Classic Album Revisited: The Clash - The People’s Hall (1982/2022)

Craig Stephen on the bonus album released when Combat Rock gained its obligatory 40^th anniversary deluxe spurs in 2022:

Here at everythingsgonegreen we really need no excuse to review a Clash album … even when we’ve done it before. So, yes, I have reviewed Combat Rock, the last great Clash album, and you can read that here.

But the album’s re-release comes with an additional collection, The People’s Hall, recorded around the same time, but has been kept under wraps until now.

People’s Hall has been dubbed a cash-in and a luxury item for collectors. I’d say otherwise. Having played this several times I’d say it is a collection that stands on its own. Yes, it is a mixed bag and the snapshots of chitter chatter from the crowd outside a gig (‘Outside Bonds’) could really have been ditched, but that’s the exception to the rule. This is well worth buying even if you have Combat Rock already. 

Here's the condensed backstory: in December 1980 The Clash released the beguiling and beautiful triple album Sandinista! and in May and June of the following year played what would become a 17-show residency at New York’s Bond’s Casino to promote it. Those shows have gone down in musical history.

Before a tour of Asia, the band rehearsed and recorded at The People’s Hall in London, from where 11 of the tracks were recorded (the exception being ‘Outside Bonds’, obviously). It’s the bridging period between Sandinista! and Combat Rock, and you can discern the development going on. Some of the tracks were re-recorded for Combat Rock or ended up on B-sides; some were taken no further.

‘This Is Radio Clash’ was released as a single at the end of 1981. This version, which effectively opens People’s Hall, contains slightly different lyrics. Apart from that it doesn’t differ greatly from the single version. But the original version of ‘Know Your Rights’ veers greatly from the Combat Rock take. While all the crucial elements are there Strummer sings the lyrics straight, but on the finished version he sounds more mocking, and the guitars are edgier. I’d say they tidied it up pretty neatly for the version that the world knows now and gave it a new interpretation.

 Among the highlights is an extended and looser version of ‘Sean Flynn’ (Errol Flynn’s son who disappeared in south-east Asia while working as a photojournalist). As I listen to this particular track I feel I am being transported to the rail tracks and fields in rural Thailand where the photo session for the Combat Rock cover was taken. It’s magnificent, it feels as if The Doors are in Saigon having a jam session and letting it all out. 

‘Futura 2000’ draws from sessions with New York’s graffiti artist of the same name, revealing some raw and ready proto hip hop and contains one straight bassline played endlessly to great effect. ‘Radio One’ allows reggae great Mikey Dread to do his own, inimitable thing, ‘Midnight To Stevens’ is a tribute to bonkers producer Guy Stevens, and there’s tracks like ‘Long Time Jerk’ and ‘First Night Back In London’ that were relegated to B-sides when they deserved much better. Add in the instrumental ‘He Who Dares or Is Tired’ and you have something of a party punch. That was never served up to revellers.

At the same time The Clash worked with The Beat’s resident toaster Ranking Roger for versions of ‘Rock the Casbah’ and ‘Red Angel Dragnet’, both of which were omitted from People’s Hall and issued as a stand-alone single to fleece more money out of Clash fans.

People’s Hall was a working project for a new album but Combat Rock was the second life of a rolling project, with Mick Jones’ intention to have the band’s fifth album stretch to over an hour and be called Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg. The Clash were always drawn to different sounds and their love of reggae is renowned but this album would have been expanded to soak in Jones’ love for New York funk and hip-hop, and dub. 

The band and its mercurial/autocratic manager Bernie Rhodes instantly dismissed it. Jones was gutted and barely attended the remix sessions, which is understandable as he would be witnessing another producer, Glyn Johns, slash and burn his cherished work to create what we have now as Combat Rock. Rat Patrol has since been bootlegged to hell and back but it still needs to be given a full and official release. Why it hasn’t is a mystery given so much unreleased Clash material has already been resurrected.

Nevertheless, while you wait, indulge in this intriguing bonus album which, despite what some critics might say, offers another side of The Clash and takes the listener to another time and world, to the emerging hip-hop scene, to post-war Vietnam, and to … well, wherever you want to be.