After the Clash and Chicken Pox, Jones’ B.A.D. Tours

A case of chicken pox made Mick Jones cancel this fall’s “Big Audio Dynamite” tour. But Jones vows to come back.

“Tighten Up Vol. 88” is the band’s latest album and “Just Play Music,” the first single, is receiving radio play in the United States.

With the group planning to resume touring after the new year, Jones is eager to regain its previous momentum.

“I think it’s a growing thing, a matter of getting people to listen, changing the way they think. I just want to communicate and play music,” said the 33-year-old guitarist-songwriter, who recovered sufficiently to give a recent interview in Midtown Manhattan.

“I was getting into the mood where the group was unstoppable” before canceling the tour, he said.

“We were ravaged by the critics, but the music wasn’t for them. It was for more--it was music with a reason, with something to say. You can put us on Page 13 of your paper, but you can’t ignore us because the other stuff is going to wither and die.”

That touch of drama should be no surprise coming from Jones, who help lead the British punk movement with the Clash a decade ago.

Jones was born in London in 1955. A fan of such bands as the Animals and the Kinks, he considered rock ‘n’ roll “the most exciting thing around.” But in the 1970s, he and many other fans grew disillusioned with the direction of rock. Punk groups began to appear as a response to the complacency and indifference of mainstream rock and society in general.

Like the Sex Pistols, the Clash were crude, loud, angry and threatening--in short, everything they thought rock ‘n’ roll should be.

“It needed to happen,” Jones said. “We needed it at that time.”

Punk wasn’t simply a kind of music, it was an attitude. Jones, like many who grew up in England in the 1960s and ‘70s, thought that the more established rock bands had turned their backs on the fans.

“The music’s just as much about the fans,” he said. “They’re very important. They don’t want go to the show and just have their wallet emptied. They’ve got T-shirts, but they’re not anywhere. You need to take it to the next place.”

Jones and bassist Paul Simonon were in the punk group London SS before forming the Clash in 1976 with singer-guitarist Joe Strummer, previously a member of the 101ers.

“At the time I was just expressing myself the only way I could,” Jones said. “We looked at it as if we had a foot in the door, and we were going to go in that door. There has never been anything like it since.”

Their self-titled debut album came out in 1977 and contained some of the most ferocious music ever recorded. As one reviewer noted, it was music that “never stops snarling. It’s always threatening to blow up in your face.”

Jones, who ironically once worked as an inspector of suspected letter bombs, readily agreed with that assessment.

“It was quite a rush,” he said. “It sounded beautiful to us. Music should explode, it shouldn’t be contained and well behaved and do what it’s told.”

Although the Clash went on to record classic albums such as “Give ‘Em Enough Rope” and “London Calling,” the members of the band started feuding and by 1984, the band had broken up.

“We ended up writing our own things and sort of handing them over. It wasn’t as much fun.”

So Jones decided to start fresh. He wasn’t interested in forming a “Mick Jones Project”; he wanted prospective band mates to think of themselves as equals.

“ Ideas was the main word. I wanted to have people with good ideas and fresh ideas,” he said. “I was a good enough musician by that time. I looked for people who had personality. I didn’t want it to just be me.”

But Jones couldn’t deny who would emerge as the band’s leader.

“It’s a dictatorship,” he said, smiling, “but a benevolent dictatorship. I wanted to make it a more democratic thing. I try and listen to the others.”

Jones pieced together a new group, starting with his friend and ex-Clash video director Don Letts (credited with “FX and Vocals”). He added bassist Leo “E-Zee Kill” Williams. Drummer Greg Roberts was hired through a newspaper ad, and Jones then brought in keyboardist Dan Donovan who originally came to photograph the band.

The band was named Big Audio Dynamite (B.A.D.), and drew on varied musical styles, notably reggae.