DETROIT—On a cloudy, cold March night tall skinny radical activist of amorphous persuasion M-50 stood outside the Motor City Roller Rink shivering and passing out leaflets that read: “THE CA$H SOLD OUT!”

M-50 feels he was let down, after the pain and fury of the first two Clash albums. His feelings are not likely to be soothed by the fact that the Clash’s music is finally palatable to the dons at Rolling Stone, or by their album marching resolutely up the charts to sit, fat and smug, at #27. There’s gotta be something wrong, and M-50 figures bucks must be involved. The Clash had to sell out to sell records, right? a

Most of the people filing into the roller rink for the Clash’s March 10th benefit for Jackie Wilson tossed the fliers away, but the rumbling’s coming from both sides of the rock ’n’ roll fence: FM programmers are “happy the Clash has made an album acceptable to AOR.” They finally stopped shouting and made a nonthreatening album.

"If you're gonna pick up a guitar or open your mouth, you've gotta make sure you've got a six-foot thick skin. —Joe Strummer"

M-50 and pals would agree: they sold out.

The truth is that the Clash, arrogant as ever, have made exactly the album they wanted to make and piss on you.

They had no reason to do otherwise; at the time of recording London Calling the band was at bottom emotionally and financially. Lengthy managerial hassles had depleted their money and devastated them personally. London Calling could very well have been their last shot. Recorded cheaply and released at an economic $9.98, it is a stirring emotional comeback. They had nothing to lose, as Joe Strummer pointed out later:

“It was like, let’s rock out before they bug us out of the studio.”

I told him about a misinterpretation of the album in the magazine Us, where it was slagged off as negative in spirit and punkily perverse.

“I don’t think that we could have made a negative record,” he replied, shaking his head sadly. “It would have been too depressing.”

More than any other band to come out of punk, the Clash are burdened with their fans’ emotional expectations. Not the new fans of London Calling (like Bootsy Collins, who plays “Train In Vain” every day), but the fans who. cherished their import copies of the first two albums of passionate, political music. The people from Kansas who drove in for the Jackie Wilson benefit because it was the closest the Clash would come to them (700 miles is close? 700 MILES IS CLOSE?).

This burden does not sit lightly on Joe Strummer’s shoulders. While the band seems to genuinely enjoy giving their fans treats (like the impromptu concert they played instead of just a soundcheck for the early arrivals at the Detroit gig), the more intense feelings of their congregation seem to worry them.

As my CREEM cohort Mark Norton and I sat around behind the stage of the roller rink, soaking up the fan ambience, the band finished their soundcheck/preview and disappeared up the stairs to the dressing room. Strummer had barely made it to the third step, though, when cries of “Joe! Joe!” brought him doubling back down, guitar still strapped on. “Joe!” a leather-jacketed teenager yelled. “I just wanta touch ya.” Strummer’s face broke into a gaptoothed grin, and he pumped the kid’s hand. This gave a kid just behind the first one his chance to grab the hapless singer and bearhug him. Joe’s attention to them both seemed to gently imply, “See, I’m just a flesh-and-blood schmoe like you,” especially confronted with their adulation. It probably had the opposite effect—it probably thrilled them to the bone.

While talking later at the hotel, my comrade-in-pens Norton had gone into a Brando/Apocalypse Now impression, in the course of an impassioned discussion on flicks: “Strummer!” he choked in a strangled Brando mumble, “What do you call it...when the assassin...accuses the assassin... (See, Brando’s still got the cotton in his mouth from The Godfather).”

Joe laughed. “That’s how I feel, every day, when I try to talk to people.. .like [does English Brando mumbling)...sometimes I think I’m their Godfather, just grunting away.”

Picture Joe, in his pale broad brimmed hat, spliff firmly in mouth, mumbling “You shall have your justice” to a desperate soul. He mumbles well.

“Like, in Boston,” he related. “We’d just got out of the coach, and there were all these people shouting ‘Ban Don Law,’ ‘ban Don Law,’ just like that, and handing out pamphlets. The guy turns out to be the promoter, and I’m thinking, here we go for the classic punch-out gig, you know. And we get in there, and they’re taking all the seats out, and that’s made their demonstration irrelevant. They were complaining about being harassed, and told to stay«*a> their seats, but they’d actually taken out the seats, like everywhere should. Like everywhere should.

“They were complaining that this guy, Don Law, uses guerillas... But I went to those people—I went to the biggest guy I could see. And I said, ‘There’s no chairs here, right?’ And he said, ‘No.’ And I said ‘Well, what are you gonna do when there’s people standing there?’ And he says ‘I’m not gonna do nothing to them.’ ‘Well, what if they start jumping around?’ ‘Well, we got the chairs here to protect us, So I don’t give a fuck.’ That kind of eased the tension a bit, I reckon. But we’re always walking into that, ’cause it’s hard to be a group from somewhere else, and come steaming three thousand miles in, and you have to go with the guy in town, say Bill Graham in Frisco. If you don’t go with Bill Graham in Frisco, he’s gonna bar cars from the street the gig’s on and turn it into a car park before you get out of the airport.”

Against all odds, Mark and I finally made contact with Kozmo Vinyl, vital for any

"...Sometimes I think I'm their Godfather, just grunting away. ••Joe Strummer"

Clash press business. (After numerous calls to Kozmo at the hotel, an exasperated desk clerk asked, “Did his mother give him that name?”) Kozmo was everything we’d heard he was and more. A record company friend who’d been put through the mill by Ian Dury nonetheless spoke warmly of Kozmo; it was universal. Now I know why: Kozmo strives to please everybody. He may end up scattered, running to and fro while confusion reigns, but nobody gets mad because he tries. He talks to you. He makes you laugh. Said Joe Strummer: “He’s more than a PR man, he.. .keeps the spirit up. You know what I mean? You need someone, when you’re flagging, to keep your spirit up so you can get back up there. Kozmo’s one of those sorts of human beings, he’s all razzle-dazzle and no downs, which is quite special, doing a tour and stuff.”

Kozmo transported us upstairs to meet the Clash before the show; we’d talk afterwards.

The moment of truth had arrived: would we be eaten up by the Clash machine and spewed out like so much journalistic excrement? Would we be verbally trashed? Would Joe get mad and hit our tape recorder? Would they laugh at our clothes?

This was a terrible dilemma; as with any Clash fan, their personal morality was abnormally important to me, and I knew a few journalists who were devout Clash fans but had emerged from theiV interview encounters...shaken. How could they hate such devoted nice guys as Simon Frith (who their then-manager Bernie Rhodes had advised to check for his wallet after he left the band). and Dave DiMartino? Simon probably appeared, in late 1977, dangerously mature and too intellectual to be a Clash fan. But he was. Dave did what pisses me off: gross indecencies with a cigarette (albeit in all innocence). Still, were the Clash righteous assholes peddling moralistic Sunday School lessons to their fans, only to trample on kindly human souls in real life?

Topper and I made contact sartorially— we were wearing identical green Air Force jackets (mine so unspeakable my mother won’t sit in the same room with me wearing it) . We laughed, and then he went back to his brooding. (Understandable as he was nursing a cracked pelvis and a torn ligament in his hand, so anything above a snarl was probably a superhuman effort.) Freddie, a muscular guy in the band’s employ, demanded “So is this a cowerstory?” menacingly, but Mick was effervescent and entertaining, and Joe smiled genuinely and answered all questions with care. Kozmo gave us Dutch beer; was there any limits to this British hospitality? Our fragile American ■ illusions remained intact.

And so. the gig: As soon as DJ Birry Myers spun “Higher & Higher” we knew the Clash were imminent; they came bursting out with “Clash City Rockers” and a long, frenzied gig■ was underway. The Clash sedfnc'd. to look at the audience as curiously as they themselves were scanned from the teeming masses on the roller rink floor. Joe decided to break the ice with a little grooming foreplay, asking the audience for a comb (just like our monkey ancestors licking each others’ fur?). Presented with a brush, he protested but made do. He’s just lucky it wasn’t Ted Nugent’s—‘the guitar-playing deer hunter had driven in two hours from his farm near Jackson to experience the Clash in Detroit. And indeed, he experienced a cultural clash when the band gleefully sent out a roadie with a pair of scissors and the message that Ted could come back and meet them if he cut off his frizzy mane. All in fun, but Ted didn’t get the joke, and huffed out. An apologetic letter from the Clash’s manager was sent out the next day. “After all,” said an Epic person, “what if someone said they wouldn’t talk to Joe Strummer unless he fixed his teeth? How rude.” The Clash didn’t insult anybody else in Detroit, though; in fact they played a long set, covering each album generously, re emer-

"I like to be given the duff review. --Joe Strummer"

ging manfully for encores, and surprising the crowd with one last turn onstage when everybody’d given up On them, already having had several hour’s worth of music. Whether by playing long, or by playing well, the Clash were determined to give Jackie Wilson’s benefactors their ticket’s worth.

The Detroit FM stations were playing the two “radio” cuts from London Calling— “Train In Vain” and “London Calling”— only, so a good deal of the audience were politely attentive but had never heard a lot of the Clash’s earlier numbers, as they hadn’t been played on the radio. Another portion were the hippie “show me” types. One such fellow stunned me by never moving so much as a hair in the long mane floating down to his waist. It was incredible—not one muscle moved in even a spasm of rhythm. But it struck me, listening to Mick Jones thrashing out precise, thundering power chords that maybe someone like Nugent was getting off on this...or even Mr. 1969.

Hippies like the Clash. So do black peopleI watched two black girls dancing, to see whether they favored the reggaeflavored numbers or not. They didn't. They’re American girls, after all.

This ever-broadening audience of the Clash’s, being American, is so large and uncouth and...unhip that maybe it’s a natural conclusion on the part of the avant-gardists that the Clash are unhip, too. These people in their audience don’t even know how to dress; this goddamn hippie may havif bought every one of their albums, but what does he know? Right? He might as well be at a Molly Hatchet show, if looks are anything. Next my mother will want an album, and M-50 will be furious: How dare they appeal to such people?

I told Joe Strummer during our interview that 1 found London galling full of ^ American rhythms, and tjaus its appeal td' Americans wasn’t very h^td to fathom. I do believe that touring the length and»breadth of the New World,/ listening to their rockabilly and 50’s rock ’n’ roll tapes was responsible for deepening the texture of their sound, resulting in,,the versatile combo showcased on London Calling. It’s embarrassing when Clash are slavishly

acclaimed by cptics as the rock ’n’ roll band of the decad©''—and yet, what other band has so successfully absorbed the music of so many cultures, digested it, and emerged with a startling, evocative language of their own?

☆ ☆ ☆

After the show, Mark and I awaited Kozmo and our journalistic destiny at the foot of the dressing room stairs, mingling with the kids, country punks, Detroit media j superstars, etc, A chap next to us, Cart Nordstrom of “Free Radio Now,” announced authoritatively: “We can’t see the Clash because they’re upstairs giving an interview toCREEM." The price of fame, blah, blah. Mark and 1 nod understandingly.

Fashion note: all of the Clash still favdr their late 50’s/early 60’s greaseball hair styles, which of course necessitates frequent, Kookie like combing sessions. (Ask your older brot her who Kookie is. ) In the dressing room after the show, as we explained to Kozmo how punch press operators in the auto factories have their hands clamped to their machines, Paul, Mick and Joe lined up in front of a trunk minor and made some impressive comb . moves, maneuvering their heads so each could see himself.

The men at the factory are old and cunning, You don’t owe noihing so boy get runnin'

It s the best gears o) your life they want to steal.

—“WorkingFor l ire Clampdown”

It being decided that the Clash required a bar to satisfy (heir post gig cravings (and our interview wishes), we were called on to choose the place, and fixed upon our old haunt Dili’s, in Harntramck Coordinating a large bus crammed with people with our Mustang took some doing, but we arrived with half an hour left before closing. Despite the entourage who’d followed us down the freeway (as we entered the club one fellow snorted to his pals: “Don’t you EVER try to talk me Out of following anybody!” as he took his place at the bar next to the Clash), the bar wasn’t too raucousMick settled down to drinking tequila with a tableful of friends, and 1 could see Joe’s hat planted at the bar, where Lili, the Polish Zsa Zsa Gabor, poured rounds of wisniowka. Joe was instructed on the proper pronunciation of the Slavic toast “Nazdrowie,” which magically brought more and more of the red liquid to his glass. It s a tribute to the alcoholic capacity of the average English man that opr interview was ever conducted at alL Once Lili got through with Joe.

Isee In London the papers arefull of... 100 1 ska bands, all doing the old ska hits, andprobably ruining them all forever. --Joe Strummer

Packed snugly by a crowd of Detroit “pals,” Joe called me over to explain that he needed to relax in the bar, as it was “normal,” and, after a gig, he needed desperately to feel normal. We agreed to do a formal interview later, at the hotel. As I passed by Mick’s table, I-also heard the word “nqrmal” issued from the Jones mouth to describe the place. Strange, when we’re used to suspicious English visitors like Elvis Costello or reclusive megastar groups like the Stones, to encounter a group so eager to mingle with the natives and observe the local scene. If they wanted equal, low-key treatment this was the place; Lili didn’t know exactly who they were, but any friends of friends of hers are given the wisniowka treatment and a hearty welcome.

☆ ☆ ☆

Since' Detroit was the last date of this truncated tour, the mood back at the hotel was distinctly non-business. My compadre and I walked despondently to Lee Dorsey’s room, where a soul hootenanny was taking place. Photographer Pennie Smith offered helpfully, “Well...you can always do an atmosphere piece.” V:

And we have the perfect atmosphere tape; a roomful of assorted Clash well-wishers, Kozmo Vinyl, visiting friend Pearl E. Gates, fans from Kansas (not the band), Clash employees, and, of course, Lee Dorsey, and ourselves, singing every old soul/gospel/R&B song we could think of. But no C.C. Rockers in sight; subject Simonon was long in bed, resting his moody profile as he was off to Vancouver the next day to begin shooting on a movie; subject Jones was off, intent on chatting with a pretty blonde; subject Headon was nowhere to be found; subject Strummer had been seen ducking into his room.

But, as we laughed in the face of interview disaster, drank beer and sang, Joe kept the faith by returning to Lee’s room, where he lounged back on the bed, still behatted, listening to our wailing with no small amusement. Since Topper came in and broke the caterwauling up by slapping oh a Taj Mahal tape (boooo), we agreed with Joe to adjourn to his room, where Joe fielded questions cheerfully, offering us Clash t-shirts and buttons in return for the R. Crumb CREEM t-shirts we gave him. It was 5r30 or 6:00 in the morning, and the distinctive Strummer voice was reduced to a hoarse whisper, but we sipped beer and slogged on.

First he questioned us: “What would it take,” he asked in that distinctive monotone, “for a reggae record to go to number one in America?”

Probably it would have to be a novelty record like “My Boy Lollipop” or “The Israelites,” I offered. “Novelty” to American ears, anyway... What about the anti-reggae backlash in the English papers? " s “That’s the devil talking, if you ask me,” Joe replied. “A couple of years ago I thought the same thing; I thought, well maybe it’s going to go into a slump now, you know? But then, it’s just cooking away, and it’s even going to break through—bigger than what I even thought before. And so I’ve changed my opinion on that. I read that too, I think.. .some guy going “Blah blah.” I think he’s a fool.”

What about the 2-Tone sound?

“Bluebeat? The trouble is..,this one summer I’d gone to live with this bloke called Don Etts who’d made the punk rock movie, kind of a home movie—he’s done a lot of filming for us—well, I’d moved into his house, I rented a room he had spare, and he gave me this Trojan album, ’cause he was digging the “now sound of roots rock reggae,” right? And he didn’t want—they’re not interested in the old stuff. They think it’s boring if it ain’t new, you know? Which is quite a good attitude. But anyway—he said he didn’t want it.. .so I got hold of it, I put it on...and I was just wiped away for six pnonths, ’cause it’s just like the cream, in a triple album set, the cream of all the bluebeat stuff.

“And then all that new stuff came up—I felt that there was a danger sign ’cause they were just rippin’ off the licks, you know? Like even if they had their own song, they just put in a famous bluebeat lick, ybu know? [Joe hummed the intro to “Gangsters”].. .and that’s all off old records.

I felt like ringing them up and telling them, ‘Hey, put yourself in there, get some input in, ''cause otherwise it becomes too. dangerously;. .retreading, you know what I mean?

“I see in London the papers are full of that kind of—1001 ska bands, all doing all the old ska hits, anckprobably ruining them all forever! I don’t knbwrT.”

What about the possibility that the Specials-type ska t, will—being pop-ish— influence Americans to go back and listen to the real thing?

“That’s a thought, yeah,” Joe replied. “I think it probably will. ’Cause 1 like those bands, that said. That’s my reservation. Apart from that, I like those bands, I think they’re fucking great.” He took the offensive again. “Is it true you can tour the Motown studios? Are they far from here?”

We confirmed that there was a tour, and offered to take him over the next morning.

“Ahhh, you won’t remember. Could you be here at 11:00? Nah, you" won’t make it. I’ll bet you five dollars you won’t.”

We accepted the challenge. What about songwriting; the songs are credited Strummer/Jones—did Joe compose mostly lyrics, and Mick mostly music? That was probably the image most people have.

“You could say that was a rough definition, but I wouldn’t even ever say that, because it’s just not true. Mick wrote all the lyrics to ‘Complete Control.’ And all the music.

“We collaborate on everything.. .there ain’t any method to it at all. It’s a big jumble up, really. You’d probably be surprised if you knew who contributed what—they think just because I sing it, I wrote it, or because he sings it, he wrote it, but it ain’t like that at all.”

I offered him a cough drop, but Joe lit up another Camel Light.

“I just believe that...it’s difficult but good to have a meeting of minds...it’s difficult because everyone’s got an ego, and you obviously think that what you think up is better than what anybody else thinks up. Or you do if you’re like me, anyway,” he laughed. “So it’s good to collaborate...”

What about the American press?

“Well, I read what I can find, but I haven’t been able to find very much.” He laughed silently, his hoarseness growing worse. “A little review in the New York Bollocks or whatever that said we was like...volume merchants or something. Ira something. Ira Schnub.

TURN TO PAGE 60

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 45

“But I like to be given the duff review,” he rasped happily. “You know? Especially by a square. Like on newspapers, they send back some guy who’s got an attitude before he walks in the door,.and he reviews the concert from that point of view, and they come up with some be-autiful sentences... like one I read tonight, it’s fantastic! It was really an over-the-top sentence, and I’m kind of rooting for them, going yeah!” he chortled hoarsely, beside himself. “Say something worse! ’Cause the worse they say, I know the better it is, you know what I mean? Because if they don’t get it, that means it really must be there.

“Lee Dorsey was really hurt,” he continued. “He read in Billboard [March 15th, Talent In Action]: ‘Lee Dorsey came on and played a 45-minute, tight, unexciting set.’ End of sentence, right? And you know, that’s probably his first review in ...whew. And you know, he really takes it bad, the way I used to take it when we first started, when we were on tour. I could see he was really taking it bad * so I told him about the Elvis reviews that I read the other day from 1956—in the New York Times, like ‘Elvis Presley cannot singi cannot dance, he has no talent whatsoever and he • is going nowhere.’ BAM! There goes Elvis! There it is, down in cold print. I told him that, to make himteel better,” Joe mused. “But I don’t think it had any effect.”

And the English press?

“It’s good to have a lot of information passing around the four papers every week—there’s a lot of information going round, and I think ideas can go round,” he said. “But the negative side is all this bitching over the fine points of anything— > you know? Anything, there’s a crowd of vultures bitching about it.. .sometimes I read them, and I feel depressed, so down, that I don’t read ’em for a month.”

Were they sometimes too hard on the Clash, did he think?

“Naaaah,” Joe laughed. “There’s no point—if you’re gonna pick up a guitar or open your mouth, you’ve gotta make sure you’ve got a six-foot thick skin before you start—know what I mean?

We passed Joe his t-shirts, which prompted him to ponder R. Crumb’s fate.

“Guy’s a genius! He’s probably drinking wine tonight or something.” Joe paced up and down the room. “There’s a few slick cartoonists in England, right, and theyrtio stuff that looks just like this,” he pointed to the girl’s arm on the Mr. Dreem Whip shirt. “That crosshatching on that bird’s arm— those strokes. If they’re drawing someone’s leg they do that Robert Crumb crosshatching on the side.”

Inspired, Joe continued to walk about, chanting, “Bring back Robert Crumb... bring back Robert Crumb...only he can save us.”

We discovered Joe’s taste in films to be right up (or down, possibly) our alley—he’d make a lively luncheon companion for our own Edouard Dauphin (Drive-In Saturday) on the subject of movies, as both favor the trash aesthetic in films. Joe revealed himself to be “a Dark Star fanatic,” having seen the embryonic Carpenter film three times in England. \

“OhsGod, they filmed that so cheap,” Mark/Cried out, in acute pain. “American cinema is actually a lot better than that.”

Joe was firm. “I know, but that’s a fucking great film.”

It is, it is.'..

“I don’t care about the budget, I care about the idea,” he emphasized, getting up to pace around.

“Joe! Sit down!”

“When they’re trying to talk to the Commander,” he laughed.

“The Commander was on ice, and he’s talking: ‘I am dead, but I will talk to you...”

“Did you see The Fog?” Joe queried, eager for the news.

I responded that it’d been...disappointing. -

“Boo, boo, boo, boo!” he exclaimed. “By the way, do you get the films that nutter make down in Cleveland—the guy—the Pink Flamingoes guy?”

John Waters, from Baltimore—affirmative.

“They just got that one in England made back in ’74—Desperate Living,” Joe enthused.

“ ‘Hey schtoopid, you gbt your clothes on backwards!”

We questioned how Joe had come to see so many weird American flicks.

“In London there’s quite a lot of people who get into those films, actually,” he said. “They’re classics! They should be shown on TV, American prime time TV! I’ll ring up my friends at CBS and tell them to stick it on their TV.”

In describing the Polish/Ukrainian neighborhood Lili’s bar was located in to Joe, we got into the subject of the depressed local economy (Chrysler, etc.), the similarities over in England, and Joe introduced a topic dear to his heart: guitars and their manufacture. He spoke fondly of his .’61 Esquire and his ’63 Telecaster (although whether the ’61 was an Esquire or not was the subject of heated debate).

“What the fuck are we going to do in ten years?” he said. (With older guitars.)

Take care of them...

“Yeah, but is it still gonna be working?” Joe queried.

You change the pods and pickups...

“But what about the nut?”

Stradivariuses last 300 years.,,.

“Yeah,” he countered, “but did the guy play the Stradivarius every night at the show? He didn’t bang it on the back of fucking amps because he couldn’t stand to hear it go twanging...” Joe looked heartbroken. “My brand new ’61 Esquire, right? My little baby...”

How could you...break a beautiful instrument?

“Ah, some nights ate like that, you know.”

The daylight was getting more and more insistent, so I trotted out my awkward question...what about the Clash’s feminist consciousness?

They’d been known for insisting on female opening acts; the lyrics of “Lovers Rock” on London Calling actually proposed that men take some responsibility for birth control, and their partner’s pleasure. While heavy metal musicians of whatever nationality are the worst offenders, casual observation of English male musicians generally reveals a pretty primitive attitide towards women. (And not just the stereotyped superstar/groupie scene.) Along with European charm comes a certain subtle chauvinism... which makes the Clash’s * view of women all the more intriguing—and admirable.

“Well, I think it’s something you have to watch, because it’s inbred,” Joe proffered.

Sexism? _____

“Yeah. It’s inbred, you don’t even notice it. Sometimes I catch myself saying that are just...stupid, you know?”

Did he think rock ’n’ roll was particularly sexist?

“Well, all the £arly passion was deprived from...a sort of lust.”

But lust isn’t sexist.

“Yeah, but it tended to bend that way,” he replied. “When taken to an extreme... ‘I’m a hog for ya baby/Can’t get enough of your love’—you could say that’s a love song...and this guy comes along, and it ends up in England, going like...I don’t even want to say iti I don’t even want to say it...it’s really dumb.”

Heavy metal seemed to twist a lot of honest sex around...

“That’s what it turned into,” Joe said. “I mean, those early sort of passion numbers turned into.. .just macho. What do they call it? Cockstrutting routines. And I can’t stomach that.

“You just say one word, chicks,” Joe Snapped his fingers. “Says it all, right? We used to find—we’d be standing in the warehouse in Camden Town [their practice room] and these kind of surveyors were coming in off the pavement, and they’d go ?Oh blah blah blah, these chicks, man!’

.. .And I remember we’d kind of get up and say: ‘You can call them girls...or birds...or women...but you can’t call fhem chicks.’ Know what I mean? Chickens. I remember sometimes, they really could get my goat. And then, the other day, 1 found myself saying it.” ,

Joe leaned against the window of the hotel room, looking overwhelmed by it all, the worried Godfather of his own description.

Did he have any new impressions of America this time around?

“Well,” he sighed. “I think America’s really .too big...to fit into. Playing at one time. If you put New York in...Boston, Philadelphia, Georgia, South Carolina, and Louisiana—and these places stick out in the back of your head—by the time you get round to Oregon, and Utah...” he sighed again.

Now that the Clash had broken through successfully in Detroit, was he going to continue the Clash crusade in America?

Finally surrendering to fatigue—mental and physical, Joe drooped on the radiator. “Well, noooo.”

We prepared to leave. It was 7:00. “So,” he perked up. “Are you going to meet here at 11:00 to go to Motown? Bet you five dollars you don’t make it. I’ll be in that coffee shop across the street.”

(Note to Strummer: do you taka-checks?)