“I just lost my temper”: How being attacked in Hamburg changed The Clash
You might think that after the release of London Calling in 1979, The Clash were completely set up for future success and had signalled that they were ready to become one of the biggest bands in the world. Ditching some of their earlier punkish sensibilities in order to adopt a more varied new wave-oriented style, the band had managed to worm their way into the mainstream and were seemingly riding high off the back of this incredible success.
In actuality, this couldn’t be further from the truth, and the year they experienced after the turn of the decade was perhaps the most tumultuous of their career to date. With plans for a singles series being scrapped due to conflicts with their record label, the underwhelming response to their London Calling follow-up Sandinista! and public opinion of the band beginning to show signs of turning in the wrong direction, there were many things for the band to show their concerns about.
London Calling had been hailed as a modern masterpiece that was able to live up the hype and expectation that had been set out for the band, and they had successfully managed to convey their political angle through a variety of punk-adjacent influences that were more far-reaching than their self-titled debut and Give ‘em Enough Rope had been. It’s hard to understand why anyone might be willing to turn against a band that were showing signs of maturation and growth, but there were plenty of dissenters among their fanbase.
The problem with the record was that some fans of their earlier work saw it as a symbol of them abandoning their roots in order to make an attempt to be appreciated by the mainstream. As far as the staunchly punk contingent of their audience was concerned, this was a complete and utter betrayal of their core principles of rallying against the status quo and commercial success, and the ways in which they showed their discontent proved to be a huge obstacle for the band to overcome in the following year.
When the band went on their European tour in 1980, they faced a number of hostile crowds, but the worst of all came in Germany, where people were evidently incensed to the point that the audience chose to engage in physical altercations with the band. Audiences in Berlin taunted them with comments about how their grandmothers were into the Clash these days, but Hamburg crowds took things a step further by chanting “you’ve sold out” at their show.
According to a 1981 interview in NME with frontman Joe Strummer, “they were all down the front, and if they could grab hold of a microphone lead they’d pull,” and before he knew it, all hell had begun to break loose. “I was playing and I saw this guy, sort of using the guy in front of him as a punch-bag, trying to be all tough. So I rapped him on the head with a Telecaster, I just lost my temper. And there was blood gushing down in front of his face.”
This bust-up led to Strummer’s arrest, and a night spent in a German police cell made him believe that he’d finally “overstepped [his] mark” and that action needed to be taken. “I became very frightened that violence had really taken me over. So since then, I’ve decided the only way you can fight aggro in the audience is to play a really boring song.” The band would subsequently choose to stop touring to the same extent, and they realised that they needed to work out a different approach to performance that wouldn’t land them in the same trouble again.
