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Black on white

Rock 'n' roll director Don Letts redefines color and culture lines

By James Scanlon
For The Prague Post
October 31st, 2007 issue

Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST
Letts took inspiration from rock stars like George Clinton and Jimi Hendrix and never let his color define his work.
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Culture Clash: Dread Meets Punk Rockers

By Don Letts and David Nobakht
SAF Publishing, 223 pgs.

The title of a new book by Don Letts, Culture Clash: Dread Meets Punk Rockers, is a succinct snapshot of everything the video and film director stands for. In Prague recently as a guest of the Music on Film, Film on Music Festival (MOFFOM), Letts came armed not only with his book (which sold out rapidly at a book-signing session at Anagram), but two of his films: Clash On Broadway and George Clinton: Tales Of Dr. Funkenstein.
Letts, however, doesn’t see the former as a film at all.
“It’s what was salvaged from a project that was conceived in 1981 when The Clash went to New York to do a couple of gigs,” he says. “The tickets were massively oversold and they ended up having to do 19 shows back-to-back. In the ensuing chaos, there were riots in Times Square and all kinds of things. It put a lot of pressure on The Clash and they were about to break up, so the film was put on ice.”
A lengthy impasse led to unpaid bills and the subsequent destruction of some negatives. How could such a thing happen in the modern age?
“Believe me, [the lab in the UK] destroyed them, because if they had them and they realized how valuable The Clash archive was, they would have been ransoming us to get the money,” Letts says. “Luckily, I had what they call a cutting copy under my bed, which is like a rough version of what I was trying to do. I salvaged some images out of that and put together what was left as Clash On Broadway.”
But we’re not talking dregs. Broadway makes an appropriate extra on the DVD of Letts’ main Clash film, Westway to the World. as it manages to capture the true spirit of the occasion as well as the vibe of a happening new sound.
“When you see the visual elements in there, it does kind of paint an interesting portrait of New York in 1981, with the explosion of hip-hop and the whole graffiti thing,” Letts says. “It’s like a little time capsule.”
Letts’ other film at MOFFOM offered — along with an unadulterated look at the Godfather of Funk — his take on black musicians and artists.
“I’ve always been drawn to black artists who are not defined by their color,” he says. “We, as a race, have a problem of inventing these little labels and then getting stuck with them — like we only do hip-hop or reggae. And then along come people like George Clinton or Jimi Hendrix, who said, ‘No, because I’m black, it doesn’t mean I have to do this or that. I’ll define what I am.’ That was tremendously empowering for someone like myself who later would start interacting with punk.”
As his book relates, his black brothers thought he was losing his marbles getting involved with the spikey-haired, safety-pins-and-bondage brigade. But, true to form, Letts remained defiant to the cause. His take on the punk scene, Punk Attitude, screened at the MOFFOM festival two years ago.
“What we’re talking about is young people trying to find their own voice, trying to find their own language,” Letts says. “And, invariably when that starts to happen, it’s heavy-handed. So kids wearing swastikas, I don’t think they understood the political complexities of using symbols like that. I remember little kids in the classroom drawing swastikas on their school books because it was taboo and it was naughty, and there wasn’t a political thought behind it.”
Now 51, and with enough years of experience to warrant the title “cultural historian,” Letts says music is still what gets him out of bed every morning. Having directed all of The Clash videos plus 300 others, he believes music on film must push parameters as far as they can go. Every video he’s done has been a statement of its own.
“I always try to say something with my imagery,” he says. “Like putting my black band [Musical Youth] in front of the Houses of Parliament. That was my way of showing a postcard image of what the new England was about.”
Letts wasn’t able to watch Julian Temple’s Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten at this year’s festival, though he’s seen it before. “It was very disturbing, but in a good way, I guess,” he says. “Joe was close to myself and a lot of people. After five years you find a space and accept that he’s gone. But to go into a cinema and have it all brought right back in my face, to hear Joe’s voice, it’s a bit of an emotional roller coaster for me.”
Still, Letts sees the value for a wider audience. “There is a tendency when people pass away to kind of mythologize them,” he says. “Look what happened to John Lennon. They just put these people on pedestals where they are almost no longer human. It’s very important that we don’t do that, that we keep them grounded in reality. If you start to mythologize them, you remove them from the realms of normal people.”
When the original Clash folded, Letts became part of Mick Jones’ Big Audio Dynamite. A rock ’n’ roll stew of Jamaican bass lines, hip-hop beats and Letts’ samples from left-of-center films, BAD “sign-posted the way music was heading,” Letts says.
However, he eventually parted ways with Jones for basically the same reasons that Jones was booted out of The Clash. “He was disappearing up his own bottom and that’s why I decided to leave,” Letts reveals, quickly adding, “But I love you, Mick. He knows that! Nice people don’t come up with good ideas.”
No doubt Letts will continue to document popular culture for many years to come. To see where it’s all going, check out his book.

James Scanlon can be reached at tempo@praguepost.com


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