O dia em que Bob Gruen conheceu os The Clash

Este post inclui o vídeo "Guns of Brixton" (ao vivo, US Festival,1983) e um excerto do documentário The Last Testament: The Making of London Calling (2004).

Este post vem na sequência da entrada anterior, sobre o fotógrafo Bob Gruen, e ainda no âmbito da recente comemoração dos 30 anos de London Calling (14 de Dezembro de 2009), prontamente 'aproveitada' por duas grandes multinacionais: a Sony com o lançamento de uma edição especial do álbum (Vinil+CD+ Documentário The Last Testament: the Making of London Calling) e a Converse com o fabrico de  um modelo especial (comemorativo) de sapatilhas...

Numa entrevista originalmente publicada no curioso website New York Trash, e reproduzida na sua página, Bob Gruen descreve o seu encontro com os The Clash, que se transcreve abaixo.

 (Foto (Bob Gruen com Paul Simonon e Mick Jones, San Francisco 1979)

http://www.bobgruen.com/scrapbook.htm

"(...) I remember Joe Strummer and Mick Jones had just gotten together, and I went with Vivien (Westwood), Jon Savage and Carolyn Coon in Vivien's tiny mini to the ICA to see the Clash play their second show. I have pictures of that. I thought they were a fucking great band, and after I came back to America I started to hear more about them. I liked them and wanted to see them again the next time I went to London. 

I remember calling up the record company and saying I wanted to see the Clash and being told 'oh, not the Clash, they're impossible to deal with, we can't get you any photo passes, they won't do anything we ask them'. I asked if they could just tell me where they were.(...)

(Foto: "Joe Strummer - Hand Over Eyes", England 1977)

http://www.bobgruen.com/files/clash/r109.html

 

(...) They told me where the band was staying, I took it from there, and somehow it worked out. I went to see the Clash and I met Mick (Jones) and Paul (Simonon) in their hotel lobby. Mick was looking me over and said "You're that guy from New York, right?" I said "Yeah," and Paul, who I hadn't met that night at Club Louise looked at me like 'oh, a journalist,' and he said, "Well, you better watch out 'cause we're cunts*" I just said "Yeah, you look it." From then on we were friends. (...)"

(*"cunt" é considerada uma das palavras mais ofensivas da língua inglesa. Normalmente utilizada para descrever os genitais femininos, neste contexto o significado será  "filhos da p***" ou "cabr***").