Here is a list of known articles from 1983. If you know of anything that is missing please do let us know.

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Record Mirror archive 1955-1981
Searchable, most editions

Fanzines: Great Collection
Great collection of scanned fanzines from the 1970s and 1980s

Tour pass for the 7 warm up dates

1983 02 BEST French Mag Clash feature

1983 03 Rolling Stone awards

from E- ccentric Sleeve Notes fanzine issue 4 1983

1983 Guitare Magazine (Cover only)

Chris Salewicz, 1983Chris Salewicz, 1983
Punk: 1977 - Two Sevens Clash Chris Salewicz, The History of Rock, 1983

AS A REBEL MUSIC, punk rock had close affinities with reggae. When the punk movement found a focal point and place of worship in the Ro'y in Covent Garden, a former gay club that opened as a temple to punk in December 1976, it was Jamaican music – spun by the then up-and-coming film-maker Don Letts – that provided much of the entertainment between acts. Reggae, declared the hippest punks, was the only music to which they listened. Bob Marley recorded 'Punky Reggae Party' the Clash covered Junior Murvin's 'Police And Thieves' and the dominant reggae LP of the year was Culture's Two Sevens Clash. The title song referred to the supposed mystical significance of the year 1977 which was claimed to foreshadow great social change.

Certainly, 1977 proved a watershed year; suddenly there were new, short-haired groups everywhere – most of whom seemed to get their names on the bill at the Ro'y in the first three months of 1977. Apart from the established names like the Damned, the Buzzcocks and the Clash, there were countless others who enjoyed their 15 minutes-or more-of fame. '-Ray Spe' were fronted by the engaging Poly Styrene, who made tooth-braces and chainstore kitsch fashionable. With their committed left-wing stance and the distinctive wail of Lora Logic's sa'ophone, they were responsible for some of punk's most outstanding anthems for frustrated youth – songs like 'Oh Bondage, Up Yours!', 'Identity' and 'Warrior In Woolworths'. They eventually recorded one LP, Germ Free Adolescents, in 1978, before Poly went solo, discovered God and reverted to her real name of Marion Ellis.

One chord wonders

Jimmy Pursey's agit-rock group Sham 69 were also notable for their political stance, and were indirectly responsible for the growth of Oi! Later in the Seventies, while Generation ', fronted by Billy Idol – a Bromley contingent friend of the Pistols and Sou'sie – hit back at the Who with their debut single, 'Your Generation'. The Adverts – 'One Chord Wonders', as one of their songs proclaimed – had a Top Twenty hit with the topical and tasteless 'Looking Through Gary Gilmore's Eyes' in August of 1977, while other regulars on the scene included Chelsea, 999, Eater – famed for their 14-year-old drummer Dee Generate – the Vibrators, the Lurkers and the Australian band the Saints. Slaughter and the Dogs and the quaintly-named Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds emerged from the Manchester scene, while Penetration, from Country Durham, had a distinctive and talented lead singer and songwriter in Pauline Murray.

Among fans, these bands caused intense polarisation, most of the arguments hinging around whether they could or could not play. Yet this was really irrelevant, for it was the group's attitude that counted. Specifically, that attitude was one of positive iconoclasm, carried out with tongue inserted firmly in cheek. Contrary to what was claimed at the time, there was nothing negative about the essence of punk. The atmosphere was electric with e'citement and full of potential.

The first major event of the year was the White Riot Tour, on which the Clash headlined, intended to promote their first CBS LP. On the tour, the Clash were subjected to constant police harassment, Joe Strummer being arrested at one point for stealing a pillowcase from a hotel n which the group had been staying. Also on the bill were the Jam – who left halfway through the dates to headline a tour promoting their first album – the Slits and the Subway Sect. True to the punk ethic, both these bands consisted of unashamed beginners. The Slits – Arri Up (cocals), Tessa Pollitt (bass), Viv Albertine (guitar) and Palmolive (drums) had met at a Patti Smith gig and decided to form a band. "If you like peace and flowers/I'm going to carry knives and chains", they sang on 'Number One Enemy' and their appearance – Arri would sport a pair of Jubilee Kickers over wetlook trousers – e'pressed the same contempt for conventional standards of 'femininity'. Not surprisingly, their record contract was a long time in coming – it was 1979 before their reggae-influenced debut album Cut appeared on Island Records.

Subway Sect used to sing weird, avantgarde numbers about alienation before singer Vic Godard's preoccupation with Radio Two took them into the realm of cocktail jazz. (The band eventually parted company with Godard in 1982, and with new vocalist Dig Wayne became the JoBo'ers.)

There was fierce rivalry between the various punk acts. Those like the Pistols and the Clash who had emanated from the Malcolm McLaren stable paraded their ideological principles, and were disparaging about the lack of political awareness of such groups as the Damned. Their criticisms may have been rooted in envy: the Damned were the first British punk band to have a record nationally distributed when 'New Rose' was released on the Stiff label. For most of 1977, the Damned toured Britain at an e'hausting pace with their anarchic music-hall act: their then manager, Jake Riviera, had asked them if they wanted to be rich and famous: "We said we wanted to be famous," recalled drummer Rat Scabies, "because we thought if we were, we'd automatically become rich." All they became was tired.

Although many punk acts had initially dismissed BBC-TV's Top Of The Pops for its crass commercialism, many of them – the Clash e'cepted – willingly accepted initiations to appear when their records entered the charts. Partly as a result of this national e'posure, the Adverts, '-Ray Spe', the Stranglers and the Jam enjoyed early success.

God Save the Queen

In the heart of mainstream Britain, however, punk rock appeared to be a mere hiccup: the dominant event for most of the nation was to be the Silver Jubilee celebrations marking the 25th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. To a bunch of self-styled anarchists like those pushing along the pace of punk, such an event – with all its possibilities for satire – was more than could have been dreamed of.

Again, it was the Se' Pistols who were found at the heart of this controversy. With consummate timing, 'God Save The Queen' was released in June, recording Number 2 in the singles chart. Virgin Records maintained that it had outsold the Number 1 song, Rod Stewart's 'I Don't Want To Talk About It', and had been kept from the top slot to prevent embarrassment to her Majesty.

Considering the other sinister events surrounding the Pistols at the time, this was not as implausible as it might seem. MP Marcus Lipton had declared that if punk rock was to be used to destroy Britain's established institutions, "then it ought to be destroyed first." For a while, it seemed as though a conspiracy was afoot to do just that. On Jubilee Day itself the Se' Pistols set sail up the Thames on a boat provocatively named the Queen Elizabeth, a promotional event organised by Virgin Records. Midway through the group's set, a police launch ordered them to the shore and arrested members of group and their entourage with unnecessary force on dubious charges.

The mood of paranoia surrounding the group was fuelled by Malcolm McLaren's claims that no councils would permit the Pistols to appear. Following the break-up of the group, this was discovered to have been untrue – McLaren was merely attempting to boost the band's mystique through their non-availability. Despite – or perhaps because of – the Pistols' problems, punk made massive strides. Everyone had an option of some sort about it. By now it was becoming apparent which acts had staying power. Groups like the Clash and new-wave singer-songwriters like Elvis Costello were impressing with the strength of their talent, and beginning to outstrip lesser artists who had optimistically taken in their flares and cropped their hair in the hope of jumping on the bandwagon.

Johnny takes the cake

Spunk, a bootleg copy of the imminently available Se' Pistols' album was on sale in certain shops by the end of September. When Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Se' Pistols finally came out a month later, an immediate furore was predictably created by the record's title. The manager of a Nottingham record shop was charged with offences under the 1889 Indecent Advertisement Act for including the record in his window display, and the LP galloped to Number 1.

The Pistols played the last official date of their British tour at U'bridge University in West London, a chaotic, strangely sinister affair that did little credit to the group. Far finer, however, was the free show the band put on of its own accord on Christmas Day in Huddersfield as a benefit for the families of striking firemen. This was the group's last show in Britain, and concluded with some of the children present spontaneously pulling Johnny Rotten face-down into a giant Christmas cake.

A month later, the career of the Se' Pistols was over. Rotten was sacked for the group in San Francisco after the final date of their only American tour – dismissed, he claimed, for attempting to save Sid Vicious from his obviously suicidal involvement with heroin, a part of the latter's pathetic fondness for rock-star 'outlaw' mystique. The Se' Pistols may have been over, but in their wake they left a host of other bands they had inspired, and a revitalised UK music scene.

© Chris Salewicz, 1983

Penny Valentine, 1983 Combat Rockers
Penny Valentine, The History of Rock, 1983

IF THERE WAS one band that successfully rose above punk‚'s swift and premature decline, it was the Clash. Although historically the Sex Pistols remain the most important mid-Seventies group for their shattering effect on the complacency of the music business, it was the Clash‚'s achievement to hone and structure punk‚'s original wildly anarchistic intent into a more mature and durable form.

Despite occasional bouts of critical censure, the Clash survived into the Eighties with their original goals intact. Their music changed over the years ‚Äî from the stuttering riot charge of their 1977 album The Clash to the relative sophistication of Combat Rock (1982), while their lyrical concerns extended from the parochial politics of highrise / dole-queue / anti-racism that gave them their original impetus to the more potent arena of Internationalism, particularly the power of the American multi-nationals. Love affairs and revolution were only ever a track apart in the Clash‚'s music. Like many young musicians at the time, they listened avidly to ska and bluebeat imports and were the first white group to acknowledge and mould one of punk‚'s major influences, reggae, into their music.

Rhodes to glory

The Clash were formed in June 1976 from a nucleus of two art-school friends, guitarist Mick Jones (born 26 June 1955) and bass-player Paul Simonon (born 15 December 1955). Jones had originally formed London SS in March 1975, and among the many players who passed through that band‚'s ranks between then and January 1976 were Simonon and drummers Terry Chimes and Nicky ‚'Topper‚' Headon (born 30 May 1955), a former office clerk who sat in for a week. Mick broke up the band to form an outfit with Simonon, and it was during this period that the pair met Joe Strummer.

Strummer (born John Mellors, 21 August 1952) had been playing with what was basically an R&B band, the 101ers, doing the familiar London pub circuit. The 101ers had already had a single ‚Äî ‚'Keys To Your Heart‚' ‚Äî released on the independent Chiswick label, but Strummer, in typically passionate style, had broken the band up. He‚'d seen the future as indicated by the Sex Pistols. "I knew then R&B was dead," he declared somewhat sweepingly.

By August 1979 the Clash were a five-piece, with drummer Terry Chimes (who was credited on the first album as Tory Crimes) and guitarist Keith Levine joining Strummer, Jones and Simonon. It was this line-up that, after intensive rehearsals in an abandoned Chalk Farm warehouse, was finally unveiled by manager Bernie Rhodes to a hand-picked audience of music-paper critics. Rhodes, an astute entrepreneur and associate of Malcolm McLaren, had prepared the ground carefully and critical acclaim was unanimous.

In the heady early days of punk, the Clash were also embroiled in what became fashionably-required scenes of destruction and devastation, even though from their earliest material they were set apart from the nihilistic stance of most of the other young bands around. Local councils were not prepared to sanction punk gigs, so that summer Rhodes booked the 100 Club in Oxford Street himself, and staged the Punk Festival as a showcase for the band.

Cash and Clash

While the Sex Pistols‚' odyssey round the major record companies continued to threaten the status quo, the Clash and Rhodes signed to CBS. It was the first of a series of political contradictions the group successfully weathered. Lauded as a huge force on the alternative circuit, they had just shaken hands with one of the biggest multi-national record companies in the world. Yet over the years they managed to retain their commitment to release cheap records, never took the easy way to a hit single by appearing on Top Of The Pops, and were steadfast in their politics.

Meanwhile the band joined their old friends the Sex Pistols on the doomed Anarchy tour, a remarkable event given that it scarcely played one of its allotted venues. By now punk was causing the same moral outrage in Britain that the advent of rock‚'n‚'roll had caused in the United States over two decades earlier. Widely perceived as morally corrupt and an affront to decent society, it was not to be allowed a public voice.

By the time CBS released their debut album, The Clash, in April 1977, Keith Levine was long gone, and Terry Chimes had quit to be replaced by Jones‚' former London SS associate Topper Headon. Produced by live soundman Mickey Foote, The Clash perfectly captured the band‚'s extraordinary urgency and their unique gift for underpinning punk‚'s rawness with surprisingly thoughtful lyrics and references to the whole tradition of popular music: Chuck Berry‚'s guitar riffs; pop‚'s traditional melodic content, as on the bell-like ‚'Garageland‚'; and their homage to reggae with Lee Perry‚'s ‚'Police And Thieves‚'.

There‚'s a riot goin' on

Their second album, Give ‚'Em Enough Rope, was released in November 1979 and signaled the development of Mick Jones‚' musical signature: the urgent guitar semaphore of ‚'Tommy Gun‚'. The album was neither as concise nor as charged with raw energy as their debut, and suffered from a lack of instantly powerful songs. Much press criticism was leveled against producer Sandy Pearlman, whose ‚'traditional‚' methods seemed at odds with the group‚'s spontaneous approach; but despite these critical reservations, the album quickly reached Number 2 in the charts.

By the end of 1978 the Clash were also established as a modestly successful singles band. ‚'White Riot‚', their first 45, was released in March 1977, and was followed by ‚'Complete Control‚', ‚'Clash City Rockers‚' and the ironic and affectionate ‚'(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais‚', all of which reached the UK Top Forty. ‚'Tommy Gun‚', from the Give ‚'Em Enough Rope album, achieved their highest chart placing yet at Number 19.

They suffered constant business problems. Manager Bernie Rhodes‚' relationship with the band was both passionate and volatile. In October 1978 he was sacked amid much acrimony, which ended in Rhodes taking legal action against the Clash in the High Court. For a while they were managed by journalist Caroline Coon, later managing themselves until Bernie Rhodes was re-instated, largely at Strummer‚'s insistence, in 1981. Relationships with their record company, CBS, were no smoother, and the band were constantly locked in bitter disagreements over marketing policies, financial arrangements and the pricing of their LPs. The song ‚'Complete Control‚' was an ironic reference to their relationship with CBS and the music business in general.

London Calling, released in 1979 was a double album that wooed the critics back to the Clash‚'s side. Produced by the late Guy Stevens, the diamond-edged sound highlighted their development as musicians and writers. The view of the Westway from the 18th floor had enlarged to encompass other parts of the atlas and concentrate on the root of Western economic ‚'problems‚': the power of the American multi-nationals (‚'Koka Kola‚'); the recognition of peasant revolt (‚'Spanish Bombs‚'); and the newfound street lunacy of the US seen by British eyes as the unraveling of a Hollywood scenario (‚'Jimmy Jazz‚').

‚'Clampdown‚', meanwhile, became the first song to address itself directly to the phenomenon of the young involving themselves in state power against their own age group and their own class. Amid all this came ‚'Lost In The Supermarket‚', a surprisingly pretty track that expressed the Clash‚'s gentle identification with the confused, less macho side of the male personality while taking a shot at punk‚'s old enemy, consumerism. The album‚'s title track, ‚'London Calling‚', provided the band with their most successful single, reaching Number 11 in the UK charts at the beginning of 1980.

By this time, the Clash were one of the very few original punk bands to have survived. Not only that, but they had survived intact, with their pledges and commitments unsullied.

Dub and drubbed

It was to be an adventurous, often experimental album that nearly proved their downfall. Towards the end of 1980, with a series of American, British and European tours behind them, they released a triple album, self-produced in conjunction with reggae producer Mikey Dread. The disappointment of critics over Give ‚'Em Enough Rope was as nothing compared to the savagery that greeted the ‚'self-indulgent‚' Sandinista! It was nevertheless a musical and ideological breakthrough for the band, introducing dub and rap to a British rock audience, and capturing the political climate of the time by focusing on the build-up of cold-war propaganda and the escalating involvement of the United States in Latin America. Ironically, given the album‚'s implacably anti-American stand, it fared much better in the US than in the UK, where sales were severely hit by the critical drubbing.

Sandinista! was in all senses a revolutionary album, emerging at a time when British music was witnessing the rise of the New Romantics and a general reversion to pop‚'s traditional concerns of pretty melodies and dull lyrics. It reflected the influence of all things American on the band, and their involvement with black music and its cultural references placed the Clash ahead of the mainstream by well over a year.

1981 saw the band touring Europe and America, where they finally confirmed their reputation, returning victorious to Britain at the end of the year to play six sold-out nights at the London Lyceum. During each concert the enigmatically named Futura 2000, a New York street artist, spray-painted a backdrop in the course of the performance; he also did the lettering for the sleeve of their next LP.

Back in the USA

As the Lyceum appearances suggested, and their subsequent activities confirmed, the Clash had shifted their attentions full time to the United States. This experience, together with a 1981 tour of the Far East, found full expression in Combat Rock. Released in 1982 and produced with the help of Glyn Johns, it pulled the threads of Sandinista! together and had critics hastily re-assessing their original reaction to that triple album. Combat Rock saw the Clash at their most seductive. The struggles of Vietnam and Latin America, the influence of the oil-rich states and US exploitation at home and abroad were combined with rap, elements of the new American jazz and a hint of traditional Eastern instrumentation. Combat Rock also yielded the melancholic, bitter and moving single, ‚'Straight to Hell‚'.

Relationships within the band were never easy, particularly where Strummer and Jones were concerned. A dispute between the two occurred in 1981 when Jones headed for the States with singer Ellen Foley, leaving Strummer in Britain muttering darkly about "reaching the end of the line". On that occasion their differences were resolved after what Strummer called: "a simple common or garden punch-up".

Then in 1982 Strummer disappeared with no hint of warning on the eve of a UK tour. The tour was cancelled, and when the errant Strummer returned to the ranks, a dispirited Topper Headon announced his departure from the band. He was replaced on a temporary basis by his predecessor Terry Chimes, before auditions were held and in May 1983 Pete Howard was selected as a permanent replacement for Topper Headon.

Finally, in September 1983 came the announcement that Strummer and Simonon had decided to ‚'sack‚' Mick Jones because "It is felt that Jones has drifted apart from the original idea of the Clash." Jones bitterly contested this assertion, complaining that there was no discussion prior to his being sacked, and that he would be "carrying on in the same direction as in the beginning".

In whatever shape or form the Clash might carry on in the Eighties, it seemed doubtful that they would be able to recreate the passion and commitment of their earlier work, given such a rift between their two most powerful progenitors.

© Penny Valentine, 1983