“Nothing like you’ve ever seen”: When angry fans physically attacked The Clash on tour
Anger triggers anger. All punk bands know that fact—even if fans seem on their side, frustration is unpredictable, and sometimes it can feel like mob mentality kicks in long before rational thought does. It’s happened time and time again, but no one, not even some of the more quintessential cultish punk bands, knows this fact better than The Clash.
The end of the 1970s was an interesting one for the band following a strange period of time where it seemed like they didn’t precisely know what sort of sound they wanted their music to adopt. Unlike many other musicians who write constantly to prevent the fear of arriving in a studio with nothing, they also had nothing prepared for London Calling when the time came after suffering from writer’s block for a year.
However, things turned out OK, better than OK, and they entered the 1980s ready to make Sandinista! with an audacious vision that would transform their sound from one that didn’t know where it wanted to land to one with more purpose. They continued blending various genres, like punk, rock, and reggae, but learned the value of focus to make something that was both daring and resonant.
However, the heat surrounding London Calling was still prickling at the edges and all the frustrations they had tapped into—not just thematically and ideologically but in sparking fan anger from within—were still very much alive and a facet carried to their live shows. According to Joe Strummer, the hostility stemmed from two sides of the coin, with some criticising their betrayal of the punk ethos and others claiming they have become too stale.
“There’s a lot of people who would like to see us take a dive,” Strummer told NME in 1980. On the road, things didn’t soften or slow down, and the band were once physically attacked by a mob of fans who decided to start something on the basis of ‘London Calling’.
“We’ve had a tough time touring as well. I’ve been attacked by a mob this year, suffered at the hands of a mob,” Strummer said.
Revealing the details of the fallout, he continued, “In Hamburg, these kids attacked us, going ‘You’ve sold out, you’ve sold out,'” adding, “It was like nothing you’ve ever seen. They were all down the front, and if they could grab hold of a microphone lead they’d pull, and it was a tug of war. And then it started getting really violent.”
Granted, Strummer also admitted he stirred the pot a little, especially after he spotted someone in the audience using the person in front “as a punching bag, trying to be all tough”. This triggered his own frustration, and in a pit of rage, he hit him “on the head with a Telecaster”. Of course, he was charged after for “striking him over the head with a guitar”, but the whole ordeal made him reflect on the ubiquity of violence.
“It was a watershed – violence had really controlled me for once. I became very frightened that violence had really taken me over,” he added, learning the hard way that deep-seated angst thrives when met with the same charge and that the only way to overcome it was to step away and not allow it to be fed. It’s difficult, though, especially for a band like The Clash, which instilled anti-establishment energy from day one. But even they began to realise the destructiveness of unchecked aggression.
