Fact #178357

Ian Flooks (agent, Wasted Talent) : The Swedish promoter Thomas Johansson promoted just about every band I had - Pretenders, Talking Heads, Eurythmics, U2 … but the first one I can remember was The Clash. They played some clubs for Thomas early 79. Later that year they were recording the Sandinista album. They were in a very creative space and wanted to do a triple album. CBS were having g none of it, and cut off the recording budget. The band were very upset, but they were broke, and needed the label to pay for recording. They came to me to see what could be done. There were very few festivals in Europe at that time. I called Thomas and he said he thought he could get them on the Ruisrock Festival (Aug 4, 1979) in Turku, Finland at short notice. I’d never heard of it. He promised that the band just needed to get on the plane. He would provide equipment, transport etc. A week later we were on the plane. The band played a blinder. They were in Finland for about 3 hours. On the plane home the band were going crazy, throwing money around the plane and their long suffering tour manager Johnny Green had to go round picking it up. They got paid £10,000 in cash and used it to complete Sandinista. I don’t think CBS ever found out how they did it. The album was released the following year.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience magazine, Apr 2019)