Passion Is A Fashion The Real Story of The Clash Book

Go way back with these guys. I remember still being on my learner's permit when Sandinista! came out, so I had to throw my oblivious mother in the car for the drive to the record store. I even saw them live—only a couple gigs before they fired Mick Jones, so just under the wire. But it's been ages since I've listened to them. Something about the Clash—their rousing, communist-cell single-mindedness, their asexuality, I don't know what—put me off once I left my teens. Reading Pat Gilbert's (very good) biography coincides with my first real immersion in this band in ages, and I think I'm finally ready to come back into the fold, because these guys are unbelievable.

Great bands feel the need to deepen their roots at some point. As punks, the Clash couldn't go the usual route of the blues or folk—that's for hippies, for christ sake—so they turned to reggae, which led them to dub, and turned to funk, which led them to early rap; by the end, their sound was a harbinger of later hip-hop production. (Gilbert reminds us that Grandmaster Flash was an opening act, and reveals that the young Beastie Boys were fans.) Sandinista! and some of the weirder things on Combat Rock, which were a stretch at the time, make a lot more sense once you've heard Paul's Boutique or a little Odd Future. Of course, they were primarily rock and rollers, and listening to them again now, I hear fluency and character in their record-making—let's say genius—that's as good as the Stones were at their peak.

Gilbert makes it clear that likable prima-donna Jones was the biggest talent, but his heart is clearly with Joe Strummer, whom he got drunk with and whom people loved the way some soldiers love their platoon leader. Spend a half hour so with some of the video clips from the band's 1981 stand at Bond's Casino in New York and you may love him, too.