"I'd seen Led Zeppelin, loved it, but you can't touch them: they fly away on a jet plane that says 'Led Zeppelin' on it. The Clash pulled up in a station wagon": Guns N' Roses' Duff McKagan on the gig that changed his life forever
In September 1979, having just completed the recording of their third album, London Calling at Wessex Sound Studios, The Clash embarked upon a six week American tour. The west London quartet had played a handful of shows in the US and Canada on their provocatively-titled 'Pearl Harbour' tour at the start of the year, but this more extensive run, dubbed the 'Take The Fifth' tour, was their first genuine attempt at winning hearts and minds in the heartlands of America.
"I want to get through to the person in high school," Joe Strummer told the NME's Paul Morley as the tour launched in the mid-west. "All the people that we've got to in the cities, they're sussed, right, it's the kid in the high school who doesn't know anything about it even yet. I hope ultimately we get through to him. Because he's the one at home in his bedroom, he's got Kansas albums and racks of Kiss and all that, and I feel like he should have a dose of us."
Michael 'Duff' McKagan could hardly have been a more perfect example of the type of kid that Strummer and The Clash were targeting.
"I had older siblings, so I heard Led Zeppelin and The Beatles and the James Gang and Sly and The Family Stone at home before I really knew music," Guns N' Roses bassist once told this writer, revealing that the first records he bought as a teenager were Kiss Alive, and Pat Travers’ Puttin’ It Straight. But seeing The Clash at the Paramount Theater in his hometown on October 15, 1979, would prove to be a transformative experience which turned the then-15-year-old's world upside down.
In an interview conduced by Alice In Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell to promote his current album Lighthouse, McKagan revisits that fateful evening, and it's immediately evident that his memories of the gig are still vivid.
"This gig changed my life," he says simply. "These guys... like, so exotic, from England, at the Paramount, and there was 150 people there, and they were just... it was so truthful. I'd seen Led Zeppelin, loved it, at the King Dome [in 1977], but they're way far away, you know, you can't touch them, they're Led Zeppelin. They fly away in a jet plane that says 'Led Zeppelin' on it! The Clash pulled up in a station wagon."
The show became enshrined in local legend because of a confrontation between The Clash and the venue's security team after some fans were treated roughly, and the band threatened to remove the stage barriers to be closer to their audience.
"A security guy punched a guy who was pogoing, he thought he was being violent," McKagan tells Cantrell. "He broke his nose, and it's one of our friends. So The Clash stopped the show and [bassist] Paul Simonon went back [stage] and got the firefighting axe, and Strummer is like, 'There's no difference between us and you, we'll cut down this this fucking fence here, we're in this together.' You know, 'We're in this together!' What a moment!'
You can watch the full interview below:
