Acoustic harmonies
Live in Amsterdam| The Clash | |
|---|---|
 The Clash performing in Oslo in 1980. Left to right: Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, and Paul Simonon. | |
| Background information | |
| Origin | London, England |
| Genres | Punk rock |
| Years active | 1976–1986 |
| Labels | CBS |
| Associated acts | The 101'ers; London SS; Generation X; Big Audio Dynamite; Havana 3am; The Latino Rockabilly War; The Pogues; The Mescaleros; Carbon/Silicon; The Good, the Bad and the Queen |
| Website | www.theclash.com |
| Former members | |
| Mick Jones Keith Levene Paul Simonon Terry Chimes Joe Strummer Rob Harper Nicky "Topper" Headon Pete Howard Nick Sheppard Vince White | |
The Clash were an English punk band that formed in 1976 as part of the original wave of British punk rock. Along with punk, they experimented with reggae, ska, dub, funk, rap, dance and rockabilly. For most of their recording career, The Clash consisted of Joe Strummer (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Mick Jones (lead guitar, vocals), Paul Simonon (bass, backing vocals, occasional lead vocals) and Nicky "Topper" Headon (drums, percussion). Headon left the group in 1982, and internal friction led to Jones's departure the following year. The group continued with new members, but finally disbanded in early 1986.
The Clash were a major success in the UK from the release of their debut album, The Clash, in 1977. Their third album, London Calling, released in the UK in December 1979, brought them popularity in the United States when it came out there the following month. Critically acclaimed, it was declared the best album of the 1980s a decade later by Rolling Stone magazine.
The Clash's politicised lyrics, musical experimentation and rebellious attitude had a far-reaching influence on rock, alternative rock in particular. They became widely referred to as "The Only Band That Matters", originally a promotional slogan introduced by the group's record label, CBS. In January 2003 the band—including original drummer Terry Chimes—were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked The Clash number 30 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
Before The Clash's founding, the band's future members were active in different parts of the London music scene. John Graham Mellor sang and played rhythm guitar in the pub rock act The 101'ers, which formed in 1974. By the time The Clash came together two years later, he had already abandoned his original stage name, "Woody" Mellor, in favour of "Joe Strummer", a reference to his rudimentary strumming skills on the ukulele as a busker in the London Underground. Mick Jones played guitar in legendary protopunk band London SS, which rehearsed for much of 1975 without ever playing a live show and recording only a single demo. London SS was managed by Bernard Rhodes, a sometime associate of impresario Malcolm McLaren and a friend of the band McLaren managed, the Sex Pistols. Jones and his bandmates became friendly with Sex Pistols Glen Matlock and Steve Jones, who would assist them as they tried out potential new members. Among those who auditioned for London SS without making the cut were Paul Simonon, who tried out as a vocalist, and drummer Terry Chimes. Nicky Headon drummed with the band for a week, then quit.
After London SS broke up in early 1976, Rhodes continued as Jones's manager. In February, Jones saw the Sex Pistols perform for the first time: "You knew straight away that was it, and this was what it was going to be like from now on. It was a new scene, new values—so different from what had happened before. A bit dangerous." At the instigation of Rhodes, Jones contacted Simonon in March, suggesting he learn an instrument so he could join the new band Jones was organising Soon Jones, Simonon on bass, Keith Levene on guitar and "whoever we could find really to play the drums" were rehearsing. In late May, Chimes was asked to audition and became the band's full-time drummer.
The act was still searching for a lead singer. Chimes recalls one Billy Watts (who "seemed to be, like, nineteen or eighteen then, as we all were") handling the duties for a time. Rhodes had his eye on Strummer, with whom he made exploratory contact. Jones and Levene had both seen him perform and were impressed as well. Strummer, for his part, was primed to make the switch. In April, he had taken in the opening act for one of his band's gigs. That act was the Sex Pistols. "I knew something was up," Strummer later explained,
so I went out in the crowd which was fairly sparse. And I saw the future—with a snotty handkerchief—right in front of me. It was immediately clear. Pub rock was, "Hello, you bunch of drunks, I'm gonna play these boogies and I hope you like them." The Pistols came out that Tuesday evening and their attitude was "Here's our tunes, and we couldn't give a flying fuck whether you like them or not. In fact, we're gonna play them even if you fucking hate them."
On 30 May, Rhodes and Levene met surreptitiously with Strummer after a 101'ers gig. Rhodes gave him 48 hours to make up his mind whether he wanted to join the new band that would "rival the Pistols". When Rhodes rang him up a day early, demanding an immediate answer, Strummer agreed. Simonon later remarked, "Once we had Joe on board it all started to come together. Chimes did not take to him at first: "He was like twenty-two or twenty-three or something that seemed 'old' to me then. And he had these retro clothes and this croaky voice". Simonon came up with the band's name after they had briefly dubbed themselves the Weak Heartdrops and the Psychotic Negatives. He later explained the name's origin: "It really came to my head when I started reading the newspapers and a word that kept recurring was the word 'clash', so I thought 'The Clash, what about that,' to the others. And they and Bernard, they went for it."
After rehearsing with Strummer for less than a month, The Clash made their debut on 4 July 1976, supporting the Sex Pistols at the Black Swan in Sheffield. The band apparently wanted to make it on-stage before their rivals in The Damned—another London SS spinoff—made their own scheduled debut two days later. The Clash would not play in front of an audience again for another five weeks. Levene was becoming disaffected with his position in the group. At the Black Swan, he approached the Sex Pistols' lead singer, John Lydon (then going by Johnny Rotten), and suggested they get a band together if the Pistols ever broke up.
The night after their debut, the band members along with most of the Sex Pistols and much of the rest of London's "inner circle" of punks showed up at Dingwalls club to attend a concert by New York's leading punk rock band, the Ramones. Afterward "came the first example of the rivalry-induced squabbling that was to dog the punk scene and undermine any attempts to promote a spirit of unity among the bands involved." Simonon got into a scuffle with J.J. Burnel, the bass player of The Stranglers. A slightly older band, The Stranglers were publicly identified with the punk scene, but were not part of the "inner circle" centred on the Sex Pistols
With Rhodes insisting that the band not perform live again until they were much tighter, The Clash rehearsed intensely over the following month. Strummer and Jones shared most of the writing duties—"Joe would give me the words and I would make a song out of them", Jones later said. Sometimes they would meet in the office over their Camden rehearsal studio to collaborate directly. According to a later description of Strummer's, "Bernie [Rhodes] would say, 'An issue, an issue. Don't write about love, write about what's affecting you, what's important."Jackson Pollock" look—played before a small, invitation-only audience in their Camden studio. Among those in attendance was Sounds critic Giovanni Dadamo. His review described the band as a "runaway train...so powerful, they're the first new group to come along who can really scare the Sex Pistols shitless". Strummer took the lead vocals on the majority of songs; in some cases he and Jones shared the lead. Once the band began recording, Jones would rarely have a solo lead on more than one song per album, but he would wind up responsible for two of the group's biggest hits. On 13 August, The Clash—sporting a paint-spattered "
On 29 August, The Clash and Manchester's Buzzcocks opened for the Sex Pistols at the Screen on the Green—The Clash's first public performance since 4 July. The triple bill is seen as pivotal to the British punk scene's crystallisation into a movement. In early September, Levene was kicked out of The Clash. Strummer would claim that Levene's dwindling interest in the band owed to his supposedly abundant use of speed, a charge Levene has denied. (Levene and Lydon would form Public Image Ltd. in 1978.) On 21 September, The Clash performed publicly for the first time without Levene at another seminal concert: the 100 Club Punk Special, sharing the bill with the Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Subway Sect.[25] Chimes left in late November; he was briefly replaced by Rob Harper as The Clash toured in support of the Sex Pistols during December's Anarchy Tour.
By the turn of the year, punk had become a major media phenomenon in the UK. On 25 January 1977, The Clash signed to CBS Records for £100,000, a remarkable amount for a band that had played a total of about thirty gigs and almost none as a headliner. As Clash historian Marcus Gray describes, the "band members found themselves having to justify [the deal] to both the music press and to fans who picked up on the critics' muttered asides about The Clash having 'sold out' to the establishment." Mark Perry, founder of the leading London punk periodical, Sniffin' Glue, let loose with what he would later call his "big quote": "Punk died the day The Clash signed to CBS." As one band associate described it, the deal "was later used as a classic example of the kind of contract that no group should ever sign—the group had to pay for their own tours, recordings, remixes, artwork, expenses...."
Mickey Foote, who worked as a technician at their concerts, was hired to produce The Clash's debut album, and Terry Chimes was drafted back for the recording. The band's first single, "White Riot", was released in March 1977; the album, The Clash, came out the following month. Filled with fiery punk tracks, it also presaged the many eclectic turns the band would take with its cover of the reggae song "Police and Thieves". "[A]midst the Sex Pistols' inertia in the first half of 1977, the Clash found themselves as the flag-wavers of the punk rock consciousness", according to music journalist and former punk musician John Robb. Though both the single and album charted well in the UK—"White Riot" reached number 34, The Clash number 12—CBS refused to release either in the United States, saying that the sound was not “radio friendly”. A US version of the album with a modified track listing was released in 1979, after the UK original became the best-selling import album of all time in the United States. Chimes left the band again soon after the recording, so only Simonon, Jones and Strummer were featured on the album's cover, and Chimes was credited as "Tory Crimes". In the documentary Westway to the World, Jones referred to him as one of "the best drummers around". Chimes, who had no great wish to make a career from music, said, "The point was that I wanted one kind of life—they wanted another, and why are we working together, if we want completely different things?"
The band went through several drummers, with Jones handling the duties for a time. They finally recruited Nicky Headon, who had played briefly with Jones's London SS two years before. Headon was nicknamed "Topper" by Simonon, who felt he resembled the Topper comic book character Mickey the Monkey. An excellent musician, Headon could also play piano, bass and guitar. He originally planned to stay briefly, gain a name for himself, and then find a better band. Realising The Clash's potential, he changed his plans. Strummer later observed, "If we hadn't found Topper, I don't think we'd have got anywhere". In May, the band set out on the White Riot Tour, headlining a punk package that included the Buzzcocks, Subway Sect, The Slits and The Prefects. The day after a Newcastle gig, Strummer and Headon were arrested for stealing pillowcases from their hotel room. That same month, CBS released "Remote Control" as the debut LP's second single, defying the wishes of the band, who saw it as one of the album's weakest tracks.
Headon's first recording with the band was the single "Complete Control", which addressed the band's anger at their record label's behavior. It was co-produced by famed reggae artist Lee "Scratch" Perry, but Foote was summoned to "ground things" a bit and the result was pure punk rock. Released in September 1977—NME noted how CBS allowed the group to "bait their masters"—it rose to number 28 on the British chart and has gone on to be cited as one of punk's greatest singles. In February 1978, the band came out with the single "Clash City Rockers". June saw the release of "(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais", which surprised fans with its ska rhythm and arrangement.
Before The Clash began recording their second album, CBS requested that they adopt a cleaner sound than its predecessor in order to reach American audiences. Sandy Pearlman, known for his work with Blue Öyster Cult, was hired to produce the record. Although some complained about its relatively mainstream production style, Give 'Em Enough Rope received largely positive reviews upon its November release. It hit number 2 in the UK, but it was not the American breakthrough CBS had hoped for, reaching only number 128 on the Billboardchart. The album's first UK single, the hard rocking "Tommy Gun", rose to number 19, the highest chart position for a Clash single to date. In support of the album, the band undertook its first, largely successful tour of North America in February 1979.
In August and September 1979, The Clash recorded London Calling. Produced by Guy Stevens, who had previously worked with Mott the Hoople and others, the double album was a mix of punk rock, reggae, ska, rockabilly, traditional rock and roll and other elements possessed of an energy that had hardly flagged since the band's early days, but with greater maturity and production polish. It is regarded as one of the greatest rock albums ever recorded. London Calling reached number 9 on the British chart and number 27 on the US chart. Its final track, a relatively straightforward rock and roll number sung by Mick Jones called "Train in Vain", was included at the last minute and thus did not appear in the track listing on the cover. It turned out to be their first US Top 40 hit, peaking at number 23 on the Billboard chart. In the UK, where "Train in Vain" was not released as a single, London Calling's title track, stately in beat but unmistakably punk in message and tone, rose to number 11—the highest position any Clash single reached in the UK before the band's breakup. During this period, The Clash began to be regularly billed as "The Only Band That Matters". Musician Gary Lucas, then employed by CBS Records' creative services department, claims to have coined the tagline. The epithet was soon widely adopted by fans and music journalists.
The Clash planned to record and release a single every month in 1980. CBS balked at this idea, and the band came out with only one single—an original reggae tune, "Bankrobber", in August—before the December release of the 3-LP, 36-song Sandinista!. The album again reflected a broad range of musical styles, including extended dubs and the first forays into rap by a major rock band. Produced by the band members with the participation of Jamaican reggae artist Mikey Dread, Sandinista! was their most controversial album to date, both politically and musically. Critical opinion was divided, often within individual reviews. Trouser Press's Ira Robbins described half the album as "great", half as "nonsense" and worse. In the New Rolling Stone Record Guide, Dave Marsh argued, "Sandinista!seems nonsensically cluttered. One of the Clash's principal concerns...is to avoid being stereotyped." The album fared well in America, charting at number 24,[49] even though it had no catchy single and, in the increasingly conservative environment of album-oriented rock (AOR) radio in the US, received minimal airplay. is nonsensically cluttered. Or rather
During 1981, the band came out with a single, "This Is Radio Clash", that further demonstrated their ability to mix diverse influences such as dub and hip hop. They set to work on their fifth album in the fall, originally planning it as a 2-LP set with the title Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg. Mick Jones produced one cut, but the other members were dissatisfied. Production duties were handed to Glyn Johns, and the album was reconceived as a single LP. Though Combat Rock was filled with offbeat songs, experiments with sound collage, and a spoken word vocal by Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, it contained two "radio friendly" tracks. The leadoff single in the US was "Should I Stay or Should I Go", released in June 1982. Another Jones feature in a rock and roll style similar to "Train in Vain", it received heavy airplay on AOR stations. The follow-up, "Rock the Casbah", put lyrics addressing the Iranian clampdown on imports of Western music to a bouncy dance rhythm. (The singles were released in the opposite order in the UK, where they were both preceded by "Know Your Rights".) The music for "Rock the Casbah" was composed by Headon, who performed not only the percussion but also the piano and bass heard on the recorded version. It was the band's biggest US hit ever, charting at number 8, and the video was put into heavy rotation by MTV. The album itself was the band's most successful, hitting number 2 in the UK and number 7 in the US.
After Combat Rock, The Clash began to disintegrate. Topper Headon was asked to leave the band just prior to the release of the album, due to his heroin addiction, which was damaging his health and drumming. The band's original drummer, Terry Chimes, was brought back for the next few months. The loss of Headon, well-liked by the others, exposed the growing frictions within the band. Jones and Strummer began to feud. The band opened for The Who on a leg of their final tour in the US, playing (among other places) New York's Shea Stadium. Though The Clash continued to tour, the personal tensions were increasing.
In early 1983, Chimes left the band after the end of the Combat Rock Tour, due to the in-fighting and turmoil. He was replaced by Pete Howard for the US Festival in San Bernardino, California, which The Clash co-headlined, along with David Bowie and Van Halen. The band argued with the event's promoters over inflated ticket prices, threatening to pull out unless a large donation was made to a local charity. The group ultimately performed on 28 May, the festival's New Music Day, which drew a crowd of 140,000. After the show, members of the band brawled with security staff. This was Jones's last appearance with the group. In September 1983, he was fired. Shortly thereafter, he became a founding member of General Public, but left that band as they were recording their first album. Jones then founded the long-lasting project Big Audio Dynamite.
Nick Sheppard, formerly of the Bristol-based Cortinas, and Vince White were selected as The Clash's new guitarists. Howard continued as the drummer. The reconstituted band played its first shows in January 1984 with a batch of new material and launched into the self-financed Out of Control Tour, travelling widely over the winter and into early summer. At a striking miners' benefit show ("Scargill's Christmas Party") in December 1984, they announced that a new record would be released early in the new year.
The recording sessions for Cut the Crap were chaotic, with manager Bernard Rhodes and Strummer working in Munich. Most of the music was played by studio musicians, with Sheppard and later White flying in to provide guitar parts. Struggling with Rhodes for control of the band, Strummer returned home. The band went on a busking tour of public spaces in cities throughout the UK, playing acoustic versions of their hits and popular cover tunes.
After a gig in Athens, Strummer went to Spain to clear his mind. While he was abroad, the first single from Cut the Crap, the mournful "This Is England", was released to mostly negative reviews. "CBS had paid an advance for it so they had to put it out", Strummer later explained. "I just went, 'Well fuck this', and fucked off to the mountains of Spain to sit sobbing under a palm tree, while Bernie had to deliver a record." However, critic Dave Marsh later championed "This Is England" as one of the top 1001 rock singles of all time. The single has also received retroactive praise from Q magazine and others.
"This Is England", much like the rest of the album that came out later that year, had been drastically re-engineered by Rhodes, with synths and football-style chants added to Strummer's incomplete recordings. Although Howard was an adept drummer, drum machines were used for virtually all of the percussion tracks. For the remainder of his life, Strummer largely disowned the album, Other songs played on the tour remain unreleased to this day, including "Jericho" and "Glue Zombie". The Clash effectively disbanded in early 1986. although he did profess that "I really like 'This is England' [and album track] 'North and South' is a vibe."
After the breakup, Strummer contacted Jones in an effort to reform The Clash. Jones, however, had already formed a new band, Big Audio Dynamite (B.A.D.), that had released its debut late in 1985. The two did work together on their respective 1986 projects. Jones helped out with the two songs Strummer wrote and performed for the Sid and Nancy soundtrack. Strummer, in turn, cowrote a number of the tracks on the second B.A.D. album, No. 10, Upping St., which he also coproduced. With Jones committed to B.A.D., Strummer moved on to various solo projects and screen acting work. Simonon formed a band called Havana 3am. Headon recorded a solo album, before once again spiraling into drug abuse. Chimes drummed with a succession of different acts.
On 2 March 1991, a reissue of “Should I Stay or Should I Go” gave The Clash its first and only number 1 UK single. That same year, Strummer reportedly cried when he learned that "Rock the Casbah" had been adopted as a slogan by US bomber pilots in the Gulf War.
In 1999, Strummer, Jones and Simonon cooperated in the compiling of the live album From Here to Eternity and video documentary Westway to the World. On 7 November 2002, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced that The Clash would be inducted into the Hall the following spring. On 15 November, Jones and Strummer shared the stage, performing three Clash songs during a London benefit show by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros. Strummer, Jones and Headon wanted to play a reunion show to coincide with their induction into the Hall. Simonon, however, did not want to participate because he believed that playing at the high-priced event would not have been in the spirit of The Clash. In the event, Strummer's sudden death from a congenital heart defect on 22 December 2002 ended any possibility of a full reunion. In March 2003, the Hall of Fame induction took place; the band members inducted were Strummer, Jones, Simonon, Chimes and Headon.
In early 2008, Carbon/Silicon, the new band founded by Mick Jones and his former London SS bandmate Tony James, entered into a six-week residency at London's Inn on the Green. On opening night, 11 January, Headon joined the band for The Clash's "Train in Vain". An encore followed with Headon playing drums on "Should I Stay or Should I Go". This was the first time since 1982 that Headon and Jones had performed together on stage.
Simonon and Jones featured on the title track of the Gorillaz album Plastic Beach in 2010. This reunion marked the first time the performers had worked together professionally in over twenty years. They later joined the Gorillaz on tour for their "G-Club" shows in the UK.
The band's music was often charged by a leftist political ideology. Joe Strummer, in particular, was a committed leftist. The Clash are credited with pioneering the advocacy of radical politics in punk rock, and were famously dubbed the "Thinking Man's Yobs" by NME. Like many early punk bands, The Clash protested against monarchy and aristocracy. However, unlike many of their peers, The Clash rejected nihilism. Instead, they found solidarity with a number of contemporary liberation movements and were involved with such groups as the Anti-Nazi League. In April 1978, The Clash headlined the Rock Against RacismVictoria Park for 80,000 people; Strummer wore a T-shirt identifying two violent left-wing groups: the words "Brigade Rosse"—Italy's Red Brigades—appeared alongside the insignia of the Red Army Faction—West Germany's Baader-Meinhof Gang concert in London's
Their politics were made explicit in the lyrics of such early recordings as "White Riot", which encouraged disaffected white youths to become politically active like their black counterparts; "Career Opportunities", which addressed the alienation of low-paid, routinised jobs and discontent over the lack of alternatives; and "London's Burning", about the bleakness and boredom of life in the inner city.Caroline Coon, who was associated with the punk scene, argued that "[t]hose tough, militaristic songs were what we needed as we went into Thatcherism". The scope of the band's political interests widened on later recordings. The title of Sandinista! celebrated the left-wing rebels who had recently overthrown Nicaraguan despot Anastasio Somoza Debayle, and the album was filled with songs driven by other political issues extending far beyond British shores: "Washington Bullets" addressed covert military operations around the globe, while the "The Call-Up" was a meditation on US draft policies. Combat Rock's "Straight to Hell" is described by scholars Simon Reynolds and Joy Press as an "around-the-world-at-war-in-five-verses guided tour of hell-zones where boy-soldiers had languished." Artist
The band's political sentiments were reflected in their resistance to the music industry's usual profit motivations; even at their peak, tickets to shows and souvenirs were reasonably priced. The group insisted that CBS sell their double and triple album sets London Calling and Sandinista! for the price of a single album each (then £5), succeeding with the former and compromising with the latter by agreeing to sell it for £5.99 and forfeit all their performance royalties on its first 200,000 sales. These "VFM" (value for money) principles meant that they were constantly in debt to CBS, and only started to break even around 1982.
In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked The Clash number 30 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. According to The Times, The Clash's debut, alongside Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, is "punk's definitive statement" and London Calling "remains one of the most influential rock albums". In Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, London Calling ranked number 8, the highest entry by a punk band. The Clash was number 77 and Sandinista! was number 404. In the magazine's 2004 list of the 500 greatest songs of all time, "London Calling" ranked number 15, again the highest for any song by a punk band. Four other Clash songs made the list: "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" (228), "Train In Vain" (292), "Complete Control" (361), and "White Man In Hammersmith Palais" (430). "London Calling" ranked number 48 in the magazine's 2008 list of the 100 greatest guitar songs of all time.
In John Robb's description, The Clash's debut established the "blueprint for the sound and the soul of what punk rock would be about.... The Clash were utterly inspirational, utterly positive, and they offered a million possibilities." Jake Burns of Stiff Little Fingers, the first major punk band from Northern Ireland, explained the record's impact:
[T]he big watershed was The Clash album—that was go out, cut your hair, stop mucking about time, y'know. Up to that point we'd still been singing about bowling down California highways. I mean, it meant nothing to me. Although The Damned and the Pistols were great, they were only exciting musically; lyrically, I couldn't really make out a lot if it.... [T]o realise that [The Clash] were actually singing about their own lives in West London was like a bolt out of the blue.
The Clash also inspired many musicians who were only loosely associated, if at all, with punk. The band's embrace of ska, reggae and England's Jamaican subculture helped provide the impetus for the 2 Tone movement that emerged amid the fallout of the punk explosion. Other musicians who began performing while The Clash were active and acknowledged their debt to the band include Billy Bragg and Aztec Camera. U2's The Edge has compared The Clash's inspirational effect to that of the Ramones—both gave young rock musicians at large the "sense that the door of possibility had swung open." He wrote, "The Clash, more than any other group, kick-started a thousand garage bands across Ireland and the U.K.... [S]eeing them perform was a life-changing experience."Bono has described The Clash as "the greatest rock band. They wrote the rule book for U2."
In later years, The Clash's influence can be heard in American political punk bands such as Rancid, Anti-Flag, Bad Religion and NOFX, as well as in the political hard rock of early Manic Street Preachers. California's Rancid, in particular, are known as "incurable Clash zealots". The title track of the band's album Indestructible proclaims, "I'll keep listening to that great Joe Strummer!"Bad Brains, Massive Attack, Sublime and No Doubt. They are credited with laying the groundwork for LCD Soundsystem's "punk-funk". Jakob Dylan of The Wallflowers ranked London Calling above the work of his father, Bob Dylan, as the record that “changed his life”. Bands identified with the garage rock revival of the late 1990s and 2000s such as Sweden's The Hives, Australia's The Vines and America's The White Stripes and The Strokes evidence The Clash's influence.Among the many latter-day British acts identified as having been inspired by The Clash are Babyshambles, The Futureheads, The Charlatans and The Arctic Monkeys. Before M.I.A. had an international hit in 2008 with "Paper Planes", which is built around a sample from "Straight to Hell", she referenced "London Calling" on 2003's "Galang".[79] A cover of "The Guns of Brixton" by German punk band Die Toten Hosen was released as a single in 2006. The Clash's involvement with Jamaican musical and production styles has inspired similar cross-cultural efforts by bands such as
The band has also had a notable impact on music in the Spanish-speaking world. In 1997, a Clash tribute album featuring performances by Buenos Aires punk bands was released. Many rock en español bands such as Todos Tus Muertos, Café Tacuba, Maldita Vecindad, Tijuana No and Attaque 77 are indebted to The Clash.Los Fabulosos Cadillacs covered London Calling's "Revolution Rock" and "The Guns of Brixton" and invited Mick Jones to sing on their "Mal Bicho".Mano Negra's politicised lyrics and fusion of musical styles. Argentina's The Clash's influence is similarly reflected in Paris-founded
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| David Byrne | |
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 David Byrne speaking at the 2006 Future of Music Policy Summit hosted by the McGill University Schulich School of Music in Montreal, Quebec | |
| Background information | |
| Born | May 14, 1952 Dumbarton, Scotland, UK |
| Genres | Experimental pop music, worldbeat, New Wave, alternative rock |
| Occupations | Musician, artist, singer, actor, director, producer, Record producer |
| Instruments | Vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards, synthesizer, Flute, Clavinet, slide guitar, autoharp, harmonium, buildings[1] |
| Years active | 1974–present |
| Associated acts | Talking Heads, Brian Eno, X-Press 2, Fatboy Slim, The BPA |
| Website | Official Website |
| Notable instruments | |
| Fender Mustang Fender Stratocaster | |
David Byrne (born May 14, 1952) is a Scottish-born musician and artist best known as a founding member and principal songwriter of the American new waveTalking Heads, which was active between 1975 and 1991. Since then, Byrne has released his own solo projects on record, and worked in a variety of media, including film, photography, opera, and Internet-based projects. He has received Grammy, Oscar, and Golden Globe awards for his achievements. As a member of Talking Heads, Byrne is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. band
Although a resident of the United States since childhood, Byrne is a British citizen.
Byrne was born in Dumbarton, Scotland to Tom and Emma Byrne, the older of two children. Two years later, his parents moved to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and then to Arbutus, Maryland, when he was 8 or 9 years old. His father worked as an electronics engineer. Before high school, David Byrne already knew how to play the guitar, accordion, and violin. He was rejected from his middle school’s choir because they claimed he was “off-key and too withdrawn”. From a young age, Byrne had a strong interest in music. His parents say that he would constantly play his phonograph from age three and he learned how to play the harmonica at age five. He graduated from Lansdowne High School in southwest Baltimore County. Byrne started his musical career in a high school duo named Bizadi with Mark Kehoe. Their repertoire consisted mostly of songs such as "April Showers", "96 Tears", "Dancing On The Ceiling", and Frank Sinatra songs.
Byrne then attended the Rhode Island School of Design for one year before dropping out and forming a band called "The Artistics" with fellow RISD student Chris Frantz. The band dissolved within a year, and the two moved to New York together with Frantz's girlfriend Tina Weymouth. Unable to find a bass player in New York, Frantz and Byrne persuaded Weymouth to start playing and together they formed the group Talking Heads which had its first gig in 1975. Guitarist Jerry Harrison joined the group in 1977.
During his time in the band, Byrne took on outside projects, collaborating with Brian Eno in 1981 on the album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which attracted considerable critical acclaim and featured a groundbreaking use of sampling.
While working on the film True Stories, Byrne met costume designer Adelle LutzNew York City. whom he married in 1987. They have a daughter, Malu Abeni Valentine Byrne, born in 1989. Byrne and Lutz divorced in 2004. Byrne currently lives in
In 1981, Byrne partnered with choreographer Twyla Tharp, scoring "The Catherine Wheel," a ballet prominently featuring unusual rhythms and lyrics. Productions of "The Catherine Wheel" appeared on Broadway that same year. In Spite of Wishing and Wanting is a soundscape David Byrne produced for the Belgian dance company Ultima Vez.
His work has been extensively used in movie soundtracks, most notably in collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Cong Su on Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, which won an Oscar for Best Original Score. In 2004, Lead Us Not Into Temptation (music from the film "Young Adam") included tracks and musical experiments from his score to Young Adam. Byrne also wrote, directed, and starred in True Stories, a musical collage of quirky Americana released in 1986. He wrote and produced most of the music in the movie as well. Byrne also directed the documentary Île Aiye and the concert film of his 1992 Latin-tinged tour titled Between the Teeth. He was chiefly responsible for the stage design and choreography of Stop Making Sense in 1984. Byrne added Loco de Amor (Crazy for Love) with Celia Cruz to Jonathan Demme's 1986 film Something Wild.
Byrne wrote the Dirty Dozen Brass Band-inspired score for Robert Wilson's Opera The Knee Plays from The CIVIL warS. Some of the music from Byrne's orchestral album The Forest was originally used in a Wilson-directed theatre piece with the same name. The Forest premiered at the Theater der Freien Volksbühne, Berlin in 1988. It received its New York premiere in December 1988 at BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The Forestry Maxi-single contained dance and industrial remixes of pieces from The Forest by Jack Dangers, Rudy Tambala, and Anthony Capel.
In 1990, Byrne contributed a version of "Don't Fence Me In" to the AIDS benefit compilation album Red Hot + Blue: A Tribute to Cole Porter.
Byrne also appeared as a guest vocalist/guitarist for 10,000 Maniacs during their MTV Unplugged concert, though the songs in which he is featured were cut from its album. One of them, "Let the Mystery Be", appeared as the fourth track on 10,000 Maniacs' CD single "Few and Far Between".
Byrne also worked with "Queen of Tex-Mex", Tejano superstar Selena, writing, producing and singing a song ("God's Child (Baila Conmigo)"), included on Selena's last album, "Dreaming of You", before her death.
Byrne was the host of Sessions at West 54th during its second of three seasons.
Byrne also collaborated with members of Devo and Morcheeba to record an album called Feelings in 1997.
Byrne founded Luaka Bop, a world music record label which releases the work of artists Cornershop, Os Mutantes, Los De Abajo, Jim White, Zap Mama, Tom Zé, Los Amigos Invisibles, King Chango among others.
Byrne is also a visual artist, and has shown his work in contemporary art galleries and museums around the world since the 1990s. He has also created a number of public art installations, many of them anonymous. He is represented by Pace/MacGill Gallery, NYC. In 2008 he designed nine bike racks around Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Byrne is also known for his activism in support of increased cycling, and for having used a bike as his main means of transport for most of his life, especially cycling around New York, where he has designed innovative bicycle parking racks, as image outlines. He says that he cycled when he was in high school and was able to get back into the sport in the late 1970s. He likes the freedom and exhilarating feeling cycling gives him. He has written widely on cycling, including a 2009 book, Bicycle Diaries. In August 2009, he auctioned his Montague folding bike in order to raise money for the London Cycling Campaign.
In 2008, The New York City Department of Transportation asked Byrne if he would help judge a competition for bike rack designs in the city and he eagerly accepted. Enthusiastic about the competition, Byrne sent in some designs of his own for bike racks that would correspond with the area they were located. For example a dollar sign for Wall Street and an electric guitar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The Department of Transportation loved the designs and said that they would allow him to put them up, if he could find someone to make them. Sure enough, Byrne found a place that would make the racks in exchange for the chance to sell them later as pieces of art. The racks ended up staying on the streets for about a year.
In 2001 a censored version of Byrne's single "Like Humans Do" was selected by Microsoft as the sample music for Windows XP to demonstrate Windows Media Player (not included in SP2 installs). The next year, he provided vocals for a track, "Lazy" by X-Press 2, which reached number 2 in the United Kingdom and number 1 on the U.S. Dance Charts. David said in an interview in BBC Four Sessions's coverage of his Union Chapel performance that Lazy was number 1 in Syria.
In April 2003, Byrne appeared as himself in an episode of The Simpsons, "Dude, Where's My Ranch?".
In late 2003, Byrne released a book with a companion DVD called Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information (ISBN 3-88243-907-6). The work included artwork composed entirely in Microsoft PowerPoint. It includes one image that depicts, according to Byrne, "Dan Rather's profile. Expanded to the nth degree. Taken to infinity. Overlaid on the back of Patrick Stewart's head."
Byrne's latest solo album, Grown Backwards, was released on March 16, 2004 by Nonesuch. This album used orchestral string arrangements, and includes two operatic arias. He also launched a North American and Australian tour with the Tosca Strings. This tour ended with Los Angeles, San Diego and New York shows in August 2005. The following year, his singing was featured on "The Heart's a Lonely Hunter" on The Cosmic Game by Thievery Corporation.
In 2005, Byrne initiated his own internet radio station, Radio David Byrne.Each month, Byrne posts a playlist of music he likes, linked by themes or genres. Byrne's playlists have included African Popular Music; Country Classics; Vox Humana; Classical Opera; Italian Movie Music. Byrne also posts personal comments on the music and, occasionally, on the state of the recorded music industry. In July 2007, Byrne posted the following comment:
There was another piece in the Times today about yet another 20 percent drop in CD sales. (Are they running the same news piece every 4 months?) Jeez guys, the writing's on the wall. How long do the record execs think they'll have those offices and nice parking spaces? (Well, more than half of all record A&R and other execs are gone already, so there should be plenty of parking space). They, the big 4 or 5, should give the catalogues back to the artists or their heirs as a gesture before they close the office doors, as they sure don't know how to sell music anymore. (I have Talking Heads stuff on the shelf that I can't get Warner to release.) The "industry" had a nice 50-year ride, but it's time to move on. Luckily, music remains more or less unaffected — there is a lot of great music out there. A new model will emerge that includes rather than sues its own customers, that realizes that music is not a product in the sense of being a thing — it's closer to fashion, in that for music fans it tells them and their friends who they are, what they feel passionately about and to some extent what makes life fun and interesting. It's about a sense of community — a song ties a whole invisible disparate community together. It's not about selling the (often) shattered plastic case CDs used to come in.
Returning to this work in the theatre, in late 2005 Byrne and Fatboy Slim began work on Here Lies Love, a disco opera or song cycle about the life of Imelda Marcos, the controversial former First Lady of the Philippines. Some music from this piece was debuted at Adelaide Festival of Arts in Australia in February 2006 and the following year at Carnegie Hall on February 3, 2007.
Byrne and Eno's influential 1981 album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts was re-released for its 25th anniversary in early 2006, with new bonus tracks. In keeping with the spirit of the original album, two of the songs' component tracks were released under Creative Commons licenses and a remix contest site was launched. Later that same year, Byrne released Arboretum, a sketchbook facsimile of his Tree Drawings, published by McSweeney's. He also had an exhibition of his chairs — drawings, photographs, sculptures, and embroideries — at Pace/MacGill Gallery, NYC. Byrne was profiled in the New York Times in January, 2007. The article refers to his April 15, 2006 journal entry, in which he wrote: "I was a peculiar young man — borderline Asperger's, I would guess."
In 2007, David Byrne provided a cover of The Fiery Furnaces' song "Ex-Guru" for a compilation to celebrate the 15th birthday of Thrill Jockey, a Chicago-based label.
In April 2008 Byrne took part in the Paul Simon retrospective concert series at BAM performing "You Can Call Me Al" and "I Know What I Know" from Simon's Graceland album. In 2008, Byrne and his production team programmed the Battery Maritime Building, a 99-year-old ferry terminal in Manhattan, to play music. Essentially Byrne took the old New York City building, hooked the entire structure - pipes, heaters, pillars and all, electronically to an old pipe organ, and made a playable musical instrument of it, for a piece called "Playing the Building". This project was also installed in 2005 in Stockholm, Sweden, and at the London Roundhouse in 2009. It bears similarities to a series of installations performed by New Zealand and Detroit based artists Alastair Galbraith and Matt De Genaro, recorded on their 1998 record Wire Music and 2006 follow-up Long Wires in Dark Museums, Vol. 2.
Byrne says that the point in this project was to allow people to experience art first hand, by creating the music with the organ, rather than simply looking at it.
Byrne and Eno reunited for 2008's Everything That Happens Will Happen Today He assembled a band to tour worldwide for the album for a six-month period from late 2008 through early 2009 on the Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno Tour. The day after that album was released, Big Love: Hymnal - his soundtrack to season two of Big Love was made available. These two albums constituted the first releases on his personal independent record labelTodo Mundo. and Byrne assembled a band to tour the album and other collaborations between the two through late 2008.
He is featured on the tracks "Money" and "The People Tree", on N.A.S.A.'s 2009 album The Spirit of Apollo.
David Byrne appeared on HIV/AIDS charity album Dark Was the Night for Red Hot Organization in 2009. He collaborated with Dirty Projectors on the song "Knotty Pine".
David Byrne performed at the 2009 Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee.
In the summer of 2009 Byrne was a signator of a letter protesting the decision of the Toronto International Film Festival to choose Tel Aviv as the subject of its inaugural City-to-City Spotlight strand.
