Catching Up With The Jones

The last time yours truly crossed paths with Mick Jones was four years ago in Lynchburg, Tennessee, when he played the Jack Daniel’s Legendary Mash with his then-new band Carbon/Silicon. As I’ve said before, being a journalist or punk legend are bitches of jobs. What does Mick remember of his week in JD country?

“The hangover,” he chuckles, “and getting to play in this old wooden building which looked like it belonged on Walton’s Mountain! We had a big jam at the end with Hard-Fi. I don’t remember what we did, but it was a lot of fun!”
Allow me to jog his memory – they started with Carbon/Silicon’s ‘Why Do Men Fight?’, continued with Hard-Fi’s ‘Stars Of CCTV’ and then ended with the double Big Audio Dynamite/Clash whammy of ‘E=MC2” and ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’.
Jonesy will be bashing out more Clash songs – ten of ‘em to be precise – this month when, along with old pals Pete Wylie (of Wah! semi-fame) and The Farm, he plays Justice Tonight gigs in Dublin and Belfast.
“It’s basically all of us on stage at the same time plus guests, playing each other’s songs,” Mick continues. “We’ve had some really great people join us – Ian Brown and John Squire in Manchester; James Dean Bradfield, the Primal Scream boys and my old pal Paul Simonon in London; James from Glasvegas in Glasgow; and Jon from Reverend & The Makers in Sheffield. Every night it’s an orchestra of guitars! We wanted to get Shane MacGowan for the Dublin show, but I think he’s going to be in Australia. Perhaps U2 would like to come down? Seriously, we’d love to have ‘em!”
Over to you boys! Mick has always been reluctant to trade on his Clash past, so why go out and do the likes of ‘Stay Free’, ‘Train In Vain’, ‘Bankrobber’ and ‘White Man (In Hammersmith Palais)’ now?
“The main thing is it’s a not a Clash show – I mean, it couldn’t be without Joe,” the dapper-looking 56-year-old reflects. “It’s not a nostalgia thing. We play the songs as we are now – men – as opposed to how we were then – boys. I only have to look in the mirror to know I’m not 23 anymore!
“I don’t necessarily sing all the Clash songs and they don’t necessarily sing theirs – we mix it up every night, which gives it a real edge and an energy.”
The justice being sought is for the 96 Liverpool fans who were crushed to death in 1989 whilst watching their team play Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough in an FA Cup Semi-Final.
“Some more government documents were released the other day, but the victims’ families still don’t have a clear picture of what happened or who’s to blame for the investigation being so flawed,” Jones resumes. “I’d love to know what Margaret Thatcher’s thought process was. Was less done to unearth the truth because during the ‘80s, Liverpool stood up to the Tories? Would more have been done if it was Chelsea or Arsenal or another London team?”
The answer to that, I suspect, being a resounding “Yes!”
“What I love about Liverpool is it doesn’t forget. 23 years after they wrongly blamed the deaths on ‘drunken Liverpool fans’, people there still refuse to buy the Sun. You’ll only find it in the very odd shop, which must have cost Murdoch a lot of money.”
Mick met his Justice co-conspirator and ardent Liverpool fan Pete Wylie during the height of the punk wars.
“The Clash used to go to Liverpool a lot and play in this place called Eric’s where we’d do a matinee and then an evening gig, which all the people who subsequently had groups of their own turned up to,” he reminisces. “Pete stood out because 1) He was so loud and funny and 2) He was really talented. People think of him as being more of an ‘80s and ‘90s artist but we do a new song of Pete’s called ‘The Day That Margaret Thatcher Died’, which is genius.”
With a title like that how could it be anything else? The last time Mick trod Irish soil was as a member of Gorillaz.
“The best thing about the Gorillaz?” he deadpans. “The hats! We had great stylists. It was nice being the hired hand for a change, and have other people carry the show. I was like a kid at Christmas getting to play with Bobby Womack every night. He was really kind and lovely.”
Any other projects in the Jonesian pipeline?
“We’ve been making a Big Audio Dynamite record over the last period of time,” he reveals. “We’ve taken tracks that we started 25 years ago and are now trying to finish. It’s bridging the gap between the past and the present. We want to keep the original integrity of the group whilst bringing it into the modern age. Same as we are with the Justice gigs.”
 
Mick Jones, Pete Wylie, The Farm, MC John Robb and assorted guests bring the Justice Tour to the The Academy, Dublin (March 30) and the Spring & Airbrake, Belfast (31).