|
Richard Williams - Melody Maker 1977
'Let's free the working class,
We're tired of licking the government's arse,
Let's free the working class,
We're tired of kicking the Monarchy's arse.'
Have I lifted that verse from the Clash’s new album? No. Have I been privy to a secret airing of the Sex Pistols' “No Chance” / “God Save the Queen”, on a copy stolen from A&M's famous locked cupboard? No. Is it a part of the manifesto of some unrecorded new wave group - Generation X, say or the Slits? No, again.
In fact they were written and recorded in 1970, severn years before, by a group called Third World War. Their album, on Fly Records, has languished near the bottom of my collection since the week of its release, exhumed only occasionally during the first three or four years and never since.
Listening, this week to the Clash’s album, noting its attitude and sentiments, I was driven back to Third World War, and having played the old album a couple of times afresh I'm convinced that it is one of the most prophetic yet neglected items in all of British rock.
Third World War were basically two guys, singer/guitarist Terry Stamp and bassist Jim Avery, who were evidently out of step with their times. They scowl from the back of the album cover framed behind a chicken-wire fence (probably under Westway), with short hair, one in a well-worn Burton’s suit, the other in a cheap leather jacket. No attempt whatsoever at any kind of contemporary chic, just plain Cockney sneer.
The sleeve is almost monochrome, the front a bleached-out photo of a baby’s face, screaming. Any sense of adornment, of prettification, is palpably scorned.
Neither is there any prettification of their music, but we'll get to that later. First, the songs: titles like “Preaching Violence”, “Get Out of Bed You Dirty Red”,”Shepherd's Bush Cowboy”' “MI5's Alive”, “Working Class Man”... they would fit on the Clash’s sleeve without any incongruity.
Let's hold it there, though, for a moment, and ponder on 1970, the year of Third World War’s birth. What was the mood, the zeitgeist of that largely unmemorable year.
As I remember, it was the interregnum between Flower Power and Glitter, we were writing and reading about Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Chicago, Hendrix, Leonard Cohen, Taste, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Colosseum, and the Nice.
Pop festivals still seem to epitomise some kind of general feeling, a need for togetherness, even if Jean-Jacques Lebel and his Situationalists, from Paris did invade the Isle of Wight.
In retrospect the prevailing emotion was: boredom. With buckskin fringes.
Low key, low profile, waiting, trying to amuse ourselves with James Taylor’s psychoses and Carole King's wholesomeness.
In the midst of this apathy, Third World War appeared, shot their load and disappeared again with the benefit if a review by Roy Hollingworth, who saw them play at the Lyceum and wrote that they were, in so many words, the worst band he’d ever seen. And Roy saw some pretty awful bands.
I got hold of the album because I liked the attitude of the sleeve graphics. I guess I also thought they had something to do with the Who (probably I imagined some connection between Terry Stamp and Chris Stamp; I still don't know if there was one), and felt that an up-dated Who would be a good idea.
It seemed a potentially pleasing alternative to the prevailing introversion (“Fire and Rain”, “Helplessly Hoping”, and so forth), yet it was evidently out of its time: Bolan, Bowie, and Ferry subsequently proved that the correct (i.e. successful) contemporary reaction was to revolt against the style (by proposing glamour and mystery as alternatives to blue-denim homeliness) rather than against the content.
Third World War's songs on this album live up, pretty much, to the billing I've been giving them. The record begins with “Ascension Day” - and that's “ascension” as in “rise up, revolt.” It's a power-to-the-people song, unspecific in everything but the stated methods: “Waiting on the rooftops/Looking for a sign/Pull your hand grenade pin/I'll pull mine/...Waiting in the shadows/When the bullets whine/Blast your automatic/I'll be blasting mine.”
In the sleeve credits, Stamp is described as playing something called “chopper guitar” and that's how it sounds. On “Ascension Day” his guitar is a chainsaw, hacking up the chords and spitting them out with out with robotic intransigence. This is the most powerful track, a magnificent piece of rock music, perfectly balancing its inner intensity with an outward nonchalance.
The other musicians, Avery on bass and Mick Lieber on lead guitar and Fred Smith on drums, have just enough competence to mirror their desires, and in this way close resemble today's new wave combo's. Avery, in particular, would fit perfectly into the Clash, if he were prepared to play at their tempo.
Stamp’s voice, again, sounded horrifically amateurish at the time, but would nowadays be accepted without question. He drawls, leers, snarls, and grunts in the very loosest approximation of “singing” but his intentions are beyond question. Just like Joe Strummer, Dave Vanian, and J. Rotten.
Naturally, the musical approach is more varied than we find with the current groups. Third World war had no example to follow, save that of the Who (who were, after all, quite eclectic in their choice and arrangement of material). There was certainly no “party line” as there is today, telling them that every song must be played as fast as possible, and just a little faster than their techniques allow.
Nor could they have taken any inspiration from that pillar of the new wave, the Velvet Underground. Stamp sounds as though, had he ever heard “Sister Ray,” he would have dismissed the Velvets as a bunch of posing poofs.
Without these rules and regulations, Third World War made plenty of mistakes in the course of their album. They used strings on one track, and horns (arranged, somewhat incongruously, by Bobby Keyes and Jim Price) elsewhere. Perhaps this was an attempt by their producer, Jon Fenton, to mute the harshness by varying the textures.
Sometimes the adventurousness works, as on “Teddy Teeth Goes Sailing,” a hymn to the failings of our then Prime Minister, which, through sheer starkness, achieves some of its intended chilly alienation.
Even when the music doesn’t quite make it, the words usually do. “Working Class Man” is a much realler version of Lennon's “Working Class Hero,” told in the first person by a lorry driver “...the foreman’s big mouth/Said stop, you've been shirking/Get out of that truck/And the company clothes/I nut him in the face/And I broke his long nose/Got sacked for fighting, cards and money on the spot/You’d think five years’ service is something/But it's not.”
“Shepherd's Bush Cowboy” is a tale of the protagonist's encounters with con-men, whores, football fans and ...well: “I turned to a skinhead drinking pint race/He said 'Man, that queen's got a nice face'/Up came my fist, other queen got kissed/That adds one more to my list/The boozer closed its shutter/The barman said ‘Don’t leave him there/Roll him in the gutter’.”
Now there’s a difference today’s new wave would be too self-conscious to admit to that particular reality.
It reads exactly like the stuff Johnny Rotten was giving to interviewers at the end of last year, when it was taken to be a “revolutionary” sentiment.
“Third World War” is very far from being a great album. In 1970 it had its merits, overlooked at the time, but in 1977 it appears even more extraordinary, by virtue of the prophecies it held. Maybe, just maybe, among this week’s releases is an album which sounds preposterous today, and will make perfect sense in 1984.
|
|
