Due to the fact that an increasingly large part of our Mail Dept, letters are devoted to some “Clash vs. Led Zeppelin” battle that started—and currently exists—in our readers’ minds, we decided to have two representatives of this cultural war meet in our offices and have a verbal showdown, once and for all, in the [admittedly futile] hopes that it would cut down somewhat on the volume of the C vs. Z mail. Where would this all erid? When the Clash ydnquished Led Zeppelin—or vice versa—would the winner then proceed to wrestle with Pink Floyd? Then who? Burl Ives? At any rate, Janie Jones appears here wearing the Clash colors, and Geddy Lee Roth argues for the Led Zeppelin side. Whether this settles any of this or is simply more randorp dog barks in the neighborhood of huh? is for you, dear reader to decide. [And we have to get our sofa cleaned... ] ‘

JANIE JONES: “Yeah, man...let’s listen to some really heavy Zep jams and go to 711 for some cheap wine, which we will drink until we puke, while we tear up and down the strip making old ladies cry with our powerful $39.95 Realistic speakers, which proves once and for all that we are real men with big wongs who go for real, heavy music. We’re men enough to grow our hair long and filthy down our backs, just like our older brothers did in the good old 60’s. Hendrix lives, man...” Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s your typical slobbering Zeppelin fan...

GEDDY LEE: OH YEAH??!! Wen how ’bout this : “Oh gosh, golly 1 can’t go the Clash concert tonight! WHAT WILL 1 WEAR?” Does that sound familiar? It should, you punk rock jerk, ’cause most punk rock fans I’ve ever seen look like they’d rather stare in a mirror than listen to good music! Good music! How could I even mention good music in the same breath as the Clash?! YOU KNOW they stink! You just think you’re cool listening to that music when secretly you know you’d rather be listening to VAN HALEN or somebody cool! But you know you CAN’T because if you ever walked into any kinda good heavy metal concert you’d get your ASS

kicked! ’Cause Zep KICK ASS and YOU KNOW IT!

JANIE: KICK ASS is just the sort of phrase morons like you would use, although in reality you’re just, a bunch of secretly impotent meatheads who mask your doubts about your masculinity behind your “Kick Ass” kind of music and your mind-numbing macho rhetoric. Face it, you’d get more giHs, which is all you guys care about anyway, if you showed up at a Clash concert,, where women go looking for more sensitive, intelligent-type males. No, on second thought, stay at yourheavy metal gigs! We don’t want you mixing with the real men and confusing us...

GEDDY LEE: DAMN RIGHT you’d be confused if you saw me, honey! Or any of my pals, either! Face facts, sweetie, the kinda men you wanteire what we call “male models” where I come from. Ever seen Cruising? And what’s this garbage about “wanting more girls”? If / wanna score a chick that’s one thing, but I’ll tell ya this: I sure as hell wouldn’t go to a CLASH concert to find a real woman! After all, everyone there’d be wearing lipstick and maybe even a few of the girls, too!! You call those punk rock geeks “real men”? Let’s put it like this, babe: the Clash are to Vienna sausages like Led Zep are to a goddam koshersalarmV.

JANIE: OK, away from your organ obsession and let’s get to the music: compare Led Zeppelin’s thunderously inept stab at reggae in “D’ yer Maker” with the Clash’s honest attempt to fuse white and black music vyhen they covered Junior Murvin’s “Police and Thieves”. The result isn’t a straight cop or an attempt to rip off the arrangement, but an experiment, using their white British sensibility to bring new meaning to the black-written lyric arid music. Why does it work better than Zep’s hilarious rip-off? Perhaps because while Jimmy Page is thumbing through his catalog of eighteenth century opium boxes on the fifth floor of his mansion overlooking Loch Ness, Joe Strummer is stalking the streets of London for sounds and new experiences to put into his writing.

GEDDY LEE: “White British sensibility”? SHEESHH Ya know what that sounds like to me? Sounds like an excuse! Maybe ’cause while “Joe Strummer is stalking the streets of London” he’s

too busy listening to other people’s music to come up with anything decent of his own! Strummer and his jerks never do anything original! They cover a reggae tune here and there, maybe remake some great American track like “I Fought . The Law” (their first hit, too, which proves the only time anyone’ll listen to ’em is when they don’t write the song!). 'But of course, honey, you’re a PUNK ROCKER so you won’t believe me when I tell ya that EVERYTHING THE CLASH HAS EVER WRITTEN ALL SOUNDS THE SAME!! Where’s the great experimentation? Can of rotten-teeth Joe Strummer come out with a record as goddam ASS-KICKIN’ as Physical Graffitti? NO WAY!!

JANIE: Sounds the same—yesh, uh—at the decibel level you guys listen to Zeppelin, I’m amazed you still are taking in signals from the outside world. Face it, the whole point of listening to “Moby Dick” (you wish), for instance, to have your eardrums melted down into feline excretory matter. Why not speed up the process and go to your nearest “live entertainment” bar, walk directly up to the speakers during the “band’s” set—maybe when they’re playing “And The Cradle Will Rock”—and just rest your head lightly in one of the speakers. ASS-KICKING? Why not go have your head kicked in since you don’t use it to listen to music, it's just on top of your shoulders so you can nod out to' the jam,man...

GEDDY LEE: You bet, sweetie! We’re all dopes! That’s why In Through The Out Door's sold 16 million copies so far and the Clash can’t Oven get a goddam gold record! Yeah, we all know that line—“everyone sucks but us.” Sure. And I suppose the 16 million intelligent people throughout the world who bought the Zep album are ALL WRONG but only Clash fans like YOU are right! DON’T MAKE ME PUKE! Hey, just ask anyone! Look at the goddam pictures of the Clash! IF ya can STAND it! Four ugly goons, most of ’em don’t even have any TEETH! How can anyone even hope to sing like Robert Plant when they gotta deal with a mouth like Joe Strummer’s? Or look at that creep Mick Jones! He even took the name of one of the BEST guitarist in the world next to Page—Mick Jones from Foreigner! THEY kick ass too! And what about that guy Paul Sirnpniz? Looks like someone should wax the floor with HIM! And I ain’t even gonna begin tb compare the great John “Bonzo” Bonham with Nicky “Topper” Headon!

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V Know why they call him “Topper”? That’s ’cause when he’s havin’ “fun” with his homo Clash I buddies ALL THEY CAN SEE IS THE“TOPPER” HIS HEAD!!!

JANIE: Homo? Don’t tempt me. Just read, one month’s worth of CREEM reader mail about Zep’s sexuality, individuality and collectively, and weep. Ever hear of “gay Jimmy Page”? As someone who should know said, “Some people have enough jmoney to experiment with

everythingBut again, the difference is between millionaires’ kicks and real live sex, with real people, for real reasons. YOU GUYS know why you’re such homophobes, and misogynists as well! The truth is, you simply revel in your huge (in your dreams) male members, your superiority to frmales, your lqck of dependency on them, etc,, etc., because you’re afraid you’re (oh the shame) gay yourself. Instead of being honest about it, you put on this big act about your macho supremacy and try to wipe out everybody else’s good time with your goddam mind-emptying aural sledge and your penis-substitute muscle cars and everthing else in your little world. Read The Hobbit lately, man?* Nothing worse than Parvenu hippies. Why don’t you cut your hair, you slob?

GEDDY LEE: Yeah, yeah, use yer fancy French, honey, and no one’ll understand ya! And isn’t that the way ya LIKE it? Sure, it’s gotta be! Everybody knows ya can’t understand the Clash, after all, so I guess it makes sense if you talk like ya got marbles in your mouth! Anyway, what’s with this “you may be gay yourself” biz? Yeah, sure I may be gay. And I may not be, too. And if I was-, you’d be the first to know! So what*s this got to do with the CLASH, who stink anyway and aren’t even worth talkin’ about! You can hand me all the fancy psycho-analyzin’ you want, go ahead—you’re just livin’ in the same little dreamworld all the jerks who like the Clash live in anyway. Let’s just get back to the basics—Robert Plant can sing, Joe Strummer can’t, he’s too busy lookin’ like a JERK! Mick Jones is a pile o’ bonesl He stinks! Tell ’im to "come back when he’s learned “Communication Breakdown”! Paul Synanon looks like a junkie! And that tune he sings on that new album—what’s it called, Momma’s Calling?—sounds like my dog when she’s in heat! And “Topper” needs a stopper! Preferably made outta CORK! You can argue all you want, but answer me this: in 20 years, who’ll have sold the most records, the Clash or Led Zep?

JANIE: OK, so Led Blimp have been around since the First Hippie Age, and they’ve managed to boil the thump factor down to a basic one-note thud, Which pleases all of the cretins, all the time. You call Robert “Shirley” Plant a singer—I call his singing more ear-piercing than a litter of cats in a paper bag, less sexually arousing than Wayne Newton undressed, as meaningful as an Eight Is Enough teleplay—which, comedo think of it, is more literary than Bobby’s stabs at lyric-writing. Jimmy Page looks like my mother could knock him over with a Stay-Free minipad. A wet one. At least the Clash make some attempt to look manly, and hip at the same time. Page’s guitar playing is as limp as his Size three velvet jackets...John “Bozo” Bonham is the classic example of the drummer who’s listened to too many of his drum solos—and been impressed. You compare Strummer’s manly baritone to Bobby’s epicine (that’s PIG-LIKE, dummy!) soprano (as in FEMALE) squeeeaaaaaaaajing? You DEAF ZEPPER! Give me the Clashboys anyday—at least they’re the same sex on any given day. P.S. You guys are too busy trying to figure out what sidd Bobby dresses on to pick up girls. Have you figured it out yet? Is he Jewish? GEDDY LEE: Speaking of one-note thugs— oh, you weren’t—well WHO CARES, sweetie, ’cause I feel like bringing up Joe “Goat-ear” Strummer’s voice anyway! You can call it a “manly baritone” if ya want, but back where I’m from the farmers just called-’em “OINKS” and that was it! You’re right, though, about the Trash’s lyrics—who can match the INCREDIBLE COMPLEXITY of “He’s in love with rock ’n’ roll whoa/He’s in love with getting stoned whoa”? Yeah, 1 knew these guys were the next James Joyces, but WHO COULDA EXPECTED THIS? My personal fave of the bunch is the “whoa”s, though, since it shows that the jerks realize their listeners only can respond to HORSE LANGUAGE!! FACE FACTS ONCE MORE, SUGAR: THE CLASH STINK AhlD IF YOU LIKE THEMYOU’D LIKE THE SOUND OF 55 DOGS HOWLIN’ AT THE MOON AND I WOULDN’T BE SURPRISED IF YA ALREADY BOUGHT THAT RECORD ANYWAY AND LED ZEP ARE THE'BEST BAND IN THE WORLD AND AFTER THAT VAN HALEN AND THEN•

(At this point Geddy collapsed on the CREEM sofa, apparent victim of the many drugs he needed to continue living. Ms. Jones, meanwhile, showed a stunning change of heart immediately afterwards. Screaming “What if he was right, what if he was right?” she threw herself from our second story window and, sadly, broke every bone in her body. Geddy Lee Roth, we’re sopy. to say, died en route to the hospital. We hope this settles the bothersome “Clash vs. Led Zeppelin” question once and for all—Ed.) §j$g