lead singer, John Lydon (then going by Johnny Rotten), and suggested they form a band together if the Pistols broke up. Hours after their debut, the band members along with most of the Sex Pistols and much of the rest of London's "inner circle" of punks showed up at Dingwalls club to attend a concert by New York's leading punk rock band, the Ramones. “It can’t be stressed how great the first Ramones album was to the scene … It was the first word of Punk, a fantastic record” (Joe Strummer). Afterward "came the first example of the rivalry-induced squabbling that was to dog the punk scene and undermine any attempts to promote a spirit of unity among the bands involved." Simonon got into a scuffle with J.J. Burnel, the bass player of the Stranglers. A slightly older band, the Stranglers were publicly identified with the punk scene, but were not part of the "inner circle" centered on the Sex Pistols. With Rhodes insisting that the band not perform live again until they were much tighter, the Clash rehearsed intensely over the following month. Strummer later described how seriously the band devoted itself to forging a distinct identity: "The day I joined The Clash was very much back to square one, year zero. Part of Punk was that you had to shed all of what you knew before. We were almost Stalinist in the way that you had to shed all your friends, or everything that you'd known, or every way that you'd played before." Strummer and Jones shared most of the writing duties—"Joe would give me the words and I would make a song out of them", Jones later said. Sometimes they would meet in the office over their Camden rehearsal studio to collaborate directly. According to a later description of Strummer's, "Bernie [Rhodes] would say, 'An issue, an issue. Don't write about love, write about what's affecting you, what's important." Strummer took the lead vocals on the majority of songs; in some cases he and Jones shared the lead. Once the band began recording, Jones would rarely have a solo lead on more than one song per album, though he would be responsible for two of the group's biggest hits. On 13 August, the Clash—sporting a paint-spattered "Jackson Pollock" look—played before a small, invitation-only audience in their Camden studio. Among those in attendance was Sounds critic Giovanni Dadamo.