PUNK SOIGNEE
Hearing In the Hammersmith Palais on the radio last week sent me sifting through old photographs of The Clash online, which made me understand how terrifically glamorous they were. Punk valued the damaged, the distorted,and the broken-down, and The Clash, at first glance, fit the bill. Their sound was aggressive, their posture trenchant. They dressed in zippered jackets and combat boots, and had bad teeth and madman haircuts. But, even in the early days, they were always put-together, brilliantly dressed and coiffed. They achieved a kind of punk soignée.
Paul Simonon, the band’s bassist, was a painter working at Vivienne Westwood’s boutique Sex when guitarist Mick Jones recruited him, largely because of his style. Simonon played a key role in outfitting the band, and guiding photo and stage set designs. At first the musicians sported skinny jackets and ties, and shirts with hand-stenciled slogans and Pollock-style paint splatters. Later they wore police and military uniforms, zoot suits, ranger hats, gasoline attendant shirts, neckerchiefs, and string ties. Much of the boldness and detail in their dress is lost in photographs and video, which are shot mostly in grainy black and white, and in shadowy tour buses, dressing rooms, and concert halls.
The band hit a sartorial peak when they opened for The Who at Shea Stadium in 1982. Simonon wore camouflage pants, a camel topcoat, and a Mets cap, with walnut-sized silver rings across his knuckles. Jones wore a cherry red parachute jumpsuit with a green Che Guevara beret. Frontman Joe Strummer wore contrasting camouflage prints and a coonskin cap. All of them sported shining eight-hole Doc Martens and, in some photographs, carried baseball bats like walking sticks. They don’t look like a punk band, and they don’t look like newly-minted rock stars either. They look like art students dressed for Halloween.
Photograph by Neal Preston. The Clash backstage at Shea Stadium, October 13, 1982.