Passion is a Fashion by Pat Gilbert

Author:Pat Gilbert [Gilbert, Pat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781845138028
Publisher: Aurum Press
Published: 2011-08-30T23:00:00+00:00

In early August, Joe and Mick flew into San Francisco. ‘We’d always dreamed of going to America,’ says Mick. ‘We never wanted to be a parochial, little band.’ The Automatt studio was on Folsom Street, not far from the docks. It was an area of old warehouses and industrial buildings, populated by struggling artists and Bohemians. There were clusters of shops, sleazy nightclubs, heavy leather bars. ‘Back then, it was a little bit on the rough side, a little bit non-residential,’ says journalist Howie Klein. Mick and Joe booked into a hotel in Chinatown. Away from the intense pressures of London, they relaxed and enjoyed each other’s company. It was warm and sunny. The Automatt had a great jukebox filled with vintage soul, R&B and rock ’n’ roll. Mick and Joe’s favourites included Otis Redding’s ‘(Sittin On) The Dock of the Bay’ and The Bobby Fuller Four’s ‘I Fought The Law’, written by Buddy Holly and the Crickets’ guitarist, Sonny Curtis.

Pearlman had spent a few days in New York, preparing for the sessions, and arrived in San Francisco to discover Joe and Mick had already been to the cinema five times – to see the same film. ‘I returned to find they’d discovered National Lampoon’s Animal House,’ laughs Pearlman. ‘They claimed to believe it was a documentary, and that John Belushi, alias Bluto Blutarki, was the greatest living American.’

Mick and Joe found America intensely exciting. They’d seen San Francisco in Bullitt and scores of other movies and now they were there. The city had a vibrant music scene. They discovered artists whose records they’d bought as schoolkids performing in bars and small venues all across town. ‘We were there having a party,’ says Mick. ‘It was like a hangover from the sixties, Country Joe and the Fish were playing. From very early on we made lots of friends, like Mo Armstrong, who is the singer of Daddy Long Legs. He was a Vietnam vet – he came back an activist. He had a Cuban wife, and there was a lot of talk, not only then but years later, about trying to play in Cuba.’

Sandy Pearlman recalls that ‘they wanted to meet Mike Bloomfield, who was playing at a club in the Haight area. They were introduced, but he had no idea who they were. They became visiting dignitaries, visiting ambassadors to the San Francisco new wave and punk scene, which, of course, was, along with England in general, the most thriving punk and new wave scene in the entire known universe. They had certainly come to the right place.’

The Clash’s songwriting partners became a magnet for like-minded souls, outsiders, outcasts and punk rockers. Pearl Gates was one of the latter. She was an eighteen-year-old half-Filipino singer who’d been brought up on American airforce bases in Europe. When Ian Dury and the Blockheads toured the US in March 1978, Pearl befriended Kosmo Vinyl, the group’s press-man. She was also one of the 100,000 or so Americans who had bought The Clash on import.

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