The Clash – Fanzine Hemorrhage

I’ve recently come into a gaggle of older issues of NY Rocker, and thumbing through them, I’m even happier about my minor acquisitions than I’d thought I’d be. At least on the evidence presented by NY Rocker #18 from April/May 1979, this not-really-a-fanzine tabloid newspaper was even better in its earlier years than it would be a couple years hence. I’ve talked about issues from that later era here, here, here, here and here. And I’ll talk about other ones that sprang from ‘79/’80 in the weeks to come, as I traverse them. This shall take time. For now, let’s see what was happening in the world of underground NY/LA/SF/London during the Carter years.

First, there’s Howie Klein reporting from San Francisco. Sigh. I can’t throw a stick at a fanzine from this period without encountering the guy. If you’re not a Clash fan, and I’m not, it’s hard to wrestle with hyperbole such as Klein’s blather when he sees their 2/7/79 show in San Francisco: “This was undoubtedly one of the best shows ever seen in the Bay Area…..”. If you don’t know which side of the true punk vs. corporate schmuck divide Klein stood on – or at least which side he was (rightly) perceived to be on – there are these gems from the same piece: “Rock super-promoter Bill Graham – the only major concert promoter in the U.S. to give strong and consistent support to the new wave…” (Bill fucking Graham!!) and dissing the grass-roots punk/all-ages organization called New Youth who got The Clash to play this cheap, for-the-people gig in the first place. “…the band (got) involved with New Youth, a group of mostly idealistic (like starry-eyed at best, and in some cases, simply psycho) young fans who believe in non-profit punk rock gigs. So they got The Clash to commit themselves to doing a benefit for them at a deserted Jewish synagogue between the Peoples’ Temple and the Old Fillmore in the heart of San Francisco’s black ghetto. A cheap ticket price and the opportunity to see the band in an unseated funky venue…caused a dramatic slump in ticket sales in what should have been the band’s biggest and fastest sell-out. As it turned out, The Clash came pretty near to selling out anyway….but not before a lot of rock-biz upset between the Graham Organization, Epic Records and Tapes and the William Morris booking agency”.

The horror! You can see the sort of scene mechanics that actually stressed Klein out in 1979, and why he ended up being so utterly reviled by music-focused underground aesthetes at the time, unfair as it perhaps may have been, considering one’s perspective and degree of oppositional defiance.

More irony abounds in a Sandy Pearlman interview – he produced The Clash’s Give ‘Em Enough Rope – “The Clash themselves will do virtually nothing to make it. In other words, they will not accommodate themselves to the rotten, debased, commercial system of exploitation that currently exists. The Clash do not wish to make any compromises”. Totally! On the flipside is a paean by Doug Simmons to truly underground Boston band The Neighborhoods and their singer David Minehan. I didn’t much care for the band, once I finally heard them, but my 9th grade best friend Jon Grant had just moved to San Jose from Massachusetts, and his brother had been close friends with Minehan. I’d hear all about The Neighborhoods from Jon, and seriously, I felt pretty special at age 14 knowing a guy who had a brother who was friends with a guy in an actual performing punk band that I’d never heard.

Oh, and the Beach Boys stuff in this issue is just fantastic. There’s a Greg McLean interview with Carl and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, as well as a Harvey Kubernik sidebar about a recent BB book. McLean clearly isn’t a fan of Dennis Wilson: “his frequently crass and unexpected comments often cut Carl off mid-sentence, and he dropped the name of his new girlfriend, Christine McVie, whenever possible”. McLean retaliates and agitates them by only asking questions about Brian Wilson: where is he, tell me more about Brian etc. This does him no favor with the brothers. Dennis says, vis-a-vis the Dr. Eugene Landy thing, “Brian is loved dearly by all of us and us by him, and all that bullshit about him being manipulated is just….not in my experience…”. McLean then goes on to bait them further about Mike Love being an asshole (a certified fact, from what I understand), and then talks about a Beach Boys show at Radio City Music Hall in ‘79: “Between songs, Love babbled aimlessly, killing any sense of pace the show might have established. Mike Love looked old and foolish”. Everyone loves Mike Love, don’t they?

So this issue is absolutely packed, and I could write reams about each piece – but there are like, 20 pieces: The Shoes; a thing on young Boston and NY radio DJs and stations; Viv Stanshall; The Raincoats; The Only Ones; and a really early piece on The B-52s, circa their Rock Lobster 45, with great photos of a very young band and an interview by editor Andy Schwartz. Even so, NY Rocker would sometimes give space to mainstream music-lovers like Ken Barnes. He writes a thing about how much he loves disco, even in 1979 (the year of Disco Demolition Night), and says, perplexingly, “It seems to me that a lot of people are quite scared about disco, and they’re lashing back with unreasoning venom. An interesting observation by Mark Shipper pertains here – for years during the 70s rock lull, all the right fanzines clamored for the return of fast, exciting beat music kids could dance to. Now it’s here and kids dig it…but because it doesn’t follow the form the clamorers grew up with, they’ve turned on it viciously. Ironic, wouldn’t you say?”. I mean…..that’s one way to look at it?

Finally, and I feel like I’m skimming here, but there are great reviews of recent “rock concerts” by The Contortions, Nico, The Knack (who are absolutely buried by Don Waller), and The Ramones with their special opening band Lester Bangs’ Birdland. NY Rocker #18 comes to an outstanding close with Jeffery Vogel’s fake “TV Guide” listings that shit mercilessly on every upcoming show and on every NY band – especially the Dead Boys. Now that’s some vitriolic mirth-making that we at Fanzine Hemorrhage can get behind, anytime & anywhere, even from 46 years ago.

Here’s another issue of this 1980 English fanzine – I talked about Issue #4 here. “Marts” and “Tim” are the editors, and it looks like this is a Summer 1980 thing, which means the short interview with Joy Division and Ian Curtis was done mere weeks before he killed himself in May 1980, and this was printed before they had a chance to acknowledge it. Ironically, Curtis asks here, rhetorically, “Why does everyone say our music is gloomy and doomy?”. Poor fella.

You have to imagine that Tim and Marts were excellent at slapping backs and greasing palms, given the access they were provided to “bigger names” for their small regional fanzine The Story So Far #3. For instance, The Clash have just come back from the US, and London Calling has just come out. I certainly appreciate the band providing this much attention to a small fanzine; however, what came out of their mouths was often just narcissistic BS and it totally soured me on the band from an early age. This happened to be late, late in their run, but man – I remember listening to San Francisco’s commercial “rock of the 80s” new wave station The Quake around 1984 or so, and a drunken Joe Strummer either called in or stumbled into the studio, I can’t remember which. He proceeded to give an over-the-top master class in unbridled self-admiration, conceit and ego, ranting about how he was takin’ The Clash back to their roots, how his music was incredibly important for the kids, and how the new album he was working on – it would be Cut The Crap – was going to be a major, major work. It was highly entertaining, to be fair.

So are these Mick Jones quotes from the Clash interview in The Story So Far #3:

“America is dying for the sort of music we play. Dying for it. Going berserk, right…We’re probably one of the last hopes you’ve got, really”.

Better still: “I personally asked Gary Numan, who must be a quite a simple chap really, to explain what the fuck he’s on about. Because we can stick two roadies in fuckin silly pyramids and make them dance around the stage, and we can get a load of fuckin big lights at the back to make us look better….explain what you’re on about, my man. It’s your time to do it…be plain, the kids can’t understand you. They only buy your records because ours ain’t out, but when they are out, you can go to fuckin hell”.

Mick Jones, ladies and gentlemen. The guy who’d be in Big Audio Dynamite a few years later.

Gary Numan kinda takes it on the chin across the entire issue. There’s an interview with Daniel Miller from Mute Records, who’s just come off being “The Normal” but hasn’t quite hit paydirt by signing Depeche Mode yet. In it. one of the editors hand-scrawls something about how Gary Numan’s Tubeway Army has “ripped off Daniel Miller”. Perhaps. Now these guys love The Cramps; it appears to have been total mania at their recent shows in the UK, and the editors see them as the personification of everything great about America, as do I. As should we all.

Finally, there’s an “unedited” interview with The Mo-Dettes. I’ve read interviews with them before and they were pretty loopy, “taking the piss” sorts of talks. They adored going after other bands in a way that no one does any longer. Here’s a feisty quote from Jane in the band: “Rough Trade’s a bunch of hippies. They’re a load of stupid intellectuals with too many ‘isms’. It’s all these feminists. I’d include The Raincoats in the feminist bag…I think their music stinks”. Apparently there’s a Mo-Dettes flexidisc included in this issue, but mine’s just two blank pieces of orange tape on the inside front cover, sort of like what a gallery wall looks like after an art heist. Not that I’m comparing the two, mind ya.