The Triumphant Return of Mick Jones

Unknown Publication
1985
By Chris Salewicz

A terse communique was issued in August, 1983, by the office of The Clash: Mick Jones had been dismissed from the group. Apparently, he was ideologically unsound.

Jones had appeared one afternoon at the group's West London rehearsal studio, only to be informed by vocalist Joe Strummer that he no longer wanted his songwriting partner and guitarist in the group. Jones replaced his guitar in its case and left the studio. "The moment I closed the case, my seven years with The Clash were over and my life began again," he says. The action marked the culmination of months of simmering tension between Jones and Strummer. Ironically, it was Jones, the founder of The Clash, who had brought Strummer into the group in the first place.

Strummer specifically accused Jones of behaving like a flashy, self-indulgent rock star, and by so doing, had become everything The Clash were against.

"I know that I did behave like a rock star," Jones now admits. "But in doing that, I was just one component of what made up The Clash. It was never just one person, or one attitude: You could see it all onstage, the way we moved around and complemented each other. At first, the effect we had live was all we were after. The three of us at the front knew exactly how it looked to the audience, it was exactly as we wanted---that's why we weren't even bothered how it sounded at first.

"I did behave like a prima donna, I did pull numbers. But that was the attitude we all learned from Bernie Rhodes, our manager.

"But, anyway, I've grown up now," he adds, acknowledging the part played in clearing the pollutants from his should by the birth 10 months ago of his daughter, Lauren, to his girlfriend, Daisy. Though his version of the split differs in almost every detail from that given by Strummer, Jones believes there is no profit in delivering diatribes about his former companions. "The Japanese believe that if you say bad things about other people, then what you say is a judgement on yourself, rather than of the people you are talking about. That's why I don't want to make any character judgements of Joe or Paul (Simonon)---I believe other people will perceive the truth from what they have said about me."

On Sunday evening, Mick Jones is in the Townhouse studio in West London mixing "The Bottom Line," his first single since he left The Clash, the proclamatory statement of intent for his new and as-yet-unnamed four-piece group, and the trailer for an eventual album. The song was tentatively set for May release on Columbia-by coincidence, the same month that his former cohorts were scheduled to released their new album, their seventh as The Clash, and the first without Jones. When asked to comment on what The Clash were up to these days, their manager, Kosmo Vinyl, illuminated: "There's enough confusion surrounding The Clash without my adding to it." Thanks, Kosmo. Your complimentary copy is on the way.
"The Bottom Line" is stirring and anthem-like, loaded with reference to other musical forms, but with Jones's unerring sense of melody as its lifeblood. Like all the best things, it is very simple belying the immense diligence that has gone into its making. A baseball cap jammed down over his tumbling, black-dyed mane, Jones approached the task of mixing with the painstaking assiduousness of the painter he was trained as, applying minute brushstrokes of sound until the picture is complete.

"The purpose of this group is to say something positive for all time, something that separates us from those groups that rant on about world destruction, and those that are just palatable and bland. We want to say something positive, and not be browbeaten into toeing the line.
"On a more personal level, I see what I'm doing as a battle to come up with our new sound: We're sound pioneers. After all, it would be terrible to come up with just another Clash LP."

Jones's first steps of a long personal climb were taken as soon as he walked away from Strummer and Simonon. First, he enlisted Leo Williams, a dreadlocked black bass-player and former member of the Basement Five. But Jones's efforts to assist former Clash drummer Topper Headon by giving him a job in the new group were fruitless; for the time being, at least, Topper had found heroin.

By May of last year, after nine months of work, it was again just Jones and Leo Williams. Through an advertisement in Melody Maker a drummer was found: Gregg Roberts, a survivor of several soul and reggae bands.

But Jones was troubled by indefinable, niggling doubts that all was not yet complete. A stalwart ally during his months in the wilderness had been Don Letts, the Rastafarian filmmaker whose style of "visual dub" had dealt so emphatically with The Clash on all their videos. Lett's support of his friend intensified after he learned that his continuing association with Jones meant that he was considered persona non grata at Clash events. Jones then asked Letts to join this new group.

"After working with The Clash for seven years, I'd become unconsciously constricted by all the rules of musicianship that I'd learnt," says Jones. "So what Don does is to open all that up again, because he looks at things and sees possibilities in a way that a musician wouldn't. He's incredibly creative, and not just in a visual way."

Letts plays percussion and provides keyboard effects. His training with film scripts, moreover, has resulted in the group's new songs having a visual quality that renders them perfect for future videos.

"What we are presenting," emphasizes Jones, pausing before swinging around on his chair to the mixing desk to add a further miniscule aural detail to "The Bottom Line," "is a widescreen, positive music, done in a totally high-tech way, but still using just guitar, bass and drums. I hope people can appreciate a gambler. I know what I was good at, and really, all I'm doing is just continuing to do it. So as far as my purpose is concerned, it is just doing what I do best."

After months of angst-ridden internal battles, he is once again working with the full flow of his creativity unblocked. "I'm on top of the world," he says. His eyes that, for a while, were dead and pained, are gleaming again with their once-characteristic fiery energy. Then he grins, slyly ironic, "And it's about time."

Articles Page| London's Burning! Home Page