T he days of London’s Burning are long gone. For a start, you can’t go “up and down the Westway / in and out the lights” any more, because while the overpass the Clash romanticised is still there, the lights aren’t. From the top floor of Damon Albarn’s studios in west London, we – Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and I – can see the lamp-posts cut short like a string of London’s plane trees cut back to the trunk. The guitarist and bassist are no longer angry young punks, either – instead, they’re startlingly well-dressed middle-aged men, Simonon handrolling his cigarettes, and Jones offering non-sequitur asides as if he’s walked off the set of some half-forgotten old radio comedy.
They are here to promote a pair of compilations that will emerge at the summer’s end. Sound System is a box set, containing the first five Clash albums remastered, plus a plethora of rarities in both audio and visual form, along with the usual assortment of bright shiny trinkets. The Clash Hits Back is a two-CD best-of, sequenced to copy the setlist from a show at the Brixton Fair Deal – now the Academy – in July 1982. That a new Clash compilation and box set – the sixth and the third, respectively – can still generate excitement is testimony to both the affection in which the band are held, and the sense that, for all the decades that have passed since their demise, no British rock’n’roll band since has challenged them for ambition, scope and pure excitement.
Why was the Brixton show so significant that you copied the setlist for The Clash Hits Back?
Mick Jones: I don’t know!
Paul Simonon: We’re from the Brixton area, and I used to go there – it used to be called the Brixton Astoria – for Saturday-morning pictures. It’s actually where I saw my first ever pop show. We all turned up as 10-year-olds, and they said: “Right, boys and girls, we’ve got a special surprise for you – we’re not going to show you a film!” So everyone was “Booooo.” “No, we’ve got a special surprise – we have Sandie Shaw!” And Sandie Shaw came on, and she was going on about not having any shoes. So we had an hour set from her, and that was my first pop concert.
MJ: We used to bunk in, which was quite difficult. In those days, on a Saturday night, it would be thousands of people – as many people as you get to a gig at the Academy. You’d have that but the whole place would be packed – before video, before anything. That was the social hub. On weekdays and in holidays, one of us would shin up a drainpipe and go through the open window to the loos, right, and then come down and open the door and we’d all pile in. It would generally be an X.
PS: I wanted to see Hell’s Angels ’69, but they said: “No mate, you’re too young.”
MJ: And I was also in the ABC Minors up the road at the Fridge. I was in a twist competition!
PS: I used to go to the ABC as well and occasionally I went to the Classic.
MJ: The Classic! The fleapit, which is now the Ritzy. They used to show two movies, but also you’d come when the doors opened about 12.45, and then you could sit there all the way through till the evening and it was time to go home. They’d usually be dubbed into English …
