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"It's incredible. While I was resting, he (Bernie Rhodes, the manager) had finished the album, gave it a title, and got it into the stores." (Joe Strummer)
With the ambiguous but successful COMBAT ROCK (1982), The Clash returned to expressing themselves more directly and also closer to what they had done at the beginning of their career. An album, in short, that consecrates them even more to the general public, but with the extension of the American tours, it foreshadows the end of the Strummer/Jones alliance, consumed with the last concert held together on May 29, 1983 at the U.S. Festival. On the following September 10, on the pages of NME, Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon announce the dismissal of their friend Mick Jones due to incompatibilities regarding the band's artistic direction. By the end of the year, with the new recruits Pete Howard (drums), Nick Sheppard (guitar), and Vince White (guitar), they planned more dates in the U.S.A. and others in Europe for 1984, which included the two historic evenings on February 27 and 28 at the Palasesto in Milan. With the lineup many will remember as that of the other Clash, they proceed to record a new album which, with the years—and for lack of artistic continuity—even Strummer himself will not deem worthy of being considered as the coherent closing chapter of the band's discography.
The sixth work of the London band is an opportunity to listen to a certain pop-rock with a clearly radio-friendly flavor (and deliberately spiced with some biting guitars...), which perhaps aimed to break into the ears of the audience not strictly adolescent, yet capable of getting hooked on easily assimilable melodies and the highly elaborate videos that at the time (let's not forget we're talking about the end of 1985...) were rampant on the dominant MTV. There's no surprise in the disappointment that might arise from listening to "Dictator" or the excessive lightness of "Are You the Red..Y" with clear references to the danceable and contemporary sounds elegantly and naturally conceived by a certain Prince Roger Nelson. The sharp impact of "Dirty Punk" doesn't raise the stakes like the piercing attempt at a rediscovered originality of "We Are The Clash", which resolves into a feeble declaration of a new identity towards the former Mick Jones. Echoes of the Stones emerge in the harsh riff of "Cool Under Heat", while "Movers and Shakers" is truly a pity for those synths!) could have been a good restart, letting the electronic funk of "Fingerpoppin'" play the role of a delightful surprise not even that out of context. It won't be the melodic indulgence of "North and South" or the pleasant ska of "Three Card Trick" to rebalance the failed attempt at experimentation in "Play To Win", not to mention the synth-rock of "Life Is Wild" which, taking us to the end of the listen, confirms how sometimes even the most beautiful fairy tales don't always have a happy ending.
The album, hastily assembled by the all-purpose manager Bernie Rhodes (also co-author of all the tracks), was released in the market at the beginning of November 1985, produced by one Jose Unidos, in which those closest to the band would recognize as the pseudonym under which the new management Strummer/Rhodes operated. Recorded between January and March of the same year, it was preceded about two months earlier by a powerful single like "This Is England", which was able to hark back to the band's glorious past and the only track that Strummer would save from that controversial period, including it in THE ESSENTIAL CLASH, the compilation curated by himself and published a few months after his death. "TIE" spontaneously stands out above all other tracks on the album, representing, to its credit, a bold and successful protest anthem of the renewed Clash, transforming over the years, and unknowingly, into an inspired swan song.
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