Remembering When The Clash Shocked the Music World by Firing Mick Jones at the Height of Their Success in 1983

Commercial success doesn’t always sit well with certain bands. The Clash discovered this. You can argue that their breakthrough to the mainstream actually hastened their implosion rather than giving them a boost.

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It all went down in 1983. Just a year after they frequented the pop charts at the highest level in their volatile career, they fired one of their creative leaders. And they never quite recovered from that move.

Uncompromising and Unstoppable

The Clash combined punk authenticity with musical ambition like perhaps no other band of their era. Whereas other groups of the genre quickly faded once they exhausted their supply of three-chord tirades, this quartet bloomed. Their versatility and restlessness ensured that they weren’t repeating themselves.

They hit the heights with their 1979 album London Calling, hailed even at the time of its release as a classic. That album contained an accidental hit of sorts. “Train In Vain”, mostly written and sung by Mick Jones, had been added to the LP so late in the game that it wasn’t even found on the record cover. Nonetheless, it became the first Clash song to reach the US Top 40.

Their next project, the 1980 triple album Sandanista! found the band still sticking to its uncompromising ways. They seemed simply unwilling or unable to hone their sound into something palatable to the masses. And then Combat Rock happened.

Taking ‘Combat’ Too Literally

Released in 1982, Combat Rock contained the oil industry satire “Rock The Casbah.” That song, with its club-friendly sound, went Top 10 in the US. Guitarist Mick Jones wrote and sang lead on the follow-up single, “Should I Stay Or Should I Go”. That track also received significant airplay, even though it missed the Top 40.

Sadly, these hits coincided with a tumultuous period within the band. Drummer Topper Headon, who had written the music of “Rock The Casbah”, was canned right before the Combat Rock tour due to his drug-fueled unreliability. Meanwhile, Mick Jones was alienating himself at the time from lead singer and songwriter Joe Strummer and bassist Paul Simonon.

Jones wasn’t ready to immediately follow up Combat Rock, preferring for The Clash to lie low for a while. Strummer and Simonon wanted to quickly capitalize on their success by getting back into the studio. On top of that, Jones was becoming more and more fascinated with new sounds like hip-hop. The others wanted The Clash to return to their more straightforward rock roots.

Jones Ousted

Considering the level of success that they’d reached, you’d think that cooler heads might have prevailed. But Strummer and Simonon lost patience in a hurry. In September 1983, they announced the firing of Jones from the band.

While Jones went on to form the eclectic group Big Audio Dynamite, The Clash forged ahead with a new drummer and two new guitarists. However, their 1985 album Cut The Crap was a disaster, its music falling far short of the band’s legacy to that point.

The Clash folded their tents in early 1986. And although relationships were repaired among the core members over the years, no full-fledged reunion took place before Joe Strummer’s death in 2002. As such, the Mick Jones firing served as the catalyst for the premature end of one of rock’s most explosive bands.

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