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.

Classic Album Review: The Clash - Sandinista! (1980)

Following on from his recent Combat Rock review, Craig Stephen returns to the everythingsgonegreen lounge bar to soak up another Clash album … only this time, he asks the barman to pour him a triple.

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As a young laddie getting into The Clash for the first time, I recorded a friend’s tatty vinyl copy of (the triple LP) Sandinista! onto tape. Given the editing abilities afforded by the format I cut out a number of tracks and for many years would listen to what was effectively a double album. It was, in effect, what a sizeable number of critics had been saying since its release at the end of 1980: that Sandinista! was bloated and carried too many fillers.

Buying the reissued triple album on vinyl two years ago I was given an opportunity to hear, again, Sandinista! in its entirety: every waltz, dub version and children’s vocal take. In reviewing it, I decided to listen backwards, as it were, from the generally derided sixth side back, thus waiting longer for the hit singles and the heavyweight tracks like ‘Washington Bullets’.

It “starts”, therefore, with a curious side of versions, dubs and alternative takes. So … ‘Career Opportunities’ is sung by session man Mickey Gallagher’s young kids, with predictable results, ‘Silicone On Sapphire’ is the rather exotic name for the dub(ish) version of ‘Washington Bullets’, and ‘Living In Fame’ is ‘If Music Could Talk’ with Mikey Dread’s distinct take on it. It’s rounded off with an instrumental ‘Shepherds Delight’ (yes grammar nazis, it is apostrophe free) but the side is notable for the one true original, and a fine one at that, ‘Version City’.

Side five features a mix of the sublime and the ridiculous. The latter being provided in the form of ‘Mensforth Hill’, one of the most un-Clash songs put to vinyl, a version of ‘Something About England’ played backwards with overdubs. Strummer’s singing is barely comprehensible and its proto trippyness makes for a bizarre listen. And yet it points to a new direction The Clash could have taken if it had survived, and did adopt in some of the versions that would feature on B-sides and outtakes.

‘Lose This Skin’, as well meaning as it is, (about racial division) features Tymon Dogg on vocals and if he isn’t deliberately singing out of key, well …..

And yet, here are some of the strongest components of the album, in particular ‘Charlie Don’t Surf’ (a take on the new world order: “The reign of the superpowers must be over/ So many armies can’t free the earth/ Soon the rock will roll over/ Africa is choking on their coca colas”). ‘Kingston Advice’ is one of the understated gems of the entire work, and its close cousin ‘The Street Parade’ is heavy on calypso drums. These two tracks were just meant for each other. 

Side four contains heavyweights a go-go, beginning with ‘Police On My Back’, a fast and frenzied version of a very little known track by The Equals (yes, the ‘Baby Come Back’ lot). ‘The Call Up’, a rallying call to conscientious objectivism (It’s up to you not to heed the call up/ I don’t wanna die/ It’s up to you not to heed the call up/ I don’t wanna kill”), ‘Washington Bullets’, and finally ‘Broadway’.

The middle of the trio is the most political track of the album, a sign that punk hadn’t left the band entirely. Referencing Chile and the brutal and illegal overthrow of its democratically-elected leader Allende, and the failed CIA-initiated futile invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs (“those Washington bullets want Castro dead”). And yet ‘Washington Bullets’ also shows what resistance can do, in Nicaragua when the FSLN overthrew the Somoza regime. But if this is sounding all somewhat aggressive against America’s aggressive foreign policy, Strummer also chides the “Moscow bullets” fired in Afghanistan and the Chinese invasion of peaceful Tibet.

Dub Fiends and Political Animals

  

‘Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice)’, which kickstarts the third side, is notable for Strummer’s semi-slurred take on rap music, one of the band’s first forays into the genre, initiated by their visits to New York. It comes across in the same way as Debbie Harry did when rapping on ‘Rapture’ about the same time. Mick Jones’ ‘Up in Heaven (Not Only Here)’ is a critique of the many cheaply constructed, crime-ridden towers of London flats that is as relevant now as it was in 1980 in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster. “You can’t live in a home which should not have been built/ By the bourgeoise clerks who bear no guilt.” And rather ominously portends that the building will fall to the ground when the wind is too strong.

This side features ‘Corner Soul’, which begins with a radio excerpt from the Notting Hill Carnival and segues into ‘Let’s Go Crazy’, both harbouring Caribbean tendencies, while ‘The Sound of The Sinners’ is pure gospel that could have been recorded in the Bible Belt.

Bypassing ‘Rebel Waltz’, as to do otherwise would only result in unhelpful comments, the second side is on to an old Mose Allison number ‘Look Here’ and the Paul Simonon voiced ‘The Crooked Beat’, which reflects the bassist’s obsession with reggae. Soon turning, as they would regularly do, to another beat, ‘Somebody Got Murdered’ is the kind of raucous up and at ‘em track that reminds me of ‘Spanish Bombs’ from London Calling. It concludes with the magnificent reggae anthem ‘One More Time’ and its accompanying dub version. Remember, the original intention was to record an album entirely of reggae and dub in Jamaica, and the band likely achieved that ambition with a string of tracks in the genre. If you look for one, you’ll find a complete reggae or dub album within these 36 tracks.

And that leads us to the first side, and the most impressive, with two excellent singles, ‘The Magnificent Seven’ (clip below), and ‘Hitsville UK’ kicking it off. The former is all New York, pseudo-rap and souped-up funk. The lyrics appear to be a stream of consciousness that name-check all manner of historical figures and drops in lines such as “vacuum cleaner sucks up budgie” at odd points. It’s ostensibly about the working day, “Ring! Ring! It’s seven a.m.” is the opening holler and when our wage slave reaches the workplace “minutes drag and the hours jerk”. ‘Hitsville UK’ meanwhile, features Ellen Foley on main vocals along with Jones in a diatribe on the hit-making pop factory.

There’s a version of James Waynes’ 1951 blues cut ‘Junco Partner’, with Strummer back in his customary position; ‘Ivan Meets G.I. Joe’ is cold war disco, ‘The Leader’ explores the cult of personality and media sycophancy, all within one minute and 40 seconds, and ‘Something About England’ begins with plenty of piano and forlorn signing before Strummer gets into his stride.

You’ll have noticed I have breezed past some songs (and omitted some completely), but it would be impossible to delve into them all in great detail. Suffice to say there’s an enormous sway of styles and ambitions on the six sides, and that’s not to mention the occasional inter-song dialogues and other experimental tricks the band get up to.

Sandinista! isn’t, per se, a bloated album, as some commentators have long suggested. It has its flaws, of course; it would be virtually impossible for a triple not to dip in quality at some points. But the flaws are not in the triple album concept, more in the inclusion of say, half a dozen tracks that there must have been some ready-made substitutes for. ‘Career Opportunities’ sung by children?? Someone was having a laugh, but it wasn’t funny. And Tymon Dogg should never have been let near a microphone, but ‘Lose This Skin’ is his song and he’ll sing if he wants to.

But, you know, quite frankly, who gives a jellyfish’s family jewels for these slip ups, they’re as much a part of the concept as grandad’s missing teeth. And while there’s a case for, say, having all the dub and alternative versions corralled into a separate disk released sometime in 1981, this is what we have, and a little patience and commitment results in a pair of satisfied ears.  

Here's 'The Magnificent Seven':