Mojo - The Music Magazine

The Clash’s Revolution Rock DVD storyboards the end of the dream, argues Phil Alexander.

“IN ’82 NORMAL PEOPLE who did a job and went to the office would come and see us, so we were breaking into the mainstream,” states Clash drummer Topper Headon, reflecting on the commercial apex of his band in last month’s MOJO magazine. It is this period of triumph and turmoil that is captured on the recent Live At Shea Stadium album and underlined by Revolution Rock – a 22-clip DVD collection which, despite its documentary pretensions, is designed to appeal to that mainstream audience that The Clash began to reach back in ’82. The Clash’s predicament – a band with a moral code at odds with their desire for greater glory – could hardly be better dramatised.

Created for the US market – where this collection was released in April of this year – Revolution Rock boasts large chunks of live footage that have already graced previously Clash DVD sorties (most specifically The Essential Clash set). Here, however, they are strung together with a history of the band courtesy of customarily well-intentioned Kiwi radio DJ, Zane Lowe. In truth, his most basic of scripts is designed for those whose familiarity with The Clash begins and ends with their two bona fide US radio hits – Should I Stay Or Should I Go? and Rock The Casbah – meaning that ardent fans will probably reach for the ‘Play Music Only’ option on the DVD menu, omitting the Janet-And-John commentary.

But even the Clash hardcore will will be surprised by footage shot at the Manchester Elizabethan Suite by Granada TV in 1977 (What’s My Name?, Capital Radio One), and delighted by extracts from the band’s 1981 Stateside appearance on the Tomorrow Show With Tom Snyder (This Is Radio Clash, The Magnificent Seven). And Revolution Rock’s real value lies in this rapid-fire contrast between this nervy, energised early footage and that later material, capturing a Clash already conflicted over their attempt to conquer America.

Indeed, as the camera pans around the gargantuan exterior of Shea Stadium during performances of Should I Stay Or Should I Go? and Career Opportunities, it is evident that, for all their ambition and Who-like rock heroism, The Clash were never designed to straddle the world’s stadia. Their performance of Know Your Rights at Steve Wozniak’s loss-making US Festival in 1983 is a poignant one, the song’s message clearly failing to connect with a majority of the 200,000 sunburnt Californians who’d just watched Men At Work and Flock Of Seagulls. It was Mick Jones’s final appearance with the band.

Revolution Rock’s two DVD extras underline The Clash’s Problem With America. The first is an interview with the aforementioned Tom Snyder (the US answer to Terry Wogan in terms of both geniality and bumbling), the second is an appearance by Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon on NBC Live At Five where the strait-laced Sue Simmons struggles to reconcile the band’s ‘punk’ reputation with their polite demeanour. Both encounters are uncomfortable and both serve to illustrate just how far The Clash had to travel – musically, ideologically and, in these instances, conversationally - in order to be entertained, let alone understood, by the mainstream US media. While Revolution Rock is flawed as a home video jukebox, it’s moments like these that add new perspective on that perennial Clash conundrum: Where Exactly Did It All Go Wrong?

Phil Alexander