New Wave

RETROSPECTIVE: Joe Strummer’s Culture Clash Single

| IZui0uMTe2

The Clash’s Reggae Revolution Examined. Just two years into the Seventies British punk era, this is no three-chord thrash. A brave, culturally and politically insightful brilliant record that asked questions the scene wasn’t ready to answer.

Four Colour The Clash White Man In Hammersmith Palais


Many years on from its release, Joe Strummer and Mick Jones’ most pointed cultural critique still cuts like a razor through the pretensions of punk’s supposed solidarity. ‘Seventy Eight’s “White Man In Hammersmith Palais” wasn’t just The Clash dipping their toes into reggae waters, it was a full-blooded dive into the contradictions of being white, privately educated (or art school) punks singing about revolution whilst signed to a major label.

The genesis of this track lies in Strummer and Don Letts’ pilgrimage to see Jamaican acts like Dillinger, Leroy Smart, and Delroy Wilson (the ‘Smooth Operator’) at the famous West London venue in early 1978. What they witnessed wasn’t the cultural communion Strummer expected, but a stark reminder of his own position as an outsider looking in. The resulting song became punk’s most honest examination of cultural tourism and political posturing.

Musically, it’s The Clash at their most adventurous pre-London Calling. The always under appreciated Topper Headon’s ska beat is perfect, not a ham-fisted attempt but a genuine understanding of reggae’s rhythmic subtleties. Mick Jones’ guitar work walks the tightrope between punk urgency and reggae’s more spacious approach, whilst Simonon’s bass provides the crucial foundation that makes the whole thing swing rather than simply thrash.

But it’s Strummer’s lyrical dissection of the disappointment of that night in the lightweight way the bands presented – plus the culture clash South London zeitgeist that elevates this from mere genre experiment to the essential punk document it has become. His observations about fashion victims “too busy fighting for a good place under the lighting’ and weekend revolutionaries were aimed squarely at punk’s emerging orthodoxies and not for the first time. That fabulous line about ‘turning rebellion into money’ and the hollowness of sloganeering hit closer to home than many wanted to admit. This wasn’t The Clash having a go at the establishment this was them turning the mirror on themselves and their scene, one now infiltrated by the Far Right.

The single’s commercial failure at the time, it barely scraped in, seems almost inevitable in hindsight. A huge fork in the road that was too reggae for the punk purists, too punk for the Rastas, and too uncomfortable for those who preferred their politics less complicated including anti-violence, wealth distribution, unity. Lyrically Strummer is really kicking off. Radio programmers didn’t know what to do with it, and neither did much of the press initially. This ain’t no White Riot redux.

Urban mythology has built up around the track over the years. Some claim Strummer wrote it in a fit of disgust after seeing Far Right punks and skinheads doing Nazi salutes at the Palais gig, though those who were there aren’t convinced of that. Others insist it was a direct response to criticism from Jamaican musicians about white bands appropriating reggae. The truth, as usual, is probably more mundane: four young men trying to make sense of their place in a musical and political landscape that was shifting beneath their feet.

What’s undeniable is the track’s influence on what followed. Without “White Man,” there’s no London Calling album, no “Rudie Can’t Fail,” no bridging of punk and reggae under the influence of Letts’, and that became one of The Clash’s defining characteristics. It opened doors not just for The Clash but forother bands who realised that punk’s year zero mentality was creative suicide and a punky reggae party might be route one for them too.

The production, handled by the band and Sandy Pearlman is sparse without being minimal, allowing each element space to breathe whilst maintaining punk’s essential urgency. The decision to keep Strummer’s vocals relatively low in the mix was inspired it forces you to lean in and listen rather than simply absorb. I’ve got four copies and I dread to think how many times my white ears have heard it. It’s impossible to get bored with.

Looking back, “White Man In Hammersmith Palais” stands as perhaps The Clash’s most prescient moment. Its questions about authenticity, appropriation, and the commodification of rebellion feel more relevant now than they did in 1978. ‘If Adolph Hitler flew in today, they’d send a limousine anyway’ they’d also get his opinion of this week’s Nazi atrocity. In an era when punk has been thoroughly sanitised and packaged for consumption, Strummer’s uncomfortable truths about the music industry are prophetic.

The Clash would go on to greater commercial success, but they never again achieved quite this level of self-awareness. “White Man” remains their most honest song, a moment when they looked in the mirror and didn’t like everything they saw, but had the courage to share that reflection with the world.

RETROSPECTIVE: The B-52’s – S/T (1979) It’s Joy As Rebellion

| IZui0uMTe2

Picture this, it’s ’79 – punk’s getting philosophical and Seventies disco is wheezing waiting for it’s Eighties inhaler. Then five exuberant nutters from Athens, Georgia rock up to dance this mess around a bit.

The B-52's Self Titled Debut Album From 1979 Retro Reviewed


I realised while thinking about the ‘next one’ that being a punk, new wave, indie and nowadays classic rock fan there’s not exactly much joy in my album racks. A few disco era, the Bee Gees’ Saturday Night Fever soundtrack is mostly upbeat even if the film is grittier than you’d expect.

So running my finger along the spines and out slides this bright yellow pop art cut and paste thing by Sue Ab Surd (get it?) that sounds exactly like it looks. Joyful but odd in equal measure and totally new wave – because what other genre would have them? Art Brut now included music.

Nearly half a century on, and the B-52’s debut still sounds like it was made by visitors from Planet Claire where everything’s inclusive and brilliant all the time. What we’ve learned in the intervening decades is that this wasn’t just a great teenage party record – it was the moment American rock music remembered it was allowed to smile.

Back in ‘79, punk was getting all serious and art-school, chart disco was dying on its arse, and new wave was formed sixth formers in skinny ties looking miserable. Then along came five lunatics from Athens (Georgia) – with beehive hairdos, ‘a ‘thrift store’ look before Molly Ringwald and the audacity to suggest that rock music could be simultaneously completely mental and absolutely brilliant.

The genius of it is clearer now than ever. While their contemporaries were desperately trying to be cool, the B-52’s had stumbled onto something much more powerful – they were trying to be joyful. And joy, as it turns out, is infectious.

Fred Schneider’s vocal approach was nothing short of revolutionary, though nobody realised it at the time. That Schrechgesang ‘speak-sing’ delivery that seemed bonkers in ‘79 basically invented alternative rock vocals. Indie frontman like Michael Stipe channelled a bit of Fred’s fearless weirdness. The man gave permission for rock singers to stop being frontmen and be themselves.

“Rock Lobster” once destined for the bizarre list alongside Telephone Man and Oh Superman! has revealed itself to be pure genius – a seven-minute masterclass in how to build tension, create atmosphere, “Rock lobster, down, down” and anyone that way inclined lose their mind on a dance floor. please listen to it now. It’s f***ing crazed. As the closer for side one it’s perfect, you cannot wait to hear side two. Chapeau Chris Blackwell and B-52’s.

Fun fact; Cindy Wilson’s screaming vocals, reminiscent of Yoko Ono (with the mic left on) and the album’s playful nature directly inspired John Lennon to come out of retirement to write and record Double Fantasy. That tells you everything about its power. If it was good enough to get a Beatle excited about music again, it’s worth attention. It’s hot lava!

But here’s what’s become most apparent with time, this wasn’t just novelty nonsense. The B-52’s were proper musicians creating genuinely innovative sounds. Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson’s vocal interplay was decades ahead of its time, creating templates that alt-rock new wave bands like the Go-Go’s would follow. Ricky Wilson’s guitar, jangly alien-surf-rock, created a sound that would dominate US college rock for the next two decades.

The Athens connection looks even more significant now. That vibrant and bustling college town also produced R.E.M. and literally dozens of lesser known US indie bands. But the B-52’s got there first, proving that stateside you didn’t need to be in New York or LA to create something world-changing. All you needed was great imagination, a sense of humour, and no shame.

What’s remarkable is how modern this record still sounds. You could play “Planet Claire” today and it sounds fresh, unaffected by fashion and super upbeat. It exists outside of time, belonging to no particular era because this album created its own entire universe.

The album’s influence on fashion, art, and general cultural weirdness is immeasurable. The B-52’s made it acceptable to be fun and outrageous. Note fun. They proved that style and substance weren’t exclusive, that you could be completely over the top and still create lasting art. This is Drag Race T-40 years, no B-52’s no Scissor Sisters, maybe for a few coming out became easier and every person who’s ever teased their hair into an impossible shape owes them a drink.

Looking back, the production by Chris Blackwell is inspired. A clean, spacious mix that lets every mad element breathe – it was the perfect sonic setting for controlled chaos. While punk records were deliberately aggressive and new wave was often formulaic and sometimes saved by power pop, the B-52’s found the sweet spot where everything was clear, punchy, and completely alive. Over the next decade other US alternative bands like R.E.M applied the jangly guitar courtesy of Peter Buck and clean uncluttered mixes, Sonic Youth particularly on Daydream Nation that clarity and chaos evident here and The Go-Gos who applied similar vocal interplay, there are also similarities with Talking Heads although these are simultaneous with Brian Eno at the controls until 1981.

A then revolutionary feminist angle has only become more apparent with age. In an era when women in rock were still fighting for basic recognition, Kate and Cindy weren’t just singers – they were equal creative partners, their voices driving the songs as much as any instrument. They presented a model where gender was irrelevant; all that mattered was bringing their energy.

What’s most impressive about revisiting this album now is how it’s aged like fine wine whilst somehow getting more relevant. In our current era of manufactured authenticity and focus-grouped strategy, there’s something deeply inspiring about the B-52’s’ complete commitment to their own beautiful madness. They had a vision, admittedly involving lobsters, aliens, and enough Harmony [insert any US hair spray for local readers] to punch a hole in the ozone and they pursued it with utter conviction.

The ripple effects are still being felt. Is too much to say that without the band and this album, there’s no US college rock explosion or indie revolution, no acceptance that American rock could be colourful and strange. Kurt Cobain in those big white sunglasses. The B-52’s didn’t just make a great debut – they rewrote the rules.

Forty-six years on, “The B-52’s” debut album remains the sound of pure possibility, proof again from these retrospective reviews and research (also for my book Art Pop / Pop Art) that the best art comes from the margins, from people who care more about creating something wonderful than following the rules. It’s a record that gets better with age, revealing new layers of genius with each listen. I’ve loved playing it again.

In a world that often feels like it’s forgotten how to have fun, the B-52’s debut stands as a reminder that sometimes the most revolutionary thing you can do is refuse to take yourself too seriously. They created music that was so purely themselves that it transcended trends, genres, and decades.

Still essential. Still mental. Still absolutely bloody brilliant. 6060-842!

ART POP / POP ART: Genesis P-Orridge and Throbbing Gristle

| IZui0uMTe2

The Birth of a Proto-Industrial Provocateur

Having grown up around the bleak industrial landscape of Hull in the late 1960s, a young Neil Andrew Megson, later to become Genesis P-Orridge, found himself at the Hull School of Art. Amid the pollution-stained buildings and dockyard silhouettes, this artistic institution became the crucible where Megson’s transformative journey began, a journey that would eventually lead to pioneering work in industrial music, performance art, and radical explorations of identity. Perhaps the most extreme example of the experience of art school manifesting in popular (sic) music.

The port city’s stark contrasts, its bleak post-war architecture juxtaposed against a vibrant underground arts scene provided the perfect backdrop for Megson’s early artistic development. Here, surrounded by the rhythmic machinery of Hull’s factories and the distant calls of ships, the foundations were laid for what would become a revolutionary artistic vision that challenged conventional boundaries of music, gender, and consciousness.

“I never wanted to be an artist in the conventional sense,” P-Orridge would later reflect. “I was more interested in using whatever medium seemed most effective to challenge control structures and question the assumptions underpinning society.”

At Hull, P-Orridge encountered the writings of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, whose cut-up technique would become a foundational methodology not only in P-Orridge’s literary experiments but eventually in the sonic assaults of Throbbing Gristle. The technique involving the physical cutting up and rearranging of text to create new meanings represented a form of artistic détournement that challenged linear narrative and conventional meaning.

Perhaps most significantly, Hull provided P-Orridge with a first taste of institutional resistance to provocative art. While studying there, P-Orridge began mail art projects and early performance pieces that deliberately pushed boundaries of taste and acceptability. These early forays into confrontational art would establish patterns that would define the rest of P-Orridge’s career.

It was during the Hull years that P-Orridge formed COUM Transmissions with Cosey Fanni Tutti in 1969. Initially conceived as a fluid musical and performance art collective, COUM represented a direct application of P-Orridge’s art school philosophy: art should disrupt, challenge and provoke rather than merely decorate or entertain.

The influence of Fluxus, the avant-garde art movement that emphasised the artistic process over finished products, was evident in COUM’s approach. Like many art school graduates who formed bands in this period, P-Orridge saw little distinction between visual art, performance, and music; all were simply different vehicles for expressing ideas and challenging established norms. The entire Art School system served as an incubator for artists and creators to produce work for a burgeoning post-war consumer society

COUM’s performances grew increasingly provocative, incorporating elements of self-mutilation, pornography, and occult symbolism. Their development paralleled similar explorations in Vienna Actionism and other radical performance art movements, but with a distinctly British working-class inflection that added both grit and humour to their provocations.

The culmination of COUM’s art school-inspired approach came with the infamous “Prostitution” exhibition at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1976. The exhibition, which included pornographic images of COUM member Cosey Fanni Tutti from adult magazines alongside used tampons and other provocative items, caused a national scandal. Conservative MP Nicholas Fairbairn famously denounced the group as “wreckers of civilisation,” a title P-Orridge and company wore with pride.

When COUM Transmissions evolved into Throbbing Gristle in 1976, it represented not an abandonment of art school principles but their logical extension into sound. The four members—Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Chris Carter, and Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson approached music not as trained musicians but as conceptual artists working in sound.

Throbbing Gristle’s sonic palette of distorted electronics, found sounds, atonal improvisations, and disturbing samples directly reflected art school methodologies. Their approach to music production paralleled the mixed-media assemblages and collages taught in art foundation courses. The band’s very name, Yorkshire slang for an erection, indicated their continued commitment to provocation and their working-class roots.

P-Orridge explained their approach: “We wanted to see if one could make music like an art movement, like Dada or Surrealism, rather than as entertainment… We were interested in information war, in using sound as a weapon, as a tool for change.”

The group’s establishment of Industrial Records and their coining of the term “industrial music” represented a conceptual art move as much as a musical one. The label’s logo, a photograph of the Auschwitz crematorium and slogan “Industrial Music for Industrial People” explicitly positioned their work as a commentary on post-industrial Britain and the mechanisation of society.

Beyond their own creative output, P-Orridge and Throbbing Gristle became nexus points for a wider network of art school graduates working across disciplines. Their association with publications like RE/Search helped disseminate ideas from the European avant-garde and postmodern theory into underground music circles.

P-Orridge, in particular, became a conduit through which concepts from critical theory, occultism, and poststructuralism entered the post-punk musical landscape. The band’s Industrial Records label released work by fellow art school provocateurs like Monte Cazazza and SPK, creating what amounted to a distributed art movement operating under the guise of a record label. This intellectual approach distinguished Throbbing Gristle from many of their contemporaries. While punk often expressed its dissatisfaction through direct, emotional expressions of anger, TG’s approach was more analytical, using strategies of détournement, appropriation, and conceptual framing derived directly from their art school backgrounds.

After Throbbing Gristle disbanded in 1981, P-Orridge continued to apply art school methodologies in the formation of Psychic TV and the Temple of Psychick Youth (TOPY). These projects further developed the idea of erasing boundaries between art, music and life, now central to P-Orridge’s philosophy.

TOPY, in particular, functioned as a kind of alternative art school in itself, with P-Orridge as the provocateur-teacher at its centre. Through publications, rituals, and networking, TOPY disseminated techniques of collage, sigil magic (itself a form of symbolic visual art), and conscious mythmaking to a generation of followers.

In these later projects, the influence of P-Orridge’s art school background remained evident. The cut-up technique first encountered through Burroughs and Gysin became central to TOPY’s magical practices. The network’s visual aesthetic, a mixture of occult symbolism, industrial imagery, and pornography drew on the same transgressive visual language developed during the COUM/Throbbing Gristle years.

Perhaps the most profound expression of P-Orridge’s art school thinking came in the later Pandrogeny Project, undertaken with second wife Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge. This project, which involved both partners modifying their bodies through plastic surgery to resemble one another, represented the ultimate extension of art school principles into life itself.

The project explicitly referenced conceptual art precedents like Duchamp’s alter ego Rrose Sélavy and drew on theoretical frameworks around gender and identity that had become staples of advanced art school education by the 1990s. In becoming the artwork, P-Orridge fulfilled the ultimate art school ambition of erasing the boundary between art and life.

P-Orridge described the project as “breaking DNA control,” a phrase that encapsulated their lifelong artistic project of challenging biological, social, and cultural determinism, a project that began in the studios and classrooms of Hull School of Art.

Genesis P-Orridge and Throbbing Gristle exemplify how art school education provided not just technical skills but conceptual frameworks that musicians could deploy to revolutionary effect. Unlike many rock musicians who attended art school but ultimately produced conventional music, TG maintained an uncompromising commitment to the avant-garde principles they encountered in their education.

Their influence extends far beyond the immediate industrial music scene they helped create. The analytical, theory-informed approach to making music pioneered by Throbbing Gristle became a template for generations of experimental musicians who approached their work as conceptual art rather than mere entertainment.

When P-Orridge died in March 2020 (from leukaemia), the obituaries rightly positioned h/er not just as a musician but as an artist whose primary medium happened to include sound. In this, the art school had done its job, not producing a conventional artist, but nurturing a creative revolutionary who used every available tool to challenge, provoke, and transform.

The story of Genesis P-Orridge and Throbbing Gristle reminds us yet again that sometimes the most profound musical innovations come not from conservatories or traditional music education, but from the conceptually rich, boundary-pushing environment of the art school. In their noise, distortion, and transgression, we can hear the echoes of critiques first encountered in the classrooms and studios of provincial British art schools transformed into sounds that would change musical history forever.

—

Art Pop / Pop Art: a study of the influences of art school, famous artists and movements on pop and rock music. Those institutions where failure is motivation, where the eccentric and pretentious emerge into the fascinating space where art and music meet.

ART POP / POP ART: The Clash Cut And Paste Revolution

| IZui0uMTe2

As the amber lights of The Rainbow dimmed on a hot night in May 1976, few in the perspiring audience realised they were witnessing more than just another gig. The Clash, in their first major London appearance promoting White Riot while supporting the The Jam, Buzzcocks and Subway Sect represented something beyond mere musical rebellion. In the jagged guitar work of Mick Jones and the snarling bass lines of Paul Simonon lay the foundations of a visual and conceptual revolution that owed as much to the corridors of Britain’s art schools as it did to the streets of Notting Hill.

The conventional narrative of punk rock often emphasises its working-class roots, positioning the movement as a visceral reaction against both the excesses of progressive rock and the stifling economic conditions of 1970s Britain. Yet beneath this compelling but simplified account lies a more nuanced story, one in which formal artistic training and calculated aesthetic choices played roles as crucial as raw anger and three-chord progressions.

Paul Simonon’s journey to becoming the iconic perfect cheek-boned bassist of The Clash began not with a guitar in his hands but with charcoal and canvas. His time at Byam Shaw School of Art in London, though brief, was highly influential and established a visual sensibility that would later define the band’s aesthetic as much as their sound.

“I was always drawing, even before music came along, that was my thing. I’d spend hours sketching the streets, the people, trying to capture something real about London that wasn’t in the tourist brochures.” Paul Simonon 1991.

At Byam Shaw, Simonon encountered formal artistic disciplines while maintaining his outsider’s perspective. Though he departed after just a year, frustrated by what he perceived as the institution’s disconnect from the urgent social realities of mid-1970s London, the techniques he absorbed proved transformative. His understanding of composition, negative space, and visual impact would later inform everything from The Clash’s stage presence to their iconic album artwork.

Malcolm McLaren, who through his partnership with Vivienne Westwood ran the Sex boutique in Soho, a place where punk band members congregated and the future Sex Pistols recruited noted: “Paul brought something different to punk, an actual artist’s eye. He understood intuitively how to construct an image that would provoke and endure. That’s not accidental; that’s training.”

This training manifested most visibly in Simonon’s approach to the bass guitar itself. Unlike many musicians who viewed their instruments purely as sonic tools, he approached his Fender Precision Bass (and occasional Rickenbacker 4001) as a visual element, a prop in a carefully constructed tableau. His famous bass-smashing moment, captured on the cover of “London Calling,” demonstrates this synthesis perfectly. The moment, often mistaken for spontaneous rage, was in fact a considered piece of performance art that Simonon later acknowledged drew from his understanding of compositional drama.

“I knew exactly what I was doing,” he admitted years later. “It wasn’t just anger, though there was plenty of that. It was about creating something visually powerful, something people would remember.”

While Simonon brought the raw visual power of street art and expressionism to The Clash, Mick Jones arrived with a different artistic heritage. His time at Hornsey College of Art, though similarly abbreviated, exposed him to post-war modernist thought that profoundly shaped his approach to songwriting and performance.

Hornsey had established itself as a hotbed of radical artistic thought following the famous student occupation of 1968, when students and faculty seized control of the college for six weeks, demanding fundamental reforms to art education. Though Jones arrived after this watershed moment, the institution retained its reputation for encouraging experimental approaches that questioned established boundaries between artistic disciplines.

“At Hornsey, they were teaching us that everything connected, art wasn’t just painting pictures to hang on walls; it was about communication, about challenging people to see things differently. That’s exactly what we were trying to do with The Clash.” Mick Jones.

This modernist, interdisciplinary approach shaped Jones’s guitar style and songwriting. His compositions frequently juxtaposed seemingly incompatible elements such as reggae rhythms against hard rock guitar lines, poetic social commentary against street slang, creating a collage effect that mirrored the cut-and-paste aesthetic of the band’s visual presentation.

Professor Brian Fielding, who taught at Hornsey during Jones’s brief tenure, observed: “Mick wasn’t our most technically accomplished student, but he grasped something essential about modernism the idea that art gains power through juxtaposition and re-contextualisation. When The Clash combined rockabilly with political manifestos or dub reggae with punk energy, that was pure modernist technique.”

No examination of The Clash’s artistic foundations would be complete without acknowledging the profound influence of artist, journalist and activist Caroline Coon. Though not formally their teacher in an institutional sense, Coon became a critical mentor figure whose background in fine art and radical politics helped shape the band’s direction.

After studying at Central Saint Martins in the 1960s, Coon had established herself as both a painter and a counter-cultural journalist when she encountered The Clash in their formative stages. Recognising their potential, she became their manager and de facto artistic director.

“Caroline understood exactly what we were trying to become before we did, she saw that punk wasn’t just about making noise; it was about creating a complete alternative language, visual, musical, political, everything.” Joe Strummer.

Coon brought rigorous artistic thinking to the band’s presentation. Her formal training enabled her to articulate visual strategies that amplified their political message. Under her guidance, The Clash developed a cohesive aesthetic that drew from Russian Constructivism, Jamaica’s political poster art, and American abstract expressionism, synthesising these influences into something that felt simultaneously revolutionary and accessible.

“I was simply applying what I’d learned as an art student,” Coon later explained modestly. “Art is most powerful when it connects with people’s lives, when it speaks to real conditions. The Clash had something urgent to say about those conditions, and my contribution was helping them find the visual vocabulary to say it.”

What distinguished The Clash from many of their punk contemporaries was their sophisticated understanding of bricolage, the postmodern technique of constructing new meaning through the recombination of existing cultural elements. This approach, central to the teaching at both Byam Shaw and Hornsey during the period, became fundamental to The Clash’s artistic strategy.

Simonon’s hand-painted shirts and customised instruments, Jones’s collage-inspired songwriting, and the band’s repurposing of military and workwear fashion all demonstrated bricolage in action. They appropriated symbols from across the cultural spectrum, from RAF target roundels to American western imagery, reconfiguring them to create new, subversive meanings.

This wasn’t merely fashion; it was applied semiotics. As cultural theorist Dick Hebdige would later observe in his seminal work “Subculture: The Meaning of Style,” The Clash’s visual presentation constituted “a form of consumer resistance” in which commercial objects were “worn and displayed in a way that subverted their original meaning.”

Bernie Rhodes, who managed the band after Coon’s departure, recognised the strategic value of this approach: “Most bands just wanted to make records. The Clash understood they were creating a complete cultural intervention. Every photograph, every poster, every stage set was carefully considered. That came directly from Mick and Paul’s art school background.” Evidenced also by the fury surrounding the release of Remote Control by CBS without their approval and subsequent rejection of this in the lyrics of Complete Control.

By the time The Clash released “London Calling” in 1979, the artistic influences that had shaped their development had cohered into a singular vision. The album’s iconic cover featuring Simonon smashing his bass on stage, was deliberately modelled after Elvis Presley’s debut album, creating a multi-layered visual statement about rock history and punk’s position within it.

Graphic designer Ray Lowry, who created the cover, worked closely with the band to realise this concept. “They weren’t like other musicians I’d worked with,” Lowry later recalled. “They understood design; they could talk about typography and composition. They knew exactly the historical references they wanted to invoke and subvert.”

Inside, the music demonstrated how completely Jones and Simonon had absorbed and transformed their artistic influences. Songs like “Lost in the Supermarket” applied situationist critiques of consumer culture that might have come straight from a Hornsey College lecture hall. “The Guns of Brixton” reflected Simonon’s ability to translate the visual immediacy of his art school training into urgent sonic landscapes.

In the decades following The Clash’s dissolution, both Jones and Simonon continued to demonstrate the lasting impact of their artistic foundations. Jones’s work with Big Audio Dynamite pioneered the integration of sampling and video art into rock music, while Simonon returned explicitly to the visual arts, exhibiting paintings that reflected his continuing engagement with urban landscapes and social commentary.

Their influence extended far beyond their own careers. The art school to punk pipeline they exemplified became a recognised pathway in British music, with institutions like Saint Martins, Goldsmiths, and the Royal College of Art producing successive generations of musicians who approached popular music as a multi-disciplinary art form rather than mere entertainment.

As writer Jon Savage noted: “The crucial contribution of The Clash was demonstrating that popular music could be simultaneously accessible and intellectually sophisticated, visceral and visually literate. That’s the art school legacy in action.”

In today’s fragmented cultural landscape, where musicians routinely control every aspect of their presentation across multiple media platforms, The Clash’s integrated artistic approach seems remarkably prescient. What appeared revolutionary in 1976, the idea that a band should consider every aspect of their output as part of a cohesive artistic statement has become standard practice.

This transformation owes much to those afternoons Simonon spent sketching at Byam Shaw, to Jones’s exposure to modernist theory at Hornsey, and to their collective willingness to apply formal artistic training to the raw materials of punk rock. In doing so, they helped establish popular music as a legitimate field for serious artistic expression, a cultural battlefield where trained artists could deploy their skills in service of authentic communication rather than academic abstraction.

The legacy of The Clash reminds us that the most enduring cultural revolutions often occur at the intersection of formal training and raw expression, where the techniques of the academy meet the urgency of the streets, creating something neither could produce alone.

—

Art Pop / Pop Art: a study of the influences of art school, famous artists and movements on pop and rock music. Those institutions where failure is motivation, where the eccentric and pretentious emerge into the fascinating space where art and music meet.

ART POP / POP ART: Ian Dury & Peter Blake

| IZui0uMTe2

The Artistic Bond Between Ian Dury and Peter Blake.

In the vibrant landscape of post-war British art and music, few creative partnerships have been as meaningful yet understated as the one between punk & new wave pioneer Ian Dury and pop art master Sir Peter Blake. Their collaboration bridged the worlds of fine art and popular music, creating a visual and sonic language that celebrated British culture in absolute eccentric glory.

The foundation of their relationship was built at the Royal College of Art in London, where Blake taught in the painting school during the early 1960s. Among his students was a young Ian Dury, who enrolled to study painting before his musical career took flight. This teacher-student relationship evolved into a friendship and creative partnership that would span decades.

Blake, already known for his pop art style and collage techniques, recognised in Dury a kindred spirit who appreciated the beauty in everyday British imagery and vernacular. Both artists shared an affection for music hall traditions, seaside entertainment, and the rich tapestry of working-class British life.

Their most famous collaboration came in 1977 when Blake designed the iconic cover for Dury’s album “New Boots and Panties!!” with his band The Blockheads. The cover featured Dury and his son Baxter standing outside a clothing shop in London’s East End, capturing the authenticity and unpretentious quality that characterized both artists’ work.

This wasn’t Blake’s first venture into album artwork, he had already created the legendary collage for The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” a decade earlier. However, his work with Dury reflected a different sensibility: less psychedelic fantasia and more urban realism, though both shared a deep appreciation for cultural references and visual richness.

The visual aesthetic Blake helped create for Dury became part of the artist’s signature style, combining elements of music hall, fairground art, and British seaside postcards with the energy of punk. This visual language perfectly complemented Dury’s lyrics, which celebrated similar themes with linguistic dexterity and wit.

What bound Blake and Dury together was more than just a professional relationship, it was a shared artistic philosophy, a Pop Art manifesto:

Democratic Art – Both believed in art that spoke to ordinary people without condescension. Blake’s pop art embraced everyday imagery and commercial design, while Dury’s music combined highbrow wordplay with the rhythms and language of the street.

British Cultural Heritage – They shared a deep appreciation for distinctly British forms of entertainment and expression from music hall traditions to seaside amusements, fairgrounds, and the rich lexicon of Cockney rhyming slang.

Visual Storytelling – Both artists were masterful visual storytellers. Blake through his intricate collages and paintings, Dury through his character-driven narratives and vivid lyrical portraits.

Authenticity – Neither artist was interested in pretension. Blake’s work celebrated real people and places, while Dury’s songs gave voice to characters often overlooked in popular music.

The visual language they developed together helped define Dury’s public persona as an artist deeply rooted in British tradition yet thoroughly modern in his sensibilities. Blake, for his part, continued to be inspired by music throughout his career. Having worked with Dury, he went on to create artwork for other British musicians, including Paul Weller, Oasis, and The Who. His experience collaborating with Dury undoubtedly informed these later musical partnerships. Ian Dury’s painting style very similar to Blake’s, in fact they could be confused.

The Blake-Dury collaboration represents an important moment in British cultural history, a time when the boundaries between “high” and “low” art were being deliberately blurred, and when artists were reclaiming and celebrating aspects of British culture that had been previously dismissed as vulgar or trivial. Evidenced in the 1962 BBC TV episode of ‘Monitor’ a previously establishment series reserved for fine art and classical music sensibilities showing a laid back, montage style documentary by Ken Russell dedicated to pioneering Pop Artists; Peter Blake, Derek Boshier, Pauline Boty & Peter Philips. These occasional media break outs preparing the ground for later.

Their partnership demonstrated how visual art and music could reinforce and elevate each other. Blake’s artwork didn’t simply influence Dury’s music it contextualised it, providing literary-visual pop art inspired cues that enhanced the listener’s understanding of the musical content. For me, the Blake-Dury relationship is the epitome of Pop Art and Art Pop, Blake’s influence was so essential to Dury I don’t believe he would have existed or been anywhere near as popular without. In perspective, the surprising statistic that Dury was the U.K.’s biggest selling pop artist in 1978.

Today, their collaboration stands as a testament to the power of cross-disciplinary artistic partnerships. The visual language they developed together continues to influence album artwork and the presentation of musical personas, while their shared appreciation for the vernacular aspects of British culture has helped shape subsequent generations of British artists and musicians.

In a cultural landscape increasingly dominated by global influences, the Blake-Dury partnership reminds us of the rich creative potential that can emerge from deeply local inspirations proving that the most universal art often comes from the most specific cultural contexts.

Their legacy lives on in their shared vision of an art that speaks to and celebrates the lives, language, and experiences of ordinary people an artistic philosophy as relevant today as it was when a young Ian Dury first sat in Peter Blake’s classroom at the Royal College of Art.

Ian Dury Royal College of Art, 1964-1967.

—

Art Pop / Pop Art: a study of the influences of art school, famous artists and movements on pop and rock music. Those institutions where failure is motivation, where the eccentric and pretentious emerge into the fascinating space where art and music meet.

ART POP / POP ART: Jerry Dammers’ Multi-Cultural Vision

| IZui0uMTe2

Or Rude Boy Revolution: Jerry Dammers Two Tone Vision.

In the drab concrete wasteland of late-70s Coventry, while the rest of Britain was busy ripping its clothes and safety-pinning them back together again, a bespectacled keyboard player with a vision was plotting a different kind of revolution. One that would eventually come dressed in sharp suits, pork pie hats and checkerboard patterns.

Jerry Dammers the dentally challenged architect of Two Tone Records, founder of The Specials, and perhaps the most criminally underappreciated musical visionary of his generation didn’t stumble upon his aesthetic by accident. The roots of Two Tone’s striking visual identity and multicultural musical fusion can be traced directly to Room 057 of Lanchester Polytechnic’s art department, where young Dammers spent his days absorbing influences that would later explode into a cultural phenomenon.

The Art School Radical

Lanchester Poly (now Coventry University) in the mid-70s was hardly Central Saint Martins, but what it lacked in glamour it made up for in gritty authenticity. While Malcolm McLaren and Jamie Reid were cooking up the Sex Pistols’ confrontational visuals in London, Dammers was in Coventry, quietly developing his own radical visual language.

“Art school was where I learned about Constructivism and Bauhaus,” Dammers once explained in a rare interview. “That black and white check pattern came directly from studying those movements, simple, bold, impossible to ignore.”

The checkerboard motif that became Two Tone’s signature wasn’t just visually striking, it was loaded with meaning. Black and white squares existing side by side, neither dominating the other. In Thatcher’s Britain, with racial tensions simmering and the National Front on the march, Dammers’ art school education gave him the tools to create a powerful visual metaphor for racial unity.

His tutors recall a serious, somewhat detached student whose sketchbooks were filled with record sleeve concepts years before he had a record label to release them on. While other students were making self-indulgent installations, Dammers was obsessively designing logos, posters, and manifestos for a cultural movement that existed only in his imagination.

The Coventry Sound System

If art school provided the visual framework, Coventry’s streets supplied the soundtrack. The city’s substantial Jamaican community had brought with them a rich musical heritage that fascinated Dammers. He spent countless nights in West Indian blues clubs, absorbing the hypnotic rhythms of ska and rocksteady, watching how the music created community in the dingy basements of a city best known for being bombed to smithereens in WWII.

“The thing about those Jamaican sounds,” recalls Neville Staple, who would later join Dammers in The Specials, “was that they were already fusion music. Ska itself came from Jamaicans late-night listening to American R&B on crackling radio stations and reinterpreting it through their own cultural lens.”

This was the critical insight that Dammers took from those nights, that musical cross-pollination wasn’t appropriation but conversation. The idea that white punks and black skinheads could find common ground on the dance floor became the foundation of the Two Tone philosophy. A near identical philosophy being formed by Joe Strummer, the white man In Hammersmith Palais.

The Poly Basement Tapes

Lanchester Poly’s dingy rehearsal rooms became the laboratory where Dammers conducted his grand experiment. The Automatics (later renamed The Specials) began as a ragtag collective of art students and local musicians, with Dammers as the unsmiling conductor, pushing his bandmates to fuse punk’s energy with ska’s rhythmic sophistication.

It wasn’t always harmonious. Punk purists thought the ska elements were gimmicky; traditionalists found the punk influence sacrilegious. But Dammers, with the single-minded determination of the true art school obsessive, drove the band forward through sheer force of will.

“Jerry would bring these complicated charts to rehearsal,” remembers original Specials guitarist Lynval Golding. “Most of us couldn’t read music that well, but he had this complete vision in his head. Sometimes we’d spend hours on just two bars of a song until it had exactly the tension he was looking for.”

That tension between disciplines, between cultures, between chaos and control became the defining characteristic of The Specials’ sound. It was the musical equivalent of a Bauhaus design: stripped down to its essential elements, each serving a specific purpose, no ornamentation for its own sake.

The Birth Of Two Tone

When Dammers finally launched Two Tone Records in 1979, it emerged fully formed, with an aesthetic coherence that betrayed its art school origins. Everything from the label’s logo to the bands’ uniforms to the stark black and white promotional photos spoke of a unified vision that was simultaneously retro and futuristic.

The label’s first release, “Gangsters” by The Specials, was pressed with an initial run of just 5,000 copies. Dammers personally designed the sleeve, a stark black and white affair featuring Walt Jabsco, the label’s rude boy mascot adapted from a photograph of Peter Tosh. It sold out immediately, and the Two Tone revolution was underway.

What followed was a brief but incandescent moment in British music history. The Selecter, Madness, The Beat, and others joined the Two Tone stable, each putting their own spin on the fusion sound Dammers had pioneered. For a glorious 18 months, these bands dominated the music charts, bringing their message of racial unity to Top of the Pops while the country burned with riot and discontent.

The sad irony is that Dammers’ art school training, which gave him the tools to create Two Tone’s unified aesthetic, also contained the seeds of the movement’s demise. Like so many art school idealists before him, from Brian Eno to Pete Townshend, Dammers couldn’t stop evolving while the movement he’d created crystalized around him.

By the time of The Specials’ masterpiece “Ghost Town” a harrowing sonic portrait of urban decay that hit number one during the 1981 riots Dammers was already restless, pushing toward more experimental sounds that left both bandmates and audience bewildered.

When The Specials inevitably fractured, Dammers formed the jazz-influenced Special AKA, creating the anti-apartheid anthem “Free Nelson Mandela.” It was another masterpiece of political pop, but by then the Two Tone moment had passed. The art student had moved on to new experiments while his classmates were still copying his previous breakthrough.

Legacy

Today, Lanchester Polytechnic is long gone, absorbed into Coventry University. The concrete brutalism of 1970s Coventry has been softened by redevelopment. And Jerry Dammers has become something of a recluse, occasionally emerging for DJ sets of obscure jazz and world music.

But the impact of that collision; between art school theory and street-level reality, between black and white musical traditions, between design and visceral energy continues to reverberate. From the multicultural dance collectives of the 90s to the post-genre experiments of today’s London scene, Dammers’ Two Tone vision has proven remarkably prescient.

Perhaps the most telling testament to Dammers’ achievement is that the checkerboard pattern he adapted from his art school studies has transcended its origins to become a universal signifier of ska music across the globe. From Tokyo to Mexico City, bands still don pork pie hats and two-tone suits to pay homage to the vision of a serious young art student from Coventry who dared to imagine that black and white could create something more powerful together than apart.

In an age of algorithmic playlists and frictionless fusion, it’s worth remembering that Two Tone wasn’t just about mixing musical styles. It was a complete artistic statement; visual, musical, political and crafted with the disciplined vision of a true art school radical. And somewhere in a dusty archive at Coventry University, there may still exist the student sketches where Jerry Dammers first dreamed it all up, years before the first needle dropped on “Gangsters” and changed British music forever.

“The thing about Jerry, is that he was never just a musician. He was always creating this whole world with its own rules and values. That’s what you got from him being an art student he saw the big picture while the rest of us were just trying to get a gig on Saturday night.” Neville Staples.

In that sense, Two Tone was perhaps one of the greatest art school movements in British pop, marginally less famous than the one that gave us the Sex Pistols, but in many ways more enduring. After all, McLaren, Lydon and Pistols told us there was “No Future.” Dammers and his Two Tone multi-cultural vision insisted there could be if only we were brave enough to imagine it together.

Jerry Dammers attended Lanchester Polytechnic, Coventry, 1972-1975

—

Art Pop / Pop Art: a study of the influences of art school, famous artists and movements on pop and rock music. Those institutions where failure is motivation, where the eccentric and pretentious emerge into the fascinating space where art and music meet.

ART POP / POP ART: Introduction

| IZui0uMTe2

The introduction to my book Art Pop / Pop Art: a study of the influences of art school, famous artists and movements on pop and rock music. Those institutions where failure is motivation, where the eccentric and pretentious emerge into the fascinating space where art and music meet.

The Art School Revolution in Rock

It begins with paint splashes before guitar slashes. Hands stained with pigment before calloused by strings. Art school corridors have pumped more revolutionary blood into rock’s system than any conservatory ever could.

Consider the transformative parade of daubers-turned-rockers: Townshend with his windmill arm and operatic ambitions; Ferry, the suave pop-art provocateur; Bowie, that “chameleon, comedian, Corinthian and caricature”; Eno, the polymath dismantling sound like a child with a particle accelerator. This holy lineage stretches from The ‘Stones’ Keith Richards to Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker, with countless visionaries between.

What these visual thinkers brought wasn’t mere decoration but destruction, the impulse to tear down and rebuild. While classically trained musicians polished scales, the art school brigade posed a more subversive question: “Why make music this way at all?”

Canvas and Chord

The art school mentality transformed how music was conceived, packaged, and performed. Album artwork became an extension of the sonic statement. Warhol’s banana for the Velvet Underground announcing its art-house credentials before needle touched vinyl; his provocative zipper for the Rolling Stones. Consider too The Factory, not just Warhol’s silver-walled playground but the Manchester institution founded by art graduate Tony Wilson, who understood that bands like Joy Division and New Order needed proper framing.

Stage design reflected this visual thinking. Bowie’s transformations weren’t costume changes but conceptual renovations, each persona a living installation. Talking Heads’ David Byrne expanded concerts into performance art with his oversized suit and mechanical movements, a visual commentary no conservatory graduate would likely conceive.

The Clash’s aesthetic – sartorially and musically – owed everything to collage techniques from art school. The Pollock splattered Paul Simonon, a serial truant whose father assigned him to copy artistic masters, brought this sensibility to bass playing. Even Malcolm McLaren emerged from art school understanding bands as living artistic movements. Situationist provocateurs with amplifiers.

Conceptual Experimentation

Art school didn’t just transform music’s appearance, it fundamentally altered its sound. The dismantling of rock orthodoxy owes its framework to the experimental ethos of the art studio.

Brian Eno, having ‘Crashed his plane and walked away from it’ emerging from art school with concepts borrowed from John Cage, approached sound as malleable material. His Oblique Strategies cards instructing musicians to “Honour thy error as hidden intention” represented pure art school methodology. His ambient works treated music as environment rather than event, as gallery installation rather than narrative.

Pete Townshend’s concept albums weren’t mere song collections but gestures toward larger meaning, rock equivalents of installation art. His generation’s rebellion against rock’s three-minute constraints paralleled the art world’s expansion beyond traditional frames.

Post-punk’s angular assault on convention (prefigured by Eno’s “Third Uncle” from 1974), Wire’s stark minimalism, and Gang of Four’s razor-sharp deconstructions reflected critical theory central to 1970s art education. These weren’t just songs but sonic arguments – musical essays slicing through cultural assumptions with surgical precision.

A Lyrical Lens

The art school contingent’s most distinctive contribution may have been their observational sharpness. Ian Dury’s Pop Art tribute “Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3″ and Ray Davies’ character studies offer forensic examinations of English society, affectionate yet unsparing, finding universal truth in specific detail, 20th Century Hogarth .

Jarvis Cocker brought similar precision to his dissections of class dynamics and sexual politics. His lyrics function as short films, zooming in on telling details with Kubrickian focus. “If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah!”

Even punk’s compression owed something to art school techniques, the ability to convey volumes through minimal means, musical guerrilla marketing. Steve Jones’ power chords and Joe Strummer’s manifestos demonstrated economy of expression. Bowie’s cut-up lyrical approach borrowed directly from Dadaists and William Burroughs. Creating meaning through collision rather than exposition.

A Broader Brush

This cross-pollination wasn’t merely stylistic but ideological. Pop Art’s appropriation of commercial imagery found its musical equivalent in sampling. Dadaism’s absurdist protest resonated through punk’s deliberate confrontation. Bauhaus principles influenced post-punk’s stark functionalism, literally embodied in the angular sound of that eponymous band.

Perhaps most crucially, art school’s emphasis on vision over technical prowess gave permission to prioritise expression over virtuosity. Three chords became sufficient if they were your three chords, played your way, serving your vision. This democratization of music-making owed everything to art school’s validation of the authentic voice; an ethic continued by Art Brut with their song “Formed a Band.”

A Continuing Legacy

This fertile cross-contamination continues today, though institutional pathways have multiplied. Digital landscapes enable new visual-sonic collaborations, while genres like hip-hop have developed visual literacy and sampling aesthetics paralleling art school methodologies, albeit minestrone of intellectual property. 

What remains constant is the revolutionary potential when visual thinking collides with sonic exploration. When the eye informs the ear and conceptual frameworks shatter musical conventions. From The Beatles to Blur, popular music’s most interesting corners have been mapped by those who see sound as colour, approach composition as collage, and understand music as a multi-sensory experience.

The art school radicalisation of rock wasn’t merely accidental but a necessary infusion indeed rock’s periodic salvation from its own orthodoxies. Long may paint-stained (or mouse-clicking) fingers reach for guitars, synthesisers, and samplers. As you will realise from the following chapters, our ears and entertainment depend on it.

From Art Pop / Pop Art.

Copyright Steve Coulter / 45renegade 2025