The Clash’s first American concert
When i Clash they played their first American concert, the February 7, 1979they had already released two albums, “The Clash” (1977) e “Give’em enough rope” (1978), and were popular enough in the United States to play a venue like the Berkeley Community Theater in BerkeleyCalifornia, a 3,500-seat venue on the campus of Berkeley High School where they had performed in the past, to name just a few, Bob DylanThe Who And Jimi Hendrix.
The singer of the English band Joe Strummerused to playing English punk clubs, wasn’t keen on the idea of ​​performing on a university campus. Backstage, speaking to Time magazine, he declared: “We shouldn’t have played here. It’s a college town. They’re boring snobs.”
Strummer didn’t imagine it would turn out like this. But on the other hand, in recent months ai Clash It didn’t run very well. The band had been forced by CBS Records to hire the producer of Blue Oyster Cult, Sandy Pearlmanfor their second album, “Give ‘Em Enough Rope”a record that due to its more glossy and radio-friendly sound had not broken through in the United States as the record company had hoped. Plus, the band was in debt to CBS and had just fired their manager Bernie Rhodes and, last but not least, Strummer and the guitarist Mick Jonesthe main authors of Clash they were in the midst of a creativity crisis.
Things started to go better after the group chose a new manager, Caroline Coon. Coon was the bassist’s girlfriend Paul Simononbut was attentive to the needs and desires of all band members. Touring America? With i Clash In debt, CBS didn’t want to finance an overseas tour, but Caroline managed to convince the band’s US label, Epic, to subsidize the tour. Simonon and Strummer wanted Americans to open their concerts Bo DiddleyCoon scouted Diddley in Australia and agreed to pay him up front.
THE Clash they met Diddley in Vancouver, Canada, where they began the tour on January 31, before moving on to the United States. By Diddley Joe Strummer to Q he said: “In person, he was more impressive than we could imagine. He dressed like he was ready to fight. Always wearing his huge sheriff’s hat and giant buckle, you were definitely in the presence of someone who gave no quarter.”
Diddley and the group grew fond of each other. This was a good thing considering they were all traveling on the same tour bus. While traveling from Canada to California they received terrible news: Sid Viciousex Sex Pistols and member of the same London punk scene as Clashhad died in New York. So he reported the terrible event Joe Strummer in the tour diary he kept for NME magazine: “I wake up and while I’m looking for something for breakfast, Ace Penna, our US tour manager, says ‘Hey, did you know Sid’s dead?’ I take it by the throat. ‘What do you mean?’ I growl. Then, as I realize, I don’t want breakfast. Our first morning in America.” It was the first morning of Clash toured in America, but it wasn’t actually their first time in the United States. The previous year, they had spent some time recording parts of “Give ‘Em Enough Rope” in San Francisco.
Fans in the Berkeley audience may not have realized how much i Clash they were happy to be in America. The band began the concert with “I’m So Bored With the USA”. Strummer also told Q: “We started the concert with ‘I’m So Bored with the USA’ because we wanted to find out if they had a sense of humor in America. They loved it, because we said we were sick of the cheap rubbish on TV, of all the cheap cultural imports coming out of America. The kids were as fed up as we were with all that rubbish.”
The rest of the set featured a mix of songs from the first album, second album and more recent singles, “Clash City Rockers”, “White Man (In Hammersmith Palais)” and the cover of “I Fought the Law”. “White Riot” it was the encore. In the book ‘Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer’ the photographer Bob Gruen about that first American concert of the Clash he says: “The first concert was a blast. The place was full of happy people dancing. The Clash were more than just a normal band having fun. Not only were we having fun, but we were also reflecting on the problems that were affecting people. Things were serious and there was a lot to be angry about, but there was also a lot to have fun about. The strength of the music made it feel like a battlefield, a confrontation. The lights were flashing constantly, like explosions.”
The reviews of the concert reported by newspapers and music magazines were largely positive. Some recognized that US audiences were more subdued than British punks, i.e Clash they appreciated the fact that no one tried to spit on them during the performance. While Joe Strummer admitted that the university audience had appreciated the first concert of the Clash in the United States (“they tapped their biology textbooks in time to the music,” he commented ironically in his diary), he had not come to America just to connect with the student population.
Thus, challenging the promoter Bill Grahami Clash they hastily organized a second live in the San Francisco area for the following evening. This would be held at Geary Temple (which had once been Graham’s old Fillmore West), would cost half as much as the first concert and would benefit a youth organization and the homeless. The band’s second concert in America was a charity event, a fact of which i Clash they were proud. Wrote Strummer: “The show is really great, the room is really great, the audience is really great, but we have to leave right after the set to drive 400 miles to Los Angeles.”
Setlist:
Complete Control
I Fought the Law (Crickets cover)
Jail Guitar Doors
Drug-Stabbing Time
City of the Dead
Safe European Home
(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais
Tommy Gun
Clash City Rockers
English Civil War
