Dutch promoter Frank van Hoorn remembers riots, thunderstorms and a nasty fecal adieu. As told to Pat Gilbert, Mojo Magazine, in 2005.
The Lochem Festival had been going since 1968 and was programmed on Ascension Day at the end of May. The tradition in our part of Holland was that people went out on their bicycles at daybreak. So the festival started at 9am and the headliner went on at 7pm. I was in charge of booking the acts and in 1982, I had problems getting a strong line-up. There was Tenpole Tudor, Bow Wow Wow and Saxon, so the whole show leaned very heavily on The Clash appearing.
Because Joe Strummer had gone missing a few months before the actual show and this was all over the media, there was constant talk of getting another headliner or cancelling altogether. Because of the uncertainty, the tickets weren’t selling. I was trying to cut my losses. Just a few days before the festival, they found Joe in Paris. Joe returned to London on Tuesday, 18 May. The other band members Mick, Paul and Topper were pleased to see him fit and well. The band elected to play the Lochem gig. They desperately needed the money.
The Lochem show has gone down in history for a simple reason: it was to be Topper’s last gig with The Clash. The group were topping a bill which included Saxon, Tenpole Tudor, Bow Wow Wow and The Stray Cats. Ominously, the show took place during a terrific electrical storm. Frank van Hoorn’s account of what happened that afternoon is so vivid it’s worth printing in its entirety:
“They came to my show by bus. Even before they arrived, they were a pain in the ass. The band were meant to do a sound check the night before [Wednesday] but they didn’t turn up . Of course, they were late on the show date and they’d picked up all kinds of hitchhikers and they were absolutely out of their heads. They had a whole bunch of idiots with them. [Co-manager] Kosmo Vinyl was my contact, but he was talking in riddles.
I still hadn’t sold many tickets because it was only about three or four days earlier it was publicly announced that they would do the show. The weather was abysmal.
We immediately got into a huge argument with their agent because they insisted on having their full fee. My argument was that I didn’t sell any tickets because of the bad publicity of Joe Strummer gone missing.
It was a fucking nightmare. Bow Wow Wow were even more erratic than The Clash. Saxon behaved like good schoolboys, they went to bed early the night before. On the day, the weather was so bad… there was rain and a heavy storm was predicted. Then the caterer ran off with all the money, I saw him heading off across the roof with a big bag of cash; I never saw him again. The Clash came on – they had been constantly teasing Saxon about their stage set, which featured a big metal bird the band insisted on referring to as ‘the metal budgie’. That was the only funny moment. It started pouring down and thundering and halfway through, Joe stopped the show and said, ‘where’s the promoter?’, as there was a fight between the fans and security. There were knives and bats, it was a messy situation.
Then Joe invited the audience up on stage and hundreds of people tore down the barricades and some went under the stage. I could see the stage starting slowly to collapse, and in the far corner the Dutch police wanted to invade the terrain with their cavalry, so we had to stop that too and get all these people out from under the stage. There was thunder, lightning, rain, broken fences —it was a nightmare!
I noticed Topper was quite intoxicated before and after — he looked completely on another planet. He was really stoned whereas the others were quite lively and being their horrible selves. There was no interaction between them and Topper. God they were so . . . I was completely flabbergasted because here was this punk band that preached anarchy and fulminated against these rich rock artists and they really screwed me by insisting on having their whole fee. I was in complete shock about it.
It was just a lunatic band! Kosmo was there, he was wearing an army suit and speaking in a kind of crossword puzzle. After the show they called me at 2 a.m. the next morning, they wanted me to pay for the roadies’ hotel rooms in Amsterdam who decided to have a night out. I told them to fuck off!
As icing on the cake, Bow Wow Wow left a human turd in the middle of the dressing room, apparently a habit from a not to be named female band member. But, I have to admit, seeing The Clash play was a great experience.”
As told to Pat Gilbert, Mojo Magazine. Printed with permission.
