Levene helped create The Clash with guitarist Mick Jones and bassist Paul Simonon when he was only 18. Levene, alongside the band’s manager, Bernard Rhodes, asked Joe Strummer, frontman with the 101ers at the time, to join them. Strummer wasn’t keen on the genre of music but had just seen the Sex Pistols play at the Nashville Rooms in London and had become convinced that punk was the way forward.