BY Chris Harris
In 1977, The Clash discovered that signing to CBS Records meant surrendering the very freedom they thought they’d secured. When the label released Remote Control without their permission, Joe Strummer and Mick Jones responded with three minutes of magnificent fury. Complete Control was punk rock revenge at its finest, with one delicious irony: CBS had to release and sell it.
In September 1977, The Clash released Complete Control, three minutes of furious guitars and revenge, Joe Strummer’s snarling vocals and a message to CBS, the people who thought they owned the band. The extraordinary thing was that the record company being told to fuck off was the very same company releasing the single, in many ways, sums up the magnificent contradiction at the heart of punk rock.
To understand Complete Control, we need to go back to April 1977, when The Clash released the seminal self-titled debut album on CBS Records. Signing to a major label had naturally already attracted criticism from sections of the punk movement, who considered such arrangements a betrayal of everything punk supposedly stood for. The Clash saw things differently. They wanted their music heard, and a major record company offered the distribution and resources to make that possible. Idealism versus pragmatism, life is never simple. Unfortunately, they were about to discover that having a record deal and having control over your records were two very different things.
In May 1977, CBS released Remote Control as a single without consulting the band. Written by Mick Jones, the song was already on their debut album and attacked the establishment, local authorities, the police and the institutions that dictated what ordinary people could and couldn’t do. The irony was almost too perfect. Here was a band singing about the absence of freedom and the power of institutions, only to discover that its own record company had decided what music it would release without bothering to ask.
The Clash were furious, particularly as they preferred giving fans new material rather than asking them to buy something they already owned, always thinking of fans and relatively speaking, how expensive vinyl actually was then. They didn’t think it was the strongest choice of single anyway. So they did what any self-respecting punk band ought to do. They wrote a song attacking the people who had signed them.
Complete Control was written by Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, reportedly at Jones’s grandmother’s flat on the eighteenth floor of a west London tower block. It wasn’t simply a complaint about CBS releasing the wrong record. The lyrics also attacked the band’s management, the music industry’s manipulation of artists and the difficulties they had encountered during the White Riot Tour. Record companies wanted control over releases, marketing and money. Managers wanted control over careers. Promoters and venue owners wanted control over performances. Everybody, it seemed, wanted a piece of The Clash, the creative money generators left stranded as bystanders
The song’s central argument was that the promise of artistic freedom was frequently a con. The band had supposedly been offered independence, but the commercial realities and contractual arrangements told a different story. This reflected the wider political philosophy of The Clash, whose songs regularly questioned the authority of institutions and the people running them. It wasn’t simply about a record company making an unpopular decision. It was about the hypocrisy of powerful organisations offering people freedom while ensuring they retained the ability to make all the important decisions. Fifty years on, progress is still zilch,.
Musically, Complete Control was extraordinary. It opens with a ferocious guitar attack before Strummer launches into his accusations, while Mick Jones’s guitar work, Paul Simonon’s bass and Topper Headon’s drumming give the record a relentless momentum. For all its aggression, it’s also wonderfully melodic, with a sense of dynamics and musical sophistication that distinguished The Clash from many of their contemporaries. The raw harmonies at the end C-O-N CONTROL to me encompasses The Clash, at the time, fury, messaging contained within one of their best endings. Beneath the fury was a genuinely great rock song, played by musicians who were becoming increasingly accomplished without sacrificing any of their original energy.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the recording was the involvement of Jamaican reggae legend Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. Already a hugely influential figure in reggae and dub, Perry was renowned for his experimental production techniques and his work with artists including Bob Marley and Junior Murvin. The connection wasn’t as unlikely as it might appear. The Clash had recorded a version of Murvin’s Police and Thieves for their debut album, and their enthusiasm for reggae was already becoming an important part of their musical identity.
Perry happened to be in London, and the band persuaded him to produce the single, alongside Mickey Foote. Although accounts differ about how much of Perry’s original production survived in the finished mix, his involvement demonstrated that The Clash had no intention of restricting themselves to the increasingly narrow musical rules of punk. There is even a story that Perry’s determination to achieve a sufficiently powerful bass sound resulted in damage to a studio mixing desk, although the precise details remain part of Clash folklore.
Complete Control was released on 23 September 1977, backed with City of the Dead, and reached number 28 in the UK Singles Chart, becoming The Clash’s first Top 30 hit. That might not sound particularly impressive compared with their later commercial successes, but it represented an important breakthrough for a band whose music was confrontational, political and hardly designed for mainstream radio. The song became a favourite with John Peel’s listeners, reaching number two in his 1978 Festive Fifty, and appeared on the American edition of the band’s debut album in 1979. Its reputation continued to grow, and in 2004 Rolling Stone included it in its list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.
The importance of Complete Control, however, goes considerably beyond record sales or critical rankings. It helped establish The Clash as something more than another angry punk group. They were prepared to turn their political arguments upon the very industry financing their careers, and they weren’t particularly interested in disguising their contempt. There was also the delicious irony that CBS was perfectly happy to manufacture, distribute and profit from a record accusing CBS and the wider music business of manipulating artists. Presumably, somebody in the accounts department decided that rebellion was perfectly acceptable provided it sold enough copies.
Of course, The Clash couldn’t simply abandon the machinery of the record industry. They needed records pressed, distributed and sold, and their ambitions required them to operate within a commercial system they frequently despised. It’s a contradiction that has followed musicians, writers, artists and designers ever since. You can rail against capitalism, but somebody still has to pay for the recording studio. You can condemn the establishment, but you might still need its distribution network. And you can demand complete control, only to discover that the people holding the contracts have rather different ideas. What made The Clash different was their willingness to acknowledge that contradiction and turn their frustration into music rather than quietly accepting the situation.
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Welcome to Denham, a fictitious Sussex village where behind respectable doors, well-tended gardens and familiar faces, things have a habit of going badly wrong.
Obsession, ambition, deception, jealousy and petty rivalry run through this collection of tragi-comical and satirical short stories. From poltergeists and lottery winners to cricket club feuds and environmental disasters, ordinary people embark on discovering just how quickly an ordinary life can unravel into an extraordinary mess.
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