The Gollums gig was originally booked for local band 'Patrick'...who eventually 'supported' The Clash that evening.

That was a mental gig in a tiny basement room!!

Then it was onto The Drum Club for the final show of the day....... i was 16 at the time, i saw the clash 3 times in one day.....life somehow was never the same again!!

Cheers Dave

I saw The Clash play in the Carlton Bar at Sunderland Poly.

At the time, I was a student living nearby, and I'd walked up to have a pint.

Normally, you'd just stroll in. This night, it was chaos, with people milling about outside and the door shut.

I managed to ask Hazel (possibly Heather) who ran the bar what was going on by shouting through the glass. She yelled back: "The Clash are playing."

The place was packed out  and she wasn't letting  any more in.

Not wanting to miss it, a few of us managed to sneak in round the back through a fire door and sure enough, there was Joe, standing on a table singing. No amplification, obviously, and the drummer was playing on the back of a chair.

Can't remember what they played - although Janie Jones rings a bell - but it was certainly a memorable night.

Either later that night or the next night I also saw them at The Bunker, where Strummer wasn't impressed when a lad climbed on stage and tried to join in. I think he was pretty promptly shoved back where he came from.

As a footnote, the same kid, a student, was killed a while later when he fell out of an upstairs window of a house on Tunstall Road, round the back of Ashbrooke cricket ground.

Phil Smith - philip.smith4[a]virgin.net

Sunderland Echo

May 11, 1985
Clash rock The Salem

One of the biggest punk bands in the world set out on a very low-key tour armed only with acoustic guitars and a pair of drumsticks. Patrick Lavelle recalls Saturday, May 11, 1985, to Remember When The Clash (pictured below) visited Sunderland.

THEY had played to tens of thousands at concerts in the United States and at least half a million in a Rock Against Racism rally in London in the late 1970s.

And in the 1980s their raw, energetic album, London Calling, was voted the best album of the decade by Rolling Stone magazine.

So what was Joe Strummer and other members of The Clash doing in the Salem Hotel pub in Hendon in May, 1985? "They were having a few drinks," says Marty Yule, one-time drummer with Sunderland’s most well-known punk band, The Toy Dolls.

"They were on a busking tour playing venues across the country and they were in Sunderland for a few days, kipping down wherever they could."

The Clash, anti-establishment, anti-racist, anti-violence and anti-commercialisation, were going "back to basics". The band never played live on Top of the Pops and frontman Strummer didn’t like doing autographs. The Clash hated the "celebrity" side of the music business. When they embarked on a national "busking" tour everything was low-key and only those in the know found out where they were playing.

On Saturday, May 11, 1985, The Clash played Gollums Bar in the Mowbray Park Hotel and The Drum Club in Genevieves (The Mayfair in Newcastle Road) that night. But Marty, who now runs Hot Rats record shop on the corner of Stockton Road and Olive Street, remembers The Clash playing The Bunker in Stockton Road in the same week. "I was living in Ashbrooke at the time and my mate Jerome Dagg came round and shouted up to my window ‘The Clash are in the Carlton Bar’. "I couldn’t believe it, but they were there, having a couple of pints."

The Carlton Bar, Sunderland’s punk rockers may remember, was inside Langham Tower, one of the then Polytechnic’s buildings, and attracted students and non-students alike. "The Clash were really down to earth. They were talking to everyone, very approachable," Marty says.

In their few days in Sunderland The Clash did play The Bunker, says Marty, but the gig was cut short. "At the time Alan Christie was the keyholder for The Bunker and the place got packed out once it was known The Clash were there.

"The only problem was The Bunker didn’t have a licence for live concerts, so they had to be called off the stage. There were fears we might get closed down." During their time in the North East - they also played in Gateshead and outside a gig in Newcastle by The Alarm, says Marty - a local photographer, Gerry McCulloch, captured them on stage and off. "Gerry took some great photographs," says Marty. "I think he still has them but he’s now living and working in the film business in London."

Sunderland Echo - May 11, 1985
Clash rock The Salem

One of the biggest punk bands in the world set out on a very low-key tour armed only with acoustic guitars and a pair of drumsticks. Patrick Lavelle recalls Saturday, May 11, 1985, to Remember When The Clash (pictured below) visited Sunderland.