“Keys to Your Heart,” the only single by Joe Strummer’s pre-Clash band The 101’ers, was released on 27 June 1976 – 50 years ago this week.
Fantastic and still vital, “Keys to Your Heart” is a driving pop-rocker with a Sixties feel. It edges towards powerpop. But the urgency of delivery and its raggedness mark it out as broadly telegraphing what was around the corner with British punk rock. And its mid section, with Strummer's testifying, presages a fundamental element of the make-up of The Clash. An important single.
The anniversary is neat prompt to consider the band’s musical legacy: what emerged after their demise, when their former frontman’s centrality to British punk rock was cemented.
When “Keys to Your Heart” was issued, The 101’ers were over. They had played their last show on 5 June 1976. Strummer was already rehearsing with the band which became The Clash when the record went on sale. As damage limitation, Chiswick Records, the independent label behind the single, issued a press release to tie-in with the seven-incher’s arrival. It said “Joe Strummer ex 101’ers vocalist, rhythm guitarist and human dynamo has joined a new band ‘The Heartdrops’.” The name was a passing fancy, and the band which was now known as The Clash played its first show on 4 July as support to Sex Pistols. “Keys to Your Heart” was in the set list. What came next is punk rock history.
Three months earlier, on 3 April 1976, The 101’ers had been billed with Sex Pistols at West London pub venue the Nashville. This was the death blow. Strummer was swayed by what he saw, and his band duly entered its final phase. “Keys to Your Heart” was the first record on which the Pistols had an impact. The band which issued it was no more, because their front man decided they represented the future. His future.
Beyond the single – 1000 copies of which came in a graffiti-style, sales-attracting picture sleeve (pictured above right) – and the one-off promotion of it live by The Clash at their debut show, the spectre of The 101’ers intermittently lingered. When The Clash played Camden’s Roundhouse – located beside their rehearsal room – on 5 September 1976, members of the audience shouted out for Strummer’s former band. Later, the November 1978 Clash B-side “1-2 Crush on You” recycled a 101’ers song. Punk’s year zero approach had not quite eradicated Strummer’s recent past. (pictured left, the Joe Strummer-featuring back of the sleeve to the "Keys to Your Heart" single)
The 101’ers came together in August 1974, first played live on 7 September that year and found a regular venue at the Chippenham pub between December 1974 and April 1975. During this period the man who was then Woody Mellor announced that he was now Joe Strummer. In May 1975, the so-far ad hoc line-up settled on Strummer, Richard Nother (renamed Richard 'Snakehips' Dudanski: "dude" given a Polish spin by Strummer), drums; Clive Timperley (Evil C: Clive backwards), guitar; and Marwood Chesteron (Mole: as he supposedly looked like a mole), bass. There was a new pub residency: until January 1976 they regularly played The Elgin on Ladbroke Grove. Their live set was mainly R&B and rock ’n’ roll covers with the odd dip into Sixties beat, but Strummer had written “Keys to Your Heart,” “Motor Boys Motor” and “Steamgauge 99.”
As they played more and more, attention was attracted on the college and pub circuit. In October 1975 The 101'ers began a residency at top-drawer pub venue The Nashville. That November they recorded with Vic Maile, the producer of prime pub rockers Doctor Feelgood. The songs taped were all written by Strummer. It was his band. That brush with the music biz went nowhere – Maile threw in his lot with Eddie and the Hot Rods, who had shared Nashville bills with The 101'ers – and in January 1976 guitarist Dan Kelleher, who had joined in October 1975, moved to bass when Mole was sacked. The band was once again a four piece.
This is where Chiswick Records steps in. Ted Carroll, one of the label’s founders, had seen The 101’ers. Impressed, he took his business partner Roger Armstrong to another of their shows. Afterwards, the band were offered a chance to record for Chiswick, which already had an EP by fellow pub-circuit regulars The Count Bishops under their belt. The sessions which spawned the “Keys to Your Heart” / “Five Star Rock ‘n’ Roll Petrol” single took place on 4 and 10 March. Another session was held at the BBC’s Maida Vale Studio on 28 March. Then, the encounter with the Pistols and Strummer’s concomitant farewell to The 101’ers. Nonetheless, the band – on vinyl, that is – would resurface.
Beyond the single issued by Chiswick on 27 June 1976, the first sign there was more to The 101’ers than that seven-inch came in January 1981, a month after the release of The Clash’s triple-album Sandinista, when after digging through their tape archive, Chiswick issued the “Sweet Revenge” / “Rabies (From the Dogs of Love)” single. The topside was a fantastic rocker.
Two months later, in March 1981, the Elgin Avenue Breakdown LP appeared on a label named Andalucía Records. The duo behind the imprint were Joe Strummer and Richard Dudanski. Strummer had clearly made peace with his past – it was now beyond the point when it could derail or distract from the present. Indeed, one of the tracks on Elgin Avenue Breakdown was a version of "Junco Partner," which The Clash had recorded on the recently issued Sandinista. Plus ça change.
Elgin Avenue Breakdown mixed 101'ers' studio recordings, including four of the tracks completed in 1975 with Vic Maile as well as others from the Chiswick and BBC Maida Vale sessions, with a few live tracks recorded at The Roundhouse on 18 April 1976. Despite being achronologically compiled, what was heard said this was an energised, often attractively rough, band with cohesive identity. Opening cut “Letsagetabitarockin'” hurtled along. Next up, “Silent Telephone” was moody. A live “Gloria” was a blast. This was a band well-worth hearing, one idiosyncratic enough to transcend its status as pub rockers. The album reappeared on CD in 2005 in a reconfigured form with additional tracks, one of which was another live version of “Gloria.” Again, it was all well-worth hearing.
However, the story did not end here. There was more. Albeit via non-official releases.
Setting aside the scrappy mix of what already had been out and alternate versions of previously issued studio tracks collected on French-issued Five Star Rock 'N' Roll bootleg, the fullest alternate account of the 101’ers music is the 2004 double CD bootleg Smokey Joe's Café.
Smokey Joe's Café – the appearance of which was perhaps the impetus for the amended reissue of Elgin Avenue Breakdown – included everything recorded at the 4 March 1976 session for Chiswick, some more tracks recorded live at The Roundhouse and home-recorded rehearsals by the band (these had, in 2003, been on the Beat Music Dynamite bootleg LP). The set’s second disc featured a full 12 December 1975 show from Derby's Cleopatra’s, which had surprisingly good sound. “Keys to Your Heart” was not heard. "Junco Partner" was though. It was finally possible to hear an unexpurgated account of what The 101’ers were about when playing live. The official releases were edited snapshots.
Whether through official or unofficial releases, the surviving material by The 101’ers – beyond the neatness of just the single that was released in 1976 – is not easy to get a handle on. And, on album, what has been issued officially is confusing, as a track from one session is followed by one from another and so on. Live tracks crop up at random. Individual releases are a jumble. Coherence is needed.
It’s hard, though, to determine the level of demand for a full-bore 101’ers release. This is Joe Strummer, and The 101’ers are integral to the story of The Clash. And if the demand is there, enough time has lapsed since 2005’s last release dedicated to the band for a fresh – above all, coherent – look at the band. Until there is, all that can be done is to wade through the hotchpotch that is out there. Making sense of The 101’ers is possible. It’s worth the effort.
- Next week: Shop Around - The Smokey Robinson Songbook
- More reissue reviews on theartsdesk
- Kieron Tyler’s website
Add comment