The Hammersmith Palais, which closes this week, was immortalised by The Clash's (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais, a song Joe Strummer ended his gigs with right up to his death in 2002. But what's the song all about? The Britain of The Clash is no longer with us.
"I live by the river" was the clarion call of the dispossessed in their 1979 hit London Calling; nowadays, it's the boast of a Thameside double-mortgage condo-dweller. In 1919, a former tram shed in west London became the Hammersmith Palais De Danse, the beginning of thousands of nights of jazz, swing, pop, rock, bhangra and ska - as well as the School Disco phenomenon. Reggae DJ Don Letts had thought the event would be up The Clash's alley, but the lyric starts from the seditionary Strummer's disappointment at the apolitical poppiness he witnessed - "onstage they ain't got no roots rock rebel".
Strummer had hoped for reggae to be the voice of struggle, like other white British youths before and since - the reason we have the coinage "trustafarian" being that many of them are, like Strummer, public schoolboys and/or diplomats' sons. But then the lyric takes an unexpected turn into gonzo reportage with a cast including Robin Hood, Paul Weller and Adolf Hitler. What it's "about" depends on who you ask: the death knell of punk?
A call for racial unity? An attack on gun culture? This ambiguity was unlike punk's previous stark messages - Tom Robinson saw it as The Clash realising that they could "afford to admit the contradictions that we all face.
" Certainly, there's disillusionment and fear of futility in there.
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