In September 1979, having just completed the recording of their third album, London Calling at Wessex Sound Studios, The Clash embarked upon a six week American tour. The west London quartet had played a handful of shows in the US and Canada on their provocatively-titled 'Pearl Harbour' tour at the start of the year, but this more extensive run, dubbed the 'Take The Fifth' tour, was their first genuine attempt at winning hearts and minds in the heartlands of America.
"I want to get through to the person in high school," Joe Strummer told the NME's Paul Morley as the tour launched in the mid-west. "All the people that we've got to in the cities, they're sussed, right, it's the kid in the high school who doesn't know anything about it even yet. I hope ultimately we get through to him. Because he's the one at home in his bedroom, he's got Kansas albums and racks of Kiss and all that, and I feel like he should have a dose of us."
Michael 'Duff' McKagan could hardly have been a more perfect example of the type of kid that Strummer and The Clash were targeting.
"I had older siblings, so I heard Led Zeppelin and The Beatles and the James Gang and Sly and The Family Stone at home before I really knew music," Guns N' Roses bassist once told this writer, revealing that the first records he bought as a teenager were Kiss Alive, and Pat Travers’ Puttin’ It Straight. But seeing The Clash at the Paramount Theater in his hometown on October 15, 1979, would prove to be a transformative experience which turned the then-15-year-old's world upside down.
