“Some of it was true”: a Whole Day of Thinking about The Clash – TCD October 21.

This was a day all about imagining yourself in exactly the same space decades earlier.  The incongruous grandeur of TCD Exam Hall hosted The Clash on October 21 1977, and exactly forty years later, some rather older people assembled in precisely the same space to try to reconstruct the event.

In other words, we tried to squint away the decades, stare in front of us, and try to see this…

Some of the original Students’ Union execs from 1977 were with us to share their experiences.  All commented on the friendly and accommodating nature of The Clash – especially compared to the horribly smug and entitled Stranglers who showed up a few weeks later.  The original contract for the gig was circulated among the congregation.  We learned The Clash required 24 small cans of beer backstage, a bottle of tequila, but also plenty of Britvic Orange and fresh fruit.  A modest and feasible list of desiderata.  The Clash were to be paid £800 + 35% of the gate.  Since tickets sold at £1.50 each, this would have involved two fairly packed concerts if the SU was not to carry a loss – and the official capacity of the room would have to be breached.  Fortunately The Clash sold themselves instantly in the context of an excitedly emergent Dublin punk sensibility and it is impossible to calculate exactly how many people were crammed into the exam hall that day.  The set list consisted of the entire first album – with the edition of their new single – the immortal “Complete Control”.  Among the crowd in 1977 was a legendary character called “Anto” – whose punk regalia made extensive use of cow and sheep eyes.   Clearing up sheep eyes from the stage area was one of the main memories that organisers had of the original event.  We scanned the room for Anto – but nobody was able to give any account of his whereabouts since 1977.

However, we also learned about the gig in a larger context of staged contests between the Students Union and the TCD authorities.  The SU had already riled up various Deans by taking over a failing college bar and making a profit out of it.  The booking of punk bands was part of an an ongoing attempt to test the limits of student freedom.   In a brilliant move, when the college announced that the decibel level had been breached and the next gig was to be cancelled, the students announced that the next gig would have been The Chieftains.

The remainder of the day was devoted to film clips and story telling.  Don Letts walked among us.  Don Letts has told many of the same stories a great many times and enjoys telling them, and yet he preached a kind of frustration with dewy-eyed memorabilia and felt seduced yet frustrated by his own storied past.  “How or when or where can such urgent and loving anger be regenerated and refocused in the 21st century?” was the painfully obvious question he didn’t of course know the answer to.  Punk can’t allowed to just become a blanket to wrap the anecdotage of a bunch of old folks in Trinity College Dublin while Storm Brian blows and spits outside.  Perhaps an ability to feel love and anger within the same frantic instant is the best definition of anything that can cherishably called “punk”.

One thing that all the speakers had in common was that none of them claimed to “really” know Joe Strummer.  The small entourage that traveled with The Clash all remembered having had astonishing conversations with him, but the actual content of the conversations has not seemingly survived so well.  He made you feel special when he was with you in ways that mere testimony cannot adequately communicate.  Johnny Green, former Clash roadie, has a wonderfully relaxed yet arresting rhetorical style, and stressed over and over again the creative input from all four core (sorry Terry Chimes) members of the band.  At one point he started talking about some kind of gestalt formulation based on the many faces of Vishnu before hilariously breaking off with “… I’m losing you, aren’t I?”  Like many visitors to Ireland, he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to say mean things about Bob Geldorf of not.   He was instantly reassured on this point.  Be fully assured, all visitors to Ireland.  The answer to the question “am I allowed to make fun of Bob Geldorf?” is always “YESOHYESOHYESOHYES!”

I got to meet film maker Julian Temple yesterday.  He was a quiet and a shy and a serious man, but I got to shake his hand and thank him for his body of work (to date).  He told us a wonderful story of how he reconciled with Joe Strummer after decades of “exile” as a consequence of having been too close to Malcolm McLaren.  Apparently Strummer was a surprise guest at a party at Temple’s home, and Temple had been trying to construct small hot air balloon for the kids.  Strummer slowly became interested and involved in this difficult project which involved building a fire on the lawn.  The children were woken around dawn to witness the flight of this balloon which ascended briefly before plunging into flames.  The centrality of camp fires as a device within Temple’s Joe Strummer movie feels all the more poignant now.

The formal part of the symposium was now concluded.  It was never that formal.  Then it was off to a club, where Don Lett’s Westway to the World film was being broadcast against a backcloth.  This was interrupted by a Clash tribute band.  The band was tight, but I had problems with their lead singer.  This faux Joe Strummer seemed far more arrogant than the actual Joe Strummer.  My friend remarked that it was as though Jimmy Pursey had replaced Strummer as The Clash’s lead singer. Imagine that. But not for too long.