Lots of posts today stating:
May 1, 1977: The Clash begin their first U.K. tour. The forty show “White Riot Tour” begins with a concert at London’s Roxy Theatre.
But it was actually Guildford Civic Hall. The London date was May 9, and it was the Rainbow, not the Roxy.
(The official Gig Archive misspells “Guildford”.)
The White Riot tour kicked off on this day in 1977. Also on the tour were upcoming bands The Jam, the Buzzcocks, The Subway Sect and The Slits. (…)
Tickets were around $2 and no less an authority than Britain’s greatest-ever rock critic Nick Kent was wowed by The Clash. He reviewed their live version of “London’s Burning” saying it had “equal quotients of rage and the sheer exhilarating rush of speeding down the Westway.”
“Strummer’s stance sums up this band at its best, really,” he said. “It’s all to do with real ‘punk’ credentials – a Billy The Kid sense of tough tempered with an innate sense of humanity which involves possessing a sense of morality totally absent in the childish nihilism flaunted by Johnny Rotten and clownish co-conspirators.
“That is what Eddie Cochran had, what Townshend had… not some half-baked feelings about anarchy or any of that other jive.”
RELATED: “Guildford — The Birthplace of Punk?”
(Read the comments:)
Footage of some of the other bands at the same Brighton gig here.
