The lucky few who went to London’s Roundhouse on Sept. 5, 1976, had no clue they were about to be a part of history. It wasn’t because pub-rock band the Kursaal Flyers — riding the wave of their sole hit, “Little Does She Know” — were headlining. And it wasn’t because rockabilly throwback group Crazy Cavan ‘n’ the Rhythm Rockers were second on the bill, or because Andy “The Livin’ Jukebox” Dunkley was spinning records between groups. The real importance was due to the third band on the bill, who were so new and unknown that they weren’t even mentioned in newspaper listings for the show. They were called the Clash.
The Clash had come together just a few months earlier under the tutelage of manager Bernie Rhodes, who had played a pivotal role in forming the Sex Pistols the previous year. The initial lineup of singer-guitarist Joe Strummer, guitarists Mick Jones and Keith Levene, bassist Paul Simonon, and drummer Terry Chimes first performed in public on July 4, 1976, at the Black Swan in Sheffield, England, and then played a couple of additional shows in London late the following month. But much of their time was spent getting to know each other, since they were total strangers when Rhodes assembled them, and writing new songs.
The Roundhouse show was just their fifth concert, but they already had an impressive repertoire, including “Janie Jones,” “London’s Burning,” “What’s My Name,” and “1977.” But that doesn’t mean the Kursaal Flyers fans who came to the Roundhouse on a Sunday at 6 p.m., before the bar even opened, were happy to see them.
As a priceless and surprisingly clean audience tape reveals, the audience stayed respectful during early numbers “Deny,” “1-2 Crush on You,” “Short Walk to the Medicine Cabinet,” and “I Never Did It.” (Only the first of those songs would ultimately make the cut for the Clash’s debut album. The others were soon discarded forever.) But things take a turn once Strummer antagonizes the crowd for refusing to stand up before “Janie Jones”: “I suppose you think you can pay your £1.50 and just come in and sit down as if it’s a fuckin’ TV set. Get off your denims, you might wear them out!” They only descend from there.
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“Now it’s time for audience participation,” Strummer says before “Mark Me Absent,” another early song they’d abandon within weeks. “Tell me, what are you doing here?” An admittedly clever wiseass in the crowd responds with “Waiting for the next band.” This sends Strummer into a rage. “I don’t know what you are about the waist, but I guess it’s in advance of 36 inches,” he says, “so if you want to carry your corpulent body up to the bar and stuff it with a few more barrels, go ahead.”
This might have been a good time to start the next number, but Strummer decided to keep messing with the hecklers, including one who yells out, “Shut up, smart arse, get on with it.” “You big twit,” Strummer fires back. “So what if you’ve got five A-levels, what do I care? That’s just a dirty trick.”
A few songs later, when things have calmed down, the Clash break out “I’m So Bored With You,” an early version of “I’m So Bored With the USA” that has totally different lyrics. “I’m hopeless, you just don’t call me,” Strummer sings. “Must I pay enough/Everyone thinks it’s you/What can I do?” The song was dramatically improved when their boredom became about an entire country rather than a girlfriend. Musically, however, the songs are identical.
They saved their three strongest tunes for the very end: “London’s Burning,” “What’s My Name,” and “1977.” The Kursaal Flyers fans who hadn’t gone inside and waited for the bar to open witnessed something very incredible in those final minutes, particularly the prophetic “1977,” where Strummer roars “no Elvis, Beatles, or the Rolling Stones,” essentially declaring the Clash the future of rock and those three icons little more than hopeless dinosaurs. He had no idea how right he’d be about Elvis Presley’s fate in 1977, or that a different Elvis would release his debut that year.
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The mainstream British newspapers paid no attention to the Roundhouse gig. They were much more focused on upcoming shows by Queen and Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow. But Sounds did send writer Chas De Whalley — who would produce U2’s earliest recordings a couple of years down the road — to review it.
“Joe Strummer’s Clash — the best new band of the year?” he asks at the start of his review. “Well, some would claim as much. At least you can guarantee that any band fronted by the former 101’ers guitarist will bristle with fire and energy. Unfortunately at the Roundhouse Clash had little more on offer.”
He continued by comparing them to “the Ramones out of an East End squat,” referencing the New York punk group that had made their U.K. debut at the Roundhouse the previous month. “Indeed, many of the leather-clad Strummer’s new songs were little more than rewrites of this year’s punk classics. But ‘I’ve Got a Crush on You,’ ‘Janie Jones,’ and the apocalyptic ‘London’s Burning’ proved there is still power in Strummer’s right arm. Unfortunately, however, the warmth and love of the old pub-rocking 101’ers has been traded for a new aggression and belligerence. At six o’clock on a Sunday evening, long before the bar opened, the Roundhouse audience wasn’t in the most receptive of moods. The more they sat down, the more Strummer screamed at them to stand up. It was a brave, if bitter attempt to instill some kind of occasion into the weekly Roundhouse rock and roll binges, but it was not appreciated.”
Around the time this review hit stands, the Clash made the decision to part with Keith Levene. They simply didn’t feel the need for a third guitar player, they weren’t jiving with him personally, and Jones and Strummer were already coming together as songwriters. He never again played with the Clash after the Roundhouse, and is little more than a footnote to their saga. But this wasn’t exactly a Pete Best situation. A couple of years later, Levene would form Public Image Ltd. with John Lydon. His moment in the sun was coming.
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The Clash, meanwhile, were writing “White Riot” and would unveil it on Sept. 20 at London’s 100 Club. It was their first gig with the four-man lineup of Strummer, Jones, Simonon, and Chimes, who would begin work on the Clash’s self-titled debut in February 1977.
The Rolling Stones took most of 1977 off, besides two infamous gigs at the El Mocambo in Toronto; the Beatles didn’t exist in any form besides the musical Beatlemania on Broadway; and Elvis had a very sad ending in the second-floor bathroom of Graceland following the worst shows of his career. As the Clash predicted in “1977,” the year belonged to them and other punk groups from their scene. Many of the Kursaal Flyers fans at the Roundhouse in 1976 probably spent the next few years bragging to their friends that they saw them first, even if they actually spent the show yelling “shut up, smart arse” and counting down the seconds until the bar opened.
