It's four and a half decades since punk rock arrived kicking and screaming.
The new genre's aggressive brand of back-to-basics rock, snarling attitudes, and radical fashions shook up a complacent music scene and outraged Britain's popular press and its readers at the same time. One of punk's prime exponents were The Clash, a band whose range of musical styles - ska, rockabilly and dub, as well as punk - and topically politicised lyrics would separate them from their contemporaries.
In December 1976, they were on the line-up for a Newcastle show that would have been particularly memorable but in the event ended up being scrubbed. Along with fellow punk icons The Sex Pistols and The Damned, The Clash were due to perform at the City Hall on the Anarchy In The UK tour, but most of the shows - including Newcastle - were cancelled due to the controversy that followed the Pistols’ infamous TV clash with Bill Grundy.
