The history of
rock’n’roll is peppered with stories of mysterious ‘lost’
recordings and film footage. Their possible existence seems to
nag at us like unsolved crimes. The Clash have been the
subject of several such mysteries. One of the biggest was
solved three years ago when Hell West 10, the black-and-white
silent gangster movie made by Joe Strummer in 1983 and
starring The Clash, turned up on a market stall in London. No
copy of it was believed to have survived.
Its discovery promoted renewed optimism about the greatest
Clash riddle of them all: whatever became of the ‘Vanilla
Tapes’? This was an itch that had been bugging fans for over
two decades. These were recordings the group had purportedly
made in rehearsals during the early summer of 1979. They were
cut just weeks before the sessions with Guy Stevens at Wessex
for London Calling.
The first tantalizing clue that any such tapes existed
appeared in an interview Joe gave to NME’s Charles Shaar
Murray in June 1979. ‘Suppose a group came along and decided
to make a 16-track LP on two Teacs,’ said Joe, ‘which
dramatically diminishes the cost factor called "studio cost".
Suppose you presented that tape to the record company and told
’em that it cost just a few quid to make… you can still get a
fucking LP for two or three quid.’
The idea that The Clash had been experimenting with recording
their own material, or even their own LP, was planted in the
public mind. The possible existence of self-produced 1979
Clash recordings was forgotten about when London Calling
appeared to a grand hurrah at the end of that year. But as the
’80s passed by, it seemed odd that no demos/rehearsal tapes
for the album had surfaced on bootleg (bar a couple of studio
warm-ups). People began to relish the prospect that arguably
the most important group of their generation had joined The
Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Stones as creators of a
mythical lost session.
The group themselves half-remembered committing some material
to tape in the rehearsal space they used in Pimlico, called
Vanilla. But no one knew where the tapes were, or what was on
them. They had other things to worry about, lives to get on
with, and were happy to let the stories weave themselves into
the myth.
In 1997, some clarity was brought to the legend by the group’s
infamous roadie-savant, Johnny Green. That year, Johnny
published his on-the-road memoir, A Riot of Our Own: Night and
Day with The Clash. This included a detailed account of the
months spent at Vanilla developing the songs that would later
grace The Clash’s superlative double. He also related how the
group taped the rehearsals on a Teac tape recorder and
portastudio. So there it was: The Clash definitely had made
some recordings.
He also, it appeared, revealed their ultimate destiny. Having
been given a tape to deliver to Guy Stevens, then in the frame
as producer, he lost them on the London Underground. The way
Johnny tells it, the priceless rehearsal/demo recordings of
‘Clampdown’, ‘London Calling’, ‘Guns of Brixton’ and ‘Rudie
Can’t Fail’ are still travelling up and down the Northern Line
somewhere.
Then, in March 2004, something rather extraordinary happened.
Mick Jones was preparing to move a few houses around the
corner in Holland Park when he found an old cardboard box with
some tapes in it. Mick had accumulated thousands of tapes down
the years but these seemed extra special.
‘I recognised them instantly for what they were,’ he explains.
‘Then I put them somewhere… and I had to find them again. But
I sensed where they were and that took me to the right box. I
opened it up and found them. They hadn’t been heard since
before the record was made. It was pretty amazing.’
After 25 years, the ‘Vanilla Tapes’ had miraculously revealed
themselves at last.
The story behind the recordings begins in February 1979. That
month, The Clash returned from their first tour of America. At
the end of ’78, the group had split from their manager, Bernie
Rhodes. This meant they’d also lost their HQ, Rehearsal
Rehearsals in Camden. Johnny Green and fellow roadie Baker
Glare were dispatched to find them a new, permanent base.
Eventually, they chanced across Vanilla studios on Causton
Street in Pimlico. The building - a former rubber factory -
was used for car repairs. ‘It was like a drive-in garage-type
place,’ recalls Paul Simonon. ‘There were mechanics and parked
cars and fumes. It was great because it was in the middle of
nowhere, we weren’t on the map. We could be left alone. You
didn’t have other people wandering in and out. It was us,
Johnny and Baker. That was the team.’
Mick: ‘Did it feel magical? No, not at all. We just used to
walk in through the cars. It was like one of those factories
where you go up the stairs and there’s a room where the
foreman sits. That’s where we were. It was great because no
one knew we were there. Unless they were invited.’
Throughout May and June the new material came together. Topper
can vividly remember Mick excitedly turning up one afternoon
with the distinctive, strident riff for ‘London Calling’. Some
of the music came in ready-made - Rudie Can’t Fail, Lost In
the Supermarket, Four Horsemen, I’m Not Down. Other songs grew
organically. Mick and Joe were constantly to and fro-ing
across the room, showing each other chord shapes on their
guitars and guiding Paul and Topper. Sometimes Paul and Topper
would be guiding Mick and Joe.
Mick: ‘When you do music, with me, the bit you’ve just done
tells me where to go next. I can hear it already, so it’s
already there for me. It was really feeling it out, and
trusting in the way we work together, knowing it’ll be
alright. Looking back, it was a really natural, organic
process.’
Paul: ‘Mick would be an hour late or half-an-hour late, so
we’d be playing something. I suppose it was the first time we
played together in terms of creating the songs. There was a
lot of experimentation. I’d hear tunes on the radio or a
record, I’d play it, then Topper would join in. Or Mick or Joe
would arrive with something, and we would work on it. It was
like doubles at ping-pong but with music as the ball.’
Towards the end of June, The Clash decided they wanted to
record their new stuff. Joe talked animatedly about taping an
album there and then in Vanilla. However, both Paul and Mick
contend there was never any real plan to make London Calling
at Number 36 Causton Street. ‘We were bluffing,’ says Mick.
‘We were winding up the record company. Our chant for that
record was "two-for-one!". We were concerned about value for
money.’
Earlier in the year, Johnny and Baker had struck up a
friendship with The Who’s soundman Bob Pridden. They knew him
from hiring gear from ML Executives, a hire company set up by
The Who. Pridden suggested they use a Teac 4-track machine and
link it to a portastudio. He helped them set it up, and Baker
learned to work the equipment. In this way, The Clash taped
several rehearsals. At the end of each session, they ran off
cassette copies, which Mick in particular would take away to
study. It was one of the final cassette copies that Johnny
Green had left on the tube.
Today, Paul and Mick think it was, in fact, Bernie who
suggested Guy Stevens as a possible producer the album. That
was fine with The Clash. Joe went off in search of Stevens and
found him propping up the bar in a pub off Oxford Street…
So what exactly is on the ‘Vanilla Tapes’? What have we been
missing out on for the last 25 years? Well, you’re possibly
listening to them right now, so you’ll already have a very
good idea. Basically, they’re clean, bright recordings that
reveal a group who are evidently enjoying creating something
organic and musical. Paul’s bass walks, hops and lopes as he
feels himself into jazz, funk and disco. Mick plays
economically, expertly and fluidly – intelligent licks and
chops. Joe’s rhythm guitar cuts through like a man who learned
his craft from old Bo Diddley, Bukka White and Chuck Berry
records. Topper is magnificent – light, precise and clever.
It’s London Calling stripped bare for combo playing: no horns,
Hammond, piano, whistling.
The tapes Mick discovered included 37 tracks in total. These
have been pared down to the 21 best versions. Every song they
recorded is represented here. There are some interesting
snatches of studio chatter, but the most exciting revelation
is the presence of five completely unknown Clash songs: ‘Heart
And Mind’ (a rocker pitched somewhere between ‘The Prisoner’
and ‘Death Or Glory’), ‘Where You Gonna Go (Soweto),’
'Lonesome Me' and a bluesy instrumental, 'Walking The
Slidewalk.' There's also a cover of Matumbi’s version of Bob
Dylan’s ‘The Man In Me’. The Clash’s takes on Vince Taylor’s
‘Brand New Cadillac’ and Danny Ray’s ‘Revolution Rock’ made
the final album, of course.
‘Remote Control’ gets an airing and shows how different The
Clash’s first-album material was sounding two years on. A
remnant of the warm-up sessions at Vanilla, it’s a surprise to
find it here: the song wasn’t played live after the White Riot
tour in spring 1977. ‘We’re not supposed to like that, are
we?’ laughs Mick of the song CBS famously released as a single
in 1977 without the group’s permission. ‘I think Joe disliked
it on a symbolic level, because of what happened with the
release. But we always liked the tune.’
‘The Right Profile’ is still in its instrumental stage, and is
called ‘Up-toon’ (a version called ‘Canalside Walk’ has been
passed over in favour of this one). Paul’s ‘Guns of Brixton’
is still without lyrics and is slightly groovier and more
conventionally reggae. You can hear he and Mick suggesting a
drum intro to the track to Topper. On other songs, bridges and
intros are missing, and lyrics differ. ‘Clampdown’ is in its
early ‘Working And Waiting’ incarnation, while we’re treated
to the version of ‘London Calling’ that Joe alludes to in The
Clash On Broadway box set - here London calls to ‘the fools
and the clowns’ and ‘the Mods on the run’ (the 1979 Mod
revival resulted in seaside skirmishes that Easter).
Four songs from the finished " London Calling " album are
absent: ‘Spanish Bombs’, ‘The Card Cheat’, ‘Wrong ’Em Boyo’
and ‘Train In Vain’. This confirms the received wisdom that
(except ‘Wrong ’Em Boyo’), these we written when The Clash
were in Wessex recording the album proper.
Even so, that means that the ‘Vanilla Tapes’ feature versions
of 15 out of the 19 songs on the album. It’s a fascinating
document.
‘We only played these demos a few times,’ says Mick. ‘We
didn’t go into the studio and slavishly copy them. We knew the
basics, some of the lyrics came later. They were sketches,
really. But I’m glad I found them. They tell you quite a lot
about what we were like at the time.’
Sadly, Number 36 Causton Street, the site of Vanilla, was
redeveloped in the early 1990s. Today, a new building stands
on the site, renumbered 1-16. It was in these premises that
Joe first sung the immortal words ‘I believe in this and it’s
been tested by research/He who fucks nuns will later join the
church!’ on ‘Death Or Glory’. It was the ultimate insight into
how youthful rebellion is eventually tempered by the
responsibilities and realizations of adulthood.
I’m sure Joe would be laughing his socks off if he knew that
Vanilla studio is now a church building called London Diocesan
House.
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