AMERICA CALLING

Author's note: It's early '79, punk is building, and The Clash arrive in the US to play their first shows there. Sylvie Simmons was on the road with them and witnessed events first-hand.

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Author's note: In early February 1979, The Clash played their first gig in Northern California.

It was almost exactly a year, and a 20 minute drive, from where the Sex Pistols played their last show before breaking up in 1978. By sad coincidence, as the Clash's tour bus crossed the California state line, on the other side of the country Sid Vicious died of a heroin overdose.

I had been at the Pistols' last show, covering it for the UK rock weekly Sounds, and I did much the same with The Clash, traveling the 400 miles between San Francisco and Santa Monica with them on their bus. The Pistols and Clash shows had things in common – fans eager to actually see them in person; exhilarating performances – but the mood of the shows were quite different. The Clash's were less 'punk' and in more upscale venues. The first, in Berkeley, had an audience of students, not spitters. In Joe Strummer's words, “boring snobs”. It was one big reason why The Clash added a secret San Francisco show in a grungier San Francisco venue at half the price.

Yet for all the disdain in I'm So Bored With The U.S.A., which opened the show, by all accounts they wanted to tour the States. Pissed off as they were with their US record company – CBS considered their first album too primitive to release and shipped them to America to make their second album with Blue Öyster Cult's producer – The Clash looked forward to playing on the soil where rock'n'roll was born. For crying out loud, they took the legendary rock'n'roller Bo Diddley on the road with them! Mick Jones seemed to spend every free moment digging through record shop bins. Strummer and Paul Simonon would disappear to some private spot away from the circus, when they weren't being dragged off to interviews. They were no warmer with journalists than Johnny Rotten had been. But what concerned The Clash most was being in debt to a major label that was doing its damnedest to clean them up.