‘I’m So Bored’: How The Clash grew to love the USA
Unlike a lot of their contemporaries in the squalid, glue-sniffing punk scene of 1970s London, The Clash were a constantly evolving outfit and, like it or not, the United States played a key role in that development, even if the band themselves lamented every aspect of the country during their early years.
‘I’m So Bored with the USA’ is a prime cut from The Clash’s masterful debut album and, although it wasn’t actually released in the States until later down the line, it saw the band attack the increasing prevalence of Americanisms in London. Along the way, Joe Strummer criticises virtually every aspect of American popular culture, politics, and foreign policy, name-dropping the invasion of Cambodia, the Watergate scandal, the CIA, and, of course, Kojak.
As with virtually every track on that 1977 debut, The Clash didn’t pull any punches with ‘I’m So Bored with the USA’, but their view of America certainly softened when the band finally crossed the Atlantic for the first time in 1979.
For starters, the group got to tour with a rather bewildered Bo Diddley, and they almost immediately found a devoted audience in the States, which only seemed to expand as the years went by, culminating in their famous New York City riots in 1981.
Famously, the punks were booked to play seven nights at Bonds Casino in Times Square, but when the demand vastly outweighed the ticket supply, Strummer and the gang ended up playing an extensive 17-night residency at the venue. Inevitably, then, while the band were in the midst of that extended residency in the cultural epicentre of America, the country began to have a profound effect on their output.
From rockabilly to experimental jazz, The Clash soaked up countless influences and genres during their tenure, incorporating each one into their punk roots. Inevitably, the sound that they encountered in New York, particularly the then-emerging realm of hip-hop and sampling, had a profound effect on their later material.
Not only did those influences manifest themselves in tracks like ‘The Magnificent Seven’ and the entirety of Sandinista onwards, but Mick Jones continued to build upon the inspiration he found in New York during his post-Clash years, forming Big Audio Dynamite. In just a few short years, then, The Clash had gone from hating the very core of the United States to being unrecognisable without it.
It is worth noting, of course, that the group’s view of American politics, its foreign policy and its tendency to commit war crimes never changed from 1977 – in fact, visiting the US itself only intensified the extent of their activism, if anything.
Nevertheless, their criticisms of the nation’s cultural landscape certainly softened once they had actually traversed the Atlantic. They might have risen out of London’s viscous punk rock realm, but The Clash’s later discography wouldn’t sound the same without the influence of the USA. Still, that didn’t stop them from finishing their American sets with a blistering rendition of ‘I’m So Bored with the USA’ on most nights.
