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Re:Masters: Mick Jones of the Clash
The former Clash guitarist looks back on the historic Shea
Stadium show captured in the iconic band's first complete concert
recording
By Alan Light
Special to MSN Music
"I love that moment just before you go onstage," says Mick Jones. "There's
nothing there, and then you see what you can make happen."
As guitarist and vocalist with the Clash, Jones made all kinds of incredible
things happen onstage; between 1976 and 1983, the band was known as one of the
world's finest live acts. With the release of "Live at Shea Stadium," a live
recording of a Clash concert is being made available for the first time (the
group's lone previous live album, 1999's "From Here to Eternity," was a
compilation of tracks captured throughout their career).
Listen to "Live From Shea Stadium"
The band's performance opening for the Who at New York's Shea Stadium on Oct.
13, 1982 (17 years after the Beatles' groundbreaking concert at Shea) came at a
transitional moment for the Clash. The London-based punk pioneers had finally
broken in the United States with the release earlier that year of their fifth
album, "Combat Rock," which featured the hit singles "Rock the Casbah" and
"Should I Stay or Should I Go."
The show was originally recorded because the band used footage from the Shea
concert for the "Should I Stay or Should I Go" music video. Joe Strummer
apparently wound up with the master tapes, which were lost until they turned up
many years later when he was moving residences prior to his death in 2002.
Jones and Strummer shared guitar and lead vocal duties with the band, and by
the time of this appearance the pair's priorities had begun to diverge. Creative
friction was heightening between Jones, whose sensibility always leaned more to
the pop side, and Strummer, driven by his interest in social activism.
Additionally, drummer Topper Headon had recently been kicked out of the band
because of his drug problems, replaced by original Clash member Terry Chimes.
But none of this tension interferes with the blazing performance on "Live at
Shea Stadium." Seizing its shot at a massive stage opening for a (punk-friendly)
band of rock legends, the Clash delivered a relentless hour of nonstop bangers,
ranging from early rockers like "Career Opportunities" to more recent
experiments incorporating hip-hop and dub reggae into its music. Indeed, the
Shea album was captured at the ideal moment, allowing a look over the full
landscape of the Clash's music. This lineup would never record again after
"Combat Rock," and, less than a year later, Jones was dismissed from the Clash
by Strummer.
The 16 songs on "Live at Shea Stadium" finally see the light of day just as
the New York Mets play their final games in the 50,000-plus-seat venue, prior to
its destruction this winter. The album captures a thrilling convergence: One of
rock's greatest bands, for a fleeting moment, reaching a height that few acts
ever attained.
"We never dreamt we'd get to that place," says Jones, on the telephone from
his beloved London. "We just set out to play a few songs, have a few laughs, and
the rest was just magic."
MSN Music: What do you hear when you listen to this recording of the
Shea Stadium show?
Mick Jones: To me, I like to hear the four individuals of
the band and how they jell together. It's kind of magic. I like to hear it as an
overall thing. And, the way this has been put together, you can hear everything
clearly, the amalgam of four people and how it all clicks together.
This was a tumultuous time for the band. You changed drummers, and by
the next year you had broken up. Can you hear any of that tension in the
performance?
As we got more successful, we couldn't really handle it, but that didn't come
out onstage. Those other forces didn't really affect the shows; we just had
developed other interests, like, you know, fishing or whatever (laughs).
Everything always just went so fast, from the start to the finish of the
Clash. We were continually doing stuff, and we really never thought that much
about it. We were very conscious of continually putting stuff out, recording
everything even when there was no real reason to. Even these shows, we recorded
them because we were doing a video, and so we just recorded the whole shows to
cut to the numbers we filmed. Then, after that, they got lost anyway and didn't
show up until much later, when one of us moved.
Do you see any kind of through lines that connect the music to the
art to the other media? Is there some central core?
There's a thread of making work that's kind of populist, accessible to anyone
who might be interested. As opposed to making really difficult, academic music
or making art that's really obscure and hard to understand, that only a few
people are going to get and you can only see in a gallery. In this case, it's
putting it out there in public, it's free. I find that very attractive. Although
sometimes the other extreme can be a little more lucrative!
It's interesting that you say the band didn't think that much about
its plans, because now it seems there's this sense of the Clash as a group with
a very clear sense of purpose and direction.
That's true, although it might have just been me! I think we were just really
intuitive about what we did.
Just a few years earlier, you sang "No Elvis, Beatles, or Rolling
Stones." And now here you were, opening for the Who on a stadium tour.
Well, yeah, it certainly made life interesting. But I think rather than
turning our back on our fans, we were always trying to achieve more, to see how
far we could go without changing what we believed.
You might think that the more popular we got, the further we'd get from our
goals that we set out with, but I just don't think that's true. I don't see it
as any different, but all as one thing that we should be able to do, and try to
represent where we came from.
"Where you came from" was always important to you, wasn't it? Even at
this show, your road manager, Kosmo Vinyl, introduced you as "all the way from
Ladbroke Grove, London, W10."
That sense of community, yes. We didn't really analyze it too closely, but
that was always a big, important part of it, hoping that people would be proud
of us and see how far you could get and still be connected to that place. (Story Continues On Next Page...) |
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