Movie – “Westway to the world”
Westway to the world is the 2000 biopic on The Clash, filmed by Don Letts, their longtime roadie/collaborator/partner in crime. I’ve been meaning to watch this for years, but for a variety of reasons, including getting a copy that wouldn’t play in my dvd player (grr) I didn’t get to watch this until recently.
“Westway” consists of interviews with the Clash interspersed with concert footage. Letts goes back a long time with these guys, and he really gets them to open up and share a lot of personal information. The film does a good job of putting things in context of what was going on, both musically and politically/socially at the time the band was in it’s prime.
My favorite part was when Joe and Topper talked about how things ended. Topper was heavily addicted to heroin by the early ’80s, and was eventually sacked by the band. Although Joe and Mick wrote the songs and were the heart of the band, they all realized in retrospect that when Topper left, the circle was broken and the chemistry of the band was irrevocably lost. There’s an especially telling interview with Joe near the end, where he realizes in retrospect how special this band was, and how important the chemistry of the four individuals involved was. Without that special bond the four of them shared, it was never the same.
My only real criticism of this film is that the concert footage isn’t as satisfying as it could’ve been. Although there is a lot of music in this film, they never show even one complete song, choosing instead to air short clips of concert footage between interviews. This film is neither a true concert film nor a pure documentary, and it suffers somewhat from it’s lack of identity. It has also been mentioned elsewhere that the film ends after Topper and Mick leave the band, and makes no mention whatsoever that the band did in fact carry on and produce an additional album (1985’s “cut the crap”) before disbanding for good. It wasn’t the band’s finest hour, but it seems like it would have been worthy of at least a brief mention.
That having been said, “Westway” is a wonderful film and a must watch for any Clash fan. The band really opens up and shares some fantastic stories about their time in the sun. They’re all involved, and unfortunately, that will never happen again: this film was made only a few years before Joe’s untimely death in 2002.
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