|
CounterPunch
December
24, 2002
Joe Strummer
is Dead;
Long Live the Clash!
by GAVIN MARTIN
The Christmas card from Joe Strummer and family
arrived by email on Sunday night, a seasonal greeting accompanied
by Joe's colourful illustration of a fantasy festive scene.
I was touched Strummer was always such a generous host, keen
to entertain and be entertained, full of the Christmas spirit
all year round. Like me he was no doubt relishing the chance
to celebrate the festive period with friends and family.
Then, just as I was preparing to send
a return salutation, I checked the e mail on Monday and the genuinely
shocking news from his record company came through the ether.
The Christmas message had been sent on Thursday 19th. When I
had received it Joe Strummer was already dead.
Even now it seems hard to believe. The
Strummer I came to know over the past 20 odd years was always
an infectious and inspiring presence, alive with energy and ideas.
Not the sort of bloke who would simply lie down and pass away
peacefully in his sleep.
I first interviewed him shortly after
The Clash had split up. He was a rock legend, who'd lead The
Clash out of punk onto to become one of the biggest bands in
the world. Drug problems and ballooning egos had caused the band
to split. It was undoubtably a cause for regret and he'd tried
to effect a reunion with Jones several times. But Joe's belief
in the power of music to effect change remained strong, a passion
that continued as long as he drew breath. During our conversation
we discovered that we'd both recently buried. Our fathers and
Joe's mother had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, tears
were shed as we downed our drinks. A proud punk rebel with a
big soft heart Strummer was also a loving son and an attentive
father. As a musician and as a human being it was his ability
to express his deepest feelings - anger or grief, sadness or
fear - that made him special.
His father had been a Foreign office
employee, and he was born John Graham Mellor in Ankara Turkey
1952. As an infant he lived in Mexico, Germany and Cairo before
he and his elder brother David were sent to boarding school in
Epsom Surrey. He recalled being beaten at school by the day pupils
"they used wooden coat hangers, golf clubs, hockey sticks
and leather slippers anything you could beat a person with"
he told me. Music provided an escape hatch, something to believe
in, the place where he could assert himself.
" The Stones, The Beatles, The Who
and Hendrix there was no time for anything else really. After
I heard The Rolling Stones Not Fade Away I never paid attention
to anything in school. Music was everything," he told me.
But, while Joe was obsessed with the
idea that rock culture could change the world his brother David
became withdrawn and solitary. The brothers argued when David
got involved with the racist National Front and the occult. But
the flirtation was short lived on July 19th 1970 David committed
suicide in London's Regent Park.
The loss affected Joe deeply but made
him more determined to pursue his musical goals. He was expelled
from London Central School of Art for taking LSD. He played in
a succession of bands in Wales, with his friend Tymon Dogg he
busked around Europe and London in the style of folk legend Woody
Guthrie. Back in London he found a home squatting at 101 Walterton
Terrace and found minor league fame with the pub rock band The
101ers.
But, when The 101ers had released their
one and only single Keys To Your Heart (written and sung by Joe)
their frontman had seen The Sex Pistols in April 1976. It was
a sign that pub rock was dead and the rock n roll revolution
Strummer had longed for had finally arrived.
"It was like an atom bomb going
off in your mind, I was driven by The Pistols and everything
they were doing," he told me.
Bernie Rhodes a friend of Pistols manager
Malcolm McLaren introduced him to aspiring punk musicians Mick
Jones and Paul Simonon and The Clash was born. With Mick Jones
knack for arrangements and melody and Strummer's ability to deal
put weighty subjects - unemployment, social decay and race riots
- into incisive headline grabbing lyrics, one of the great songwriting
partnerships in Britrock history was born.
Though cheapened by imitations over the
years the group's self titled debut album remains a punk rock
landmark. AS a teenager growing up in Ireland the effect was
immediate and transformative this was music that I'd never dared
imagine stuttering invention, righteous politics, proud and defiant
of the old order. When The Clash debut appearance in Belfast
was cancelled hours before the group were due onstage a riot
broke. Riots were not unusual in Belfast back then but this protest
was unique because the participants were united not divided by
creed or religion. A homegrown Belfast punk scene that crossed
sectarian line was the direct result.
The punk dictates were something Joe
soon rebelled against but he refused to be drawn into a slanging
match with lead Pistol Johnny Rotten. Rotten always delighted
in ridiculing The Clash. I asked him why he'd never responded.
"He's one of the best poets we have, a real poet. Poets
deserve respect," he told me.
The fact was that Strummer's band would
have a more lasting effect than the group that inspired them.
Joe's sense of community, his determination to reach out to all
those who'd ever felt victimized or isolated grew out of his
childhood experiences. When The Clash went on tour, Strummer's
hotel room became an open house for followers seeking a floor
to sleep on. With his brother's suicide he'd seen what happened
when loneliness and isolation were allowed to fester and onstage
it was as if he were trying to reach out to every lost or confused
soul in the audience.
Over the course of five albums The Clash
rewrote the punk rulebook with a musical game plan that embraced
reggae, r&b, funk, folk, calypso, jazz and rap. Classic singles
- Complete Control, White Man in the Hammersmith Palais and Bankrobber
- were accompanied by albums that showed a hotbed of creativity.
London Calling with its Cold War inspired title track was
their masterpiece but the ambitious Sandinista, named after the
revolutionary Nicaraguan group was their most ambitious and diverse.
Joe had found out about the Sandinista rebellion from Moe Armstrong
a onetime member of Daddy Longlegs.
"They'd made a big noise when they
came to London in 1969 and Moe had become very left wing, he
gave us info that was quite hard to find out. A bunch of teenage
Marxists oust your favourite dictator? The establishment don't
want to know."
The Clash began to fall apart when drummer
Topper Headon was dismissed over a burgeoning heroin problem,
soon after Rhodes and Strummer sacked Jones for "straying
from the original idea of The Clash". Typically Joe would
later take the blame for the split figuring that he "deserved
to eat humble pie". Despite many lucrative offers the group
never reformed but they patched up their differences and he,
Jones, Headon and Simonon remained firm friends. Indeed before
Christmas he appeared onstage with Jones at a benefit for striking
firemen, and the entire band was poised to play together in New
York next year when they were inaugurated into the rock n roll
Hall of Fame.
There was one last Clash classic after
Mick Jones departed, the definitive statement of Thatcher era
despair This Is England. But Joe was hardly inactive for the
last 15 years of his life. He replaced Shane MacGowan for a while
in The Pogues, worked as a producer, played for Amnesty International,
had a fitful career as an actor. In the summer he was a regular
at Glastonbury Festival his ever-present soundbox pumping out
world music classic by the campfire. And he enjoyed going off
to his bolthole in Spain for the holidays with his family and
his guitar.
Three years ago he decided it was time
to "get back to rocking" and formed The Mescaleros.
The three nights I spent with him first in Finland near the land
of the midnight sun and at a London recording studio where the
group recorded their first album. Joe was thrilled at the prospect
of recording in the studio in an area of North West London rich
in ethnic diversity but also because it was where Free had recorded
Alright Now. His passion for music was sometimes as surprising
as it was infectious. One night in an Indian restaurant he and
the owner enthused over Keith West's cheesy 1967 hit "Excerpt
From A Teenage Opera". A few days after Christmas a friend
received an excited answer phone ordering him to celebrate Bo
Diddley's birthday, he always cherished the memory of playing
with Bo, his musical lodestar, on the first Clash tour of America.
The time I spent with him was always
some of the most rewarding and inspiring of my professional career.
Which was just as it should be, if it weren't for Strummer I
doubt I'd ever have thought it was possible to make a living
writing about music. He always thought rock n roll could change
lives, the most fitting testimony I can think to give to my old
friend is to say Hey Joe; you were right. Adios amigo.
Gavin Martin
lives in London, where he writes about music. He can be reached
at: gavin.martin@virgin.net
Yesterday's
Features
William A. Cook
The Road
to Basra and Back: The US v. Iraq, the Tale of the Tape
Lenni Brenner
51 Documents:
Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis
David Vest
Fristed:
All is Well, America is a Christian Nation Once Again
Ralph Nader
Bush's
Cakewalk Across the Constitution
Peter Phillips
A Report
from Cairo on the International Campaign Against US Aggression
on Iraq
Chris Floyd
Battlefield Earth
Gavin Keeney
Livres
Deluxe
Adam Engel
Copy, Escher, Bach (You Copy?)
CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- CounterPunch Special:
The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|