The definition of what The Clash stood for and what The Clash really was is the electricity that powered Pat Gilbert's 2004 band-bio Passion Is a Fashion: The Real Story of The Clash. Gilbert, who interviewed all members of the band during his days writing for Mojo, refused to handle the guys with kid-gloves, much to his credit. Much to their credit, the members of The Clash seemed pretty on board with the book even though it often isn't flattering. If you can't believe everything about The Clash you're supposed to believe, at least you get the sense that when it came to cases, they were pretty honest about themselves. This is both refreshing and a bit confusing, considering Joe Strummer's lifelong enthusiasm for self-mythologizing. He also seems like the kind of guy who'd tell you that all that self-mythologizing was complete bullshit. This makes for a book that is allowed to be revealing and warts-and-all honest without being disrespectful. Passion Is a Fashion is a very Clash-like telling of The Clash's story.
For the band's fiftieth anniversary, Passion Is a Fashion is being reprinted as an "updated and expanded" edition. Sometimes this kind of banner is plastered onto a book that basically just includes a new prologue, but in this case, the banner seems earned. I haven't read the first-edition, so I can't do much comparing, but Gilbert references sources that didn't exist at that time and discusses post-2004 projects, such as Paul Simonon's The Good, The Bad, & The Queen. The book does have a new prologue, but it's worthwhile for the clarification that this new edition corrects many errors from the first one and adds on another 10,000 or so words of fresh information. All of that text is shrunk down to the size of atoms to fit on the pages of a budget paperback, so all my fellow oldsters who'd want to read about an old band like The Clash might need to whip out the magnifying glass, but it's worth it.
