(This is not a) Classic Album Review: The Clash - Cut The Crap (1985)

Craig Stephen continues his extensive overview of The Clash and its wider musical legacy (see multiple posts about “solo” Joe Strummer and The Clash elsewhere on the blog):

And this is not a typical album review. You kind of can’t with something so universally despised by critics, dismissed by Clash fans, and even rejected by its creator. Cut the Crap truly was a disaster of epic proportions, a stinker extraordinaire that as a Clash fan myself I’ve only ever given one or two spins as the headaches proved too much.

Instead, this is the story behind the making of the worst punk record. The personality clashes, the sackings, the accelerated decline of the world’s best rock band of the time and the incredible mistakes propelled by egos and insecurity.

The decline of the Clash began, perhaps, in late 1982 when drummer Topper Headon, by then a caricature of a human being due to his Colombian-scale consumption of heroin, was sacked. A year later the band’s main songwriter Mick Jones was gone too. The two musicians in the band had left. And manager Bernie Rhodes, who could be credited with the band’s early success but also with sowing division, was now back at the helm. Joe Strummer turned to Rhodes’ ruthless situationist streak to cut out all the superfluous, superficial, middle class BS.

Pete Howard was first in, replacing Headon’s replacement Terry Chimes, while Jones was still in the band. Howard would soon take a call from a wired Strummer telling him he’d “sacked the stoned cunt” and demanding to know if he was on Jones’ or Strummer’s side. Howard, clearly knowing where the power lay, affirmed he was pro-Joe. Nick Sheppard, once the guitarist with pseudo punk band The Cortinas, was roped in first, followed by Gregory White whose name wasn’t rock’n’roll enough for the band so became Vince – after Vince Taylor. They were both replacements for Mick Jones.

The trigger for the album which was initially called Out of Control was the 1984 tour that featured several new tracks. These gigs signalled a return to punk rock, or Rebel Rock as it would be dubbed by the band. There would be no dub tracks, no soul-fun workouts, no kids singing … it would be all about the music, and they’d only play with Les Pauls.

The Clash were now a band but not a unit. Strummer and Paul Simonon the only other surviving member, were the new Clash; Howard, Sheppard and White were self-professed guns for hire, taking a weekly wage. And in time even Strummer and Simonon would become secondary to Rhodes’ inflated sense of worth.

A mini tour of California in January 1984 played to smaller venues than the stadiums that they had the year before, and was generally regarded as successful. While the classic Clash songbook prevailed, there was space for new songs like ‘Sex Mad War’, ‘Three Card Trick’ and ‘This is England’. A particularly impressive track, ‘In The Pouring Rain’ (it’s on the Future is Unwritten soundtrack), was aired at some gigs during 1984 but wasn’t included on the eventual album, presumably because it just didn’t fit.

With the return of a punk sound came the unwanted return of gobbing. Which at a Brixton Academy gig in March 1984 so incensed Strummer he threatened to kill someone. And wasn’t joking about it.

Strummer was sporting a Mohican – not quite à la The Exploited - and there was a militaristic ambience about this new act, including calling the new members recruits who were part of a platoon, rather than a band. There were dictums left, right, and centre and Howard equated it to being in a religious cult like the Moonies.

On a 10-day tour of Italy in the autumn of 1984 in aid of the Italian Communist Party, Strummer was absent from rehearsals and there was a single soundcheck, in which they hashed through ‘Be Bop A Lula’ before heading to the pub. Strummer was reportedly drinking two or three bottles of brandy a day.

It was a difficult time for Strummer after hearing that his mother and been diagnosed with terminal cancer, on top of his father dying at the beginning of the year. This led to the postponement of the recording of the appropriately titled Out of Control. With Strummer looking after his ailing mother, Rhodes took “complete control” and that was where it all began to go wrong. The recording of the album involved session musicians with actual members sidelined. Rhodes tinkered with it to his delight … to inevitable results.

Meantime, the band did a busking tour of the north of England in May 1985, stalking Welsh rockers The Alarm from gig to gig just to wind them up. The end came at a festival in Athens, Greece, sharing a bill with The Cure, The Stranglers, Depeche Mode and Culture Club, in July 1985.

 There was still a single and album to release, and due to a legal agreement the record label couldn’t avoid its duties even though they probably would have been keen to just ditch it and hope it went away. Which is what Strummer felt as he had left for Spain before ‘This Is England’ had been released as a single in September 1985. In Granada, Strummer produced an album for punk band 091 and worked with Spanish popstars Radio Futura. He even bought a Dodge car to drive around and eventually dump, and film-maker Nick Hall was so intrigued as to what happened with it he made an entire documentary around it, called I Need A Dodge. The film was of course a bit more about a mere car owned by a rock star: it told the tale of why Strummer went to Spain and what he did there.

Cut the Crap was released in November 1985 and as predicted by everyone was without exception derided. It was a messy, punk’n’hip hop ramble with incoherent, childlike lyrics and inane chants like We Are The Clash. None of it was coherent, none of it was pleasant listening, and the electronic drums were unbearable… And it really wasn’t punk rock. Only ‘This is England’, which was a brutal take-down of Thatcherism, greed and war, and ‘North and South’ escaped some of the savaging.

Strummer told his bandmates he was going to pen a hand-written admission of guilt in 1930s Soviet-style lettering saying he made the wrong decision. It was intended to go in all the still influential music weeklies such as NME, Sounds and Melody Maker, as well as The Guardian and wherever else. It never did appear.

It is easy to consider that this was a disastrous period for Strummer, Simonon and The Clash legacy, which was certainly tarnished by the misadventure but initially the band seemed to be doing something right. They were playing some good gigs and festivals, and the new songs didn’t sound like the lumpy, degenerate, half-baked monstrosities that they would become in Rhodes’ hands. The return to basics project after stadium tours and hob-nobbing with Michael Jackson’s manager and film stars was the right decision to make at the time. It was the execution that failed. It was tainted by Rhodes’ control freakery, the impact of family issues and bad decisions. Dealt with professionally, Cut the Crap or Out of Control as it more likely would have been called if Rhodes hadn’t had so much power, could well have been a decent album, made by people that actually wanted to make it work. One day someone will release the original demos.

'This Is England' ...