The Humble Greatness of Mick Jones
Here we are, this Sunday — June 26 in the year of our Lord 2022, celebrating the mighty Mick Jones’ 67th birthday. And the theme is the quiet, humble way he’s carried himself in his post-Clash career.
MICK JONES: GENIUS
Among the duo who led The Clash, Joe Strummer, who passed away in 2002 at the age of 50, has ascended to legend status and rock god immortality, perhaps outright sainthood, over the last two decades. Meanwhile, Mick Jones has beavered away in near obscurity outside of the veneration of other musicians and post-punk cognoscenti. While Strummer was clearly the conscience of The Clash and the lyrical genius of the band, Jones was also a fine lyricist and deceptively skilled guitarist. His genius lay in musical composition, arrangement, and innovation. While not wanting to invoke a competition over which was the greater genius, they were equally crucial as the songwriting team behind The Clash, I think it must be admitted that Jones’s work with Big Audio Dynamite surpasses Strummer’s post-Clash body of work. While Strummer produced several excellent songs spread across a handful of albums with his Mescaleros and Rockabilly War Band, his one great post-Clash album was the soundtrack to Alex Cox’s film Walker, a dramedy about William Walker, an American mercenary general working for Cornelius Vanderbilt who installed himself as president of Nicaragua in 1856. The film starred Ed Harris as Walker and was filled with the dark bathos Cox is famous for. The album was filled with gorgeous cuts updating American folk and traditional Latin styles.
After a brief stint as a founding member of Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger’s post-Beat project General Public*, Jones came strong out of the gate with a new songwriting partnership with the filmmaker and friend of The Clash Don Letts in Big Audio Dynamite. 1985’s This Is Big Audio Dynamite and 1986’s No. 10 Upping Street were instant classics. It’s hard to remember how far ahead of their time they were because the sophisticated mix of analog and electronica, hip hop, world beat, and reggae feel so natural to us today and we are inclined to remember B.A.D. as borrowing heavily from hip hop. But as with the Magnificent Seven, the instrumental version of which took over beatboxes and hip hop turntables in Queens during the summer of 1981*, Jones was borrowing from hip hop and then leapfrogging ahead. Go back and listen to This is B.A.D and Upping Street against the best hip hop from ‘85 and ‘86. In terms of sophistication and polish, hip hop wouldn’t catch up with Jones/Letts until 1988’s It Takes a Nation of Millions by Public Enemy and De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising and then the cutting-edge slant rhymes of Eric B. and Rakim’s Let The Rhythm Hit’Em in 1990. But by 1989, Jones was already onto new cutting edges with the sonically innovative, if not classic, Megatop Phoenix. It must be acknowledged, though, that Joe Strummer co-wrote some of B.A.D.’s best songs, half the tracks on No. 10 Upping Street, their best album which Strummer co-produced with Jones. Even when Jones was running the show, Joe still made him better.
Catch them at the peak of their game, here in a song co-written with Strummer from 10 Upping Street captured in a video directed by the great Jim Jarmusch. They had a hep blue-collar, multiracial vibe we really hadn’t seen since Sly and the Family Stone in the early 70s. Sonically, hip hop wouldn’t catch up for another two years.
After forming a new version of B.A.D. with a new lineup of musicians, Jones moved from critical to mass acclaim with B.A.D. II’s single Rush which topped the UK charts in 1991.
If I had my time again
I would do it all the same
And not change a single thing
Even when I was to blame
For the heartache and the pain
That I caused throughout my years
How I learned to be a man
Through the laughter and the tears
Now I'm fully grown
And I know where it's at
Somehow, I stayed thin
While the other guys got fat
All the chances that I've blown
And the times that I've been down
I didn't get too high
Kept my feet on the ground
Since 1991, Jones has had a more low-key career with the highlight probably being his semi-emeritus membership in Gorillaz joining them along with Clash bassist Paul Simonon in the studio for the albums Plastic Beach and The Fall, and the Escape to Plastic Beach world tour in 2010–2011.
FUN FACT: The Gorillaz initially got off the ground with funding from Neneh Cherry who was a friend-to-the-band of B.A.D. and appeared in the video for Medicine Show along with Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon as a pair of abusive, corrupt cops.
THE GENIUS AS HUMBLE JOURNEYMAN
Which is all to set the stage for the completely unpretentious nature of his post-B.A.D. career. While he was kicked out of The Clash for letting fame go to his head and getting too big for his britches, showing up late to rehearsals, quarrelsome, getting on his high-horse about the commercial aspects of making music, in middle age and beyond, he’s been someone who will show up just about anywhere to play just for the love of playing.
AT THE PUBLIC LIBRARY
Here he is leading a few dozen fans in a sing-a-along of Train in Vain and Should I Stay or Should I Go? in a modest public library, albeit The Rock and Roll Public Libary. And drinking lager from a can.
He closes with his most personal, heartful song, Stay Free [lyrics] from 1978’s Give’Em Enough Rope, about his best friend from childhood who ended up attempting bank robbery and imprisoned in The Old Bailey.
Stay Free was inspired by a classmate of Clash guitarist Mick Jones - a man named Robin Crocker. In an interview with The Guardian in 2008, Crocker explained: "Mick Jones and I sat together at Strand boys' grammar school [in south London]. We had a fight over who was better - I thought Chuck Berry and he thought Bo Diddley. It was a hugely disciplinarian school. The headmaster used to have a wooden leg, so he got the nickname Hobbler. We were marched down to Hobbler's office to explain ourselves and Mick said, 'We were arguing about rock'n'roll, sir.' Hobbler raged, 'Rock'n'roll is not on the curriculum in this establishment!' and was so furious that all this gob landed on his lapel. Me and Mick fell about laughing and that was it - firm friends and the end of any respect for authority for ever. Mick had the longest hair and tightest trousers in school. I was a hooligan, basically, because I was bored.
After school I was working as a journalist and got laid off. I fell in with a bunch of people and we decided to rob some banks. I ended up in the Old Bailey. It was like being back in Hobbler's office. I ended up in a maximum security jail on the Isle of Wight. By the time I got out Mick had formed the Clash. One evening he came over with an acoustic and played me 'Stay Free.' Somebody once said to me it's the most outstanding heterosexual male-on-male love song, and there is a lot of truth in that. It's a memento of a glorious band, a glorious time and a glorious friendship. Unfortunately, I didn't Stay Free. I did a wages snatch in Stockholm and got banged up again."
You can see his utter joy in performing in even such humble surroundings. Remember, The Clash opened for the Who and sold out Shea Stadium. He was part of what is widely considered to be the third greatest rock and roll song-writing duo after McCartney/Lennon and Jagger/Richards. Their album London Calling is nearly universally considered the best album of the 80s, among the top five punk albums, and among the top ten or twenty greatest rock and roll albums of all time. He just wants to play in front of people and he’ll show up and play for free if the right people ask him.
PUB ROCKER
Carbon/Silicon has been Jones’ working band since 2002, formed with his former colleague from London SS (the band they were in with Paul Simonon before The Clash), Generation X, and Sigue Sigue Sputnik member Tony James. I hate to say it while celebrating his birthday but it’s been a pretty lackluster project, which may underline his need, like Paul McCartney’s, for a strong partner. But I have to admire his desire to soldier forth.
Here they are joined by the best of The Clash’s drummers, Topper Headon, playing the kind of club dozens of my non-famous but very talented musician friends have played. The kind of club where a crowd of 50 to 200 hundred friends and local fans show up and the musicians have to schlepp their own equipment. Shot with a phone by one of their buddies milling about on stage who is in no way separate from their buddies milling about in the audience. Attentive fans will recognize Leo E-Zee Kill Williams from B.A.D. on bass.
JUSTICE TONIGHT
Closing out our tour of Mick Jones doing his thing, being a stand-up guy and all-around mensch are a few performances from The Justice Tonight Band of 2011-12. An ad hoc lineup of Jones, The Farm, and Pete Wylie formed for a benefit concert of Clash songs, in response to the death of 96 fans in a crush at the Liverpool v Nottingham Forest semi-final and generally ignored by the powers that be. That grew into a tour with a mix and match lineup in support of Justice for the Hillsborough 96 and the Don’t Buy The Sun campaign after The Sun tabloid smeared the citizens of Liverpool.
Mick recalls that first night which was meant to be a one-off concert.
”The tour started as a one-off gig in Liverpool and when I was asked to do it I was straight in. I have had close ties to Liverpool for years. They are like my brothers these people and if there is ever any band I want to play with these guys in The Farm because they really understand my work.
I have been close to Liverpool since the punk days with my friendship with Pete Wylie as well. Years ago I did this thing with The Farm at one gig then we went out later and they all sang an acapella version of White Man In Hammersmith Palais and it was so moving to see what that song meant to people.”
For Mick, it’s the perfect platform to play the Clash songs that he has not played for years.
“I haven’t played a set of Clash songs since I was in The Clash and this seemed like a really meaningful forum for them. We are not chasing any illusions here, I just wanted to put the songs to a good use. That’s why I’m doing this. I might as well make myself useful and use the stuff that I have to contribute to the thing.”
The Clash songs played include Stay Free sung by Pete Wylie, a Mick sung Train In Vain, White Man In Hammersmith Palais sung by Peter Hooten, Bankrobber, and Armagideon Time delivered by the guests as well as Janie Jones, Brand New Cadillac, Should I Stay Or Should I Go, Garageland, and even later in the tour a sprightly run-through of London Calling and others.
Mick looks up.
“That first gig in Liverpool in September was so successful that we thought we should try and do some more. We knew it wasn’t just Liverpool that cared about this thing – and there is the bigger picture as well, the primary cause is Liverpool and the Hillsborough 96 and the campaign but it’s all connected to things like Occupy Wall Street, St. Pauls, and the Arab Spring. It’s a feeling and we are part of that feeling and we are also reminding people of what gigs could be about rather than what they have become.
It’s so disappointing with what they have become. The reason why that happened was that the corporations are not just happy to just sponsor the culture they want to be the culture and we need to claw that back for our own self-respect, our own feeling of self-worth, because we are worth a lot. People have been made into morons basically, very subtlety, so this for me, gave myself a meaning in my life, and I give all I have to give here. We are not chasing nostalgia, not doing that at all. The songs stand up.”
Mick interrupts the start of London Calling and instructs the band, “More floaty. It’s got to be cloudlike.”
Excerpts from an account of a soundcheck and then the show by music journalist John Robb who was working crew for the tour:
There’s a voodoo in the room. A twitching, thrilling metallic KO of voodoo. Half of Primal Scream are playing Brand New Cadillac with half of the Clash and it sounds like pure electricity.
… And this is only the soundcheck.
Who would have thought that you would get to see Mick Jones and Paul Simonon kicking out the jams to a Vince Taylor song made famous by The Clash together onstage? Yeah, we know they did that Gorillaz tour together and that was great fun and all that. But this is The fucking Clash playing Vince Taylor. It’s quintessential Rock n’ Roll. Pure.
Paul Simonon is total gunslinger cool and he makes the Precision bass look like it’s part of his body, making it look tiny and lightweight. Try doing that at home.
With his keen artistic eye, he has got the band, apart from the besuited Mick, to dress in leather jackets. Primal Scream and Paul Simonon look like a loose-limbed bike gang, copping the Vince Taylor leather cool from those creased old sleeves that wrapped those classic cult songs from the coolest Rock n’ Roller. Simonon has the classic hat and bike boots, the whole look down. Perfect. Like Mick, age sits well on his shoulders. The ironic thing about The Clash is that whilst they were a great band to soundtrack a troubled teenage generation in the late seventies, they have grown into their elder statesman roles perfectly, with a swaggering cool and wisdom that comes from years on the road without getting too lost in rock star world.
What’s really telling is the moment when Paul walks onto the stage during the soundcheck with his bass held like an AK 47 — all the other bands, to a man, grab their iPhones and are snapping pictures. The Farm, who have had top five albums and huge selling singles, revert back to being the kids who fell in love with The Clash as teenagers. The chemistry between Mick and Paul is so natural and so electric that everyone in the room is riveted. This isn’t a soundcheck — this is a moment and everyone knows it.
… [Primal Scream tears through Jail Guitar Doors] … Jail Guitar Doors is one of the great story songs, with its tales of busts and Rock n’ Roll and the quest. Jail Guitar Doors tells you what will happen when you kick against the pricks too hard. Just ask Paul. He was locked up in Greenland for two weeks recently after a Greenpeace demo in which he tried to storm an oil platform. Fucking hell! Talk about Rock n’ Roll, can you get any more Rock n’ Roll than direct action? Bet he had the whole protest crew dressed perfectly as well!
What with Mick doing this tour and Paul in jail, The Clash are actually more on the barricades than they were even in their youth. You can just feel Joe, leg twitching, eyes bulging, up there in Rock n’ Roll Heaven itching to get involved in this! The world is fucked but Rock n’ Roll is fighting back.
[The show is underway and …] The atmosphere is already at fever pitch but it’s about to go through the roof when they switch to the Clash set. When Roy, the Farm drummer, plays that Motown intro at the begging of Train In Vain, the floor is in meltdown and there is that massive rush of excitement that you get with a perfect Rock n’ Roll moment. And it doesn’t relent. Stay Free is a celebration. Bankrobber with Holly Cook helping on vocals, is a song to get lost in. Holly is fab, her dad is Paul Cook, she sang in the Slits, and her own solo project is really great. She may not know all the words, but that’s not the point. This is not a test. It’s about unity and the moment. The whole point of punk was getting up there and doing it and that’s caught perfectly.
… I have to go backstage … In the corner Paul Simonon is sitting quietly. His bass propped up against his legs with his hat on the machine heads. He looks like a marine about to go into action, mentally prepared. We chat for a bit. I haven’t met him for twenty years. I once interviewed him for Sounds on an entertaining afternoon in Notting Hill. Simonon smiles his gap-toothed grin. The fact that he is here underlines the importance of this event. After all, it was Paul that would not come back to The Clash for the mooted Hall Of Fame gig that was talked about or rumored just before Joe died. Feeling that The Clash was about something more than playing that most laughable of high-profile award ceremonies, Simonon was right. And this tour underlines his instinctive gut feeling about what this band was best at — empowering people, making a statement.
When the Scream walk on there is another rush from the audience but that’s nothing compared to when Simonon enters the stage to join them. It’s a Clash moment. Jones and Simonon, the keepers of the flame assume the position — the classic silhouettes that we know so well and they strike up Brand New Cadillac. It’s raw and thrilling and perfect ragged Rock n’ Roll. You feel the rush of watching a band that know their chops, delivering a perfect piece of Rock n’ Roll.
Jones, mensch that he is, is happy to turn over the vocals of Stay Free to Pete Wylie. Dublin in March of 2012.
I did my very best to write
How was Butlins? Were the screws too tight?
When you lot get out we’re gonna hit the town
We'll burn it fucking down to a cinder
… And I'll never forget the smile on my face
'Cause I knew where you would be
And if you're in The Crown tonight have a drink on me
But go easy
Step lightly, yeah
Stay free
Joined by Ian Brown and John Squire of The Stone Roses.
One great takeaway from all this is that, unlike Jagger and Richards or many, many other bands of their cohort, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon could have reformed The Clash after Joe Strummer passed away and milked the nostalgia of people like you and me, staying rich and famous, but they chose not to. Because no matter how modest the next project they want to keep doing new things and things with integrity.
Here’s Simonon’s post-Clash band Havana 3a.m.
The second big takeaway is the sheer joy he takes in performance. In the live clips of Big Audio Dynamite below, he is playing with the intensity of a man intent on leading The World’s Best Working Rock and Roll Band at that particular moment. Just as The Clash had been the world’s best working Rock and Roll band for a few years when they were at the height of their powers. And you could tell they knew it. Being the Only Band That Matters was a weighty responsibility. But in the projects that followed Big Audio Dynamite, when he may have felt he no longer had anything to prove, Mick Jones is always having an absolute blast on stage. Always the one stage having the best time. Loose, laughing, joshing his band mates, mugging in jest for the crowd.
TRIBUTE
Finally, to close out, this friendly ribbing as tribute from the Dropkick Murphy’s about a time when maybe Mick wasn’t such a mensch.
By the way, that drum lick that drops in around the 2-minute mark is nicked from Topper in Tommy Gun.
Here’s the story behind the song:
You never know what you’ll get when you meet your idols. Grammy-winning producer Tedd Hutt certainly has some stories, and he once shared an encounter with Mick Jones, lead guitarist of The Clash, to another frequent collaborator, Ken Casey from Dropkick Murphys. “Ted was telling this story to us during pre-production, and we were just about to go for lunch and somehow this story comes up,” recalled Casey.
“Ah, one time I was working in a studio, and it was several studios in one building and there was a common area, kitchen, and refrigerator,” shares Casey. “And he said, ‘I came out and I put a pudding in the ‘frigerator, and there was Mick producing some project. And he’s eating my pudding.’ We said, ‘Holy s***, what did you say? Did you say anything?’ And you have to know, Ted is the most soft-spoken, nicest guy, but he wasn’t letting that ruin a good story.
“So he said, ‘I said, ‘Oy, that’s my pudding! Put it down right now!’ Which we all knew right off the rip that that was bulls***, but it made for a good story. And so we took a break for lunch and I said, ‘I’m going to stay back, guys,'” Casey adds. By the end of lunch break, Mick Jones Nicked My Pudding was a fully formed song. “It’s a little bit, obviously, about what really happened but also the analogy that you don’t meet your idols, they might let you down.”
* On General Public’s 1984 debut album, All The Rage, Jones plays guitar on Hot You’re Cool, Tenderness, Never You Done That, As a Matter of Fact, Where’s the Line? and possibly other tracks.
** As the Magnificent Seven dance mix was blasting from boomboxes and dance clubs across Queens in the summer of 1981, The Clash was in NYC to play 17 soldout shows at the Bonds Club in Time Square. While they were there they hung out and made friends with a raft of up-and-coming hip hop stars.
THE RABBIT HOLE:
Don Letts did more cowbell before more cowbell was cool.
Below, we get a taste of Don Lett’ fearsome chatting skills.
I don’t know why Don Letts keeps flipping the camera the bird but it cracks me up.
Fred Armisen pays tribute.
A duet with then-girlfriend, Ellen Foley from Spirit of St. Louis, written and produced by Strummer and Jones with musical backing from all four members of The Clash. Foley had been co-lead vocal on Sandanista’s Hitsville U.K. and backing vocals on Corner Soul and Washington Bullets. Spirit of St. Louis was recorded right after Sandinista! with the same musicians and engineers. Nearly all the songs were written by Strummer and Jones or Tymon Dogg who wrote and sang Lose This Skin on Sandanista! and played violin or keyboards on six other songs. Only one song was written by Foley. It’s essentially a Clash album but with Foley as the lead vocalist, a perk of being Mick Jones's girlfriend.
You may remember Foley from Meatloaf’s Paradise by the Dashboard Light.
Word on the street is that Should I Stay or Should I Go? was written about Foley.
Carbon/Silicon's best song.
Duet with Lily Allen of the Joe Strummer classic.
Jones was a session player in ‘77 for Glen Matlock’s post-Pistols group Rich Kids on their first album and John Peel session. He doesn’t appear here, but it’s Top of the Pops, so you are listening to him.
Aztek Camera with a B.A.D. II era Mick Jones as special guest.
Sitting in with The Wallflowers.
The classics
.