Behind the Tracks - Stories of Producers

There are only two Phil Spectors in the world, and I am one of them.

(Guy Stevens, December 1979)

If in 1979 someone had drawn up a list of producers based on criteria like reliability, professionalism and financial return, not only would Guy Stevens have failed to rank anywhere near the top - he probably wouldn't have made the list at all. He was one of those names circled in red pen next to the words "avoid at all costs".

The Clash had first crossed paths with him three years earlier, when manager Bernie Rhodes was looking for a producer for their debut demo, but the attempt hadn't delivered the hoped-for results. While acknowledging the man's sincere passion, the band had found Stevens's over-the-top behaviour (including his heavy drinking) unproductive, and Strummer in particular hadn't appreciated being told, repeatedly and insistently, to enunciate his words better. An unacceptable request in the heat of the punk era.

But by the dawn of the Eighties punk had crumbled and the Clash were a different band, with a couple of albums behind them, a mountain of expectations to live up to, and a pile of debts owed to Cbs. To break out of their indecision, the band had shut themselves away at Vanilla (a windowless rehearsal room with a low ceiling) and taped ideas for around fifteen songs. Now it was a matter of turning them into a new record.

Strummer initially wanted to keep everything in-house and perfect the use of the two TEAC 144 Portastudio recorders (the first 4-track cassette machines) already used at Vanilla, so as not to widen the gap with Cbs any further and give fans the best possible value for money, but the plan was dropped due to a lack of the necessary technical know-how (recording on a Portastudio was later put into practice by Bruce Springsteen on "Nebraska" a few years afterwards). They therefore fell back once again on the record label's resources, but demanded the freedom to choose their own producer.

Guy Stevens's name started doing the rounds again, and underwent something of a partial reassessment: he shared their personal tastes (particularly important given the stylistic nature of material that drew together the four members' mix of r&b, soul, garage, reggae, rock steady and jazz influences), and he had a knack for letting immediacy and gut instinct win out over technique and polish.

But some time before, Stevens had also made a fine contribution to the history of English music.

He had started collecting records at a young age, quickly becoming the country's biggest r&b collector, before moving on to write for the pages of the NME and Record Mirror (mainly devoting himself to praising his idols, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan), and becoming decidedly influential.

In terms of records, his career had taken off at the UK division of Sue Records (a subsidiary of Island), through which Guy had been able to launch a series of projects with bands that would later become important, but whose fortunes he never got to share.

He was in fact involved in the birth of Procol Harum, to whom he suggested the name and (purely by chance) the title of a single ("A Whiter Shade Of Pale"), but the band soon grew tired of Island's absenteeism and signed with Decca/Deram, hitting the jackpot. While he was recovering from the disappointment and had started hanging around with Brian Jones (drugs included), he recorded Free's first album in a single week, but was arrested in the following days for drug possession, getting a year behind bars as a repeat offender. Free went on to success without him.

Once out of prison, he put together Mott The Hoople (again, the name was his own - taken from a novel he'd read in jail) and produced their first four records, all with an entirely modest commercial return. Once their collaboration ended, Ian Hunter and co. were on the verge of splitting up, but were encouraged to carry on by David Bowie, who gifted them "All The Young Dudes", turning things around for them. Once again, without Stevens.

By that point the producer's situation was a difficult one, with too many failed episodes, a baggage of addictions and a reputation as a misfit.

The Clash, however, didn't see it that way: feeling as though they had their backs against the wall, they had identified Guy as the right man to share their motivations and their ideals of redemption. Strummer knew Guy hung around the pubs of Oxford Street, and started systematically working his way through all of them until he found him.

But the band agreed with Bernie Rhodes that it would be better to have someone in the studio capable of keeping the situation under control. That someone was Bill Price, the resident engineer at Wessex Studios (where the Clash had already recorded the "The Cost Of Living" EP and the Sex Pistols' "Never Mind The Bollocks").

Recording of "The Last Testament" (this was the original title, meant as a kind of testament of rock'n'roll) began on Monday, July 30, 1979.

Guy Stevens showed up with a shopping bag straight out of some elderly lady's kitchen, containing a bottle of tequila and one of something else.

It was early afternoon. "Are we ready? Let's gooooo!"

The band started off by playing "Brand New Cadillac", and as soon as it was over Guy immediately exclaimed: "Excellent! We've got a take!". Pragmatically, Topper Headon shot back: "Mmm, it's a bit rushed...". And Guy, emphatically: "Perfect! All rock'n'roll speeds up!".

Although a bit over the top, it was a start that helped put the band in the right mood - up to that point they'd been somewhat tense, not being used to working in a major studio.

According to Bill Price, Stevens couldn't have spent much time listening to the material recorded at Vanilla. Enthusiastic as he was about what was happening, he didn't seem to know the songs very well.

In the moment, though, he boasted to Roy Carr of the NME that he had "laid down twelve tracks in three days", also claiming that "in the end it's all about cleaning the bullshit out of the material!".

Anyone who has seen the Wessex Studio Footage online (that is, the backstage film released with the album's 25th-anniversary edition) will surely have gotten the impression that things proceeded without much of a method. That's because, contrary to standard record-production practice, Guy used to spend all his time in the live room with the musicians, jumping around and shouting in people's faces to motivate them, only to then perhaps head back to the control room and push every fader on the Cadac console all the way up, sometimes physically wrestling with Bill Price as he tried to stop him.

Worked up to the point of frothing at the corners of his mouth, Guy would habitually spit on whoever he was talking to. Strummer had invented a cardboard shield (dubbed the splatterboard) which he held up in front of himself during close-quarters conversations with Guy.

For Stevens, the only thing that mattered was getting the band back in touch with the direct, visceral emotion of rock'n'roll (the so-called "direct injection"), and it's a stroke of luck that this method actually worked with the Clash (unlike what shows on the bewildered face of the Damned's Captain Sensible, who appears as a guest drummer in the Wessex Studio Footage during one of Stevens's exhausting jam sessions).

Mick Jones claimed at the time that "Stevens's mere presence in the studio made all the difference. It was as if all the dirty sound went into him, like some kind of Dorian Gray portrait. And what was left on tape was... clean."

Even Strummer became far more willing to take advice on how to phrase his vocal parts.

The backing tracks for songs already arranged at Vanilla were recorded in the first two weeks (the first four were "Death Or Glory", "Koka Kola", "Four Horsemen", "The Right Profile"), though Guy wasn't necessarily always present while all the work was being finished.

As long as it was a matter of capturing the intensity of a live take, Stevens was perfect, but the moment attention shifted to details and overdubs of guitar, vocals or horns, Guy became a problem, since he basically had no patience.

Things began to fall apart the day Jones nearly got his head taken off by a ladder Guy was wielding as he wandered menacingly around the studio, but it was the famous incident of the wine poured over Wessex's Bosendorfer piano (while Strummer was playing it) that marked the first real rift. Stevens, who wanted to conjure up the spirit of rock'n'roll in his own way, was on that occasion grabbed and thrown to the ground by assistant Johnny Green, and for the first time the band distanced itself from its producer's behaviour. The piano was cleaned up on the spot and the sessions wrapped, but afterwards it needed a complete overhaul, costing CBS a further £6,000.

Because of this, control of the recording sessions passed largely into the hands of Bill Price and Mick Jones, with Guy only occasionally drifting into the studio (often tied up in marathon phone calls to Ian Hunter, looking for moral support).

And yet Stevens still had plenty to offer the Clash.

One day Maurice Oberstein, the head of CBS, personally visited Wessex. He didn't ask to hear the material completed so far (perhaps so as not to embarrass anyone), but made sure for himself that everything was going well. Guy took the opportunity to launch into a kind of tirade about the greatness of the new album and the need to get more money out of CBS to finish the work properly. His insistence grew embarrassing at points and culminated with Guy lying down in front of Oberstein's car to stop him leaving without a promise of funding. In the end Oberstein gave in and signed a cheque that guaranteed the Clash the chance to finish the overdubs and gave Bill Price the time to handle the mixing.

Without that insistence, and without Guy Stevens, "London Calling" would never have become the album we all know.

Messy, destructive, childish, self-centred, moody — yet Stevens truly gave the Clash the confidence to trust their own instincts and let go (it's no accident that they kept, in the finished recordings, the sound of fingers scraping strings, frantic piano parts, gusts of feedback, improvised vocals).

For their part, the Clash allowed the producer to be remembered for a record that had exactly what he wanted: Hammond organs, a pounding Jerry Lee Lewis-style piano, a Stones-like quality when it came to roots essence, and lyrics as significant as Dylan's.

In a new interview given to NME after the album's chart success, Stevens (who turned up on time and sober) said he had been "tremendously unpopular at CBS up until now. Now it's all 'Hel-lo, Guy!'. Suddenly everyone's my friend", and ended the interview by asking the journalist: "I can't afford a classified ad in the paper. Could you print my phone number at the bottom of the interview? It's 699-4999. Ask for Guy. Record production a speciality."

Guy died two years after the release of "London Calling". Bill and the Clash immediately chose to remember him as a talented madman, and called "London Calling" his true masterpiece. The band dedicated the song "Midnight To Stevens" to him, later released on "Clash On Broadway" in 1991.

Joe Strummer dedicated to Guy the Ivor Novello Award for lifetime achievement that the Clash received in 2001, the last occasion on which they were all together again.

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