Revisit The Clash’s most infamous gig: A Night of Pure Energy
Although The Clash are regarded as the mature foil to the snotty juvenility of the Sex Pistols, people often forget that they were also a furious band of punks. They might have penned songs that showed us how to improve the world, but beneath it all was an edge, an anger more authentic than anything their peers were creating. Look no further than their track ‘White Riot’. Ostensibly, it’s an anthemic piece of punk, but this is counterbalanced by a profound message – that their generation had to take ownership of their future.
Given that The Clash were pioneers of punk and their work came with a visceral side, it was no surprise that their gigs in the early days were raucous. Although they gave many memorable performances during their exciting early chapter, none are as infamous as October 23rd, 1976’s ‘A Night of Pure Energy’. It gave the band their first real press coverage due to an unsubstantiated claim that cannibalism had occurred during their set.
Held at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, the show was opened by Subway Sect and Snatch Sounds, but the night’s highlight was the band everyone was there to see, The Clash. Added to the eventful spirit of the night was that the “punk poet laureate” Patti Smith was in town, having already played a duo of shows at the Hammersmith Odeon that evening and the one prior. Notably, she got up onstage to dance to The Clash’s track ‘I’m So Bored with the U.S.A.’, making the crowd rowdier than they already had been – a mean feat.
A couple of weeks after the riotous evening, on November 6th, the New Musical Express ran a story about the show by Barry Miles. The article’s headline was “CANNIBALISM AT CLASH GIG”, supported by the jokey subtitle, “But why didn’t anybody eat MILES?” Despite the evident sarcasm, it caused a real stir.
The sensational headline was supported by a pair of photographs taken by Red Saunders. Featuring The Nipple Erectors member Shane MacGowan, who would go on to front The Pogues and “Mad Jane” Crockford, later of the Mo-dettes and The Bank of Dresden, the pictures conveyed utter carnage. The main talking point of the photos was that blood was pouring from MacGowan’s right ear in one of them, with fans widely believing that it had been bitten – leading to the claims of cannibalism from Barry Miles.
However, the accounts of Clash members Mick Jones and Paul Simonon in Bob Gruen’s biography The Clash, dispel any myth that MacGowan had his earlobe bitten off. Jones recalled: “That was the night of Shane MacGowan’s earlobe, wasn’t it? He didn’t really have it bitten off, you know. Isn’t that the same show where Patti Smith got up on stage during our set?”
Simonon added: “That was the ICA—it was called A Night of Pure Energy. My haircut’s gone very mod; it had flopped down from all the jumping around onstage. In the beginning, all that jumping about was a way of dodging gobs and missiles generally. There’s Joe with his sharks’ teeth—when I first met him, they looked just like a real sharks’ teeth.”
Gruen also included a statement from the band’s mastermind, Joe Strummer, who explained the article’s importance to The Clash in increasing their reputation: “Without Mad Jane’s teeth and Shane’s earlobe, we wouldn’t have got in the papers that week.”
