Word: headon
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...Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, and Topper Headon are shown living their day-to-day lives, doing things like standing trial for shooting pet pigeons and discussing the Red Brigade ("It's a pizza parlor, isn't it?"), while their fictitious counterpart, played by Ray Grange, wanders from concert to concert, drinking heavily and prying comment from the band. More than once, it seems that the filmmakers have intruded upon Clash concerts in order to beef up the action in the film, including the taunting of an unruly Rock Against Racism crowd. Late into the rambling film, a racial element...
...much sophomoric, with its implications of false sophistication, as it is freshmanic: the movie delights in the play of ideas and in its own unsuspected ability to play fast, loose and funny with them. It is refreshing to see a movie that sends ideas instead of autos crashing headon...
...them. Yet the broad mass of Americans are wearying of inflation, regulation and budget busting. They realize that those three mighty forces have impeded investment and caused the nation to fall behind, and they may be ready to support the courageous political leader who will tackle the special interests headon. In times of such ferment, the public may well be prepared to accept fairly radical steps. Some possibilities...
...that matter, the Sex Pistols, with whom the Clash is continually compared, although, as Headon says, "we're nothing like the Sex Pistols. We don't set out to shock people through being sick onstage or through self-mutilation." Jones elaborates: "I never was one for sticking a pin in me nose." The Clash, though hardly elegant instrumentalists, makes far better crafted music than the Pistols ever did. The sheets of sound they let loose have the cumulative effect of a mugging, but the songs, full of threat and challenge, never mean to menace. They are, rather, about...
...Jones, Headon and Bass Player Paul Simonon are all 23; Strummer is the band's senior citizen at 25. Two come from broken homes (Jones: "I stayed with me gran and a lot of wicked aunts") and have logged long hours doing manual labor and running the streets. Even Headon, whose father was a headmaster and whose mother was a teacher, says, "I used to steal a lot and run with a gang," and figures he would be in stir today if he had not beat out 205 other drummers at a Clash audition. Out of the pieces...