I’m a Clash fan of the variety that basically picked up everything the band saw fit to put out, bar the odd compilation and box set of studio recordings of songs I already had, so when Live at Shea Stadium was released in 2008 — 26 years after it was recorded — it was a no-brainer. I even sprang for the limited edition, hard-bound book edition, because that’s the type of dork I am.
It’s a lovely artifact, especially the edition I bought, appended with photos from noted rock shutterbug Bob Gruen, who also penned the purple-prose-laden forward to the liner notes. But, I’m not gonna lie, in the wake of the release of 1999’s From Here to Eternity: Live, it all felt a bit needless. But, again, being the dutiful fanboy, I picked it up, spun it a few times, and “threw it on the pile,” as they say (or, more accurately, filed it with anal-retentive precision in “the Clash section” amid my increasingly anachronistic shelves of CDs). It’s pretty much sat there ever since, as it’s — if I’m being honest — rarely the first Clash album I’m inclined to pull out or listen to, especially since most of my listening transpires on my iPod while commuting to and from work.
But there’s another thing about Live at Shea Stadium that prevents me from lauding it as others might, and that’s the revisionism. Yes, the Clash did indeed play Shea Stadium on the rainy night of October 13, 1982 (my birthday, incidentally), but, crucially, they were not the headliners of the event in question — The Who was. Sure, Bob Gruen cites this in the afore-mentioned forward, but if one were simply to peruse the album cover, that inconvenient truth is nowhere to be found, arguably giving younger, less-informed and/or casual fans the misconception that The Clash were a big enough concern in 1982 to warrant a gig at Shea Stadium on their own.
And yeah, the Clash were blowing up, at the time. Having already ascended out of the rough-hewn rabble of British Punk by their iconic third album, London Calling, they were swiftly becoming a globally-known and entirely accessible quantity. I vividly remember spinning “Train in Vain” off same, and having my mother jitterbug into my room with a big smile on her face “Now *THIS* I like!,” she beamed. To the 13-year-old me, there was no greater ignominy than having a parent approve of my favorite music.
Indeed, by 1982’s Combat Rock, the Clash no longer belonged to a furtive cabal of gatekeeping punks. They were everyone’s band. Between “Rock the Casbah” and “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” they were all over the place (and, clearly, the cracks were starting to show). The big time was surely beckoning.
But not Shea Stadium big, let’s be clear. Surely, their spiritual forebears in The Who probably recognized a bit of themselves in The Clash and Townshend was still seething to claim some kinship to Punk Rock (seek ye “Who Are You?” and “Rough Boys” if you need convincing), so adding them to their bill (alongside former New York Doll David Johansen) got as close to checking that box as was feasible. But the majority of the vast throngs of people who came to Shea Stadium that night were not there to hear The Clash. To hear my friend Rob — who attended the gig — tell it, the crowd was essentially the old school — aging classic rock fans with painted denim jackets. The Clash weren’t poorly received, but their short, opening-band set was largely tolerated politely by folks pining to hear hoary rock-opera standards like “Pinball Wizard” and “Baba O’Reilly,” not the menacing dub of “Guns of Brixton” or the forward-thinking funk of “The Magnificent Seven."
By and large, though, Live At Shea Stadium paints the Clash as conquering heroes of the punk generation, usurping the fabled Queens enormo-dome from the Beatles (when, in actuality, it would be the Police who accomplished that feat a year later). Personally speaking, for a band so steeped in conviction, the downplayed specifics, omissions and fact-fudging of Live At Shea Stadium all seem a bit disingenuous. The heart and conscience of the band, Joe Strummer, was already long dead when the record was released. Maybe he’d have cast it differently.
So, why am I discussing any of this now? Well, because I was recently watching yet another episode of Amoeba Records’ “What’s In My Bag?” and rapper Vic Mensa proudly displays his vinyl copy of Live At Shea, clearly unaware (and/or possibly unbothered) by the fact that The Clash played Shea under slightly different circumstances than is implied, … as if that would matter.
At the very least, it made me listen again, and — if nothing else — Live at Shea Stadium does feature a live version of “London Calling” that is markedly superior to the one captured on From Here to Eternity: Live. For whatever reason, Joe comes in with his opening verse a bit late, by about a whole bar, which reveals the choppy, staccato foundation of the song in an enjoyably illuminating manner. Secondly, unlike the version on From Here.., Joe actually remembers all the lyrics and manages to sing them in the original order, which is nice.
As you were.
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