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\n\tHappy 40th birthday to the Clash<\/a>\u2019s Cut the Crap<\/em>, the most hated album of the Eighties. History is full of cases where great bands make terrible records, yet history stands speechless at what the Clash accomplished here. Cut the Crap <\/em>came out in November 1985, and got instantly repudiated by Joe Strummer and anyone else involved with it. It\u2019s the all-time case of a legendary group with a previously impeccable discography who make one flop so mind-blowingly awful it kills off the brand forever. As Strummer said <\/a>a few years later, \u201cYou probably could put it under the flogging-a-dead-horse file.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tCut the Crap<\/em> has gotten erased from the Clash\u2019s official history. It\u2019s not listed in the discography <\/a>or timeline on the band\u2019s official website. It goes unmentioned in the documentary Westway to the World, <\/em>left out of almost all their reissues and compilations. Never has such a great band gone out with such a humiliating disaster. How did this happen? How did the Only Band That Matters stumble into one of the most infamous rock & roll fiascos?<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt was a complete fuck up,\u201d Joe Strummer told the NME <\/a>in the summer of 1986, admirably taking the blame. \u201cWhat you must realize is that a large percentage of people like me are idiots. I sit in a room and write ditties while others are selling stocks to Malaysia on the vodophone. It\u2019s easy to manipulate people like me. What I do best is write doggerel so a part of me must be very childish.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe Clash were coming off one of history\u2019s all-time great five-album runs. The London punk rebels seized the revolutionary spirit of 1977 with their raw manifesto The Clash<\/em>, then refined their sound with the flawed Give \u2018Em Enough Rope<\/em>. They peaked with their classic London Calling<\/em>, the one Rolling Stone proclaimed the best album of the Eighties, but then reached even higher with their sprawling epic Sandinista!<\/em> <\/a>They finally broke the U.S. with Combat Rock<\/em>, with hits like \u201cRock the Casbah\u201d and \u201cStraight to Hell.\u201d Crucial and influential albums, every one of them. Four horsemen, on top of the world.<\/p>\n