Belfast 1978 — When my boot hit punk legend Joe Strummer in the face
The Clash played Belfast in 1978 and they were just so good that night, so completely on fire, that everyone in the audience went absolutely and utterly beserk. This was no ordinary hey-it’s-really-good-to-be-here-in-uh-Belfast, date-29-on-another-tour, type gig. This was SPECIAL. This was SUPERNATURAL.
I was near the front and was so overwhelmed by the amazing, transformative, life-affirming power of the music, that I found some space, took off one of my boots and flung it at the stage. It curled an arc over the heads of the manic dancers at the front and, to my surprise, caught Joe Strummer smack on the right hand side of his face. Joe caught the boot and threw it back into the crowd, and totally unfazed, got tore into playing the next song. No bother to him, as Belfast folks would say.
Of course, I never meant to hurt Joe. There was nothing violent about it. I was just reaching out, just wanted to demonstrate just how much I appreciated the Clash coming to Belfast. Just wanted to show how much I appreciated the energy and the passion Joe and the other members of the Clash were pouring into the crowd in the Ulster Hall that night. I wanted to give them the shirt off my back, the boots off my feet. I would have thrown my whole body onto the stage as well, if that had been possible. The Clash were THAT good. It was the best gig I had ever seen in my life. And it remains so.
Sometime earlier in Belfast city…
My sister and I were sitting at the bar in Robinsons and I was absolutely outraged. Davey McBride had explained his view that the accepted format of rock gigs was completely ridiculous. You paid money and went to see a band, you sat down, the band played, you applauded at the end of each number, whether they were good or bad, and at the end, the band went through this charade of playing encores. What a load of nonsense that was, he explained. They always knew how long they were going to play for — so what was this ‘encores’ nonsense? Did the band REALLY deserve to be called back? Most times, he didn’t think so, because most rock gigs were really boring. You bought a ticket. You went to see a band. The band played their latest album and it didn’t sound as good as it did on record, and you sat down and applauded anyway. They played some encores. And then you went home. There was no passion.
I was a newcomer to this rock concert thingy and I was outraged. Davey was blaspheming here. He had no respect. And, what’s more, he was absolutely right. That’s what made it so annoying. Rock music in the mid-seventies was as threatening and disruptive as the Antiques Roadshow.
Right at that moment, I decided that from then on I was going to get my money’s worth and turn stale ritual into an audience-participation spectacle. I was either going to become completely immersed in the performance and take part, or not bother at all. And that’s exactly what I did.
The only band that mattered
The Clash came to Belfast in October 1978 and they played like it was the last gig they were EVER going to play. They played like they were going to be shot at dawn the next morning. They gave it absolutely EVERYTHING, full throttle the whole way, take NO prisoners. This was shortly after they had released White Man in Hammersmith Palais — their very finest moment. This was before the critical backlash to their second album, the over-produced Give ’Em Enough Rope. And this was before they had toured America, before they became a much bigger band, before they achieved major success and turned into something else entirely.
I had seen the Clash before, had hitch-hiked across from Ireland earlier that year to catch the last night of their infamous set of shows at the Music Machine in Camden Town. Those shows had been awesome too. The Clash had been backed by the Specials (also managed by Bernie Rhodes) and New York electro-duo Suicide, whose name seemed very apt, since an impatient crowd was intent on bottling them off the stage. After a superb set, the Clash were joined on stage by Paul Cook and Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols; and for a final encore of White Riot by Jimmy Pursey of Sham 69. It was like some sort of excitement overdose. Having travelled for more than 24 hours to get to the gig, we had to literally sleep out on the streets that night, but me and my mate thought it was more than worth it. I was 17 years old and I remember making my way up towards Camden and seeing a stacked display for Suicide’s first album in a record shop window in Mornington Crescent, and wondering if the doorway would be a suitable place for a kip.
But the Belfast gig in October was even better. For a start, not that many bands bothered to come to Belfast. The ‘troubles’ were in full, hideous, swing, and every evening the BBC news was full of bombing and bloody murder. Most bands thought that Northern Ireland was a place they’d be wise to avoid. The Clash were different; they had first tried to play Belfast in late 1977, but the gig was cancelled at the last minute. Unable to play, the band did a photo-shoot among the army check-points and war-scape of the city centre. I thought it looked a bit funny, a bit fake; with the most genuine thing about the photos being the moustaches and the flak jackets of the soldiers, the same soldiers who stopped and searched me on my way to school, just another part of everyday life in Northern Ireland.
Not deterred, the band returned to play a low-key University gig, to show their Belfast fans that they really did care; that meant a lot. And then in October 1978, they returned again to play the big one, the Ulster Hall. It was always going to be a very special night.
Punks in Northern Ireland were sort of special, anyway. It was a very disturbing and violent time in a society that was fractured along sectarian lines, with deep divisions between (fundamentalist) religious and political factions, Loyalist and Nationalist. Being a punk meant saying ‘bollocks’ to all that, basically, and opening yourself up to a completely new discourse; but that also meant you became a whole new kind of target. By sticking their heads above the parapet, and by refusing to identify with either faction, punks left themselves open to attack from both sides. The army and police weren’t exactly known for their open-minded views, either.
As for myself, I thought punk was the best thing that had ever happened to Northern Ireland, and to me. I wanted to say stuff the Pope and the Queen and the politicians. I wasn’t going to pay homage to anyone’s medieval regime. And stuff religion, especially. We lived next to a church, and my Ma was, at times, caretaker and housekeeper to the priest. I got to see in full technicolour the hideous hierarchies of the church — a bit like Fr. Ted re-imagined by Hieronymus Bosch. In identifying with the Clash, in being a punk, I essentially found a wonderful freedom from those strangling orthodoxies. I discovered that I could live my life in my own way, without having to carry a huge burden of religious and sectarian hogwash.
October 11th, 1978
The Clash liked to have local bands as support when they played, and so in the Ulster Hall, Belfast’s own Outcasts were on first. They played a solid rocking set and got a warm reception from the crowd. I had previously written to Gavin Martin to ask why he hadn’t covered them in his fanzine Alternative Ulster, and he had written back saying that the Outcasts were middle class posers and not worthy of his or my attention. I thought that was, heh, heh, just a wee bit unfair. I liked the Outcasts — they didn’t take themselves too seriously, and they had the bottle to come up and play in backwaters like Armagh, where I lived.
When the Clash came on, there was an enormous, tidal-wave roar as everyone in the place charged to get right to the front. This wasn’t some sit-down, rock gig ritual. When they started to play, the crowd just exploded, just went off. People were salmon-leaping in the air, but it was more of a jump for joy than a pogo. The Clash smashed out tune after tune, Joe ripping and thrashing at his guitar like he had been possessed by some holy spirit; Mick Jones and Paul Simonon bouncing and boomeranging up off the stage and sparking off the huge energy of the crowd; Topper a blur on the drums at the back. They made an enormously wondrous and beautiful noise, like Miles Davis and John Coltrane in full swing, like James Brown at the Harlem Apollo, an entirely precious and blessed thing. I felt so privileged to be there, to be a witness. It was a difficult enough to be a teenager in Northern Ireland at that time, difficult to be a punk, and this felt like some kind of healing. The Clash were setting us free, if only for one night.
Boot
I managed to wriggle a space in the writhing mass of the crowd and bent down and got one of my boots off. I wasn’t wearing my usual Dr. Martens, just a pair of canvas baseball boots. The boot was lightweight and easy to throw. I stretched back and let fly… The boot hit Joe Strummer on the right hand side of his face. “Good shot, mate!” someone said, and slapped me on the back.
After the gig, after all the encores, like the band, I was completely drained and soaked in sweat. I staggered around, exhausted, dripping, and limped around to the side of the stage where Mick Jones and Joe Strummer had already started a kind of constituency surgery for fans, making themselves available to talk to everybody. No rock star egos here. A queue had already formed. I wanted to stay and talk to them, but it was late, and I had to try and make my way across Belfast with only one boot, try and find my sister’s student flat. I knew I’d better make a move.
I was hobbling towards the exit when a couple of punks came up to me and handed me my missing boot. “Here,” they said, “we kept it for you.”
I was kinda glad of that.
Olde London Towne
The next year, I moved to London. The friends I made in the metropolis assumed I had come to England to escape the violence at home. No, I corrected them, I actually came to see the Clash.
Paradoxically, I never did see the Clash again. They went to America, played huge venues. Instead, I unconsciously followed traces of their psycho-geography around London. Squats in Kensal Rise, The Elgin pub in Ladbroke Grove; the Acklam Hall underneath the Westway, where I saw an early Sonic Youth make an unbelievable racket; cheap rockabilly records in Brixton market; reggae gigs in the Rainbow in Finsbury Park; boozy Dingwalls, the Roundhouse in Camden Town; down past the Apocalypse Hotel in Freston Rd, near where Motörhead rehearsed. I met Jimmy Red who had shared squats with Joe Strummer in Westbourne Grove, and who assured me that Joe was a regular good guy, one of us.
And as we strolled up the Portobello Rd., we would sometimes see the man himself, out doing a bit of shopping in the vegetable market. “Hiya Joe!” we would shout and he would wave and grin. I meant to stop him, have a chat and apologize for the boot, but never got around to it, didn’t want to bother him.
At the gigs I went to, I made sure to get involved. Showed Einstürzende Neubauten how to work a Kango drill like a proper Irish builder, joined Lux Interior on stage while he crawled around in his underpants, joined in the moshpits for Conflict and the glorious Flux of Pink Indians. Then got seriously bored, till one night I staggered into the Hope & Anchor and found PogueMahone belting out ragged Country ’n ’Irish ’n’ Punk hits. Spider Stacy beating the head off himself with a beer tray, Cait O’Riordan ferocious on the bass. That kept me amused for a while till they too got swallowed by the business of the music business.
Many years later
I’m in Sydney, Australia, and I pick up a book about Joe Strummer in a second-hand bookshop. The bit about squats is good, but towards the end the author warbles on far too long about some Mellors guy hanging out in Somerset with Lord Muck and Lady Fandango.
So what.
That’s not how Joe Strummer inspired me. That’s not what I learned from the Clash. To value having passion for what you believe in, to value authenticity, to value social justice, to question authority and orthodoxy, to be aware of the compromises we have to make to live equitably in a corporate world, and not to make overblown triple albums, that’s what I learned from the Clash…
I gave the book to a homeless guy who was living in a doorway near where I worked. I gave him the receipt as well, so he could exchange it, if he didn’t want to read it.
I thought Joe would have liked that.
