while Strummer holed up in a fort made of flight cases (the “spliff bunker”) and by the end, they worked separate shifts and were barely speaking. Reaching a compromise on the final mixes and track sequence proved impossible. The album wasn’t done when the Clash departed for a tour of Asia and Australia in early 1982, so they flew out the unfinished tapes and the standoff continued. As photographer Pennie Smith, who joined the band in Thailand to shoot the Combat Rock cover, puts it in Passion Is a Fashion : “If you’re with people for long periods of time you can sense they’re fed up without anyone having to say anything.” Finally, Rhodes suggested they call in Glyn Johns, a career rock engineer who’d helped salvage the Who ’s Who’s Next , and Johns, Strummer, and a very reluctant Mick Jones sat down and reworked every song in three days.

Some popular bands get along well, and some make enough money to fake it, but the Clash circa Combat Rock couldn’t manage either. They weren’t yet cashing in on their records, because they’d sold London Calling and Sandinista! for bargain prices in Britain. They weren’t making it up on tour, because they wanted rock-star live production and refused to pass on the cost to the audience. After Sandinista!, the band owed their label, CBS, something like half a million pounds. The upside was that, by now, the Clash could play almost anything: slinky socialist disco (“ The Magnificent Seven ”), white reggae-rock (“ Bankrobber ”), swanky barroom blues (“ Jimmy Jazz ”), even a fluke American pop hit (“ Train in Vain ”). It’s this flexibility and fluency that carries Combat Rock ’s walloping opener “Know Your Rights” into the carbonated R&B-punk of “Car Jamming” and on to the spacious, echoey dub of “Sean Flynn.”

The album’s themes—antimilitarism, the damage inflicted by American imperialism—weren’t new material. “I don’t wanna go fighting in the tropical heat,” the band had railed on “Career Opportunities,” from 1977’s The Clash . London Calling ’s anti-fascist rocker “Clampdown” took up the specter of Brownshirts; Sandinista! protested the draft and U.S. interventions in Latin America. Combat Rock is constantly of two minds, fascinated by the grit and vibrance of early ’80s New York and aghast at the bigger system of which it was part.

The ambivalent nature of many later Clash songs reflected the criticism the band faced in the UK rock press (too focused on America, betraying punk values) and doubles as a way to sidestep the fact that art doesn’t equal political action. Often, Combat Rock seems to speak in the voice of another, absorbing establishment doublespeak on “Know Your Rights,” the omniscient narration of Allen Ginsberg on “Ghetto Defendant,” and the POV of Taxi Driver ’s Travis Bickle on “Red Angel Dragnet” (voiced by Kosmo Vinyl). Sometimes the provenance is less clear: “Car Jamming” is like a folk song stitched together from fragments of broadcast news and “Atom Tan” presents the grotesque spectacle of “the first all-live heart attack.” Casualties of war on “Inoculated City” occur not in battle but “at the top of the hour” for an indifferent public. The mediated distance, the intimation of surveillance, feeds into the album’s sense of wariness and paranoia. Yet the Clash also speak with clarity: “Murder is a crime!/Unless it was done/By a policeman or an aristocrat.”

If you think of the two sides of Combat Rock as a narrative arc of tension building to fury and the slow, destabilizing comedown of catastrophe, you’ll notice the comedown lasts far longer than the fury. But for a thrilling few moments it sounds like “Rock the Casbah,” an instrumental Headon recorded practically by himself on a day when no one else showed up to the studio. Strummer’s lyrics, about a repressive sheik’s failure to stamp out rock’n’roll, were partly a parable inspired by the 1979 Iranian Revolution and partly a shot at Rhodes, who’d quickly grown impatient with the Clash’s taste for improvisation and complained that all their new songs were too long.

Taking a page from Apocalypse Now , “Rock the Casbah” mythologizes the Clash’s professional frustrations and maps them onto the cinematic land of the sheikh, who drills oil and drives an American car. In retrospect, it’s a terrible miscalculation: “Rock the Casbah” is famous now in part because it was a hit in the U.S., and thereafter used as an ad hoc soundtrack to the American bombing of the Middle East. The orientalist imagery enables this sort of reading even as the narrative writes against it, a criticism that doesn’t apply to, like, fuck-up former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani using “Rudie Can’t Fail” as walk-on music . Like the band’s polarizing debut single, “White Riot,” “Rock the Casbah” is almost too powerful; the Clash mean to suggest music as the catalyst for revolution, but their hedonistic glee summons the kind of energy that’s hard to control.

All of Combat Rock is preoccupied with cycles of violence and the structures that support them, especially “Straight to Hell,” where the music echos hollowly under an enormous arc of oppression that spans deindustrialized English steel towns, the children of American servicemen in Vietnam, and the plight of immigrants throughout history. When the Clash ask who has the right to kill, the answer is: no one. “Who got shot tonight?” they cry above the ominous reggae thump of Simonon’s “Red Angel Dragnet,” another perilous Clash political mirror that holds up New York City vigilante organization the Guardian Angels alongside Kosmo’s deranged Travis Bickle: self-congratulatory reactionaries celebrated for their impatience to clear the streets.

Nothing on the second half brings quite the same energy—in Strummer’s words, “Fifty percent of Combat Rock was great rock, but the other fifty was what Phil Spector would call ‘wiggy.’” Side two kicks off with the lively but lyrically weak “Overpowered by Funk,” perhaps the nadir of the Clash’s interest in early hip-hop and improvised rap (“Breakfast, serials?/You know you can’t escape”); the guest verse by graffiti artist Futura, whom the Clash had hired to live-paint their stage backdrops, is more interesting as a glimpse into the golden age of New York street art culture than as a technical accomplishment. From there, it moves slowly from the cockeyed apocalyptic humor of “Atom Tan” into the cold fog of ambient dub collage “Sean Flynn,” named for the photojournalist and son of Hollywood actor Errol Flynn who had disappeared in Cambodia more than 10 years earlier. The closing “Death Is a Star” tinkles like the accompaniment to film credits, mournful and a little confused, reflecting on the cinema-going experience with the faintly dissociated feeling of one who’s just walked out of the theater.

But if Combat Rock eventually spirals off into psychedelic battlefield phantasmagoria, Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg is the director’s cut, Apocalypse Now Redux . Half an hour longer and significantly woozier than the album proper, Rat Patrol —a working title borrowed from the vintage television series about a quartet of Allied servicemen—is often described as Mick Jones’ final version of Combat Rock , shelved sometime in 1981. In truth, the bootleg sounds a little rough and hissy around the edges, like a transmission to a cheap radio, but to this day, plenty of Clash fans will tell you it’s required listening. The influence of Jones’ sequence on the final tracklist is clear, bunching together his timeless “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” with “Rock the Casbah” and “Know Your Rights” before spiraling out with a lengthy instrumental jazz interlude and versions of “Ghetto Defendant” and “Sean Flynn” that stretch to six and seven minutes.

Extended runtimes came naturally to the Clash as dub reggae fans and prodigious stoners, though you don’t have to be a major record label to see why they’d be a hard sell. Much as they might’ve downplayed it for the benefit of the British press, the Clash aspired to reach U.S. audiences, and a third super-long LP would’ve risked already tenuous label relationships. But it can be tempting to overwrite the 46-minute Combat Rock with Rat Patrol , the looser, wilder album, arguably the more ambitious attempt to fuse the Clash’s diverse musical interests and take in the whole sweep of American moral decay in one staggering, 77-minute slow pan.

Then there’s the notion that the clarified and abridged version of anything must be inauthentic and thus fundamentally un-punk. Imagine if the Clash had released another dense double LP and “Rock the Casbah” would’ve never taken such a gruesome turn, because the whole album would’ve been weird and unmarketable. Offer any counterfactual you like: If Combat Rock weren’t so successful, maybe the band wouldn’t have felt so conflicted about it, and there’d have been more Clash albums after (there is one, the unfortunate 1985 Bernard production Cut the Crap ). When fans debate Rat Patrol vs. Combat Rock , it’s like watching an endless re-enactment of the competing tastes and opinions that fueled and then splintered the band.

It is traditional to locate the Clash’s failure in their fundamental contradiction, a collective psychic conflict between ambition and principle—what Strummer, speaking in 1984, called “an experiment of a kind, that’s never succeeded, mind you, in making rebel music for a mass audience.” Of course, contradiction is their source of success, the reason why Rat Patrol is interesting but Combat Rock hits. Jones’ mix brought the sinister atmosphere and heroic stamina, but popular art requires strategy. “Every night we play I wonder who our audience is,” Strummer told Rolling Stone ’s Mikal Gilmore during the Clash’s 1982 U.S. tour. “But you have to figure you’re reaching some of them. Maybe we’re only entertaining most of them, but that’s not really so bad when you think about it—look what it is that we entertain them with. I reckon each show we reach some new ones, really reach them. It’s like fighting a big war with few victories, but each of those victories is better than none.” The other word that comes up a lot with the Clash is “romantic,” because the romantic is always holding out hope.

So chalk up a few victories to Combat Rock . It sounds like a band drifting toward the edge, yet it remains astonishingly, unsettlingly topical. Among the lessons the Clash learned from reggae: Protest music doesn’t have to be loud and fast (punk) or slow and serious (folk); it can be midtempo and jammy, spare and surreal. Its power lies in the ability to unite an audience in the sense of being outsiders—to draw in other people who like to think they’re pretty clever and tell them something worth knowing. Forty years later, the opening trifecta on “Know Your Rights” will grab you by the throat: the impunity of wealth and power, the indignity of means-tested welfare, the suppression of dissent. At the end of the song, when Strummer breathes the word “Run!” and Jones’ lead guitar takes off in flight, the rhythm section pursues in a jackbooted stomp. I don’t suggest that you learn politics from the Clash, necessarily; you listen to the Clash and understand what politics means, which is life and death.

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From the very first power chord blasting out of the speaker at 120 db, the Clash live knocks you flat on your ass. The pure youthful energy and exciting, intimate atmosphere of seeing the band in a club or theater is unlike any other concert experience.

Joe Strummer's incredible intensity, Mick Jones' high leaps, Paul Simonon's cool sway and Topper Headon's steady groove is one of the most gripping live combinations ever assembled in rock. Every word Joe said had 1,000x more meanings and power than it does on record, and his expressions and voice capture all the feelings of youth: anger, fear, frustration, and rebellion. Mick Jones' performance was like seeing pete Townshend in his prime. Everysong had ample improv, and solos that were played that same, like on Complete Control, sounded even better in the flesh. On later tour, some of his songs, like Train in Vain, always got the biggest cheers from the crowd, especially the girls.

In the late 70s, in a room full of anxious and rebellious leather clad rockers, angry bouncers, and sound loud enough to fill the Grand Canyon, only The Clash could calm everyone down. Every Clash concert felt like a personal conversation with Joe, he managed to make the entire theatre be so intimate, even with 500 fans to tend to. The Clash were one of the greatest live acts in rock history, and there performances were like nothing anybody had seen or ever will witness again..

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When the Clash Finally Played Their First U.S. Show

The Clash were about two and a half years into their career before they played a gig on U.S. soil. The band’s first American show wasn’t at a grimy punk club: They were already too popular in the States. Besides, Give ’Em Enough Rope had already shown the Clash was moving beyond the rudimentary constraints of punk.

They played their first U.S. gig on Feb. 7, 1979 at the Berkeley Community Theatre in Berkeley, Calif. The 3,500-capacity venue on the campus of Berkeley High School had a rock pedigree, with past gigs by Bob Dylan , the  Who and Jimi Hendrix .

But Joe Strummer was still dismayed that his band’s American debut would be in a college town. “We shouldn’t have played here,” Strummer told Time magazine backstage. “It’s a university town. They’re boring snobs.”

It wasn’t how Strummer pictured this would go. But then, not much in recent months had gone that way for the Clash. The band had been forced by CBS Records to use Blue Oyster Cult producer Sandy Pearlman on their sophomore LP, Give ’Em Enough Rope , an album that – for its glossier, more radio-friendly sound – hadn’t broken the Clash in the U.S. the way the record company had hoped. Meanwhile, the band was in debt to CBS, it had just fired manager Bernie Rhodes, and Strummer and guitarist Mick Jones were in the midst of a bout of writer’s block.

Things started to get better after the Clash picked a new manager, Caroline Coon. Sure, she was bassist Paul Simonon’s girlfriend, but she also listened to what the band members actually wanted to do.

Do a tour in America? With the Clash in debt, CBS didn’t want to fund an overseas trek, but Coon was able to get the band’s Stateside label, Epic, to pony up the cash. (This was somewhat remarkable, given that Epic had refused to release the Clash’s raw debut album in 1977.) When Simonon and Strummer wanted rock ’n’ roll pioneer Bo Diddley to open the band’s U.S. tour, Coon found the singer-guitarist in Australia and agreed to pay him upfront.

The guys in the Clash met their tourmate in Vancouver, where the string of dates began on Jan. 31, before heading down to the States. Diddley was somewhat bewildered by his role in what the Clash termed the Pearl Harbor ’79 Tour (and didn’t particularly enjoy the volume at which the band played). Strummer was in shock the rock icon agreed to the job.

“In the flesh, he was more awe-inspiring than we could possibly imagine,” Strummer recalled, according to Q . “He dressed like he was ready to fight. He always had his huge sheriff’s hat on and a giant belt buckle, and you were unmistakably in the presence of someone who gave no quarter.”

But Diddley and the group soon warmed up to one another, which helped since they all traveled on the same tour bus, which had been leased from another American music icon: Dolly Parton. Even though Strummer and friends didn’t enjoy sleeping on the bus too much, they took to the on-board TV and videocassette machine, which allowed them (or at least drummer Topper Headon) to watch Star Wars over and over.

They were on their way from Canada to Northern California when they heard some awful news: Sid Vicious – former Sex Pistol and a member of the same London punk scene that had birthed the Clash – had died in New York, on the other side of the country the group was so eager to explore.

“I wake up and as I’m searching for some breakfast, Ace Penna, our U.S. tour manager, tells me ‘Hey, didja know Sid is dead?’” Strummer wrote in the tour diary he penned for NME . “I grab him by the throat. ‘What do you mean?’ I snarl. Then, as it sinks in, I don’t want no breakfast. Our first morning in America.”

Watch the Clash Perform 'I'm So Bored With the U.S.A.'

It might have been the Clash’s first morning on tour America, but it wasn’t actually their first trip to the country. The previous year, the band spent a little time while recording portions of Give ’Em Enough Rope in San Francisco. But that had given the Clash but a taste of the U.S. and the members were excited to see more.

Humorless fans in the Berkeley audience might not have realized how happy they were to be in America. As a poke in the ribs, the Clash began their set with “I’m So Bored With the U.S.A.” It would become a tradition throughout the winter tour.

“We started the show with ‘I’m So Bored with the U.S.A.’ because we wanted to find out if they had a sense of humor in America,” Strummer said, via Q . “And the answer was that they were double into that number. They loved it, because we were saying we were sick of the cheap rubbish on TV, all the substandard cultural imports that came out of America. The kids were as bored as we were with all that rubbish.”

The rest of the set featured a mix of songs from the Clash’s first album (which had yet to be officially released in the States, though tens of thousands of import copies had been purchased by American fans), second album and recent singles – including “Clash City Rockers,” “White Man (In Hammersmith Palais)” and their ferocious cover of “I Fought the Law.” All three songs would end up on the U.S. version of The Clash . “White Riot” served as a frenetic encore.

“The first show was a blast,” photographer Bob Gruen recalled in Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer . “The place was full of happy, dancing people. The Clash was more than your average good-time band. You not only had a good time but you also thought about issues that bothered people. Things were serious and there was a lot to be angry about, but there was also a lot to have fun about. The force of the music made it sound like a battlefield, a clash. The lights were always flashing, like explosions.”

Newspaper and music magazine reviews of the show were largely positive. Some acknowledged that the U.S. audiences were more subdued than British punk fans, and the Clash appreciated that no one tried to spit on them as they performed. Even though Strummer would acknowledge that the university crowd loved the Clash’s first U.S. show (they were “tapping their biology textbooks in time with the tunes” he snarked in his diary), he hadn’t come to America to connect solely with the student population.

And so, in defiance of promoter Bill Graham, the Clash hastily organized a second show in the San Francisco area for the next evening. This one would take place at Geary Temple (which had once been Graham’s old Fillmore West), cost half as much as the first show and benefit a youth organization and the homeless. The band’s second concert in America was a charity benefit – a fact the Clash wore proudly.

“The show is really great, the hall is really great, the audience is really great,” Strummer wrote, “but we gotta leave straight after the set to drive the 400 miles to Los Angeles.”

Having only toured Britain and Europe, the guys in the Clash were surprised at how spread out the cities in the U.S. could be. Four hundred miles was nothing. After leaving L.A. to drive across the Southwest, the band became shocked by the expanse of empty space. America was more normal, more boring, than Strummer had expected, but it was still the place that had given them so much of the music he loved.

“When you’ve been into American music as long as I have, to go there is a trip,” Strummer said in the 2000 Clash documentary Westway to the World . “To ride across the country, even better, on a bus is another trip. Fantastic. I got endless amounts of inspiration from it.”

The Clash’s primary songwriters – Strummer and Jones – were creatively rejuvenated not just by experiencing America for themselves but also by the reception they received from fans during the nine-date tour that took them from Vancouver to California, Cleveland to Washington D.C., New York and Toronto.

Later the band would write, record and release London Calling , a magnum opus that featured more than a little American influence with its R&B and rockabilly sounds. They also returned to North America for a second, more extensive tour. And more inspiration.

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Review: The Clash’s ‘Combat Rock’ Gets Expanded for 40th Anniversary

by Hal Horowitz May 23, 2022, 11:09 am

The Clash Combat Rock + The People’s Hall (Epic) Original Combat Rock: 4.5 stars Expanded Reissue: 2 out of 5 stars

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When the Sony/Epic product managers’ Outlook lit up with a reminder that 2022 was the 40th anniversary of Combat Rock , The Clash’s bestselling release, they were prompted to devise a way to re-market it to newcomers that hadn’t already bought the disc and Clash fans that had.

This was a heavy lift because there wasn’t much left in the vaults that hadn’t already been mined for various Clash reissues over the past four decades since its May 1982 debut. The result is this poorly conceived, slapdash mish-mosh. 

The double-disc simply includes CR’s 45 minutes/dozen songs on the first platter with no embellishments. The second, subtitled The People’s Hall, cobbles together already released material and a few bottom of the barrel leftovers that had rightfully been gathering dust. The eleven musical selections (the opening track is comprised of various fans saying very little of interest outside the Clash’s famous Bonds club dates) aren’t even listed on the cover, but only on a small, tacky paper insert that looks like it was added as a last minute afterthought.

The majority of these “rarities” were already available on the elaborate 11 CD Sound System (2014) compilation of the entirety of the band’s studio work; three platters of which were dedicated to outtakes and B sides where most of this was sourced from. Since that runs nearly $200, selections from it recorded or remixed around the time of Combat Rock are here to perhaps allow fans with lighter pockets entry.

But if that was the idea, why disregard some of the extended remixes of Combat Rock material included in the box such as a reggae/dub “Ghetto Defendant” and especially a longer “Straight to Hell.” An instrumental take on Sandinista’s “Hitsville U.K.” here inexplicably titled “He Who Dares or Is Tired,” is forgettable as is “Futura 2000,” a remix of “The Escapades of Futura 2000,” a rarish 1982 single. Meanwhile, a newly available 7” of “Rock the Casbah” and “Red Angel Dragnet” with Ranking Roger’s vocals is inexplicably missing even though there is plenty of room for it. Little makes much sense, nor does the thoroughly confusing four-page essay in the enclosed booklet which manages to not provide any information about why this extras assemblage exists or even background on the initial Combat Rock . A closing alternate version of “Know Your Rights” unique to this set is too little too late.

None of this detracts from the original music which has held up well over the decades despite, or more likely because of, its unusual diversity and experimental slant. From Mick Jones’ pop-infused “Inoculated City” to the truly bizarre childlike closer with singsong lyrics and tinkling piano “Death Is a Star,” The Clash continued to push boundaries on Combat Rock an album that also featured its two biggest singles.

Use this 40th anniversary to get reacquainted with it and save your money on this pointless expanded cash grab.

(Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images)

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Moscow vs St. Petersburg – Which One to Visit?

• Posted on July 31, 2019 August 3, 2019
• by Kings of Russia
• 8 minute read

When it comes to Russian girls and Eastern Europe generally, guys love to debate over which city has the hotter girls – Moscow vs St. Petersburg.

Some say they’re all the same; others say there are clear differences, while some locals will laugh then explain in autistic detail just how different every district of each city is but it doesn’t matter because you’re a foreigner and all you have to do is show your passport.

Doing comparisons can be difficult because at the heart of the matter; all cities share a similar energy that is transferrable from one country to the next. Cities all over the world attract a specific kind of mentality: those seeking careers, adventure, and anonymity. Yet certain cities seem to excel in certain things relative to others, which end up attracting certain kinds of girls. From the many cities I’ve traveled to, I can always distill the essence of the place to two overarching mindsets: business and culture.

For our purposes here we’ll be talking about Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Combined, their metro population is about 23 million, which is about 15% of the entire Russian Federation despite being clustered in a small part of Eastern Europe. In other words, it’s a very dense area.

Similarities between Moscow and St. Petersburg

Both cities attract girls from all over Russia , and also the former Soviet countries as well as parts of Eastern and Central Europe. We are talking full on megalopolises here. Both are based off the center, from which everything then sprawls out. Both have efficient transportation systems that make getting around the sprawl quite easy. Both attract lots of students and career-oriented girls. Both cities attract scammers yet in different ways. Both cities are exotic yet familiar to Westerners.

Some people freak out about “going to Russia” because the lying media claim it’s dangerous and you’ll be robbed. Pay no attention to them. These same scaremongers have been saying the same thing for 100 years, all while creating danger and crime in the West and promoting chaos outside their borders.

Keep in mind that Saint Petersburg was built with Westerners in mind and Moscow has so much money floating around that unless you’re hanging out in an Uzbekistani’s car in the boondocks 15 miles out, you’ll generally be safer than in New York or London.

You’re likely to meet girls from the surrounding regions and provinces of both Saint Petersburg and Moscow. This can give Saint Petersburg a slant towards a “Northern” local population while Moscow has a “Central” pull. It’s also possible to meet girls from Kazakhstan, Siberia and Ukraine quite easily as well and girls from one region who prefer the atmosphere in the other, say a Northerner who’s into finance, or a Southerner obsessed with poetry.

Girls in both cities are friendly, but don’t mistake that for easiness. Russian girls know their value and you’ll have to put in the time and work to get them to open up. A particular girl may really like you and the “3 date rule” may not apply, or a girl may be slutty for her local guys but see you as a possible resource (shiny foreigner), hence may make you wait. Expect dating to be more normal than one night stands, unless the girl is completely westernized with tattoos, strange hair and strange piercings.

Differences

Now the biggest difference between Moscow and Saint Petersburg is that of mentality. And this mentality permeates into the girl’s aesthetic. In general, Saint Petersburg attracts the more creative, alternative, hipster crowd while Moscow brings in the more businesslike, refined, upscale one. You can find classical looking practical girls in Saint Petersburg and green-haired drug-abusing ones in Moscow but in general these two cities have their distinct template aesthetic. In St. Petersburg I’d more often than not ask myself “What is she doing looking like that?” whereas Moscow I’d just focus on the girl herself.  This doesn’t mean the girls in Saint Petersburg are genetically ugly; merely the appearance decisions they make is more in line with fully Westernized cities.

Like Paris vs London or New York vs Boston, Moscow and Saint Petersburg have a rivalry. There’s more money flowing into Moscow than Saint Petersburg, yet more cultural capital going through Saint Petersburg. This may account for why girls want to look like a “work of art” in Saint Petersburg while Moscow girls don’t seem to care as much.

Muscovites don’t necessarily dress fantastically either though. The hiptsterization has spread there and you can see some pretty uninspired fashion. Luckily the city is big and competitive enough so you don’t need to pay attention to the hipsters.

While all Russian girls like to talk about philosophical, literary and artistic things, I’ve found Muscovites to be more practical and interested in talking business, career, ambition and such. As a man, it’s your job to steer the conversation in the direction you want, just be aware of the overarching mentality you’ll find relative to which city you’re in.

Now if a girl is indirectly inquiring into your resources from a standpoint of being a long-term provider and you’re looking for a long-term relationship, it’s up to you to gauge the situation. Just be careful about exuding the idea of foreign wealth. Just because you can provide, does not mean you don’t deserve to be loved for who you are. Do not get taken in by superficial beauty as the consequences can burn later.

Defining Sexy

Defining what makes a girl sexy is another hotly debated topic. I know guys who have clear preferences on Moscow vs Saint Petersburg. Some like Saint Petersburg because it’s “easier”, others like Moscow because the girls are “hotter”. Others say Saint Petersburg girls are nicer, while Muscovites are too conniving and cold. Since we’re dealing with so many experiences, variables and populations I can only nudge you in the direction you think will help your situation and tastes.

If your definition of sexy is alternative, Western looking mentality, cultured and unusual dress but not necessarily unattractive underneath, Saint Petersburg may be the place for you.

If your definition of sexy is dressed to the nines, long hair, hip sway while walking and a go-getting work hard play hard attitude, then the Moscow girl sounds more like your bet.

Moscow carries a more distinct Russianness than Saint Petersburg and you’ll feel you’re in a more exotic place, though still with 1 st world style amenities. Some guys hate how the city is sprawled out, others marvel in its splendor. The girls here can be friendly but deceitful. Flaking is epidemic. In that sense it’s a lot like London or New York. There’s so much distraction and commotion it’s hard to find ground sometimes.

More guys seem to prefer Saint Petersburg as its Russia without the Russianness. Europeans and Americans alike enjoy the familiarity mixed with a touch of exoticness. The girls are easy going and friendly, and since their passion is towards arts and culture, they have a more liberal and relaxed attitude. For such a large city you don’t feel they’re stressed in the same way financial centers are.

Cautionary Tales on Scammers

Regarding scammers: in Saint Petersburg, bless their hearts, they have scamming down to a perfectly technical science. It’s not as obvious as a stripper with a hot pink umbrella and tickets telling you to come to the bar. These girls will match you on a dating app, have a perfectly normal conversation, even go with you to a venue one, and then perform the bait and switch by the time you feel buzzed and comfortable.

This bait and switch usually involves going to a bar she works with, has you sit down with her, and then proceeds to order an absurdly overpriced drink for which she gets a cut. As long as you do not agree to the terms well before it gets thrown on you, nothing will happen. Do not follow her into a venue, no matter how much she insists. There may be a small chance she’ll want to show you some cool dive bar, but you can easily verify this with Google reviews.

It’s not just from dating apps, both in my and friend’s experience, girls will give you huge IOIs on the street or in the mall, flirt with you heavily and fast forward to venue two and you realize the bait and switch with the overpriced champagne.

While Russian girls are friendly, put your ego aside and think for a minute. Why is she falling head over heels for you? Is she that desperate? Are you her perfect match? Or is she trying to get one up on you? Stay dispassionate and screen for her intent if it sounds too good to be true.

Some girls may not be official scammers but they get a kick out of racking up a huge bill. She’ll pout and whine that you don’t like her if you don’t give her what she wants. I find it so infantile that I usually end up walking out right then and there. You can try and laugh it off and game on, but be very careful around that kind of girl.

In Moscow, I’d say the girls are more businesslike and up-front in their scamming. You can feel it coming a mile away. They want to go to the obviously overpriced venue. They’re dressed in a revealing but kind of strange way, “working sexy” instead of “girly sexy” may be a way to put it. Think of bartenders trying to maximize business, but with more dress than jeans.

They want the most expensive thing right away and will shame you for not opening your bank account for her in 5 minutes. The high end clubs will even hire these girls to officially flirt with you then get you to order ridiculously priced drinks. Of all the scams, this one can be the worst as you’re in a normal venue under the influence, yet they’re working behind the scenes with the staff to scam you.

Once you can see these scams coming, they become obvious as the algorithm unfolds. As long as you keep your wits about, have your ego in check and screen properly you should be mostly able to avoid these scams. As the old saying goes, you can’t cheat an honest man. Become honest by questioning a girl’s extreme forwardness mixed with demands. Don’t just fall for her beauty.

Since sexiness can be subjective and I’ve seen first-hand how different friends clearly prefer certain cities, all you have to do is ask yourself where do you feel more at home? Moscow and Saint Petersburg have distinct personalities, and its likely one clicks more with you than the other. It may not even be the girls.

Some guys prefer certain city layouts which end up giving them a better vibe to approach girls and have more positive experiences. Other guys don’t mind sticking it out in a depressive sh**hole in search of glory. Ultimately the subjectivity of sexiness depends on what a man is looking for: how much more of rabbit vs a wolf he is in terms of sexual strategy, and where his personality and interests nudge him towards.

Start meeting Russian women online with the best dating app for long-term relationships:  Russian Cupid .

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