Situation No Win

This picture was from an NME interview, Mick Jones photographed in Portobello Road following his recovery from chicken pox and complications with pneumonia in 1989 that nearly killed him. I was hoping to find other similar pictures of punks on bikes and do a semi-regular feature called Punks On Bikes but alas I've not found any others (apart from Paul Weller in that Style Council video).

Mick always had the ability to rise from the ashes of defeat and disaster. He came back from being sacked from The Clash with Big Audio Dynamite and a debut album that was chock full of tunes and hits. When the original line up of B.A.D. walked out in 1990, partly in response to his 'intolerable' attitude after getting over his near fatal illness in '89, he put together a new line up and came back once again. Rush was a big hit in the US (on the back of the re-released Levi's tie in Should I Stay Or Should I Go? admittedly but it also gained B.A.D. II plenty of airplay and curiously they also won the Billboard Modern Rock Song of 1991 award). In Rush Mick sings of no regrets and of keeping moving...

'If I had my time again
I would do it all the same
And not change a single thing
Even when I was to blame

For the heartache and the pain
that I've caused throughout the years
How I learnt to be a man
Through the laughter and the tears'

The song is so full of Mick Jones joie de vivre you can practically hear his wonky toothed grin as it plays and his continuing love of sampling is evident with borrowed sections from The Who, Deep Purple, Tommy Roe, The Sugarhill Gang and Peter Sellers.

'Now I'm fully grown
And I know where it's at
Somehow I stayed thin
While the other guys got fat

All the chances that I've blown
And the times that I've been down
I didn't get too high
Kept my feet on the ground'

Mick was still playing Rush when touring with the Justice Tonight crew in 2011- he definitely played it The Ritz in Manchester, Pete Wylie sharing the mic and The Farm backing him. The release of it as the AA side to Should I Stay Or Should I Go? caught him a bit of flak from people accusing him of cashing in the back of The Clash's belated number 1 single, but the whole Levi's re-release was a cash-in, so why not? Across a multitude of formats there are at least eight different versions of Rush. This one is the album mix. 

Rush