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English musician Mick Jones was a guitarist and singer for the punk rock band The Clash.
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Play NowMick Jones. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 05:12, May 25, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/mick-jones-20881933.
Mick Jones. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/mick-jones-20881933 [Accessed 25 May 2013].
"Mick Jones." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 25 2013, 05:12 http://www.biography.com/people/mick-jones-20881933.
"Mick Jones," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/mick-jones-20881933 [accessed May 25, 2013].
"Mick Jones," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/mick-jones-20881933 (accessed May 25, 2013).
Mick Jones [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 25] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/mick-jones-20881933.
Mick Jones, http://www.biography.com/people/mick-jones-20881933 (last visited May 25, 2013).
Mick Jones. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/mick-jones-20881933. Accessed May 25, 2013.
The album, with future punk-rock anthems like "White Riot," "I'm So Bored with the USA," and "London's Burning," quickly propelled The Clash, who would spend the next decade largely singing about revolution and the working class, into stardom.
The group's follow-up album, Give 'Em Enough Rope, hit British record stores in 1978. About a year later, the band delivered what many rock critics and fans consider The Clash's best album, London Calling,
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a double-record effort that meshed the best of the 1970s punk rock sound with a refined level of lyrics and smarts that would help usher in a new decade. Rolling Stone magazine later voted London Calling the best album of the 1980s.
But for all their early creative collaboration, tension soon mounted between Jones and Strummer. In 1983, Strummer booted Jones from the band. Three years later, The Clash, which had produced six albums during its 10-year run, broke up.
"Groups split up," Jones has said. "That's what groups do—especially after a while. Especially when you're living in each other's pockets all the time; you just get fed up with each other. We didn't have those holidays to slow down. It was just a fast train. And the bigger we got, the more uncomfortable we felt about it all."
New Directions
Jones' departure from The Clash hardly marked the end to his music career. Shortly after leaving the band, he started a new group called Big Audio Dynamite. Its debut album, This Is Big Audio Dynamite (1985), gained immediate traction for the band with a pair of hits, "E=MC2" and "Medicine Show."
Over the next decade the group went on to release several albums and push out a few more hits. In addition, the group eventually welcomed Paul Simonon into the fold.
On top of creating his own music, Jones has taken on the role of producer for several other bands. He's also served as a sort of curator for the punk rock movement. In 2012 he opened his personal rock 'n' roll library to the public. The exhibition included 10,000 items from his personal collection that he had amassed over the course of three decades. At the time of its opening, Jones was working hard to push for the creation of a permanent rock 'n' roll library in West London.
"With so many libraries closing at the moment, it would be great to open a totally new sort of library which can be used as a real educational resource to show the history of our time," he said.
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London Punk- Cultural Icons: 1970s
View groupFollowing the "Swinging London" era of the 1960s, a new group of cultural icons arose. The 1970s saw the emergence of the punk rock movement, built upon the wave of psychedelic and folk rock music introduced in the '60s. In the post-hippie era of the early '70s, rock 'n' roll had a new glam image, pioneered by outrageously dressed rockers like David Bowie and Marc Bolan. Soon other acts followed, most notably young performers like Siouxsie Sioux and groups like T.Rex and The Clash. The music of the '70s inspired fashion as well, in particular designer Vivienne Westwood, whose punk designs for the Sex Pistols helped define the decade's London style. Biography.com looks at the various icons who defined London in the '70s.
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