Two chords and the truth: they came, they saw and they played their guitars very loudly while looking dead cool and singing about sexy sounding global liberation movements. Christ, they were good: from the rat-a-tat-tat sonic blitzkrieg of White Riot and I'm So Bored With The USA through to the greatest song ever written (oh yes) White Man In The Hammersmith Palais and around to London Calling - the only double album that really ever mattered.
While the rest of their snotty nosed, cartoon punk contemporaries were left sifting through the debris of a once great movement and making total arses of themselves (hello Billy Idol), our men in black hit Broadway, moshed around with Robert De Niro, blew The Who off the stage at Shea Stadium and casually tossed off a triple album called Sandinista! that is, if you excuse the revisionism, the blueprint for today's electronic/dance sonic adventures. And unlike the Sex Pistols, they never played Top Of The Pops (no "sell out" here, bub) and they never reformed in the name of filthy lucre. We love you, Clash.
It may be a good 15 years since they last bashed a guitar in anger or posed in their terrorist chic gladrags for another iconic Pennie Smith photo, but of all the graduates from the summer school of 1977, they remain, and honorably so, the last gang in town. Their legacy? Let's start with Greg Dulli from US lofi supremos, The Afghan Whigs, who says "I get down on my knees and thank Jesus for The Clash every goddamn night", ignore everything in between (Rancid, The Offspring and Green Day basically) and finish with The Manic Street Preachers who dedicated their Brit award this year to "Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simenon and Topper Headon". As well they might.
While a reunion will never happen, strap yourself in for a timely outburst of Clashmania over the next few weeks. First, BBC2 will be screening the bandapproved and really rather brilliant documentary Westway To The World tomorrow night, then next week their first ever live album (apart from the millions of bootlegs) is released. Called From Here To Eternity, it's a 17-track affair recorded at venues as diverse as the Lewisham Odeon and Bonds in New York. The week after, the band's entire back catalogue (six studio albums and three compilations) will be re-issued.
Fear not though, those multi-million pound offers for the band to reform still get flung right back at the promoters. For anyone under the age of 30, who's been brought up on corporate sponsored rock acts and a music scene that has more in common with the stock exchange than anything else, The Clash's refusal has something to do with a thing known as "integrity" which was quite a big deal when the band first formed in 1976 but now means nothing more than the name of a designer house's new perfume spray. There was, though, a very spooky moment at the premiere of Westway To The World in their old haunting ground of Notting Hill in London last week. At the aftershow party in the nearby Cobden Club (where all the indiellectuals were out in force) many a fevered glance was exchanged when the band themselves showed up and it transpired that a stage had been set up and there were musical instruments on it. It was just someone's idea of a joke - ha bloody ha.
The documentary was made by long-time associate Don Letts, who ran his cameras over the band from their first few rehearsals in 1976 right up to their demise in 1984. Apart from some exhilarating live footage, each band member in turn talks about the journey from grubby Westway squats to worldwide stardom - all the time trying to make sense of their own mythology. "Every generation needs a soundtrack" says Letts of his film, "and The Clash provided mine."
Formed in Notting Hill in the aftermath of a famous Carnival riot, The Clash first toured with The Sex Pistols and initially specialised in short, sharp and shocking three-minute street-fighting anthems like London's Burning and White Riot. Their debut album is now considered a bona fide classic and the first time Bob Marley heard it, he was moved to write a tribute song for them callled Punky Reggae Party. As some measure of how times have changed, the band were fiercely criticised by hardcore fans when they drafted in Blue Oyster Cult's producer to work on their second album, Give 'Em Enough Rope. The fear was that the band had slighlty toned down their bang-crash-bang sound in an effort to break the US market. Strummer was incensed by the criticism: "We weren't parochial, we weren't narrow-minded Little Englanders. We had the suss to embrace what we were presented with, which was the world and all its weird variety. In Amercia, Spain, France, Sweden - anywhere in the world but here (Britain) they really know and appreciate The Clash".
It wasn't until their third album, London Calling, that the band became a global force. A dizzying mix of ska (Rudie Can't Fail), reggae (Guns of Brixton) and rockabilly (Brand New Cadillac), its release presaged the first of many confrontations with their record label. The band wanted to charge only a single album price for the double album but CBS refused and eventually The Clash had to take a massive drop in their royalties in order to put London Calling out at an affordable price.
The album went supernova in the US and Rolling Stone magazine was later to call it "the album of the 1980s" - even though it was released in 1979. Doh! In typical contrary fashion though, the band then set about torching their fan base with the release of the sprawling, triple album epic Sandinista! - which they again insisted be priced as a single record. Back then it was seen as a self-indulgent, genre-surfing folly that would have been better edited down to a single record. Now we can see it as one of the first ever albums to use sampling, hip-hop rhythms and rap - alongside, that is, the funk, soul, r 'n' b, dub, country, electronica and folk. With tensions in the band increasing, particularly over the drummer Topper Headon's heroin use and guitarist Mick Jones's "rockstar lifestyle" (which basically meant his hair was too long and he played too many guitar solos), they imploded shortly after the release of Combat Rock.
STRUMMER more or less disappeared, give or take the odd solo album; Topper Headon went to live in Dover to get over his heroin addiction; Mick Jones went on to form B.A.D. and is now a producer and Paul Simenon retired from music to become an artist and sculptor (the best customers for his work, funnily enough, are the Manic Street Preachers).
When they had a posthumous number one hit with Should I Stay Or Should I Go? in 1991 thanks to the song's use on a Levi jeans ad, the big money offers for a reunion tour started to come in but they've always resisted and say they always will. "There's no chance of us getting back together" says Strummer, "apart from the fact that the four of us haven't been in the same room together for 16 years, we still believe that what we did then was it. And now it's over."
Westway To The World is on BBC2 tonight at 9.30 p.m. From Here To Eternity is released on Monday on the Sony label. Joe Strummer is God.