On Boxing Day Christmas 1979, The Clash played a gig at a small school hall like space underneath the Westway flyover off the Portobello Road, London known as Acklam Hall. About fifty people at the most turned up. I was with my mates who owned a T-Shirt company called 5th Column. They were one of the first hand printed silk-screen printers at the start of the punk era. Many of the T-shirt designs are now an iconic part of punk history. I was a budding photographer working for Sounds and Record Mirror. I would help 5th Column with the photo process of getting images onto the screens. This included the Clash, the Jam, Buzzcocks, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Damned and many more. This was the reason we were invited as we were doing all the Clash T-shirts for their upcoming London Calling tour. I took the image of the Post Office Tower on the Clash “London Calling” tour T-shirt.
At the time, the Clash was just another punk band better than most but definitely not the rock stars they were about to become. I shot about 10 rolls of black and white but decided to only develop one roll. Money was tight in those days, and processing 10 rolls of film was expensive. I dropped the nine unprocessed rolls into the bag I kept for all my unprocessed film.
Years later, two decades to be exact I stumbled the bag of unprocessed film. Luckily I had at least labeled the rolls clearly with the Clash. I excitedly dropped them off at a photo lab in Hollywood where I now lived. A few days later I went to pick them up. I laid them down on a lightbox and grabbed a lupe. Wow ! Nine rolls of film (nearly lost forever) of the Clash playing to fifty people moments before they were to etch themselves into punk history as one of the most iconic punk bands ever.
For a brief moment, as I stood in Hollywood - a million miles away from London and my punk youth - I was right back there at Acklam Hall. It was Xmas 1979, the punk scene was in full swing. The Clash was playing “London’s Burning.” I was with my mates. I felt part of something, not quite sure what but it felt good; the future didn’t matter much. Right then I had it all.
Looking back on it now it was an incredible moment not that I could see it at the time. I was probably stressing about how I would pay for the film processing.
Here is the set list from that gig
http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-clash/1979/acklam-hall-london-england-73d7c2b9.html
More of my images at http://www.andyrosenphotos.com/
