Sunday, July 3, 2011

Pete Howard and The Clash's Last Stand

Perhaps Strummer should have shut down the Casbah Club after Jones was ousted from the band. But he didn't. Though the results were certainly mixed, it wasn't all a wash. Much of what is good in the band's final phase has to do with Pete Howard, last but not the least when it comes to manning The Clash's drum kit.

Cut the Crap was a disaster, a parody of what the band used to be, but it wasn't fated to turn out that way. For one thing, The Clash still had a great drummer in Howard. Though no one could beat Topper Headon--one of the best rock drummers ever, I believe--Howard was more than competent and a better match for The Clash than his immediate predecessor, Terry Chimes.

A brief review of live versions of "Straight to Hell" proves the point. Chimes doesn't attempt to recreate any of the dynamics of Topper Headon's original drum part; the part he plays, as seen in youtube videos or the Saturday Night Live performance of the song from 1982, flattens the song, rendering it more of a typical 1980s arena-rock song than it deserves to be. Howard, by contrast, does an admirable job of capturing what Headon did on the song (from his very first performances with the band), all that knocking and clicking on the rims that seems integral to the song, making it sound more global and not so much stranded in the rock tradition without any awareness of what lies beyond. You could argue that Howard is merely being imitative, but at least he had the skill and a sensibility for what the song demanded. In his performance at the Us Festival in 1983 (Jones' last show with the band), he looks for some reason like he's in great pain, but with other band members struggling to keep it together (either Jones or Simonon starts the song in the wrong key; Strummer's singing is flat at times, and he's holding on to his right ear throughout the entire song as though he can't hear himself sing) he holds on until the rest of the band members find their places, and he pulls off his own part to great success.

As late as 1985, Howard's playing proves that the band still had some potential. The June 29, 1985, Roskilde Festival bootleg features some great drumming, and not all of it is imitative of Topper Headon. Howard's performances on "Armagideon Time," "The Magnificent Seven," and "Rock the Casbah" are noteworthy and significantly different from other versions of these songs. Though Howard fails to capture the finesse of Headon on "Clampdown" (especially the way Headon rode his hi-hat), he pounds out some heavy fills that make for an impressive performance. My favorite versions of "Bankrobber" date to mid-1981, when Topper was pulling off some amazing rapid-fire drumming about two minutes into the song (listen to the Bond's International Casino gigs for the best example), but the Roskilde version with Howard on drums is great, too--and different. Howard's drums on "Broadway" from the same show are fantastic, as well, reminiscent as much of Stewart Copeland as of Topper Headon. The rest of the band may be falling apart around him, but Howard keeps them tight, and, believe it or not, some of the songs really come to life in a way that they sometimes didn't with the classic lineup. The guitars are also tighter than they were with Jones playing lead -- not necessarily better, but Vince White and Nick Sheppard at least know their parts.

The question, then, is why Bernie Rhodes replaced Howard with a drum machine for the recording of the songs that became Cut the Crap. Without parsing the finer details of these final recording sessions, I think we can safely say that the band was simply falling apart, and whether it was Bernie Rhodes' hubris or the same individual's desperation makes little difference: the record label expected an album, and by that point Strummer was largely absent, it seems, mentally and often physically as well. The band had effectively disintegrated. Rhodes, according to Pat Gilbert's history of the band, Passion Is a Fashion, was going for a cutting-edge, contemporary sound, but at the same time (paradoxically) wanted to take the band back to its punk roots. Clearly, he failed. Some of the songs had some great potential, though (I'm fond of "Three Card Trick"), which they might have better achieved with Howard actually playing a role in the studio.

The Roskilde Festival bootleg from 1985 is of mixed audio quality, but it does offer a good glimpse of the potential the band had left. The band pulls off a good version of "Pressure Drop" and the new song "Three Card Trick." But from all accounts Strummer's heart wasn't in it, or was only in it sporadically.

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