Wanting very badly to break The Clash in America, & convinced that their self-titled debut album's unrefined production wouldn't do it, CBS records hired Blue Öyster Cult hitmaker Sandy Pearlman to give some commercial sheen to the production of their sophomore album Give 'Em Enough Rope--the 1st Clash record to be released in the US. Pearlman wastes no time signaling his intentions: the album opens with the cannon-shot of a solo snare drum hit before the band crashes into "Safe European Home," & the tom rolls that carry it into its coda make the song a fine showcase for Pearlman's huge, reverbed drum production.
Of course, there's another reason to show off the drums in the album's opening moments: the band finally had a proper drummer! Terry Chimes was technically a session player on the debut & was never intended to be a band member (at least not until they brought him back in 1982), as evidenced by his cheeky credit in the liner notes as "Tory Crimes." New drummer Topper Headon was the best pure musician who ever played in The Clash. His unerring sense of rhythm & stellar technique are obvious in the unpredictable upshots of "Drug Stabbing Time" & the subtle swing he adds to the shuffle of "Julie's Been Working For the Drug Squad."
People like to dismiss this album because of the polished production, saying that Pearlman had no idea how to produce a punk record. That may be true--& there's certainly nothing wrong with the debut album's thin, dry sound--but Pearlman did have a knack for teasing out the arena rock elements that always existed in The Clash's sound. Witness the pinwheel-worthy downstrokes in "Tommy Gun" or Mick Jones's Mott the Hoople-flavored ballad "Stay Free." In an era of The Clash broadening their songwriting, I think Pearlman was the perfect producer to guide them through explorations of different sides to their sound.
Sadly, while I am a big fan of the music on this album, in all its excited energy, this is the Clash record with the least lyrical appeal for me. My favorite Clash modes are champions of global leftism, penning odes of solidarity to resistance guerrillas worldwide; & sardonic chroniclers of the grinding drudgery & inequity of working-class life in Britain. Give 'Em Enough Rope is a dog's dinner of lyrical topics: "Tommy Gun," "English Civil War" & "Guns on the Roof" are typical (to the point of being samey) Clash material about militarism & complacency. The peppy "Julie's Been Working For the Drug Squad" is a sarcastic song about the absurdity of locking people up for decades for the crime of manufacturing LSD, although "Drug Stabbing Time" comes off as strangely sanctimonious for a band whose members (including lyricist Joe Strummer) were all using drugs at the time. We also get songs like "Last Gang in Town," a West Side Story-esque colorful romanticization of gang violence. "Safe European Home" is an interesting lyrical exercise, partly satirizing tourists who get robbed overseas, partly acknowledging that their own compassionate politics don't insulate them from the desperate actions of poor Jamaicans ("I went to the place where every white face is an invitation to robbery"). "All the Young Punks," as a rumination on the rock star profession & how it isn't all it's cracked up to be, is mostly successful, but I have never understood the bizarre chorus phrase "All you young cunts, live it now, there ain't much to die for." (??) Meanwhile "Stay Free," Mick Jones's sole lead vocal turn about a school friend of his who took a different path in life, is the kind of introspective ballad that Joe Strummer always tried to keep Mick from doing, but I think the band should have recorded more of.
It's easy to overlook Give 'Em Enough Rope, as it lacks both the charging, snotty energy of The Clash & the freewheeling genre-bending of London Calling. What is does have is a whole bunch of big muscular rock riffs & a massive sound that commands your full attention. If the lyrics were up to par, it would be the middle chapter in an untouchable trilogy of perfect classics. As it stands, it's still the Clash album I put on when I want just a concentrated blast of rock for rock's sake.
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