It's Good To Be Jack

They haven’t been triggering full-scale riots like The Clash did, but Mick Jones’ new outfit Carbon/Silicon proved the other night in Philadelphia that they’re well up for a spot of rock ‘n’ roll sedition.

“We were just finishing this live radio station gig when a Rasta bloke jumped up on stage,” Jones beams. “One of the bouncers went to chuck him off, but I gave him my best ‘Don’t you fucking dare!’ look and we ended up with half the crowd on stage. It was like the Rainbow in 1977 – only without the seats being ripped-up.”
One suspects that Joe Strummer would approve.
“Yeah, he was always first in the queue when it came to civil disobedience! Carbon/Silicon is all about the present, but touring again in the States has made me a think a lot about Joe and the stuff we got up to here with The Clash.”
Does he remember the first time they played America?
“It was in Vancouver in January 1978. Bo Diddley was supporting – we always insisted on having cool people play with us – and we opened with ‘I’m So Bored With The USA’, which even though we were in Canada seemed appropriate! We’d been over a few months before recording Give ‘Em Enough Rope in San Francisco with Sandy Pearlman. The first time we heard ‘I Fought The Law’ was on this fucking amazing jukebox they had in the studio. It was, ‘Memo to self – record this some time’, which we did the following year for The Cost Of Living E.P. It’s the one Clash song that when he was with The Pogues and The Mescaleros you absolutely knew Joe would play.”
When Hot Press spoke to Mick before Christmas, he was apprehensive about returning to live duty after a 12-year break. Could it ever be as good as it was with The Clash and after that Big Audio Dynamite? The answer, we’re pleased to report, is a resounding “yes!”
“We’ve been having so much fun,” Mick gushes. “My mum, who lives in the States, came to the Minneapolis gig and had a ball. She was almost more up for it than I was! Then Matt Dillon appeared backstage. I know him from my B.A.D. days when Laurence Fishburne and him did a spoken word outro for ‘Dial A Hitman’, which Joe who was producing wrote. We also ran in to Joe Ely who toured with The Clash and sang backing vocals on ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’, and Wayne Kramer, which was cool ‘cause I was at the MC5’s first ever UK show in 1970.
“We had another brilliant night at South By South West in Texas when we got to play The Sopranos song, ‘Woke Up This Morning’, with the Alabama 3. Someone’s very kindly put it up on YouTube so you can have a look at it there.”
Unfortunately every silver lining has a cloud.
“We discovered the other day on the internet that Pete Doherty has been sent to jail,” explains Carbon/Silicon co-founder Tony James. “He’s more Mick’s mate than mine, but hearing he’s in the Scrubs genuinely upset me.”
“They didn’t have to do that,” Jones says jumping to Doherty’s defence. “It’s not right. Pete’s a really sweet guy who’s been doing his best to get clean. What’s the point of locking him up for however many weeks it’s going to be? There are more drugs inside jail than there are out of it. It’d be different if he was going round beating people up, but the only damage he’s been doing is to himself. He reminds me of how Shane MacGowan was a few years ago and, y’know, Shane’s doing all right now.”
Pete being banged up isn’t the only thing that’s soured the mood in the Carbon/Silicon camp.
“I’ve been getting really ratty ‘cause nobody over here shows the Queens Park Rangers highlights,” Mick complains. “The best day out I’ve had in ages was when QPR played Chelsea in the Cup and our lot spent the entire 90 minutes singing, ‘We’re even fucking richer than you!’ on account of our new owners, Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore, being worth about ten billion between them.”
Has he ever thought of doing a New Order and writing QPR a song?
“I would’ve done but Pete beat me to it,” he says referring to the Doherty penned ‘Up The Rs’. “The only trouble being that he got banned from Loftus Road for being naughty in the VIP toilets. They obviously don’t approve of performance enhancing drugs.”
Today finds Carbon/Silicon holed up in the 17th floor penthouse of Nashville’s über posh Sheraton Downtown hotel where 400 journos and competition winners from 32 different countries have assembled for the 2008 Jack Daniel’s Legendary Mash.
“Seeing as Mr. Daniel has fueled a goodly part of my career, it’s the very least I can do,” deadpans Tony James who, fashion fans, is decked out in classic English-gentleman-abroad attire.
“I only discovered Mr. Daniel’s excellent Tennessee sipping whiskey recently, but have been making up for lost time,” declares Mick, who’s enthusiasm for the product being plugged – he downs three generous snorters of Jack during our chinwag – is commendable.
“I was in Nashville before with The Clash, and made a pilgrimage to Hank Williams’ house. People like him and Johnny Cash were punks before punk was even invented. The plan tonight is to hit the bars on Broadway and see if we can run into Dolly Parton.”
While Dolly, alas, is out of town, the course of the weekend finds Team Hot Press running into Billy Bob Thornton (in a bar), Little Richard (in a wheelchair) and Legendary Mash co-stars Hard-Fi (in a shopping frenzy).
“We spent shitloads of money this morning in Hatch Show Print, which is where all the old country legends got their posters done,” explains a kid-in-a-sweetshop Richard Archer. “Just being in Nashville and getting to play in Lynchburg tomorrow night with Carbon/Silcon, who are heroes of ours, is a privilege. Albeit a fucking expensive one!”
Hatch Show Print is on the same strip – see how effortlessly we’ve slipped into the local parlance? – as such classic Broadway dives as The Bluegrass Inn, The Rocky Top Saloon, Robert’s Western World and Tootsie’s Orchard Lounge, which is the one that gets the Hot Press and Hard-Fi vote. Like a country music Hollywood, the barroom chatter is of pots of gold waiting at the end of music industry rainbows.
“You know Ricky Skaggs?” inquires one rather over-refreshed Stetson-wearer. “He wanted to put a song of mine on his new album, but the record company said, ‘We only use writers we know’. That cost me a million.”
A heart rendering tale, but one, which is unlikely to be true given that Skaggs is the President of his own record label.
Broadway is also the place where you can buy a hand-tooled pair of Confederate flag rattlesnake skin cowboy boots for a bargain $350.
“Yeah, I saw them,” Richard Archer resumes. “Kai (Stephens, bassist) wanted to buy a pair, but we told him he’d be looking for a new band and walking home if he did.
“Dodgy footwear aside, being in the States is very inspiring. I remember driving through the New Mexico desert and sitting up to watch this electrical storm illuminate what looked like another planet. The environment definitely effects the music you listen to – we couldn’t get enough old skool hip-hop in New York and in LA it was, ‘Motley Crue, allllllllllriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!’ Stay there for a few months and you’d definitely turn into a poodle metaller.”
Hard-Fi’s star buys on this tour include mint copies of Ray Charles’ Genius Sings The Blues and Muddy Waters’ Folk, plus every piece of vinyl that Kiss and Aerosmith released during the ‘70s.
“It’s payback for going to all these radio stations where you think the DJs are taking the piss but, no, they really are that hysterically excited to be talking to their visitors from the United Kingdom,” Ashcroft observes.
What’s the most bizarre promo situation Hard-Fi have found themselves in?
“Nowhere out-weirds Japan. Hungover as fuck, we had to go on a date to Osaka Castle with a bus-full of girls. We had two each who held our hands and giggled, which was very sweet but does make you think, ‘What am I doing here?’”
All of which makes that afternoon’s Legendary Mash press call a stroll in the park by comparison. Well, it is for Hard-Fi and Carbon/Silicon who find answering questions whilst sat on Jack Daniel’s barrels a bit of a wheeze, but not Black Rebel Motorcycle Club who act like schoolboys stuck in double detention. Save for drummer Nick Jago being able to fieldstrip a Shure Wireless SM-87 microphone in under 30 seconds – I wonder if they’ve got it working again? – we glean nothing from the excruciatingly monosyllabic Q+A session, which ends with the band temper tantrum-ing off stage and cancelling their remaining promo duties.
Which is all forgiven four hours later when, headlining the official Jack ‘welcome’ party in Nashville’s Mercy Lounge, BRMC unleash a white noise storm that’s almost as powerful as the tornado, which happens to be tearing through southern Tennessee at the same time. The twister is forecast to hit the Jack distillery but, God being a whiskey drinker, alters course when only twelve miles east of Lynchburg.
Had it of hit we’d have been deprived of the following afternoon’s tasting session, which is presided over by the newly installed Jack Daniel’s Master Distiller Jeff Arnett – only the seventh person to occupy the position since 1866 when the company was officially registered.
Like the vast majority of the 325 Lynchburg employees, Arnett is a born and bred Tennessean who talks about Jack as if it was one of his own children. Along with the familiar Old No. 7 Black Label, we’re introduced to the slightly sweeter Gentleman Jack and the 94 proof Single Barrel, which receives a resounding ‘thumbs up’ from Mick Jones who’s taken to this endorsement lark like a duck to, er, whiskey.
As a curtain raiser to the Legendary Mash, we get to sample some of the JD Set band competition winners who’ve been airlifted in from their respective countries. The Irish nod has gone to Snowman, a take no prisoners Cork outfit whose lead singer Shane Clancy wanders off stage mid-set and returns with the lifesize model of Jack that’s previously been stationed outside the marquee they’re playing in. There are more disapproving looks from security when they partake in an intra-band mosh with Indian representatives Menwhopause who are infinitely better than their name suggests. Afterwards the talk is of getting Snowman over to Delhi where the past few years have seen the emergence of a vibrant indie scene (see News for more).
Walton’s Mountain mightn’t be real – by the way there’s no March Hare, Easter Bunny or Santa Claus either – but BBQ Hill where Carbon/Silicon and Hard-Fi are getting Mashed up tonight is a pretty good stand-in.
It’s not every day you get to play in a log cabin looking down on Moore County, and Mick Jones marks the occasion by launching into a few verses of Tammy Wynette’s ‘D.I.V.O.R.C.E.’. He may be the wrong side of 50, but Jones remains the archetypal guitar hero and in former Generation X and Sigue Sigue Sputnik man Tony James has found the perfect foil for his poppier take on what The Clash were doing back in the day.
There’s also more than a hint of the Westway warriors about Hard-Fi, nominally tonight’s headliners, whose nicking of punk and 2-Tone’s best bits isn’t going to win them any prizes for originality, but makes for an insanely danceable live experience.
The real fun and games start though when Mick and the chaps return for all hands on deck renditions of Carbon/Silicon’s ‘Why Do Men Fight?’, Hard-Fi’s ‘Stars Of CCTV’, Big Audio Dynamite’s ‘E=MC2’ and – oxygen tent for Mr. Clark, please – some long forgotten punk outfit’s ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’.
“That was a bit of alright,” Jonesy enthuses afterwards and there’s not a single person in Lynchburg, population tonight 761, who’d disagree.