Customer Reviews

The Clash: Return of the Last Gang in Town - 2nd Edition

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I have Marcus Gray's: "Return of the Last Gang"... and MAN are you in for a treat. This book has got thousands of fantastic morsels to chew on with regard to Clash trivia and the state of punk rock back in 1977! The more your read this book the harder it is to put down! It's anything you wanted to know about the inner thoughts, feelings and attitudes of all former members of The Clash in their glory days. If you are a hard core Joe Strummer fan like myself it would be sacriligous for you to pass this book up!!

Marcus Gray takes us on a journey from the very early begininngs and backgrounds of our fine young lads: Strummer, Jonesy, Simonon, Crimes, and Topper striaght through the punk years, finacial distresses, and final commercial sucess and demise of "The only band that ever mattered". Gray even documents in detail what music the Clash boys did after they broke up.

A MUST READ for any and all Clash Strummer/Jones enthusiasts like myself! "THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT!"
Calling all Clash fans, this one is a shoe-in for you!!

Rest In Peace Joe, you were one of the great ones!

Pretty comprehesive work, but most of the information comes from sources other than the band members themselves, such as magazine and music paper interviews. On the negative side, the author jumps around quite a bit with the sequence of events, as years and dates get quite jumbled. At no time during the reading of this book did I get the impression that the author actually appreciated the music of the Clash. An entire chapter was spent dismissing "Give 'Em Enough Rope", with ammunition from various English music paper's reviews. The author also spent a great deal of time pointing out that Joe Strummer's background was not that of a poor, illiterate yobbo. Recommended for the hardcore Clash fans who have already made up their own minds, but for the mildly curious, get a copy of the Westway to the World DVD.

This book by Marcus Gray describes in painstaking detail the major and minor events leading up to and through the end of The Clash's career. Last Gang in Town doesn't pull any punches and points out all the inconsistencies and contradictions of The Clash, while showing how important the really were. But, the book is so in-depth that it doesn't even get to the actual Clash until about page 100. If you're a major fan it's a great book and well worth the read. But if you're only a casual fan, I would suggest A Riot of Our Own by Johnny Green. It's much shorter and to the point with plenty of humor .

There's much to like in this book for Clash obsessives like myself. However, the author is still stuck in the rut where punk bands were held to ridiculous standards, many self imposed, and this comes across as snobbery. His disdain for Joe Strummer is very obvious. Apparently, to the author, a middle class English person is not allowed to sing about being on the dole in England, but can sing about the USA, South America and the Spanish Civil War. I have always suspected the writer doesn't quite believe all this but, you know, street credibility counts.

There was a time when 17 years olds had to be in either the "I love the Clash and I hate the Jam" club or the "I love the Jam and I hate the Clash" club. The writing in reminiscent of this.

For Clash fans, a great amount of detail.

A great book detailing the beginnings of The Clash and Punk Rock in general. It dwells on each member individually, and the road they took to form one of the greatest bands in the world. We also get a history lesson on the Punk movement in the U.K. and all the characters who helped it become one of the biggest genres in the 70's. The Clash is fantastic, and if you want to know a little more about their mystique, read this one. It's quite the trip through time.

Now in a revised and updated edition, Marcus Gray's The Clash: Return Of The Last Gang In Town is the informed and informative biographical history of "The Clash," one of the greatest rock 'n' roll bands in the decades following the sensational Sixties. Following the individual band members' travails through basements, rehearsals, and street busking, to their wild popularity on the stadiums, the participation in radical politics, and their semi-legendary celebrity mythology, The Clash is an involving, well-researched, meticulously written, and inviting account offering a genuine, behind-the-scenes look at what it is to be a rock 'n' roller in general, and a member of "The Clash" in particular.

With each edition of Last Gang in Town, Gray's research has grown deeper and more comprehensive, and his analysis all the more cutting because of it. Gray's opinions on the band's motivations may not be to everyone's tastes, but the man has paid his dues and deserves to be heard. If you are a hardcore fan, this book is your godhead. It's the closest thing to actually having spent all your time with them. Some strung-out liggers may believe they have the inside track based on their short or casual relationship to them, but Gray digs past the sentiment and the nostalgia and does his best to recreate the world of the Clash and the world that they lived in.

There has been a lot of comment on Gray's thesis: namely, that the Clash were not nearly as Olympian as Sony's propaganda officers would have you believe. You can quibble on the specifics, but Gray does you the favor of laying out his case meticulously, like a prosecuting attorney. Make no mistake, the man is as dedicated a fan as anyone on the planet, but he doesn't let his love for the music and for the band color his judgement. The Clash were not superheroes, they were a deeply flawed group of men, as are most Rock and Rollers, and as are basically all Rock and Rollers of the Clash's stature.

I've read the other Clash bios, everything from Kris Need's scandalously plagiaristic cash-in to Pat Gilbert's earnest and deferential tribute and nothing even comes to close to the width and breadth of Last Gang. Even if you disagree with Gray-hell, even if you violently disagree- you will be blown away by the sheer abundance of fact that this book offers. You will understand the world the Clash lived in and the challenges they faced. Last Gang is true to the spirit of the Clash by taking no heroes, only inspiration

What slaps you in the face over and over again about this book is the author's blatant dislike of The Clash. When one spends three years full time on a project, one would hope that it would be something that one enjoyed. But maybe the author just enjoyed bashing the band and band members. Every album they produced the author would address it song by song and make derogatory comments not just about the songs themselves but about the process. He suggested that Mick came up with "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by ripping off a song called, "Little Latin Lupe Lu".

The band members had set high ideals for themselves. Like a lot of twenty-something kids they endeavored to live better lives and be better people. And like every other human being they failed to live up to those ideals on several occasions. The author finds this unforgivable. Not once did the author offer praise when The Clash did live up to the impossible to follow ideals that they set up for themselves.

But the extent to which they did live up to those ideals impressed me. I had heard that The Clash insisted that the record company charge the price for a single album for the triple album Sandinista and had to concede a considerable amount in royalties to convince the record company to comply. I thought that for rich rock stars the money they would lose would be just a drop in the bucket. But at the time they were 100,000 pounds in debt to their record company, broke, and Joe was still squatting because he had recently been denied a mortgage. I mean these guys spent the majority of their career living off of borrowed money. They could have cashed in big time. Mick lived with his grandmother the entire time The Clash was together. It was only after Combat Rock that they actually started making decent money, and the author criticized them for that.

Another thing is that the details in this book have gaping holes. If you read the first few pages of this book, you'd be impressed, maybe even overwhelmed, by the detail. And it's true that the author goes into in-depth detail. The author spends probably a hundred pages describing the schools and families of the Mick, Joe and Paul: their schools, where they lived, the occupations of their parents, high school friends and grades and achievements in school. The author even visited their schools to try to gain access to their school records.

The author claims to have spent three years full time researching this book, and it shows. He interviewed dozens of people even one guy who had known Mick for only six months. He got information from the archives of various publications on both sides of the Atlantic and even album sleeves.

But with the exception of Terry Chimes, he didn't interview any member of The Clash. He didn't interview Joe. He didn't interview Mick. He didn't interview Paul. He didn't interview Topper. He didn't interview their manager Bernie Rhodes. And this is where the book falls short.

Despite excruciating detail in some areas, there are huge holes in very important areas. First: the sacking of Mick. The book just says that Mick was sacked. Period. One would think that there would have been a discussion among the other members and the manager about this, and one would expect a book with this much detail to cover it. The book just says it was the manager's idea to sack Mick. Then it moved on. Certainly an event of this magnitude that truth be told meant the end of The Clash was worthy of more than a paragraph. I mean come on.

Another gaping hole was the recording contract with CBS. In one sentence, the book mentions that The Clash had signed a recording contract. That's it. Off you go to the next subject. The book ignored any facts about the contract, how the contract was negotiated and how the band members felt about it.

But through all the negative bias and gaping holes, the reader is still impressed with the depth of The Clash. The underachiever dropouts from society recorded a wide range of music and inspired people worldwide. They brought politics into popular music. U2, Rage Against the Machine, Green Day and any other artist that sings about politics can thank The Clash for making it possible and popular.

For The Clash fans, this is the book you wanted to read, but thought had never been written. Massively thick with small printing, this book, like The Clash, offers you more for your buck. Knowledgeable and relevant musically and socially, for a Clash fan, there is no better book out there.

I took this book with me on vacation and read it over the course of several sittings. I was not interested in "punk" or anything that remotely resembled rock music when it was happening, my interests were focused on great jazz. Over the years I kept hearing about London Calling and what an incredible record that is. Then the Brits went and issued a commemorative postage stamp so I just had to have a listen. I was blown away and now have the complete Clash collection and have been listening solid for about 18 months. Now I told you that so I can tell you this in context:

On the one hand, this book has a lot of detail that fills in all the blanks about that era. Very interesting stuff for sure. On the other hand, this book is chock full of snide comments the author makes about this incredible band, its membership and their failure to live up to expectations of the punksters of that era. My response - tough. Real music is about art. "He who is not busy being born is busy dying" - Dylan. So this band didn't sit in the author's little box and meet his expectations for some kind of social drama playing out in his mind. Boo hoo. The author's snide little comments are pretty immature, grow up already. If a band isn't moving forward with their sound, they are putrefying. Thank God The Clash moved on from punk and brought us London Calling and Sandinista!. I recommend the read but it can be very infuriating at times.

oh, and I managed to get a strip of the Royal Mail's London Calling stamps too :)