How “Cannibalism” and Shane McGowan Were Responsible for the Clash’s Notoriety in 1976

The Clash were a relatively new punk band in 1976, playing a show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Many were in attendance to see them, along with openers Subway Sect and Snatch Sounds. While those two bands didn’t go on to do much, The Clash would cement themselves in punk history after a write-up by NME.

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The ICA show was billed as “a night of pure energy,” and The Clash were currently in a league of their own. Alongside Sex Pistols, they were gearing up to be the U.K.’s leading punks.

During the night, Patti Smith joined the crowd after playing a show at Hammersmith Odeon. But she wasn’t content to get thrown around in the pit. Instead, she got up on stage and danced to “I’m So Bored With The USA”, according to a retrospective from Dangerous Minds.

The NME review was written by Barry Miles, who published under only his last name. The headline read “Cannibalism At Clash Gig”. It included a cheeky subheading of “But why didn’t anybody eat Miles?“

The article included two photos of none other than Shane MacGowan smiling happily in the crowd. He had blood dripping down his neck and obscuring his right ear.

Shane Macgowan Was Once a Victim of “Cannibalism” While Seeing The Clash in 1976

NME ran the story, and The Clash dominated the newsstands. The sensationalist headline might have had something to do with it. Additionally, the photos of unhinged chaos and a bloody Shane MacGowan most likely helped.

MacGowan, of course, went on to be the often controversial frontman for The Pogues. His companion at The Clash show, a woman nicknamed Mad Jane, was in the bands The Bank of Dresden and The Mo-Dettes.

However, at this time, they were just two punks messing around at an early Clash show. In the biography The Clash by Bob Gruen, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon described the impact of that show.

“That was the night of Shane MacGowan’s earlobe, wasn’t it?” said Jones. Despite NME reporting instances of cannibalism, Jones clarified, “He didn’t really have it bitten off, you know.”

According to the book, the show and bloody ear incident gave The Clash “their first significant press coverage.” Additionally, Joe Strummer elaborated on that claim. He said, “Without Mad Jane’s teeth and Shane’s earlobe, we wouldn’t have got in the papers that week.”

“Me and this girl were having a bit of a laugh which involved biting each other’s arms till they were completely covered in blood and then smashing up a couple of bottles and cutting each other up a bit,” Shane MacGowan once explained to ZigZag in 1986. “That, in those days, was the sort of thing that people used to do.”

He continued, “Anyway, in the end she went a bit over the top and bottled me in the side of the head. Gallons of blood came out and someone took a photograph. I never got it bitten off, although we had bitten each other to bits, it was just a heavy cut.”

Photo by Julian Yewdall/Getty Images