On New Year’s Day, the UK’s BBC Four aired a new 75-minute documentary called “The Clash: New Year’s Day ’77” put together by filmmaker Julien Temple and built around his own, previously unseen footage of the of the band performing on Jan. 1, 1977, at the Roxy club. It’s considered the earliest known live footage of The Clash.
The film — which includes interviews and other footage from 1977 interwoven with the live performances — has been streaming on the BBC’s site, but is now available to see outside the UK, thanks to uploader Mark Keogh (via Include Me Out).
Watch the full film below.
The BBC’s description of the program:
Built around the earliest, until now unseen, footage of the Clash in concert, filmed by Julien Temple as they opened the infamous Roxy club in a dilapidated Covent Garden on January 1st 1977, this show takes us on a time-travelling trip back to that strange planet that was Great Britain in the late 1970s and the moment when punk emerged into the mainstream consciousness.
Featuring the voices of Joe Strummer and the Clash from the time, and intercutting the raw and visceral footage of this iconic show, with telling moments from the BBC’s New Year’s Eve, Hogmanay and New Year’s Day schedules of nearly 40 years ago, it celebrates that great enduring British custom of getting together, en masse and often substantially the worse for wear, to usher in the New Year.
New Year’s Day is when we collectively take the time to reflect on the year that has just gone by and ponder what the new one might hold in store for us. Unknown to the unsuspecting British public, 1977 was of course the annus mirabilis of punk. The year in which the Clash themselves took off, catching the imagination of the nation’s youth. As their iconic song, 1977, counts us down to midnight, we’ll share with them and Joe Strummer, in previously unseen interviews from the time, their hopes and predictions for the 12 months ahead.
“The Clash: New Year’s Day ’77”
PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS
- Watch 90 minutes of footage from US Festival ’83: INXS, The Clash, Oingo Boingo and more
- Download: The Clash’s Mick Jones, Paul Simonon team up with Frank Ocean, Diplo on ‘Hero’
- 120 Minutes’ Rewind: Joe Strummer goes under the ‘120 X-Ray’ — 1989
- The Clash to release 12-disc ‘Sound System’ box set, new 2CD best-of this September
This is pretty fucking cool.
Good stuff!