Mick Jones, Joe Strummer, Paul Simonon, and Topper Headon sit for interviews recalling the music that made them before The Clash existed. Jones traces his conversion to 1963 and the Beatles, then to seeing the Rolling Stones play Hyde Park during the Carnaby Street years. Strummer remembers his first record purchase, "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," and the moment "Not Fade Away" came blasting out of a school dayroom radio, Gene Pitney's maracas locking the song into place. Simonon describes school itself as a regime, a place where you're told when to stand and when to sit. Headon's turning point is Beatlemania at the Palladium and John Lennon telling the Royal Variety Performance crowd to rattle their jewelry. The film's real subject is what happens next: when drummer Terry Chimes quits early on, the band auditions its way through a reported 205 drummers in London, a search so thorough that future New Romantics like Rusty Egan and John Moss all pass through it before Headon finally sticks.