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Riot of Our Own
Johnny Green was a footloose slacker who loved punk rock, stumbled into being a roadie for the Sex Pistols, then tripped again into a job pushing sound equipment for the Clash and driving their beat-up van to performances in the mean industrial towns of England. Disaffected youth anointed the Clash as their spokesmen and made the group synonymous with punk itself in the late 1970s. Eventually becoming the band's road manager, Green had a unique vantage point from which to witness the burgeoning punk rock movement while helping the band in their perpetual search for women, booze, and drugs. Green was with the Clash when they conquered America, bringing with them their bad behavior and great music, and burning out after their third, too-long tour. Written in a tell-it-as-it-was style and accompanied by contemporaneous drawings by Ray Lowry, who tagged along with the Clash on their American tour as their official war artist, A Riot of Our Own pierces the heart of the culture and music of punk rock and the people who lived it.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
January 15, 2024
no time to talk; time to go hyperfixate on the clash’s discography for 3 weeks.
in all seriousness a very fun, interesting and creative memoir. i have been converted into one of those believers (usually middle age dad) that rock ‘n’ roll is dead.
in all seriousness a very fun, interesting and creative memoir. i have been converted into one of those believers (usually middle age dad) that rock ‘n’ roll is dead.
December 9, 2008
It has been said that Ian Hunter's 'Diary Of A Rock n Roll Star' is the best rock book ever written and it certainly is an excellent book. However for me this one just about shades it
This is well written, informative, funny and poignant. Johnny Green spent around three years working with the Clash having joined their crew as a fan. This book is a real fly on the wall view of those years and some key moments beyond (Joe Strummer's death and the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame induction)
It gives a fantastic insight into the all the characters in and around the band. I always loved the Clash and after this I love them even more!
If you enjoy music biographies read this NOW! If not then read it anyway
This is well written, informative, funny and poignant. Johnny Green spent around three years working with the Clash having joined their crew as a fan. This book is a real fly on the wall view of those years and some key moments beyond (Joe Strummer's death and the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame induction)
It gives a fantastic insight into the all the characters in and around the band. I always loved the Clash and after this I love them even more!
If you enjoy music biographies read this NOW! If not then read it anyway
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November 27, 2023I liked this despite not realizing what I'd actually picked up. Looking for a biography or portrait of The Clash I found this perspective from one of their managers and someone who was there at the beginning. Green provides a fast-paced and engaging narrative of the early days of punk and the escapades of The Clash on various tours, ending with a tour of the United States.
Green's perspective is the professional side of The Clash. The stories here are about the challenges of bands, tours, record companies, and recording. While Green spent this portion of his life with The Clash, this is still (mostly) a business-end version of the band. He's deeply personal with the band and other key players in the history, but this book isn't a deep look at the song-writing, inspirations, or other insights into what and who The Clash were as a band or individuals.
Green's book is worth a read, and his perspective is important to the larger history of both The Clash and punk rock, but this book should be the second or third book you read about The Clash to help round out the story.
Green's perspective is the professional side of The Clash. The stories here are about the challenges of bands, tours, record companies, and recording. While Green spent this portion of his life with The Clash, this is still (mostly) a business-end version of the band. He's deeply personal with the band and other key players in the history, but this book isn't a deep look at the song-writing, inspirations, or other insights into what and who The Clash were as a band or individuals.
Green's book is worth a read, and his perspective is important to the larger history of both The Clash and punk rock, but this book should be the second or third book you read about The Clash to help round out the story.
September 18, 2022
If you are more into the politics and manifesto of the clash..well maybe leave this alone..this is a book really focusing on the clash as a touring act and to be honest they come out of it pretty well.
The kindness shown to young fans is something I had read of before but it's in abundance here.
Personality and tensions within the band are explored yet this isn't the primary focus..the fact that post clash members socialised and worked together I think shows there was always some respect .
Not a lot in this I haven't read before but it reaffirms the stuff I had read so that's cool.
The kindness shown to young fans is something I had read of before but it's in abundance here.
Personality and tensions within the band are explored yet this isn't the primary focus..the fact that post clash members socialised and worked together I think shows there was always some respect .
Not a lot in this I haven't read before but it reaffirms the stuff I had read so that's cool.
June 27, 2025
i fought the law and the law won
September 26, 2024
I saw The Clash 3 maybe 4 times back in the day. They were the second gig I ever went to and that gig helped to strongly shape my love for live music. At one gig I sat outside having a beer with Joe Strummer and some other members of the band/crew. It was inspiring for a 16/17 year old. I'm not actually sure the latter happened, it was a long time ago and events in that life defining period are hazy. The point is that it really could have happened and this book captures that. The Clash were/are a people's band, raw energy coupled with a desire to entertain. This book captures that. It touches on the arguments, unhappiness but for me it captures the human element of the band especially Uncle Joe. For me he was and still is the 'star' that shone brightest - a deeply flawed star but nevertheless a star. I later saw him playing with The Mescaleros- same intensity, same drive, same Joe. I cried when I heard he'd died - it still pains me. If you were/are a fan of The Clash then you'll enjoy this. If you werent/aren't, then you are missing out.
April 3, 2025
Johnny Green escreve de um jeito bem fluído e bacana de ler.
Sendo uma das primeiras bandas punks que cantava temas mais políticos, Clash sempre perdurou no meu imaginário e de muitas outras pessoas como esse conjunto sério e revolucionário, mas A Riot of Our Own está aí para desmascarar essa ideia. O que se lê é uma típica banda de rock’n’roll: drogas, revistas da polícia, confusões com produtoras ou fãs, brigas nos bastidores e hotéis vandalizados.
Para mim foi um prazer desmistificar a banda. O que melhor resume o The Clash nessa visão de Green é suas conversas com cada um dos integrantes:
“I chatted to Joe Strummer about politics, to Topper Headon about drugs, to Mick Jones music history and to Paul Simonon about art.”
Sendo uma das primeiras bandas punks que cantava temas mais políticos, Clash sempre perdurou no meu imaginário e de muitas outras pessoas como esse conjunto sério e revolucionário, mas A Riot of Our Own está aí para desmascarar essa ideia. O que se lê é uma típica banda de rock’n’roll: drogas, revistas da polícia, confusões com produtoras ou fãs, brigas nos bastidores e hotéis vandalizados.
Para mim foi um prazer desmistificar a banda. O que melhor resume o The Clash nessa visão de Green é suas conversas com cada um dos integrantes:
“I chatted to Joe Strummer about politics, to Topper Headon about drugs, to Mick Jones music history and to Paul Simonon about art.”
March 16, 2018
This is the best book I've ever read about The Clash, and I've read most of them. Johnny writes so well, so personally, so lightly, that you feel like you're there. It's a book I've read again and again and would recommend to everyone fan or not. It captures the essence of the band in a way I've not read before or since. Something I think that could only be done by Johnny because he was there, he actually lived it, he was part of the intimate Clash family.
March 30, 2022
I don't know why but I expected more from this.
Maybe because Clash was the first political punk band on the mainstream. I expected something with a little more substance.
What I got was the typical rock n' roll bio: drugs, running from the police, and lots of sex. All told by a guy in their crew who really enjoyed this chaos.
The illustrations on paperback edition was as shitty as they can get. Most of them I can't really tell what's going on.
Couldn't get to the end of it.
Maybe because Clash was the first political punk band on the mainstream. I expected something with a little more substance.
What I got was the typical rock n' roll bio: drugs, running from the police, and lots of sex. All told by a guy in their crew who really enjoyed this chaos.
The illustrations on paperback edition was as shitty as they can get. Most of them I can't really tell what's going on.
Couldn't get to the end of it.
May 10, 2022
A quick and entertaining snapshot of an iconic era and band. Johnny Green offers a few glimpses into the minds of the Clash members, especially my main man Joe Strummer, but mostly this book was good fun and antics. It could always have gone a little deeper into the band as people but that’s not what I felt this book was for and I was cool with it. Personally my main take-away is that Joe Strummer liked his fish fillet the same way as me (cheese, no sauce).
October 12, 2023
This is fantastic introspective read for any Clash fan written by Johnny Green a fan and becoming road manager during Clash formidable years during 1977. Also co written by Ray Lowry whom accompanied The Clash as official " War Artist" . During late 70s into early 80's for four great Albums The Clash was the only Band the Mattered.
December 12, 2017
One of my favorite punk rock books. Green dumps you right into the middle of The Clash, no backstory, and leaves the scene just as abruptly. His writing puts you right there at the side of the stage.
May 26, 2021
Brilliant!
June 11, 2023
Up close and personal, great read!
January 4, 2024
Great snapshot of the Clash at their beginnings!
February 27, 2024
This book made me feel like I was there. Great read.
March 14, 2025
This is the best book I have read on the only band that matters.
April 21, 2025
More like a journal. Not super engaging, but I’ll read anything about The Clash.
May 20, 2023
Absolutely fantastic account of life with the “only band that matters”! Johnny Green was a fan first, and a friend, who just happened to keep track of the band and make sure the shows, and recordings, happened. A heart-felt, poignant, warts and all look at the Clash…
December 17, 2008
Johnny Green was a former student and punk rock fan who chanced into working as a roadie for the Clash. He went on to spend the next few years as the band's road manager, stage manager, and sometime driver. Together with his partner "the Baker," he kept the band in guitar strings, tea, dope, and clean socks.
Ian Dury's "sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll" are all here; however, unlike a lot of rock memoirists, Green uses these mainly to establish the overall milieu rather than as the sole theme. The heart of this book, what makes it interesting, is an exploration of what made the band so great. The Clash cared about their fans and music. The closer they were to their fans the better they were and the more creative energy they had. That creativity drove them to transcend the punk genre, exercising their mix of musical interests to the full. They did best alternating between small concert venues and secluded recording studios. As Green observes, it was best when it was just the Clash, Green, the Baker, and a Transit van. (Johnny Green and the Baker appear in the video for "Bankrobber" as the bankrobbers. Green is the tall one.)
Not surprisingly, the band's world view put them at odds with their record label CBS Records, which saw punk rock as something to be packaged and marketed and fans as little more than consumers.
Although Green left the Clash before they recorded Sandinista, he gives one a feeling for the inner conflicts that ultimately caused the group to implode a few years later. Big, corporate-style tours took their toll.
The conflict between celebrity-status and the band's better instincts would be made worse by the return of Bernie Rhodes as manager. Green portrays Rhodes as an important figure at the band's founding, but also as a man given to mental games and manipulation, ala Malcolm McLaren. (Many people would come to blame Rhodes for breaking up the band.)
Where the Clash drew raw energy from their fans, the over-managed, overly packaged style preferred by music industry-types made the band burnt-out and alienated, to the point that occasionally they weren't true to their own ethic. At one show in L.A. the Clash went on stage an hour late because Paul had disappeared, showing up later with lame excuses. At another point Joe punched Mick in the face because Mick had had a backstage fit over playing "White Riot" as an encore.
Perhaps the most telling of these incidents involved Green himself. During the last stressful leg of an American tour, Green, Barry Myers (the bus driver) and the tour's artist Ray Lowry were in a desert truck-stop. As Green tells it:
The waitress said, "How are you?"
The correct Southern response is, "I'm fine, how're you?" but since she'd asked me I told her exactly how I felt: I had a head with a sledgehammer inside, I was trembly, I hadn't slept decently, eaten or washed for days. I was fucked off.
We ate and made a mess of the table with fag-butts, food, thoughtless, not vindictive, but Lowry was appalled.
He stopped me outside: "That was awful, what you did to that woman."
"What?"
"Treated her like shit. And she's got to clear up after you. It was unnecessary. She'd done you no wrong." But what really hurt me was: "The Clash wouldn't have done done it. They don't treat people like that."
Despite the stresses and emotional fractures, what comes through most in Green's book is the good-natured humanity of the people he worked with. The Clash were famous for sharing with their fans, everything from their time and conversation to hotel rooms and food. They would play football with the kids who hung out in the schoolyard across from the recording studio. They invited their parents and their grans to gigs.
A lot has been written about the deeper sociopolitical meaning of punk (and of the Clash in particular) but from Green I got the idea that the Clash's politics was mainly down to liking people, especially those who don't easily fit in. That was probably the reason they all liked Sid Vicious - not the sneering, swastika-wearing junkie Sex Pistol so much, but the kid underneath. Green says, "The old biddies round about still spoke fondly of Sid, the nice art student who carried their shopping up the stairs for them, turned the light on in their flats and made sure it was safe for them."
Ian Dury's "sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll" are all here; however, unlike a lot of rock memoirists, Green uses these mainly to establish the overall milieu rather than as the sole theme. The heart of this book, what makes it interesting, is an exploration of what made the band so great. The Clash cared about their fans and music. The closer they were to their fans the better they were and the more creative energy they had. That creativity drove them to transcend the punk genre, exercising their mix of musical interests to the full. They did best alternating between small concert venues and secluded recording studios. As Green observes, it was best when it was just the Clash, Green, the Baker, and a Transit van. (Johnny Green and the Baker appear in the video for "Bankrobber" as the bankrobbers. Green is the tall one.)
Not surprisingly, the band's world view put them at odds with their record label CBS Records, which saw punk rock as something to be packaged and marketed and fans as little more than consumers.
Although Green left the Clash before they recorded Sandinista, he gives one a feeling for the inner conflicts that ultimately caused the group to implode a few years later. Big, corporate-style tours took their toll.
The conflict between celebrity-status and the band's better instincts would be made worse by the return of Bernie Rhodes as manager. Green portrays Rhodes as an important figure at the band's founding, but also as a man given to mental games and manipulation, ala Malcolm McLaren. (Many people would come to blame Rhodes for breaking up the band.)
Where the Clash drew raw energy from their fans, the over-managed, overly packaged style preferred by music industry-types made the band burnt-out and alienated, to the point that occasionally they weren't true to their own ethic. At one show in L.A. the Clash went on stage an hour late because Paul had disappeared, showing up later with lame excuses. At another point Joe punched Mick in the face because Mick had had a backstage fit over playing "White Riot" as an encore.
Perhaps the most telling of these incidents involved Green himself. During the last stressful leg of an American tour, Green, Barry Myers (the bus driver) and the tour's artist Ray Lowry were in a desert truck-stop. As Green tells it:
The waitress said, "How are you?"
The correct Southern response is, "I'm fine, how're you?" but since she'd asked me I told her exactly how I felt: I had a head with a sledgehammer inside, I was trembly, I hadn't slept decently, eaten or washed for days. I was fucked off.
We ate and made a mess of the table with fag-butts, food, thoughtless, not vindictive, but Lowry was appalled.
He stopped me outside: "That was awful, what you did to that woman."
"What?"
"Treated her like shit. And she's got to clear up after you. It was unnecessary. She'd done you no wrong." But what really hurt me was: "The Clash wouldn't have done done it. They don't treat people like that."
Despite the stresses and emotional fractures, what comes through most in Green's book is the good-natured humanity of the people he worked with. The Clash were famous for sharing with their fans, everything from their time and conversation to hotel rooms and food. They would play football with the kids who hung out in the schoolyard across from the recording studio. They invited their parents and their grans to gigs.
A lot has been written about the deeper sociopolitical meaning of punk (and of the Clash in particular) but from Green I got the idea that the Clash's politics was mainly down to liking people, especially those who don't easily fit in. That was probably the reason they all liked Sid Vicious - not the sneering, swastika-wearing junkie Sex Pistol so much, but the kid underneath. Green says, "The old biddies round about still spoke fondly of Sid, the nice art student who carried their shopping up the stairs for them, turned the light on in their flats and made sure it was safe for them."
October 27, 2009
I stumbled on to this from seeing Johnny Green's interviews in Julien Temple's film JOE STRUMMER: THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN, particularly the outtakes which didn't make it into the movie: Green's boisterous humor and candor in those segments made it inevitable that I would snatch this from out of our bargain bins.
Green was sucked into his job as the Clash's factotum as a fan of punk (his other musical obsessions were ABBA and Country), and, despite prolonged and intense exposure to the members of the band over several years, that fandom never wavered. Green is well aware of the foibles of his mates, and yet every page breathes a love of those flawed individuals. It is telling that Green quit the band at the height of the Clash's prosperity, after their very successful second American tour, to work for Joe Ely.
Green was sucked into his job as the Clash's factotum as a fan of punk (his other musical obsessions were ABBA and Country), and, despite prolonged and intense exposure to the members of the band over several years, that fandom never wavered. Green is well aware of the foibles of his mates, and yet every page breathes a love of those flawed individuals. It is telling that Green quit the band at the height of the Clash's prosperity, after their very successful second American tour, to work for Joe Ely.
June 10, 2010
Not what I was expecting from a music biography. The book focuses on the bands adventures as experienced from the authors point of view. I prefer music bios to explain the inspiration behind and context of songs, and think this would be fascinating for a band as political as the clash. This was missing from this book and I found that disappointing.
That omission aside, I enjoyed the stories included in the book. I especially enjoyed the afterword, and felt just how close friends the band were by their interactions after all that water under the bridge. I also felt the writing was better in this part of the book.
That omission aside, I enjoyed the stories included in the book. I especially enjoyed the afterword, and felt just how close friends the band were by their interactions after all that water under the bridge. I also felt the writing was better in this part of the book.
September 15, 2007
This is one the only Clash book I would recommend to non-Clash fans as well as Clash fans. It would be hard to find a more entertaining rock book.
Green is a natural writer and storyteller. He's unsentimental and comes off as really just telling it like it happened. It doesn't really matter if everything is just as it was or embellished. Its just a fun read.
This shouldn't be confused as a definitive history of the band or any of the members but is a must read for fans.
Green is a natural writer and storyteller. He's unsentimental and comes off as really just telling it like it happened. It doesn't really matter if everything is just as it was or embellished. Its just a fun read.
This shouldn't be confused as a definitive history of the band or any of the members but is a must read for fans.
Want to read
August 3, 2016Why Everything You Think You Know About Punk Is Completely Wrong:
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March 16, 2008
Memoir by Clash roadie/manager of his times with the group circa "Give 'Em Enough Rope" and "London Calling." Captures both the importance of the band and the heady rush of the times far better than the more comprehensive Clash bios. Well written, laugh out loud funny, and offers insightful warts-and-all portraits of all involved.
October 19, 2016
The primary roadie of the only band that mattered tells it like it is from just after the first record comes out till after London Calling when Johnny Green drops out to discover America. Funny, a bit heart wrenching, with amazing strange drawings by Ray Lowry, this book was a romp. It was nothing special, but it was a romp.
April 26, 2008
I rarely like non-fiction novels or biographies, but tbe voice with which this book was written made it highly entertaining. Loved it, wasn't bored at all, and learned more about a band that I like.
July 8, 2008
A fun read about life on the road and in the studio with The Clash. A must for any fan of the band.
September 11, 2008
Have now read a few biographies of The Clash.....Good read from the'roadies' perspective.....Always amazes me how they remember so much detail :).....But overall does not really add to anything that I already knew
December 25, 2009
This is a great "almost famous" bio of The Clash with a big focus the personalities and upbringings of the members. Johnny Green was on tour with The Clash throughout the important years. His perspective is personal and revealing. Loved it.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews