The Clash “Give ‘em Enough Rope” Album Reviewed
OCT 9TH, 2022
It’s 1978, I’m still walking up to the Kings Road from my flat in Fulham but by now I have purchased those black bondage trousers I had been ogling from “Boy”, the second ever punk clothing item I ever bought, first was a pair of furry leopard skin trousers which came from a stall in High St Ken Market I was 16 at the time and super skinny so as I bulked out a bit by 17 and the skin tight trousers were now super tight so I gave them to my friend Graham…..he now lives in the USA but came home a few years ago to be presented with a box of punk clothes that his mum had kept in the loft and there they were in top quality but sadly Graham had also grown out of them after 40 years! All the rest of my gear was home made. I found a green boiler suit splashed paint on it and wrote a few band names, great for a gig. I had a leather flying jacket, painted band names and on the back had ROXY club painted with metal studs along the painted ROXY. Other items all came from my dad’s wardrobe……he was in the oil business so was away a lot, in the flat he had a collection of sixties suits and a number of white shirts. So I would take the jackets and add chains n safety pins, the trousers were straight leg so great. I also nicked his white shirts, slashed them and held them together with the ubiquitous safety pin and yet again wrote slogans/band names on them. I was probably the only person in the Vortex wearing a Van Huesen shirt! Strangely the old man never questioned me on his disappearing attire, he had put on a bit of weight between the mid sixties and the late 70’s so the clothes would never have fitted him…..I presume he also wouldn’t have thought that a scruffy punk rocker would have been wearing his sharp suits, I made sure I never wore any of his things while he was around to avoid a scolding.
The good thing to report was between the first album and the second one I had now seen The Clash three times, prior to the first album I was going to see them twice, both of which were cancelled after the Grundy fiasco. First night was the Rainbow in London, brilliant night busting up the cinema seats so we had a pogoing place at the front. Next was the Rock Against Racism gig, joined the march right at the beginning at Trafalgar Square off we all set to march to Victoria Park from Central London to the East End. We had one song, bit lame as we were going to a musical protest festival…..it went like this:
“The National Front is a Nazi Front……….Smash the National Front”
Actually quite catchy but what me and my group of friends didn’t know was the march was over five miles and two hours long! After chanting for about 40 minutes the rest of the walk was a long drawn out effort to reach the promised land of The Clash…..when we got there near the head of the legion we found that the place was rammed full of people who had taken the tube!!!
Tired we got there just in time to see Xray Specs take the stage so we shoved our way to the front and pogoed away, my main memory was of Polly dressed like my nan in a twin set, she also had a turban on which she unravelled to show a baldish head, it looked like she had tried to cut her own hair but left loads of tufts…..sadly a flag to some of the mental health issues she was experiencing I would guess.
When the Clash came on the place was rammed, you couldn’t move an inch or get anywhere near the front if you had gone to the back to get some food which we had. So they came on and we jostled our way forwards to a reasonable position centre stage. I know everyone says what a classic gig it was but I remember we were all a bit disappointed, looking back it might be something to do with our little band gone massive. It might have been the show of solidarity with Jimmy Pursey coming on to sing with the band, we had come to see the Clash not Sham.
The last time I saw them was at the Music Machine. Support were the Specials and the American duo Suicide who I loved but was one of the few that night to do so. I remember arriving early to find punk face about town Donald standing outside as always trying to hustle something, to be fair to him he was very much in the van guard of the look that became the punk image of London postcards, black studded leather jacket with a big band logo on the back, white bondage trousers with straps and the classic bum warmer accessory. Donald was also memorable as he had the sort of face you usually see chiselled in a medieval church and can still be found around north London selling a spare ticket or two. The gig was magnificent, the iconic backdrop and the boys with their military punk gear, the same theme but individual. The music was everything you would expect, short, sharp and classic tune after classic ripping out like a machine gun.
So by November 78 we were all keyed up waiting for the new Clash offering. There was a lot of negativity in the air before it’s release mainly due to Blue Oyster Clut’s Sandy Pearlman being shipped in to do the production. Despite the fact that the band had been issuing a series of brilliant seven inches since the last offering. Come the day I walked into Beggars Banquet record shop in Fulham and Alistair the shop manager had a copy on the turn table, as Joe’s voice blasted round the shop I left with my very brightly coloured LP off home to absorb the content.
First impressions were it was a lush slick production, gone was the rawness of the previous platter. The songs were longer so they had more of a traditional structure, on The Clash they were just spat out. Saying that the first three track just fly off the starting block Safe European Home, Civil War and the albums stand out track Tommy Gun just hit you right in the face. After that it started to drop off, Drug Squad was a wonder off into a different style, a hint of things to come. Last track on side one Last Gang In Town is slower than we have expected from punk at a medium pace and probably doesn’t suit Joe’s voice which Pearlman had issues with, if you sped this up and cut it down from 5 minutes to 3 you might well have a Clash classic. Flipping over the record and side two beginnings with Guns on the roof a great song but doesn’t leap out at you again due to the pace. Gun Stabbing Time is the most American in sound, the saxophone gives it a very Springsteen vibe……this bit of Americana is balanced off by Mick’s very English delivery on his song Stay Free, not nearly as strong a song as The Prisoner which was only a B side. Penultimate track was Cheapskates which seemed a bit of a filler as did the All the young punks with it’s bubblegum chorus.
I remember being really let down by this LP. Gone was the aggressive edge, the rapid fire two minutes velocity attack had been replace by 4 minutes rock designed to appeal to the US FM audience. What made it even more of a let down was 78 was a brilliant year for the band on vinyl. An album which included Clash City Rockers, Jail Guitar Doors, White Man in Hammersmith Palais and The Prisoner along side European Home, Civil War and Tommy Gun with Drug Squad, faster Last Gangs and Guns on the Roof could have been a classic…….It would have meant not having Jail and The Prisoner as B sides but some of the selection that made it to Rope would have made good B’s.
Relistening to Rope now and I have similar feeling, I am less worried about the production as I think it makes the album more listenable to than the previous garage band sound which I find you have to be in the right mood to listen to. It starts with three great songs and then starts going down, with side 2 being substantially less exciting. Even a better track listing would have helped rather than bunching the best songs together.
This album didn’t get that many plays on my newly acquired very flashy music centre….actually it wasn’t that flashy but my step dad was upgrading and his old Sony became my pride and joy for the next four years, it was very cool in 1978 to have a music centre. It I wanted to listen to the Clash that year I had to get my singles collection out, anyway there were bands like The Banshees and The Antz who were doing something slightly different to the norm and playing venues where you could see the sweat on their brow…….although I don’t think Steve, Kenny, John or Andy Warren were ever so uncool as to perspire.
78 times were changing, our little group of friends had become a legion of angry young men. Gone was the general comradery where you would see someone with a Ruts badge on and go up to chat about where they had seen the band and ask what they were like. Now we had groups of people standing together for protection as a fight was likely to break out between band fan rivals or other youth culture celebrants. The punk explosion was now sending out fragments of creative shrapnel across a musical kaleidoscope. One night I actually went to a disco, something a punk would never do, it wasn’t exactly Saturday Night Fever but a little place in Soho called Billy’s where on the unfashionable Tuesday night some people had taken it over for a “Bowie Night” it wasn’t the first time I had heard a Kraftwerk record but it was the first time I realised you could dance to those German industrial sounds.
Walking home from Billy’s in the West End to my flat in Fulham, about an hour or so as no cab would drive back to a working class area like Fulham as they had little chance of picking up a local fare (how times have changed), I could sense that times were changing. Punk was moving in two directions between the hard core fans and the Art School set…..as I walked through the quiet streets of a city where everything was closed by 11pm I had loads of time to reflect on the future of music, were the Clash finished, had there day gone……well only they could answer that so I just had to wait for the next album to appear.
