“Live as an artist forever”: Why The Clash turned down a reunion tour in the 1990s
The Clash were together for ten years. That may sound like a long time on paper, but for their sheer level of influence, it’s basically nothing, especially when you take into account that the classic lineup was only together for half that time.
The Clash was Joe Strummer up front, Topper Headon and Paul Simonon on drums and bass, respectively, and Mick Jones on guitar, barely spent a World Cup campaign together. Considering there’s an argument to be made for them to be the single most influential punk band of all time, that’s kind of shocking.
While there were several bands who also showed the world that punk could mean more than four chords and shout-along choruses, like The Slits and Television, arguably none of them did it to the level of commercial success that The Clash enjoyed. They were certified rock stars who had every chance of defining the sound of 1980s rock.
Then the actual 1980s happened, and everything fell apart. The Clash became an extended tug of war for control between Strummer (who wasn’t really much more than a proxy for manager Bernard Rhodes) and Jones. One might think that Strummer was the band’s captain, as their lead songwriter and frontman. However, before Mick Jones left, the band were making ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go‘ and ‘Straight to Hell’. Afterwards, they were making Cut the Crap. ‘Nuff said.
The band limped on as Strummer and a bunch of hired hands (with Rhodes trying embarrassingly hard to join the band full-time) until 1986. The story of where they went next sort of proves Jones’ importance in the band. He went on to some pretty serious success with his follow-up project, Big Audio Dynamite, while Strummer’s solo career never really took flight before he retreated into obscurity in the early 1990s.
Why did The Clash never get back together?
The irony of all this is that the early 1990s would have been an ideal time to reunite. The 1980s never suited The Clash’s style of down-to-earth cool. Even the punk of the time was extreme and in your face in a way that the group never were. Then two things happened in the early 1990s that changed everything. ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ dropped in the US, and Britpop became the biggest thing in music back home. This particular combination seemed tailor-made for the band’s comeback.
On the one hand, punk rock had never been more mainstream. The Ramones were suddenly playing stadiums in Argentina. Strummer obsessives like Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day and Blur’s Damon Albarn were the biggest names in music. On the other, Britishness was suddenly incredibly cool and The Clash had always dined out on being dyed-in-the-wool Londoners—clock the title of their biggest album for more proof of that. The world seemed to be desperate for a Clash comeback, so how did they miss it?
Well, the truth is, they didn’t. In an interview with Classic Rock conducted in 1999, Strummer talked about how The Clash had actually been offered a very lucrative headline slot on the 1994 Lollapalooza festival. He said, “It was five million dollars for 50 gigs or something, but you can’t put something together for money that was originally for an idea”.
He elaborated later in the interview, “If you’re confronted with a choice: take one million dollars for the death of an artist, or you can live as an artist forever—maybe—you’re gonna take the second option.”
Which is arguably the core of The Clash. Despite being incredible pop stars, they were artists first and foremost. Infamously, they never made a dime when they were together due to how committed they were to making their art accessible to all, so why would they start now? At the very least, said art will absolutely live forever as a direct result of that attitude, and for that, we should always be grateful.
