Some go to Graceland, some to Windmill Lane, some to Athens, Georgia - I go to a huge piece of concrete and metal known as the Westway in West London where after a wander around Portobello, I click the start button on my walkperson and listen again to Janie Jones, Garageland, White Riot and all those three-minute anthems that have endured over the past 20 years. Older, if not wiser, the song remains the same and The Clash remain the best goddam rock 'n' roll band in the world. There is no debate.
The Redskins once famously said that they wanted to sing like The Supremes and walk like The Clash (didn't we all?) but it wasn't just the swagger, the slogans and the T-shirts that contributed to the legend (aided and abetted by Pennie Smith's extraordinary photo-journalism). It was Jones's electrifying guitar, Simenon's booming bass and Headon's smashing snare drum all behind Strummer's snarling vocals that propelled them from council flat to Madison Square Gardens.
It's oft remarked, vis-a-vis the chronic musical limitations of Oasis that The Beatles went from She Loves You to Sgt Pepper's in the space of a mere five years. All well and good I'm sure, but on one level who would you rather have on bass guitar in your band - Paul McCartney or Paul Simenon? Mull Of Kintyre or Guns Of Brixton? On another level, The Clash went from the three-chord punk simplicity of White Riot to the dub/roots/dance/gospel/electronic ambitious musical sprawl that was Sandinista in just three years. Let cowards flinch and traitors sneer, if you're one of those half-hearted types who gave up on the band after London Calling and just can't cope with Sandinista then you're not a real fan and probably never were in the first place either.
Moments, so many moments: the drum intro (by Terry Chimes) on Janie Jones, the guitar work on Safe European Home, Jones's one-finger guitar solo on Tommy Gun, the ska-influenced Rudie Can't Fail, the bit about the Irish tombs on Spanish Bombs, the last-minute recording of Train In Vain, the glorious Sandinista highlights which include Hitsville UK, Somebody Got Murdered (Good bye, for keeps, forever), Police On My Back and Charlie Don't Surf. Glossing over Should I Stay Or Should I Go and Rock The Casbah (written by Topper Headon in a Ringoesque moment) Combat Rock, the last real Clash album, features two of their finest musical moments in Sean Flynn and Straight To Hell (you'll find the missing last verse of this song, the "vamos muchachos" one, on the box set, Clash On Broadway).
All that aside, there was their early work with Rock Against Racism and their single-minded mission to rehabilitate reggae with a punk audience. There's also the fact that they are the sole reason for the existence of the Manic Street Preachers (and The Alarm, but we'll ignore that) and that they never ever performed on Top Of The Pops, even though both The Pistols and The Jam succumbed in time. There was the double album selling for a single album price, the triple album selling for a double album price, the cut-price singles, the ultra-cool T-shirts, their heroic battle in fighting the law (the music industry) and putting up a bloody good fight before the law won. And while the legacy may be sullied by the ill-advised post-Mick Jones Cut The Crap album (which is like a bad Sham 69 album) and the use of Should I Stay in a stupid jeans advertisement, there remains the simple fact that unlike many of their peers, this is a band which you will never see hacking out the old hits at Midnight at the Olympia. At a time when prog rock is rearing its ugly head, albeit disguised as mid 1990s Zeitgeist music and worse still, where horrid conceptual rubbish like Yes and Tangerine Dream is sneaking in the back door under the guise of "ambient dance", there is a need to be ever vigilant, particularly on the "phoney Beatlemania" front. Join up with the last gang in town.
The full, unexpurgated Clash story is told by their tour manager, Johnny Green, in A Riot Of Our Own: Night And Day With The Clash, which has just been published by Indigo books, price £8.99. The definitive Clash collection, The Clash On Broadway, is available on the Sony label, price £25 - but it's worth it.
