The Clash

THE STORIES BEHIND EVERY STUDIO TRACK FROM THE ONLY BAND THAT MATTERS. Established in 1976 at the fore London’s punk rock insurgence, The Clash would outlast their peers while creating some of the most influential albums in rock ’n’ roll history. Author Martin Popoff dissects each of the Clash’s ninety-one studio tracks, examining the circumstances that led to their creation, the recording processes, the historical contexts and more. In addition, introductory essays set the scene for the band’s six studio releases (including the double LP London Calling and the triple Sandinista!) and feature sidebars detailing studios, release dates, personnel, and more. Illustrated with rare performance and offstage photography, along with images of 7-inch singles sleeves and gig posters, the resulting volume is a fitting tribute to the foursome whose staunch political stance and groundbreaking amalgam of punk, rockabilly, reggae, and hip-hop earned the title “The Only Band That Matters.”

'Hugely enjoyable ... Green's great achievement is to recapture exactly how those moments felt, but remain sufficiently detached about the whole thing to render the experience honestly' MOJO Johnny Green first met the Clash in 1977. A RIOT OF OUR OWN is his tale of three delirious years of rock 'n' roll madness as confidant and road manager of the Clash, from the early punk days to LONDON CALLING and touring America. Ray Lowry accompanied the band as official 'war artist' on the second American tour and designed the London Calling album cover. Together, in words and pictures, Green and Lowry give the definitive, inside story on one of the most magnificent rock 'n' roll bands ever.

“An ambitious look at the last days of the Clash . . . as much a political history of the 1980s as it is a look at an influential band in its final years.”—Publishers Weekly The Clash was a paradox of revolutionary conviction, musical ambition, and commercial drive. We Are The Clash is a gripping tale of the band’s struggle to reinvent itself as George Orwell’s 1984 loomed. This bold campaign crashed headlong into a wall of internal contradictions and rising right-wing power. While the world teetered on the edge of the nuclear abyss, British miners waged a life-or-death strike, and tens of thousands died from US guns in Central America, Clash cofounders Joe Strummer, Paul Simonon, and Bernard Rhodes waged a desperate last stand after ejecting guitarist Mick Jones and drummer Topper Headon. The band shattered just as its controversial final album, Cut the Crap, was emerging. Andersen and Heibutzki weave together extensive archival research and in-depth original interviews with virtually all of the key players involved to tell a moving story of idealism undone by human frailty amid a climatic turning point for our world. “The Clash’s final chapter, after guitarist Mick Jones’ 1983 departure, has largely been forgotten—until this book, in which authors Mark Andersen and Ralph Heibutzki argue that the punk pioneers were still creating vital music to the very end.”—Rolling Stone, an RS Picks/New Books “Focuses on a very different moment in the band’s history: the point at which the group splintered in the early 1980s, and its members grappled with an onset of reactionary governments around the world.”—Vol. 1 Brooklyn “One of the most rewarding music books you’ll come across this year.”—Johns Hopkins Magazine

The pioneers of British punk rock: trendsetters, icons, revolutionaries. Strummer, Jones, Simonon and Headon. In their own words. For the first time.

Revised and updated to cover the Clash's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the band members' post-Clash careers, The Clash: Return of the Last Gang in Town now includes the first full account of Joe Strummer's "Wilderness Years," his triumphant comeback with the Mescaleros, and his sudden and tragic early death. Extensively revised and updated from both its 1995 and 2001 incarnations, The Clash traces the band members' progress from dispiriting rehearsals in damp London basements to packed American stadiums. A fascinatingly detailed account of the first band to take punk's radical politics to the masses and survive for a decade against all the odds, it also offers an intriguing investigation into the gap between rock mythology and rock reality.

Joe Strummer and the Legend of The Clash provides a personal insight into the life of Joe Strummer, lead singer of pivotal punk band The Clash. Since his untimely death in 2002 Joe Strummer has been mourned as a rock'n'roll icon. The enormous sense of loss felt at his death reinforced the importance of The Clash. As time goes by the band just seem to grow in terms of influence and impact; they changed the shape of music and established a benchmark for how exciting a rock band can be. In Joe Strummer and the Legend of The Clash, author and journalist Kris Needs tells the story of The Clash with a special focus on Joe Strummer - his life history, his personal passions and his politics. Kris Needs combines his own anecdotes and press reports, plus exclusive interviews with Joe's closest friends, who include Mick Jones, his songwriting partner in The Clash and Don Letts the punk filmmaker, to breathe life into the legend that was Joe Strummer and The Clash. As a young journalist on tour with all of punk's biggest names, Kris forged life-long friendships with all the scene's key figures, while witnessing their unbelievable exploits first-hand. One of the first journalists to see The Clash live, Kris championed the band from the start, becoming close friends with Joe Strummer and the rest of the group, accompanying them on many major tours, and being present at pivotal moments in their career. Weaving in his own material from the era, with a wealth of biographical detail, Needs illuminates Joe's story with accounts of life-changing gigs, on-the-road antics and the recording sessions that produced classic music. Needs looks at Joe's motivations and passions, by drawing on his own experiences with him throughout their friendship, providing an insight into the beliefs and ideals that resonate in The Clash's music. Joe Strummer and the Legend of The Clash conveys the white-hot excitement of their gigs and the intense emotions their music caused, while providing an account of the life and times of Joe Strummer, a true punk pioneer.

There's a new kid in town! From the moment Natasha sets foot in class, it's clear she's one of the coolest kids in sixth grade. Everyone wants to be her friend, including Olive...but things might not be so easy. Olive tries her best to befriend Nat, but it seems like the only thing they have in common is that they both want to hang out with Olive's friends! Watching as Natasha gets closer with some of her best buds, Olive can't help but worry that they're starting to like Nat more than they like her...and who could blame them? Nat is just that cool...and Olive is, well, just Olive.

Much of the Middle East and North Africa still appears to be in a transitional period set in motion by the 2011 Arab uprisings, and the political trajectory of the region remains difficult to grasp. In The Clash of Values, Mansoor Moaddel provides groundbreaking empirical data to demonstrate how the collision between Islamic fundamentalism and liberal nationalism explains the region’s present and will determine its future. Analyzing data from over 60,000 face-to-face interviews of nationally representative samples of people in seven countries—Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Turkey—Moaddel reveals the depth and breadth of the conflict of values. He develops measures of expressive individualism, gender equality, secularism, and religious fundamentalism and shows that the factors that strengthen liberal values also weaken fundamentalism. Moaddel highlights longitudinal data showing changes in orientations toward secular politics, Western-type government, religious tolerance, national identity, and to a limited extent gender equality, as well as a significant decline in support for political Islam, over the past decade. Focusing on these trends, he contends that the Arab Spring represents a new phase of collective action rooted in the spread of the belief in individual liberty. Offering a rigorous and deeply researched perspective on social change, The Clash of Values disentangles the Middle East and North Africa’s political complexity and pinpoints a crucial trend toward liberal nationalism.