Customer Reviews

Last Gang in Town: The Story and Myth of the Clash

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is a bitter biography that could have used some better editing. Gray seems personally hurt by the Clash's supposed failure to live up to their words and potential. He's certainly done his share of research on the early days (you're on page 301 before the band's debut record is released), but from there forward the book is a painful stew of press quotes and album reviews. Too often, the chronology of events bounces forward and back, leaving the reader confused at finding the same information provided over and over again, at three-chapter intervals. The author admits (in the endless final chapters) to his rough treatment of the Clash, but never explains why he's got a golden rivet for Paul Simenon. Indeed, it is the other band members who receive the bulk of the slagging, while Paul is treated to pop idol hero-worship. I gave it 3 stars for the subject matter alone -- but I'm waiting for a better Clash bio to be written. I was angered to have read a 505 page (hardcover version) book that closes with a question mark ("The End?"). Well, YOU'RE the biographer, YOU tell ME. For a sharper evaluation of the band in their heyday, read the Lester Bangs book of essays or the Johnny Green memoir.

This is a useful book when it sticks to the facts. Unfortunately, Gray's attitude seems smug and superior. He seems to judge the merit of The Clash's music almost entirely based on whether or not he personally thinks the political messages evinced therein are valid. As the Kirkus review astutely notes, the Clash was four guys in their twenties; it was not a bloody political action committee. To be honest, Gray's sniping comes across as little more than a spiteful attempt to drag a talented band through the mud. The book is useful inasmuch it is, as far as I know, the only Clash biography, but the author's approach nearly ruins it.

Talk about blown opportunities! To put it bluntly, this book stinks! You're better off with Pennie Smith's book of pictures, Before & After (1980, Little, Brown). This book is wordy (over-written), and poorly edited. Most of all, the author was not granted access to interview any of the actual band members (I wonder why?)! The dependency on press quotes is annoying. In an attempt to echo Jon Savage (England's Dreaming), the author beats to death several facts about punk that would insult any knowledgable reader in this day and age. Admitedly, the Clash didn't live up to everything we may have expected them to, but what great rock act has (Marley, Dylan etc)? These guys were musicians (with a great marketing plan), not politicians! As well, his obvious resentment of the band seeking suucess in the US is rather insulting & ignorant. This utterly humorless & textbook-like read is a waste of time and money to all but the most hopeful of Clash fans. Do yourself a favor and don't bother. Or, stick on a copy of Sandinista! and browse through Pennie Smith's book at the same time.

There is a lot to like about this book, but the author's smug hypocrisy and the mind-numbing length nearly kill what good is there.

Like too many Rock writers, Gray believes that no biography is complete without the street addresses and complete floorplans of every characters childhood home(s). There is detail, and then there is minutia. Gray spends way too much time on the pre-Clash--and even the pre-musician--days of Clash bandmembers, and way too little time on the Clash itself. The book is 505 pages long and the first Clash LP isn't released until page 300.

There is plenty of interesting stuff, most of it falling somewhere between page 150 and page 300, which sheds some light on the musical background of Mick Jones (Glam) and Joe Strummer (Folk). All the stuff about the early teaming up of the Clash and the Sex Pistols was interesting. I would have liked to have known a bit more about how these guys learned to play and write--according to this book Topper Headon just sat down at a drum set and began playing great stuff--and a few more nuts & bolts type things would have been nice too.

The amazing thing about this book is that, at 500 pages, virtually all of it seems to have been culled from contemporary magazine storys/interviews/reviews. Gray is decent enough to credit his sources at every turn, but by constantly referring to those sources, Gray repeatedly reminds the reader that he was not given the opportunity to interview members of the band.

But the real shortcoming of the book is Gray's silly opinion that the Clash didn't meet the author's incredibly narrow definition of a Punk band. According to Gray, you could only qualify as a real Punk band if you were constantly abusive, cheered rioters, played to audiences of no more than a few hundred, refused to have your records released to large audiences, demonstrated a hatred of America, never did anything similar to anything else you'd ever done before, and never ever ever ever allowed even a trace of a musical influence to show through in your own music.

For Gray, after their first record, the Clash didn't meet his standards.

Call me jaded, but I think musicians want people to hear their music. I'm weird that way. And, at the time, Pete Townshend said, rightly, that the Pistol's "Pretty Vacant" was the best record of the year; he also said, rightly, that Punk was doomed if they were going to attempt (or pretend) that their music had no musical heritage whatsoever.

Finally, it's hard to read the endless recitations of Gray's definition of 'real Punk' when he so blithely ignores his own rules: "Last Gang In Town" was distributed by a big market publisher; a second, "sequel" edition was released; his style seems to be a misguided attempt at recreating Phillip Norman's fantastic book about the Beatles, "Shout!"; and--I actually find this kind of funny--Gray's photo on the dust jacket is a silly recreation of the cover photo from Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited."

Maybe I'm being petty. But I find it frustrating that there is no good book about one of the most interesting bands of the past 25 years; Marcus Gray had the chance and--hard as this is to say about such a lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng book--he came up short. A ruthless editor would have made a great difference here.

Not much to add to all of other reviews slagging this pathetic spitefest. Let me just say that with all of the hypocrisy in the past, present and future, it's sad that Gray spent even one second attempting to destroy the "myth" of the Clash while in the end utterly failing to do so. Deconstruct any public figure and you'll find skeletons, inconsistencies and unintended irony. Gray does make one valid point in the end; the best of our heroes are not larger than life gods, they're flesh and blood, middle class blokes, art school dropouts, average jerks who do extraordinary things and touch our lives. I never expected the Clash to save the world, but they saved my world and that's no myth.

Although Marcus Gray is obviously somewhat disillusioned by the Clash's ultimate failure to live up to their original aims, he is clearly still a fan of their music. Gray's criticisms are at time harsh, but it is obvious they come from the heart--from a man who cares deeply about the Clash and their music.

What this book lacks in balance it makes up for in quality. You may not agree with some of Gray's opinions about the Clash or the music business in general, but it is difficult to argue with his skill in evaluating the Clash's music throughout their existence. The Kirkus review of the book is right in arguing that Gray draws too heavily from the weekly British music papers, but in reading the book it is clear that the Clash themselves put a lot of stock in these papers' opinions.

In summary, if you are looking for a non-partisan, blow-by-blow account of the Clash, this book will disappoint you. On the other hand, if you want a decidedly opinionated treatise on one of rock music's greatest bands, you probably won't be disappointed

Arrrrgh.

Let's face it: The Clash have demanded a thorough examination for years, and even more so in the wake of Joe Strummer's passing. If you (like me) were looking for such in this book, you will not fill that void here. Marcus Gray, feeling betrayed by the "sell-out" and "phoniness" of his idols, uses this bloated opus to destroy the lingering "myth" of the greatness of this band.

The problem is that The Clash themselves understood that sell-out was eventually inevitable. One need not look further than "Death or Glory": "He who <boffs> nuns will later join the church." The approach here is also flawed by its lack of any current or original interviews! One would think that some original research - even if used to destroy the band, as he does - would at least make the book more interesting.

As it stands, my reading of it read like everything I've ever read about the Clash, recycled and re-spun into a bloated hatchet piece. It may as well be entitled "The Clash E! True Westway Story".

Hey, in the band's defense, and to Marcus Gray's discredit, while the Clash may on some level have sold out, at least they never reunited. If you're a fan, there's nothing gained by reading this - keep the legend intact and let the music speak for itself.

This book claims to tell the truth about The Clash, and to dispel some of the rumors and The Myth. While the author says it is not exactly, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, it is well researched and presents its opinions with plenty of corroborating evidence. Well researched? It is quite a tome, and I was at first intimidated by the shear mass of it. I thought I would just read the good bits, and skip most of it, but though I read it out of order, I did indeed read the whole thing. Sometimes I skimmed over parts, because the author really did a lot of research, and he really wanted you to know it.

But the interesting parts really grabbed me. There was a lot about The Clash that had always intrigued me, and this book provided answers. I first saw The Clash in San Francisco. It was a famous gig that I was lucky enough to witness because a friend of mine named George Valencia told me about it. He had just seen them at a concert put on by promoter Bill Graham (called Billy Graham in a rare lapse by the author, a Brit, who was perhaps unfamiliar with the evangelist). He said I had to see them, and was adamant about it. They were playing an underground show at Temple Beautiful, a former synagogue, now available as a punk rock venue. The posters advertised them as "The Only Band That Mattered," as they couldn't play under their own name because of their contract with Bill Graham Presents. The Temple Beautiful was right next to another infamous church, the one used by Jim Jones before he took his followers to Guyana to drink cyanide Kool-aid in a mass suicide. I was skeptical of punk rock in general, and of their claim to be "The Only Band That Mattered" in particular, but their high energy performance won me over. Joe Strummer was an intense front man. The veins popped out and he snarled his lyrics. His hair was greased back, and his huge head looked like it belonged on a horse. The guitars spit out sonic buzz saws. It was like they were juggling buzz saws of sound that was pure energy, and these were flying around the room, driving the audience into a frenzy. I was not even aware that there was a punk rock scene, but it had been brewing for a while, and there were several local bands that had played the opening slots, and I had never seen such outlandish costumes. Though loud and noisy, the songs were catchy, and I remember "Complete Control" stuck in my head, and a few days later I heard it on KALX, the college radio station for UC Berkeley.

Sometime later, I was at a party in Berkeley, and Mick Jones showed up. He was with some guy who had gained a little notoriety by starting a campaign to Nuke the Knack. The Knack had just had a huge hit with "My Sharona," and were being called New Wave. This campaign was part of the backlash. Anyway, I got to meet Mick Jones, and as he was leaving, I put a song of his on the record player. The hostess of the party, Terri DeSalvo, was embarrassed and she pulled it off so the needle scratched over the record. This was before CDs, and records were vinyl. The song I was playing was "Stay Free" which was on the album Give'em Enough Rope. I really liked it, and it was one that Mick sang, and I guess wrote as well. Perhaps it wasn't their favorite record, as the producer Sandy Pearlman, had tried to make it some kind of heavy metal record. I had known Terri since High School, but she was working for a big record company, and knew all the right people, hence the appearance of Mick Jones and her little soirée. She wanted to remain cool, and act like Mick Jones was no big deal, or perhaps she thought it would bug him. Whatever.

When next I saw The Clash, they did indeed achieve total heaviousity. I had thought they were awesome before, but when I saw them around the time of "London Calling," at the Warfield, they were at their absolute peak. I think it was the song Garageland, that contained a line "you're my guitar hero," which Joe Strummer sang to Mick Jones. He was really a guitar hero by that time, and the whole show was one of the best rock concerts I have ever seen. They were, for a brief period, the greatest Rock `N Roll Band in the World. I feel very fortunate to have seen both the early show at the Temple Beautiful, and that one, at The Warfield. I saw The Jam there too, around that time, and they were good, but for sheer energy, The Clash had them beat.

I had seen two great shows by them, but then I also saw them at their worst. They fired Mick Jones and tried to book themselves as The Clash, but it was a travesty. They had some amateurs playing, and they just didn't have the chops to pull it off. The guitars were not even in tune, and it was a pathetic display of hubris for Strummer to even think he was The Clash without Mick Jones. I was always curious about how it had come to such a pass, how they could have climbed to the absolute top, and crashed right to the bottom. The Last Gang in Town goes a long way towards answering this and other questions.

The premise of the book was that they tried to perpetrate a myth about their backgrounds, and their politics, but then internal contradictions finally did them in. Did they really believe their politics, or were they just hypocrites, who actually just wanted to be big rich and famous pop stars? Were they really just street kids, or did they come from more privileged backgrounds? And what of their manager, Bernie Rhodes? Was he just a wannabe Malcolm McLauren, trying to make them the next Sex Pistols? Was Joe Strummer just a legend in his own mind? Did Mick Jones aspire to be Keith Richards, and have long hair and flared trousers? The premise of the book is that The Clash and their manager, Bernie Rhodes, set out to create a Myth about themselves, but the contradictions between the Myth and the Truth eventually tore them apart.

It is fascinating to read about all the things that happened, with bands such as The Sex Pistols, their bass players, Sid Vicious and Glen Matlock, The Damned, named after a Luciano Visconti movie. Chrissie Hynde was actually playing songs with Mick Jones before she went on to form The Pretenders. They had a song called "Get Up On Your Hynde Legs." Did you know that Topper Headon, their drummer, actually played all the instruments on Rock the Casbah? He was later sacked for drugs, his Achilles Heel, but he was very talented. Or did you know that Joe Strummer was left-handed, but played like a right-hander, and then found that his right hand couldn't handle any complicated picking, and thus he had to confine himself to strumming. It was all six strings, or none. Paul Simonon thought up their name, and was also a painter, though he came off as being a bit of a thug.

I liked the writing, but it was a little more British than I could understand. I enjoyed all the Brit slang, but sometimes didn't have the foggiest notion what he was talking about. But mostly it was crystal clear, even when describing complex situations with various unreliable narrators providing conflicting accounts. I feel like he gave everyone's side of the story a fair telling, and chronicled a fascinating band and a memorable time in history. The Clash really managed to take it very far, but you still felt like it was a shame the way it ended, not with a bang, but a whimper. They exceeded your wildest expectations, but then went on to not live up to their full potential. Which is quite a contradiction; you might even say it was a clash.

The Clash (U.K. Version)

Give 'em Enough Rope

London Calling

Sandinista!

Combat Rock


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

Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer

Let's Rock Again

The Clash - Westway to the World

The Damned

If you're completely obsessed with the Clash you'll likely find Gray's tedious details on every aspect of the lives of each member interesting. However, Gray fails miserably to put all his research into context. The book is a barrage of obscure factoids with few attempts to weave them into a chapter-by-chapter theme toward an overall coherent picture of this band. Gray makes some effort to illustrate how the threads of the Clash came together under the social influences of the day and each member's upbringing. But he goes spinning off on long discussions of what other bands were doing at the time, and I forgot I was reading a book that's supposed to be about the Clash. While some readers have come away from this book being disgusted or dissolutioned with the Clash, that is simply the popping sound of their own distorted fantasy bubble of what they thought the Clash was all about. Larger than life. More heroic than your average heros. What's good about Gray's book is that it portrays the Clash as normal folk, put together by luck, circumstance, and the will of Bernard Rhodes. The Clash was not the product of some spiritualized magical formula for saving the world. They were just in the right place at the right time.

I don't think Marcus Gray got the point. Listening to track 6 on disk 2 of The Story Of The Clash told me more. Clash On Broadway is a 3CD set from EPIC (code 46991) and is THE definative Clash production. From "The Clash" to "Sandanista" and even most of the words I never understood. You have to listen to Mick singing "Every Little Bit Hurts" to appreciate it.