Last Gang in Town: The Story and Myth of the Clash

Rating:
Summary: Anything You Say...
Review: A slagfest. Author basically states early on that his intention is to "destroy the myth of the clash," and then does so over and over and over. Mean spirtited extended diatribe.

NO first person interviews with the band, so NO anecdotes, or anything interesting. Quotes reviews of albums, old interviews, etc.

This is a really really bad read. Past page 250 or so I wanted to chuck it out the window.

Rating:
Summary: This is a public service announcement...sans guitar
Review: Arrrrgh.

Let's face it: The Clash have demanded a thorough examination for years, and even more so in the wake of Joe Strummer's passing. If you (like me) were looking for such in this book, you will not fill that void here. Marcus Gray, feeling betrayed by the "sell-out" and "phoniness" of his idols, uses this bloated opus to destroy the lingering "myth" of the greatness of this band.

The problem is that The Clash themselves understood that sell-out was eventually inevitable. One need not look further than "Death or Glory": "He who <boffs> nuns will later join the church." The approach here is also flawed by its lack of any current or original interviews! One would think that some original research - even if used to destroy the band, as he does - would at least make the book more interesting.

As it stands, my reading of it read like everything I've ever read about the Clash, recycled and re-spun into a bloated hatchet piece. It may as well be entitled "The Clash E! True Westway Story".

Hey, in the band's defense, and to Marcus Gray's discredit, while the Clash may on some level have sold out, at least they never reunited. If you're a fan, there's nothing gained by reading this - keep the legend intact and let the music speak for itself.

Rating:
Summary: This is a public service announcement...sans guitar
Review: Arrrrgh.

Let's face it: The Clash have demanded a thorough examination for years, and even more so in the wake of Joe Strummer's passing. If you (like me) were looking for such in this book, you will not fill that void here. Marcus Gray, feeling betrayed by the "sell-out" and "phoniness" of his idols, uses this bloated opus to destroy the lingering "myth" of the greatness of this band.

The problem is that The Clash themselves understood that sell-out was eventually inevitable. One need not look further than "Death or Glory": "He who nuns will later join the church." The approach here is also flawed by its lack of any current or original interviews! One would think that some original research - even if used to destroy the band, as he does - would at least make the book more interesting.

As it stands, my reading of it read like everything I've ever read about the Clash, recycled and re-spun into a bloated hatchet piece. It may as well be entitled "The Clash E! True Westway Story".

Hey, in the band's defense, while they may have sold out, at least they never reunited. If you're a fan, there's nothing gained by reading this - keep the legend intact and let the music speak for itself.

Rating:
Summary: Good book of the Clash's Image, but not of the actual band
Review: Could have been cut in half as way too much of it is about the band member's early years, the London Punk scene, and their subsequent boring post-Clash albums. Not being allowed to interview the band members (or not being committed enough to do the work to get the interviews) was a major problem. As another reviewer noted we don't get any anecdotes of the band. It's really nothing more than a synthesis of the available public material with a large amount of the author's attitude tossed in. If you want a good book about where the Clash came from, how they were perceived, and a good overview of their music, this is a good read. If you want a closer look at the band, how they *wrote* the music, why they made the artistic decisions they did, and (most of all) a sense of what it was like to hang out with the band, then this book isn't very good.

I'll give it three stars because it's thorough. If the editor had done his job and cut out the irrelevant parts, I'd give it four. But there's no way in hell I'm going to give it anything more than that if the author can't even manage to wangle an interview with the people he's writing about.

RstJ
Albany, Or.

Rating:
Summary: Data Dump
Review: If you're completely obsessed with the Clash you'll likely find Gray's tedious details on every aspect of the lives of each member interesting. However, Gray fails miserably to put all his research into context. The book is a barrage of obscure factoids with few attempts to weave them into a chapter-by-chapter theme toward an overall coherent picture of this band. Gray makes some effort to illustrate how the threads of the Clash came together under the social influences of the day and each member's upbringing. But he goes spinning off on long discussions of what other bands were doing at the time, and I forgot I was reading a book that's supposed to be about the Clash. While some readers have come away from this book being disgusted or dissolutioned with the Clash, that is simply the popping sound of their own distorted fantasy bubble of what they thought the Clash was all about. Larger than life. More heroic than your average heros. What's good about Gray's book is that it portrays the Clash as normal folk, put together by luck, circumstance, and the will of Bernard Rhodes. The Clash was not the product of some spiritualized magical formula for saving the world. They were just in the right place at the right time.

Rating:
Summary: Data Dump
Review: If you're completely obsessed with the Clash you'll likely find Gray's tedious details on every aspect of the lives of each member interesting. However, Gray fails miserably to put all his research into context. The book is a barrage of obscure factoids with few attempts to weave them into a chapter-by-chapter theme toward an overall coherent picture of this band. Gray makes some effort to illustrate how the threads of the Clash came together under the social influences of the day and each member's upbringing. But he goes spinning off on long discussions of what other bands were doing at the time, and I forgot I was reading a book that's supposed to be about the Clash. While some readers have come away from this book being disgusted or dissolutioned with the Clash, that is simply the popping sound of their own distorted fantasy bubble of what they thought the Clash was all about. Larger than life. More heroic than your average heros. What's good about Gray's book is that it portrays the Clash as normal folk, put together by luck, circumstance, and the will of Bernard Rhodes. The Clash was not the product of some spiritualized magical formula for saving the world. They were just in the right place at the right time.

Rating:
Summary: Good Research, Bad Agenda
Review: Talk about blown opportunities! To put it bluntly, this book stinks! You're better off with Pennie Smith's book of pictures, Before & After (1980, Little, Brown). This book is wordy (over-written), and poorly edited. Most of all, the author was not granted access to interview any of the actual band members (I wonder why?)! The dependency on press quotes is annoying. In an attempt to echo Jon Savage (England's Dreaming), the author beats to death several facts about punk that would insult any knowledgable reader in this day and age. Admitedly, the Clash didn't live up to everything we may have expected them to, but what great rock act has (Marley, Dylan etc)? These guys were musicians (with a great marketing plan), not politicians! As well, his obvious resentment of the band seeking suucess in the US is rather insulting & ignorant. This utterly humorless & textbook-like read is a waste of time and money to all but the most hopeful of Clash fans. Do yourself a favor and don't bother. Or, stick on a copy of Sandinista! and browse through Pennie Smith's book at the same time.

Rating:
Summary: Last Gang In Town: the Sotry & Myth of the Clash
Review: Talk about blown opportunities! To put it bluntly, this book stinks! You're better off with Pennie Smith's book of pictures, Before & After (1980, Little, Brown). This book is wordy (over-written), and poorly edited. Most of all, the author was not granted access to interview any of the actual band members (I wonder why?)! The dependency on press quotes is annoying. In an attempt to echo Jon Savage (England's Dreaming), the author beats to death several facts about punk that would insult any knowledgable reader in this day and age. Admitedly, the Clash didn't live up to everything we may have expected them to, but what great rock act has (Marley, Dylan etc)? These guys were musicians (with a great marketing plan), not politicians! As well, his obvious resentment of the band seeking suucess in the US is rather insulting & ignorant. This utterly humorless & textbook-like read is a waste of time and money to all but the most hopeful of Clash fans. Do yourself a favor and don't bother. Or, stick on a copy of Sandinista! and browse through Pennie Smith's book at the same time.

Rating:
Summary: Turning Rebellion Into Money
Review: There is a lot to like about this book, but the author's smug hypocrisy and the mind-numbing length nearly kill what good is there.

Like too many Rock writers, Gray believes that no biography is complete without the street addresses and complete floorplans of every characters childhood home(s). There is detail, and then there is minutia. Gray spends way too much time on the pre-Clash--and even the pre-musician--days of Clash bandmembers, and way too little time on the Clash itself. The book is 505 pages long and the first Clash LP isn't released until page 300.

There is plenty of interesting stuff, most of it falling somewhere between page 150 and page 300, which sheds some light on the musical background of Mick Jones (Glam) and Joe Strummer (Folk). All the stuff about the early teaming up of the Clash and the Sex Pistols was interesting. I would have liked to have known a bit more about how these guys learned to play and write--according to this book Topper Headon just sat down at a drum set and began playing great stuff--and a few more nuts & bolts type things would have been nice too.

The amazing thing about this book is that, at 500 pages, virtually all of it seems to have been culled from contemporary magazine storys/interviews/reviews. Gray is decent enough to credit his sources at every turn, but by constantly referring to those sources, Gray repeatedly reminds the reader that he was not given the opportunity to interview members of the band.

But the real shortcoming of the book is Gray's silly opinion that the Clash didn't meet the author's incredibly narrow definition of a Punk band. According to Gray, you could only qualify as a real Punk band if you were constantly abusive, cheered rioters, played to audiences of no more than a few hundred, refused to have your records released to large audiences, demonstrated a hatred of America, never did anything similar to anything else you'd ever done before, and never ever ever ever allowed even a trace of a musical influence to show through in your own music.

For Gray, after their first record, the Clash didn't meet his standards.

Call me jaded, but I think musicians want people to hear their music. I'm weird that way. And, at the time, Pete Townshend said, rightly, that the Pistol's "Pretty Vacant" was the best record of the year; he also said, rightly, that Punk was doomed if they were going to attempt (or pretend) that their music had no musical heritage whatsoever.

Finally, it's hard to read the endless recitations of Gray's definition of 'real Punk' when he so blithely ignores his own rules: "Last Gang In Town" was distributed by a big market publisher; a second, "sequel" edition was released; his style seems to be a misguided attempt at recreating Phillip Norman's fantastic book about the Beatles, "Shout!"; and--I actually find this kind of funny--Gray's photo on the dust jacket is a silly recreation of the cover photo from Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited."

Maybe I'm being petty. But I find it frustrating that there is no good book about one of the most interesting bands of the past 25 years; Marcus Gray had the chance and--hard as this is to say about such a lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng book--he came up short. A ruthless editor would have made a great difference here.

Rating:
Summary: Bitter
Review: This is a bitter biography that could have used some better editing. Gray seems personally hurt by the Clash's supposed failure to live up to their words and potential. He's certainly done his share of research on the early days (you're on page 301 before the band's debut record is released), but from there forward the book is a painful stew of press quotes and album reviews. Too often, the chronology of events bounces forward and back, leaving the reader confused at finding the same information provided over and over again, at three-chapter intervals. The author admits (in the endless final chapters) to his rough treatment of the Clash, but never explains why he's got a golden rivet for Paul Simenon. Indeed, it is the other band members who receive the bulk of the slagging, while Paul is treated to pop idol hero-worship. I gave it 3 stars for the subject matter alone -- but I'm waiting for a better Clash bio to be written. I was angered to have read a 505 page (hardcover version) book that closes with a question mark ("The End?"). Well, YOU'RE the biographer, YOU tell ME. For a sharper evaluation of the band in their heyday, read the Lester Bangs book of essays or the Johnny Green memoir.