Death or Glory—The Clash
#365Songs: April 16
Dr. J, one of my esteemed writing collaborators on the #365Songs project, recently declared a 90’s week for himself (pardon me, a “fucking 90’s” week) and proceeded to write about everyone from Kula Shaker to The Sundays.
In short, it was excellent.
Ok, says me. Theme week it is.
I hereby declare this to be Clash Week.
I thought initially I would go in some sort of chronological order, but I scrapped that. #365Songs is all about improvisation, being in the moment, feeling it.
And right now, I am feeling it. Feeling “Death or Glory.”
Myself, Dr. J, and Smitty (the trio of writer-editor-music obsessives behind the whole series), have been debating throughout the morning about failure, rebellion, hope, and the will to write.
In a recent piece, Smitty wrote beautiful things like this:
If I’ve learned anything in this life, it’s that the opportunity that changes everything is right there on the other side of the failure that almost breaks you.
Sometimes I feel very dirty next to Smitty. I don’t have this kind of hope or optimism. I am delusionally determined, impressively stubborn, but markedly short on hope.
I came across a John Steinbeck quote recently that feels a little closer to my own stance:
“The greatest foolishness of all lies in the fact that to do it at all, the writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.”
This isn’t so far a bridge to something else Smitty wrote:
“What I try to tell myself in my dour moments, is to sit in that failure, to thank that failure for its wisdom, to get back in there and try it again, but just a little different this time.”
This is a very zen kind of stubbornness—humble and relentless, simultaneously—and I get it.
Zen and existentialism are uncomfortable neighbors — each leaning slightly away from one another in conversation, as if they each wish to be in a different area of the party. Zen leans toward the optimists who wake each day with a sense of hope, purpose, and confidence. The existentialists, on the other hand, find themselves listening in unobtrusively while the nihilists go on about there being no purpose or meaning to anything.
The only idea that anyone seems to agree on is that the sentient world is illusory, even as its hard facts diminish us and challenge us to continue.
Cynics and curmudgeons are at this party as well, as am I.
It’s hard to talk with a modern cynic. Their mandate has changed so much since their Greek origins. There was a time when cynics were closer to the zen buddhists than just about anyone else, in their rejection of superficiality in pursuit of eudaimonia. But that pursuit is a far cry from the sour pills we too often encounter today, whose cynicism is largely just a posture of distrust. In America in particular, distrust and ignorance too often go hand-in-hand, creating a nasty sub-culture of people who get remarkably mad at that which they don’t understand.
Curmudgeons, on the other hand, are cut from a different cloth. No one loves the world more than a curmudgeon. That’s why curmudgeons seem so grumpy all the time. They’re disappointed. But they never stop loving the world.
To see through failings and to confront head-on the vast gulf between what is and what should be is an exercise in resilience.
Which (finally) brings us to “Death or Glory.”
When you’re a teenager, this is a lyric that will fire you right up:
i believe in this, and it’s been tested by research
he who fucks nuns will later join the church
There was no way I could understand how frighteningly true this really was, or how ghastly close our current socio-political climate would come to what should have been hyperbole, but all the same, I knew this mindset was on to something.
death or glory
becomes just another story
Good god, how right that is. And this is exactly what I’m talking about when I talk about resilience. Resilience is stubbornness plus determination divided by truth. It’s the beating heart of a curmudgeon. It’s less, “If you knock me down, I’ll get up again,” and more, “If you let me down, I’ll still go on.”
The Clash’s London Calling has been rightly and repeatedly hailed as a masterpiece, and “Death or Glory” is unquestionably one of the highest of the high points.
It’s rhythmically sophisticated, chordally powerful, melodically beguiling, and lyrically devastating.
At face value, it’s also a rock and roll diss that would become, in a few short years, sharply ironic.
The Who had famously declared in 1965 that they’d rather die than grow old. At that point, Pete Townshend was 20 years old. In 1983, when Pete Townshend was 38, The Who were playing stadiums. Their opening act was a band that was unknowingly busy committing eventual band suicide as they wrestled on a nightly basis with whether they were selling out or broadening their message. That band, of course, was The Clash.
“One of the reasons The Clash broke up was we saw what The Who were like at the end of their tether. It’s a bad scene. You very quickly turn into nothing. I’ve enjoyed my life because I’ve had to deal with all kind of things, from failure to success to failure again. That has made me a better person. I don’t think there’s any point in being famous if you’re an arsehole, or if you lose that thing of being a human being. Because you ain’t gonna be happy living in some mansion somewhere.” — Joe Strummer, interviewed by Stephen Dalton, for Classic Rock
As with all the best Clash songs, there’s a bigger story here. It’s a story about corruption, false idols, the addiction to profit and the evils of capitalism. It’s a story about the sullying of ideals and the feeling of having been tricked, misled, lied to, and taken advantage of.
Me, I resent songs about hope. My back goes up. People like me don’t get to have hope. Failure is a luxury. I don’t court failure, romance it, or idealize it. Because I know the odds are against me getting back up, whether I learn anything from it or not. No failure for me, thanks.
And yet, I do get back up. Always. That’s the zen. That’s the curmudgeon. That’s the punk rock.
I grew up in a world where it still meant something to do the right thing simply because it’s the right thing.
now every cheap hood strikes a bargain with the world
and ends up making payments on a sofa or a girl
“love and hate” tattooed across the knuckles of his hands
hands that slap his kids around ’cause they don’t understand
how death or glory
becomes just another story
This is part of keeping on with keeping on. You don’t take it out on others. You can’t. That isn’t fair. Your rebellion is your own.
Youth is often a case of “be careful what you wish for.” A kind of ruinously self-fulfilling prophecy. When I was young, all I wanted was to be was a grumpy old man. Preferably one who played guitar and wrote beautifully raw songs.
What you don’t realize when you’re young is that old people are grumpy because being old hurts. Morally, spiritually, financially, emotionally, physically. It hurts.
That broken-down old bluesman you wanted to be? No money, shabby suit, beat-up guitar?
Not so fun in actual life. Being poor sucks. Being old hurts.
And yet. And yet.
And yet, how happy are the profit junkies? The capitalism addicts? The fiends who’d crawl over their dead mother’s corpses for another dollar, another hit of power?
fear in the gun-sights, they say lie low
you say ok, don’t wanna play the show
now all you’re thinking, “Was it death or glory now?”
playing the blues for pennies sure looks better now
death or glory
just another story
By a young person’s measurement, I’m old. I am the grumpy old man. The broken-down musician who is still trying to write beautifully raw songs for god knows what reason. Who still believes in punk rock and the blues. Who still thinks there’s a fight worth fighting. Who has a deficit of hope and a surplus of resilience.
Just another story? Probably. But I’m not going “the Hemingway.”
Credit to Nick Cave for that line, by the way:
bukowski was a jerk!
berryman was best!
he wrote like wet papier-mache
but he went the Hemingway
No, not going the Hemingway. Somewhere between death and glory is persistence.
I am, therefore I persist.
~
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