Punk but also rock, the first Clash album 45 years ago

April 8, 1977 is one of the key dates in the history of punk and at the same time the recording debut of one of the most important bands in rock history, the Clash

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In fact, the first album bearing the same name as the group founded by Joe Strummer and Mick Jones is released.

An aggressive, fast and powerful music with a violent and explicit political charge, inspired by the reality lived in the houses occupied by the Squatters movement and in the streets of Notting Hill, which then was not the super hypster neighborhood of today but the area where above all the people lived. Jamaican immigrants who daily faced the harshness of the police, conditions bordering on segregation, but who had imported reggae in those streets, which will have a huge influence on the band.

The manifesto song of the disc is "White Riot", but inside there are also "London's Burning", "I'm so Bored of the USA" and the cover of "Police and Thieves",

In addition to their political office, the Clash immediately distinguished themselves from other bands because they consisted of two frontmen, Strummer, who was actually called John Graham Mellor, (Strummer derives from strumming, the term used to define the way of playing the strings of the guitar in the accompaniment) and Jones, a formidable couple because they are made up of two very different personalities from each other but perfectly complementary on an artistic level.

Not for nothing when the differences between the two intensified the band imploded.

At the bottom was Paul Simonon, a man with a very strong personality, as well as one of the sex symbols of the time, a real "Rude Boy", in the literal sense, but also to be understood not by chance as a citation of the movement of the boys of the ghettos of Jamaica.

"Rude Boy"

is the title of the beautiful docu film about the Clash made in 1980. When Topper Headon joined the band, on drums, that is, immediately after the publication of "White Riot", the training was completed that from punk, through an extraordinary operation of contamination between genres just two years later led The Clash to release one of the most important albums in rock history, "London Calling".

The growth in just two years is impressive:

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On the other hand, Lester Bangs wrote: "If it weren't for the Clash, punk would have been just a grin, a safety pin and a pair of bondage pants."

In the meantime, a special edition has been announced on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Combat Rock, which will be titled Combat Rock / The People's Hall and will be released on May 20: it will include the original album along with 12 additional tracks completed by the surviving members of the band.