Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Induction Vault, a production of I Heart Radio
and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony is about to begin.
It's time to take your seats. In seven pledgling rock
(00:29):
band YouTube were hugely inspired by the hard charging, political
punk rock of The Clash, so much so that it's
no exaggeration to say that without the Clash, there'd be
no YouTube. In the reverent and enthusiastic induction speech made
by the Edge, he recounts his memories of attending a
Clash gig in Dublin, illustrating how the band's music was
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a catalyst that changed you to his musical path as
well as the world around them. The clashes humorous and
humble remarks are made all the more poignant by the
passing of their visionary co founder and lyricists Joe Strummer
just weeks before the induction ceremony. Rage Against the Machines,
Tom Morillo kicks things off by sharing some of his
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personal memories and points of inspiration from the class. I
had the good fortune to see the Clash play at
the Aragon ball Room in Chicago when I was a
teenager and It was an experience that changed my life.
Even before the first note was played, the transformation began.
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I bought a T shirt in the lobby. I was
used to buying heavy metal T shirts that had lots
of pictures of Garish wizards and dragons on them, but
this class shirt was very different. It just had a
few small words written over the heart. It said the
future is unwritten. And when I saw the Clash play,
I knew exactly what that phrase meant. The class performed
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with passion, commitment, purpose, righteousness, and an on flinching political fire.
There was such a sense of community in the room
and seemed like absolutely anything was possible. I was energized, politicized,
and changed by the Clash that night, and I knew
that the future was unwritten and maybe we fans and
that band we're going to write it together. Joe Strummer
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was even playing for the same little amp that I
had as a high schooler, and um, they proved to
me that you didn't need a big wall of marshal
stacks and a castle on a Scottish lock to make
great rock and roll music. All you had to do
was tell the truth and really, really really mean it.
I've never seen a better band before that night, and
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I've not seen a better band since. That's very true.
The Clash were one of those rare bands that were
greater than the some of their parts, and yet the
parts were awesome. Mick was the brilliant arranger and tune smith,
always looking forward musically, scared for Mick right on, always
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looking forward musically and pushing the boundaries of what was
possible for a punk band, of what was possible for
any band. Paul was just so damn cool looking, and
as he will see, is still so damn cool looking tonight.
He is running it like a pimp, and the image
of him smashing the bass on the cover of London
Calling sums up the fury and beautiful force of the band.
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He also wove in the reggae influence that completed the
Clash chemistry of three chords of Funky Groove and the Truth.
Terry chimes provided the cavalry charge beats that propelled some
of their early anthems, but it was Topper who made
it all possible with his drumming. He effortlessly and with
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great originality and skill, steered the band through genres undreamt
of by their peers, but really they had no peers.
Because of the center of the clash herric game stood
one of the greatest hearts and deepest souls of twentieth
century music. At the center of the clash stood Joe
Strummery Joe Strummer died on December two thousand and two.
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But when Joe Strummer played, he played as if the
world could be changed by a three minute song, and
he was right. Those songs changed a lot of people's worlds,
forever mine at the top of the list. He was
a brilliant lyricist who, with anger and wit always stood
up for the underdog, and his idealism and conviction instilled
in me the courage to pick up a guitar and
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the courage to try to make a difference with it.
That's Sturt as well. In the Great Clash Anthem White Riot,
Joe sang, are you taking over? Or are you taking orders?
Are you going backwards or are you going forwards? And
and I heard that I wrote those four lines down,
I put him up on my refrigerator, and I answered
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those four questions for myself every single day, and to
this day I still do. Joe Joe Strummer was my
greatest inspiration and my favorite singer of all time and
my hero. I miss him so much, and I was
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looking forward to him standing on this stage and rocking
with his friends tonight, and I know that he was too.
I'm I'm grateful, though, to have the tremendous legacy of music,
but the Clash left behind, because through it, Joe Strummer
and the Clash will continue to inspire and agitate well
into the future. In fact, the Clash aren't really gone
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at all, because whenever a band cares more about its
fans than its bank account, the spirit of the Clashes there.
Whenever a band plays as if every single person's soul
in the room is at stake, the spirit of the
Clash is there. And whenever a stadium band or a
little garage band has the guts to put their beliefs
on the line to make a difference, the spirit of
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the Clash is there. And whenever whenever people take to
the streets to stop an unjust war, the spirit of
the Clash is definitely there. Tonight, we will honor the
Clash and Joe Strummer with toasts and applause, But the
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best way to honor them is by putting the Clashes
philosophy into practice by waking up each morning knowing that
the future is unwritten and that it can be a
future where human rights, peace and justice come first, but
is entirely up to us. To me, that's what the
Clash was all about. They combined revolutionary sounds with revolutionary ideas.
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Their music launched thousands of bands and moved millions of fans,
and I cannot imagine what my life would have been
like without them. During their heyday, they were known as
the only band and that matters, and years later that
still seems just about right to me. After the break bill,
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here from members of the Clash on the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame Induction Vault, how are you doing? Um,
I'm sure that the last thing that Mick A Paul,
or Topper or Terry or Joe bless him would want
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is for me to stand up here tonight and sell
you all a lot of emotional hype or blarney about
the Clash and how fantastic they were. But sorry about that, lends,
because that's exactly what I'm gonna do, and not because
they need to hear it, but because I don't think
that the rest of you know just how great they
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really were. I love this plant and to me, without doubt,
they are next to the Stones, the greatest rock and
roll band of all time. And just in case there's
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any of you out there who are starting to think
that maybe I'm going a bit overboard, let me qualify
that by saying I think Elton and Elvis are in
the singer songwriter category. Um, the Beatles are obviously pop,
staying your sort of white reggae different. Um, you two,
I don't know, we're some sort of supersonic folk. But
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in rock and roll terms, the clash are the ship
is known as mm hmm. You know. I know this
because I saw it back in seven in a small
hall in Trinity College, Dublin, and it actually changed my life.
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Before they even came on stage, the atmosphere was so
completely electric. It was like being at a prize fight
or something. It was amazing. Bonna was there, Adam and Larry,
all the local bands. We were like sixteen at the time.
And the first thing I noticed with a road crew,
like their roadies. They looked so incredible. They were like
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they come from some Vivian Westward show on acid um
and they seemed to be hundreds of them, and they
weren't doing anything, but they were just kind of wandering
around on the stage with these huge mohawk care dues
and like these kilts, and we were completely mesmerized. But
then when the lights went down, it was like the
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place just absolutely exploded, and it was it was like
they were possessed. They went into the White Riot and
it was just the most intense thing anyone in that
building I'd ever seen, the rage, the commitment. It was
years later that someone explained to me about something called
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amphetamin sulfide. But whatever was going on, whatever was going on,
it went way past being just a rock and roll show,
you know it was. It was truly shamanistic. And by
the end of the night, Dublin was a different place.
Something had changed. It was like the access of the
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world had shifted. And if I'd woken up the next
morning to find the city of Dublin and flames, I
would have been less surprised than I was to discover
that actually everything was the same as that I had
been the day before, or almost, because for everyone there
that show was a kind of an awakening. We all
caught a glimpse of something something distant but now attainable,
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a sense of possibilities, part political, part musical, part personal,
but all completely inspirational. The Revolution had come to town,
and the memory of that night faded over over time.
But you know, I can't remember all the songs they played,
I don't know who I was standing next to. But
for years after I could conjure up the excitement and
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the adrenaline of that show, and I drill in it.
There is no doubt in my mind that Sunday Bloody
Sunday wouldn't and couldn't have been written if it wasn't
for the Clash. A few years later, our paths cross
again in in actually New York City. This time it
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was nine and things were starting to unravel in the
punk world. We were doing our first shows in in
the US, and the Clash We're doing a string of
shows in a in a theater called Bonds. I think
it was something like maybe maybe like ten or twenty shows.
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Because they pulled out of a big venue for reasons
that are probably best forgotten. Anyway, we ended up going
back to our hotel and we ran straight into the
entire Clash entourage. I mean, it was amazing. They must
have been like twenty punk bands crammed into the lobby
of the Grammercy Park Hotel, all kinds of shapes and sizes,
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all dressed up, looking so cool, and all had their
guitars and black plastic bags. I remember because I think
guitar cases were out at the time. You know, no
one's using them anyway. It was kind of intimidating in
some ways. But I went over to say a loud
to one girl I recognized from one of the bands,
and I stuck out my hands, being the polite Presbyterian
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lad that I am, and she took one look at
it and just smacked it. She said, don't be silly,
we don't do that anymore. I was like, so weird,
But there's kind of a circus was in full flight, um,
and you know, you could start to see that it
was it was maybe taking its toe. Punk was was
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kind of going down, and all of us who loved
the clash, we were starting to get worried that maybe
the clash we're going to go down with it. But
that didn't happen. Something much more amazing did happen. Instead
of just surviving, they moved beyond punk and gave us
a string of truly amazing rock and roll records London
calling Sandinista and combat rock folk songs really to rival
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the best of the best. But just when we started
to think that maybe we were going to get to
keep the best band that would come out of punk,
suddenly it all seemed to come tumbling down. After eight
slabs of violin in five years, the dreams started to crumble.
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Looking back now, the Clashes contributed to the story of
rock and roll is immense. Their contribution to the survival
of rock and roll, I think is unique because during
the late seventies and early eighties, when punk was starting
to wane, mainstream rock had become hopelessly and awfully redundant.
The Stones had gone to disco by the way, where
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most of the smart money was gone. At the time,
the Clash, along with one or two other bands, carried
the torch. They broke through barriers of perception and genre
and left behind them a thousand bands in garage land
who caught a glimpse of what they saw and strove for,
including one from Ireland called You Too. If they'd arrived
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ten years earlier, they would have given the Beatles the
Kings and the Stones a run for their money. If
they'd arrived ten years later, maybe they might have been
able to resolve their internal conflicts and stayed the course.
Either way, we might have enjoyed a few more records
and tours, but know what, they wouldn't have been the Clash.
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So now it is my great honor and pleasure to
induct the Clash into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Thank you very much, thankd um. There's a paper convention
in the hotel, so I just gotta be a paper um.
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I like to fang everybody representing from where we come from,
blab of Grove, London. I'd like to thank my band members,
Paul Topper, Terry and Joe my songwriting partner. It was
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just really had so much integrity and inspired us all
and it was really the real thing. And I'd like
to thank also Bernard Rhodes and visual manager Cosmo Vinyl,
Johnny Green and Baker Claire. I'd also like to mention
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my old school friend Robin Banks. It's being bad Dad
at the moment as a human shield. I'd like to
thank the Hall of Fame and he set this honor
on behalf of all the garage bands that never may
have dreamed of this type of moment. Thank you all.
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I'm quite certain that in a few moments I will
simply wake up safe and sound in my bed in
East London. But in the meantime, I'm just going to
carry on here, if that's okay with all of you. Um,
there are two dramas being actual tonight, and I don't
want to pass up the opportunity to pay tribute to
my end and fellow drummer Topper. Um m hm. I
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love those early songs from the first album. I love
them still, but I had no idea back then the
extent to which the band would developed and diversify. In fact,
when I rejoined five years later, it was a bit
of a shock to have to play all these different
styles suddenly, and much of the credit for that goes
to Topper, I think, not just because of his undoubted
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skill as a drummer, but also because of his contribution
on the creative side, helping with some of the songwriting,
for example on Rock the Kasbar. So I'd like to
you ought to join with me now to salute the
contribution of Topperheaden. We we heard earlier that the the
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whole is always greater than the sun of its parts. Well,
this particular part would like to express gratitude for being
recognized as Eaving, and I'd like to thank the Hall
of Fame very much. Indeed, thank you very much. Radio.
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All right, sushi recommendation. Ops, that's the wrong one. Order
there we go, right. I was eighteen years old and
I was studying at the Bimbashure School of our A
year later, via a chance meeting with Mick Jones and
Bernie Rhodes, I was suddenly in the group that became
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the Clash. From the next eight years were exciting and explosive,
both on and off stage. Um, Mick, Joe and Me
we were like the Free Musketeers, m brothers in arms.
Find to get our message across on achieving international recognition,
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we disbanded and went to our separate ways. At this point,
I'd like to acknowledge the important contribution that Bernard Rhodes
played in in the makeup of the Clash. Some would say,
no Bernie, no Clash, right. I Sally miss my older brother,
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my big brother Joe, who I shared my most life
changing experiences, as well as his dog Check. I would
also like to think and this is real serious those
that played their part in and it was like real
team work and that and here it goes as Top
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Ahead and Terry Chimes, Cosmo Vinyl, Johnny Green Baker and
Guys Stevens. And a special thank you to trist your
own name for keeping it together after the Clash split
split up. All right, thank you. Joe was very proud
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and honored to be inducted and on his behalf, I
accept his award. Thank you, just while I say a
big shout to a set spis course. Also thanks for
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joining us on this week's episode of Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame Induction Vault. For more on your favorite inductees,
to shop Inductee merch or to plan your trip to
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, visit rock Hall
dot com plus Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction
Special on demand on HBO Max. Our executive producers are
Noel Brown, Shelby Morrison, and Esa Gurkey. Supervising producer is
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Taylor shakogn Research and archival assistants from Isabelle Keeper and
Shannon Herb. Thanks again for joining us on this week's
episode of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Vault
Induction Ball is a production of I heart Radio and
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. For more podcasts
(21:43):
from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.