All great rock bands have a lost, mythical album lying around somewhere, but only the best ones can find them. Clash bass player Paul Simonon talks to Brian Boyd about the release of the band's legendary and long-lost Vanilla Tapes.
I wanted to look like Paul Simonon growing up. Look like him, not play bass like him, mind. "You wouldn't want to look like me now," says The Clash bass player, "but thanks, I'll take that as a compliment." Simonon, now a visual artist of some renown, is doing a rare interview to talk about the semi-legendary Clash Vanilla Tapes, recently unearthed and just released as a companion disc to the 25th anniversary edition of London Calling - what is, for many, the best rock record of all time.
All great bands have lost, mythical sessions lying around somewhere. Think The Beatles, The Stones, The Beach Boys. Some emerge on bootleg or long-delayed official release (Smile, for example). But the problem with The Clash's lost session was that nobody could remember where the tapes were - or what was on them.
Joe Strummer had referred to the Vanilla tapes in interviews, and their content has been the subject of much speculation over the years. These songs were either meant to be the album in between Give 'Em Enough Rope and London Calling or a radically different edit of London Calling itself. Even Clash members couldn't agree among themselves, it seems.
"We've got to put this in context," says Simonon. "At the time they were recorded we had just got back from a US tour and we had sacked our manager, Bernie Rhodes. As a result of that we had lost our rehearsal space in Camden Town. We found this place down in Pimlico though - a really strange room called the Vanilla room. Outside it was just a regular garage, but once inside you walked up this flight of stairs to a small, windowless room. It wasn't a studio, more a dingy rehearsal room. The great thing about it was no one from the label knew where it was."
"The songs we did there are versions of songs that ended up on London Calling; some with different titles and some with different lyrics. There were also about six or seven songs that never appeared on any Clash album. Here's the confusion: at one stage, we decided to release the Vanilla songs as our new, very lo-fi, unproduced album - we were going to sell it really cheap just to piss off the label (CBS, now Sony). We didn't in the end, and instead used some of the Vanilla songs to form the backbone of London Calling."
The band sent the tape of the Vanilla songs to producer Guy Stevens as a guide for the album they wanted to make. But they hadn't factored in the effects of alcohol and public transport. "We gave the only tape to our tour manager of the time, Johnny Green, to deliver. Johnny had a few drinks, hopped on the tube, fell asleep and left the tape behind him when he got off. That was in 1979; we put it down to experience, forgot all about the sessions and went on to make the real London Calling.
"A few months ago, though, Mick Jones was moving house. He finds a box with Vanilla written on it and immediately knows what it is - there was another tape of the session after all. At the time Sony were on to us about re-releasing London Calling as a 25th anniversary special, something we weren't really that bothered about. But when we listened to what Mick had found, we decided to put the Vanilla session on the re-release."
The Vanilla CD contains different versions of well-known London Calling tracks; seven previously unheard songs and a re-working of the 1977 single Remote Control. It's fascinating stuff: Working for the Clampdown is still called Working and Waiting; Guns of Brixton is without lyrics; and on the song London Calling, Strummer sings different lyrics, referring to the "fools and the clowns" and "Mods on the run". It's all experimental, with a lot of the stylistic adventures of the later Sandinista beginning to emerge.
"Hearing the songs again after all this time brought me right back to the Vanilla room," says Simonon. "I could just see the brown carpet that was on the ceiling as well as the floor. It really was the time when we were at our best, doing really progressive stuff and full of ideas."
When London Calling, eventually produced by Guy Stevens at Wessex Studios, was released, The Clash ensured that the double album set sold for the price of one (they also ensured that the triple album Sandinista sold for the price of a double). Surely, the three remaining members must have had some doubts about this project, given that a lot of "re-issue with bonus disc" affairs are tawdry cash-ins.
"Before Mick found the Vanilla session, Sony had been on to us about re-releasing the album and we were like you can do what you want, we don't care, either way we're not doing any promo for you. That's the thing about the music business - Sony own The Clash albums, they can do what they want with them. We only jumped in when the Vanilla songs were found. Because they were an integral part of London Calling, we decided to put them out with the album and we certainly weren't going to stand for any changes in the original artwork or song order."
Fans will be glad to hear that the famous image of Simonon smashing his bass onto the floor will still adorn the re-issue. "It's the Penny Smith out-of-focus shot again, I've got used to it now. It's only a silhouette of me, not my face or anything, but people still comment on it all the time. Iconic and all that."
When working on London Calling, Simonon says the band had no idea of the quality being produced. "You just didn't think in those terms. We were too busy. I remember Mick turning up one day at the Vanilla room with the riff for the song London Calling and the time we got Lost in the Supermarket and stuff like that, but we just thought oh, that's good, and went on to the next thing. I remember being terrified singing my first lead vocal on Guns of Brixton. It was supposed to be sung by Joe but he and Mick persuaded me to do it."
Years later, the song became the subject of some controversy when Fatboy Slim "borrowed" from it for the Beats International hit Dub Be Good to Me.
"That was funny, because they tried to claim that it wasn't my bass riff and they were getting a bit troublesome about the whole thing. I knew from the first time I heard it that it was my riff because when we recorded it, we used the noise made by Velcro being opened as an effect, and on their version you can hear the Velcro noise. During all this hassle with Beats International, Fatboy Slim agreed to meet me. He told me later then when he was waiting for me to arrive it was like waiting to see the dentist. We came to an agreement about my riff in the end."
Simonon still rues the fact that his riff was used on Top of the Pops when Beats International appeared on the programme. The Clash famously refused to appear on TOTP. (Hilariously, the in-house dance troupe, Legs and Co, once had to "interpret" Bankrobber.)
"A member of The Clash, or rather his riff, did then appear on the programme because of that Norman Cook sample," he says. "We were really proud of the fact that we never did it. Someone told me, though, that Led Zeppelin never appeared but they provided the theme tune for a few years, so I'm not sure if that counts."
The re-issue also includes a 30-minute DVD of the making of London Calling. "After Mick found the Vanilla tapes, we got to thinking of what else from that time might still be around. So we rang up our publicist from back then, Kosmo Vinyl, and he went through some lock-up he has in New York and found all this video footage of us and Guy Stevens in the studio. It's mad stuff: Guy used to throw chairs around all the time and he also used to swing a ladder around a lot for some reason. And he used to smash up instruments for no apparent reason as well.
"The video was so old we had to give it to this specialist - this little old lady who lives out in Hounslow - to restore. When we got it back from her, therewas a note attached, saying what that man did to that beautiful Steinway piano was criminal".
