THE CLASH: ‘It’s as close as we can get without reforming’

The three surviving members of the Clash tell Andrew Perry why they reunited after 30 years to create a new box set.

As the memory of rock’s golden age in the Sixties and Seventies fades, the music of the era’s biggest groups, from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones, has attained the status of crown jewels, reissued and repackaged in ever more glittering packages. Joining this elite with a new lavish box set are the Clash, the west London band whose furious energy at punk’s inception in 1976 drove them through an inventive five-album career, before they fell apart, exhausted, in 1983.  All four members struggled to acclimatise thereafter, not least their soul-searching frontman Joe Strummer, who in later life struggled with a sense of hopelessness trying to live up to the impact of the Clash.

Read more HERE