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Let's cut the crap. Will the Clash ever reform? Says the band's former singer/guitarist/conscience Joe Strummer: "The thing is this -- we ain't never gonna reform by people offering us money. That just makes it impossible. But we might
reform when no one's looking."
Strummer made the comments to Rolling Stone's Corey Levitan as he promoted his second solo album, Rock Art and the X-Ray Style. But 1999 has been the Clash's year, with both tribute and live albums on release. Rapper Will Smith has even sampled "Rock the Casbah" on his single "Will2K."
Former members Strummer, Mick Jones and bass player Paul Simonon recently appeared together at a September 22 party celebrating the premiere of the Clash documentary Westway to the World. Instruments were waiting for them on a stage, but only ex-Pogue Shane McGowan was inebriated enough to perform.
The 47-year-old Strummer admitted that relations between himself, Jones and Simonon were warming up, even if they still needed "a bit of a microwave." He didn't pass comment on Clash drummer Topper Headon, who at one point in his post-Clash career was a cab driver.
"I think the shadow the Clash casts is probably endless," he told Rolling Stone. "I'm proud of it, but I do feel it's a sticking block. If you really wanted to do something new in music or move it forward, I think it's a real lumber around your neck."
There was no sticking block for the Sex Pistols, who famously reformed for the Filthy Lucre tour in 1996 to fatten their bank accounts and desecrate their fans' memory. The Pistols are celebrated in their angrier, spryer '70s incarnation in the new documentary entitled The Filth and the Fury.
The film is directed by Julien Temple, who took over the direction of the Pistols' 1980 cinematic outrage The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle from Russ Meyer. Filth and the Fury includes interviews with all of the band's surviving members, including John Lydon, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook.
A report on the British Web zine Music 365 says Lydon verbally attacks the group's manager and self-styled Svengali Malcolm McLaren. He also pays emotional tribute to Sid Vicious, the bass player who died of an overdose in February 1979.
The film will be released with an accompanying soundtrack album including both Pistols tracks and songs from the era in February/March.
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