00:00 Joe Strummer: A title tune and he asked me and to be honest my first reaction was I don't want to have anything to do with this because I knew Sid you know a lot of people feel in this way but he eventually convinced me to come and see a rough cut and when I saw the rough cut which I went there intending to hate definitely went there with the intention of hating it
00:23 Joe Strummer: I had to admit after I'd seen it, it was a great film, you know, and I began to realise that nobody else would make a film about Sid, you know, it's hardly, to get the backing to make a film about Sid, you know, it's a feat, and I think they've done really well, and I think the actors, Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb, Sid and Nancy, well, if they didn't say so many swear words 00:45 that maybe they'd get Oscars. They deserve them, you know, because I've seen it a lot, and I really appreciate their performances.
00:45 Interviewer: What was it that convinced you about their performances?
00:45 Joe Strummer: I mean, were they like Sid and Nancy really were? Well, when I say I knew Sid, I wasn't exactly his best friend, okay? I just knew him, you know? But I knew him well enough to know exactly the sound of his voice and his facial expressions and stuff like that, you know, when we'd hang out in the punk London. And, um it was... He'd got the voice right. You know, it was... If you closed your eyes, it was uncanny. It was almost like hearing Sidney talk.
01:15 Interviewer: It must have been very traumatic for people who had known Sid and Nancy when that moment happened where she was murdered and Sid was arrested for the killing, whether it was a murder or not. I mean, how did you feel when you read about that or when you heard about it?
01:15 Joe Strummer: Well, to be quite honest, what shocked me the most was when Sid died, you know? 01:45 When I heard that that had happened in the Chelsea Hotel between him and Nancy and that he probably killed her, I suppose that was a shock, but I remember feeling the greatest shock when I heard that he died, maybe because I knew him and I didn't know Nancy so well.
02:01 Interviewer: One of the things that comes out of the film is that Sid had no musical talent, that he wasn't a great bass player or anything, but a certain charisma was there. What do you think was the key to the charisma of Sid Vicious that's made him, in a way, linger on more than any of the other Sex Pistols?
02:01 Joe Strummer: It's because Sid was Sid. Sid Vicious was really Sid Vicious. I mean, the times I went out with him and we always ended up in a fight, we always, every time I went out with him, guaranteed I mean, I'm not saying he was a vicious brute or anything, but the image that people have of him was really him, and he wasn't putting it on. Boy, we had a great time, you know? It was wild.
02:44 Joe Strummer: It was fantastic.
02:44 Interviewer: The Clash survived through all that. Why didn't the Sex Pistols survive through all that? Because they were the ones in a way who sparked it off in the publicity sense, didn't they? Oh, definitely.
02:44 Joe Strummer: The Pistols were at the heart of it. I mean, we were following their lead all the way. I think the reason that I feel they didn't survive was because they fired Glenn Matlock and got Sid Vicious in, Glenn had been the tune smith and a very good one, you know? Anarchy in the UK, the tunes and stuff. Okay, they were anarchy records, but they had tunes, you know? A lot of the punk bands who followed us a lot, they forgot that we really worked on getting a melody together so that the tunes it wasn't just all bravado shouting and loud guitars, you know.
And I found a lot of the punk bands that followed just took short cuts around that and they'd say, okay, we've got to play fast. We've got to shout the words. And to me, I felt sickened that they hadn't. But Sid was bursting to be a star, you know. I remember even before he was in the band, he used to stand around with a mic stand and he'd show me what he was going to do when he was a singer of a group, how he was going to hold it.
03:59 Joe Strummer: You know, he tilted it and he held it in a sort of an obscene manner and he said, I'm going to be like this and he'd demonstrate it. He was bursting to be a star and I suppose it was just, they couldn't, too tempting, they just fired Glenn and got Sid in.
03:59 Interviewer: A lot of people have said to me, tonight actually, I've been talking to a few people who've seen the film and I don't agree with this at all, but they've been saying, you know, it's pro-heroin 04:22 that it might encourage people to take heroin. I don't think that's right, but what do you think about that?
04:22 Joe Strummer: Well, I think the government should have given Alex Scott some money for making this film because it does more against heroin than any of their heroin advertising, you know, the things we see in the paper on the TV this year. But I think it does, you know, the last 20 minutes, you know, if anybody wants to go out and score some heroin after seeing that, they must have a wooden head. I think it's a good film and I've really tried to to knock it ideologically, philosophically, blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, I think it's a great movie. And I'm sure if Sid could see it, I'm sure he wouldn't knock it. He'd be delighted.
05:07 Audio: Plays Love Kills cut off...
05:55 Joe Strummer: Joe Strummer's Love Kills, and if you see the film Sid and Nancy, you better believe it.
30:23 Joe Strummer: a frustration the reason that the Clash hit was because we had songs rather than just a frustration the reason that the clash hit was because we had songs rather than just some noise that would go scrunch scrunch it was a song and the lyrics are very much part of that in that I don't think that you can write from any point of view that isn't something you really feel. And you can translate that into something you really care about or something you really know about.
I mean, if you research literature and you find that Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald come into that conclusion that write what you know about. And I translate that through Kurt Vonnegut, who also says the same thing, into what you care about.
And those songs were very much a sense of frustration of like, being young, you know, being in a Western society, having the advertisements flaunt the wealth of the civilized developed world in front of your eyes, and being unable to find a niche, be that a meal or a roof over your head or some gainful occupation for your hands and your mind. Instead, you know, we're presented with the drudgery of, say, a factory job or nothing, or go and draw, at the time it was £10.64, you know, go and draw that and kick your heels for a while.
31:42 Interviewer: So the Clash's songs were a reflection of that, of the frustration.
31:42 Joe Strummer: Yeah, but it was a lived experience. I really believe that you've got to live something to sing about it in a convincing way. What I'm trying to say is that it's experience that writes songs, you know, you directly feel it. You've got to like when you hear a great song, that's a piece of someone's life. You know, someone lived that. When you hear a really great song, someone's torn that piece out of their life and managed to present it as a song. Today it's very hard to talk about these things because we live in a time of disposable music where, okay, it's number one this week.
32:01 Interviewer: Everything's got built-in obsolescence.
32:01 Joe Strummer: Yeah, all the guys and girls are popping in the studio and it's number one this week and all the lights are on it but next week we'll be pushed to remember even the damn title.
32:28 Interviewer: So why do Clash songs remain durable?
32:28 Joe Strummer: Well, I think because they weren't fate. A lot of the Clash songs that we continue to play today, like Career Opportunities, are born out of that frustration, you know, a real sense of life going to waste, you know, a real genuine anger, and that's why they still live.
32:57 Interviewer: When did you first realise that a lyric was very important?
32:57 Joe Strummer: All we've got to communicate really is the language. I mean, this has always interested me. This is my subject. If I got an idea and I want to communicate it to you, I could stand here with sign language, but it would take us 19 hours longer than if I could just say it in a sentence. And that's why I think that we've always got to struggle to make the language ours. I tie everything into lyric writing.
You know, newspaper, TV, all things in life are really lyrics to me. I don't like this school of journalism that we've got here, which is the worst in the world.
They're sort of, almost like, it's not a conscious decision, well I hope not, but they're cutting down the vocabulary that the average person will know. Day by day they seem to limit it, well we can get rid of that word and substitute it with this one. And day by day they're coming down to some kind of dog speak, you know, that we'll all be speaking in 10, 20 years unless we watch out. I want to use words in songs that I can't use because they're not common currency. For example, the word hacker, right? For me this word is pregnant with meaning.
You know, who knows what a hacker is? Only a small microcosm of computer weirdos know what a hacker is, when it's one of the most exciting things going.
33:54 Interviewer: What is a hacker?
33:54 Joe Strummer: A hacker is somebody who will get into... You see, all computer systems are linked through the phone lines. All they want to do is get into systems where they're disbarred from. You know, you've got to know their password, you've got to know the right code to dial, various things, and hackers... It's a 21st century rebel, really, a hacker 34:24 but i think it's prime stuff for a song but i've got to wait for the rest of the world to catch up with the word hacker before i can hit them with it.
34:24 Interviewer: Well let's go and look at a lyric that language was quite simplistic london's burning that was one of your early punk songs yeah
34:24 Joe Strummer: I have to say the first world war inspired this song because the first world war set up the social structures that we are living under today 34:49 which means that the town is going to shut down at 11 p.m. and there's a lot of people raging drunk on the street. And this song is really a cry of frustration of like, we're young, we're energetic, we're restless, we need some excitement. Give us something to do. That's what this song is.
34:49 Interviewer: Is there a particular line in the song that stands out for you as a favourite?
34:49 Joe Strummer: Well, I always liked, "what a great traffic system. It's so bright, you know. 35:19 i can't think of a better way to spend the night." It's just all you had left in the town was to look at the wonderful works and concrete and street lights that they directed for the motor car i mean that was the entertainment was really looking at the motorway going through west london i think any song you write out of true feeling if it's true feeling it won't go away
35:49 Audio: Plays London's Burning, cuts after 3 seconds
35:49 Interviewer: How do you write most of your songs, Joe?
35:49 Joe Strummer: I like it best when there's an idea, a line and a tune. All in one. And then you can expand outwards and get a song. But when that doesn't happen, it's always a good idea to bang a lyric out that says something. I like to experiment with the way you can put it down on a simple bit of paper. You know, I like the blank sheet of paper. 36:16 You know, I like the physical idea, and I like the idea of tapping with a typewriter, say. And I like the idea of the hammer striking the paper and the characters printing out. That's exciting to me. I like these really old typewriters. I've got this beautiful job from Venezuela in about 1925, you know, five pound on the Portobello Road, and it's got peculiar symbols that you've got no idea what it is. I like the sort of... the feeling that it gives. You know, you can almost imagine 36:46 that it was in a hotel room with the fan going round on the ceiling and someone being shot in the corner. I go about it in a showmanship kind of way, like I make sure I'm wearing the right clothes, even though I'm on my own in a room and no one's there to see, right? It's very show... I like to make sure I'm wearing the right clothes, that my tie-dye is funky, I've got some nice paper, you know, nice white paper that you can get into, and I like to have 37:13 a decent ashtray, preferably stolen from a French cafe, you know, and a nice pack of cigarettes and swan vestas, you know, get all the artifacts there, you know, feel the tradition of writing.
37:13 Interviewer: Do you like the romantic image of the songwriter?
37:13 Joe Strummer: Oh, definitely, definitely, because, I mean, what else have you got? You know, it's a pain, really. I mean, Dylan Thomas, I heard he once said that 37:36 Writing a poem is just so much work. You know, this is after the world was facing him for being a poet. He said, sometimes I get the first mind down, then I sit there going, oh my God, you know, Dylan Thomas said that, and it is a, you know, it's work, but, you know, you need something to nice it up, you know, and that's why I get into the style of it.
37:55 Interviewer: Let's look at another of your songs, London Calling.
37:55 Joe Strummer: Okay, now London Calling, we saw the danger of punk being followed to the letter, of it becoming a dogma, and we weren't interested in that because punk originally meant to us the spontaneous, the creative, you know, the crazy, the lunatic, you know, suddenly all that was let in the door and so it should be and so it always should be but for once it was let in and it came great things happened because of that but when it started to become a dogma like the right uniform the right type of rhythm the right chords you know the right grunting and hollering it became just plain boring because okay we've seen all that give us something new that's what our attitude was like yeah we've done all that now let's move on what i was trying to say in london calling was was in the lyric was like encourage people to believe in themselves, really.
You know, like, it goes on, like, "London Calling to the Imitation Zone, forget it, brother, and go it alone." And I wanted to give some positive thing to them to say, like, forget imitating anybody, you know, forget heroin, believe in yourself and you can take it, you know, you can do it. And that's what really London Calling was about. And then you get to the chorus, and 39:15 the time i was living in in the World's End estate which is right by the Thames and i was following a lot of the doom prophecies that were going about you know the scientists having the big arguments about who's right and who's wrong and one lot was saying that hey the uh the ice age is coming you know and then another lot was saying well we're going to collide with the sun and obviously, that's diametrically opposed.
I mean, we can't have an ice age if we're about to collide with the sun and roast and boil alive. And all this stuff was going on, making you feel like, well, I'm just an ant. Is it worth living? And then they were going on, you know, this is before the flood, Thames flood barrier. They were going, well, you better watch out down there on the Thames.
We're due for a flood on the spring tides and you're all going to drown. I was having a laugh, I was cheering myself up by putting all these ridiculous things into one basket, you know, and "the Ice Age is coming, the sun is zooming in, you know, the atoms are melting down, the winch is going thin, the engines have stopped running" because of the fuel crisis and all that, but never mind all that because "London is drowning and I live by the river."
40:31 Interviewer: Who are your favourite lyricists?
40:31 Joe Strummer: I like the ones that stick in the head. I don't know anything about 30s or 40s music, but we all know, you know, I get a kick from champagne, and mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all. You know, things like that. The classic things that stick in your head, that's the ones I admire. I think that's Cole Porter.
Things from the musicals that that you only got a nodding acquaintance with that stick in your mind that "old man river" or even "sorry with a fringe on top" you know things that stick in your head uh who's that guy Hoagie Carmichael you know some heavy stuff there um that old man from Hong Kong song oh dear i like things that are that I can feel the craft in.
You see, what a lot of young writers don't realise is that they're not telescoping their lines enough. What those old writers realised was that you say one idea in, say, half of a line, and there's no need to reinforce it in the second half of the line and then add extra detail with a whole nother two halves of a line.
And there you've got two whole lines of a song that a crafty writer would have disposed of in the first half of a line and gone on with a fresh... Lyrical writing is like boxing. You know, there's no use one punch and then waiting before you bring another punch in. It's got to be like Sugar Ray Leonard, you know, combinations. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang and then digest that, and then bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And quite often when I hear a pop song or something that's hot on the radio, you know, I wish I could have got hold of the writer and gone, hang on, look, see this line here where you're just reinforcing what you said in the line before.
Dump all that, bring a fresh idea in there, and the whole thing becomes stronger, and I feel that maybe there's not enough craft in it. That's why I admire those old songwriters for the craft. And one period of lyric writing, which we're talking about, which has never been equaled, and I've looked at it through a four-dimensional viewing scope, and I can't still quite understand it, is, you know, Jack the Ripper sits at the head of the Chamber of Commerce.
That period of Bob Dylan writing, it was quite a short period. I think he probably, in months, he could historically bring that down to, but a lot of that writing on "Highway 61", "Revisited" and stuff like that, very dense.
You know, I think I do well for a lot of people to study that if they want to write lyrics.
The denseness is like a forest. Just as one image has hit you, another one has risen to take its place, you know. And even though you couldn't really sit down and say, what does that mean? Like, let me quote you something. "At dawn my lover comes to me and tells me of her dreams" and now the important bit "with no attempt to shovel the glimpse into the ditch of what each one means" now take those last two lines right "with no attempt to shovel the glimpse into the ditch of what each one means" that to me is lyric writing at the highest because you know what it means you see it hit me what poetry was and Robert Frost right some great American poet they said define poetry Robert and he said poetry is that which gets lost 43:56 in translation.
Now, when I read that quote, it hit me like a hammer. I realized that poetry must stay within the bounds of the language that it was written in because, and this is lyrics too, poetry is halfway between thought and language ...
44:12 Interviewer: .. so it's an association really ...
44:12 Joe Strummer: ... yeah and you cannot read foreign poetry in a translation it just doesn't go yet if you want to appreciate Arthur Rambeau, i'm sorry mate you've got to learn late 19th century french ..
44:12 Interviewer: ..does that apply to lyrics as well ...
44:12 Joe Strummer: ... yeah of course ...
44:35 Interviewer: .. do you think that you you can only appreciate a good lyric in its musical sense ...
44:35 Joe Strummer: Well mostly yeah although for example that one about the ditch you can dig just in in the free air i think a good lyric should stand up free of the music yeah to answer your question
44:35 Interviewer: ... a lot of your recent lyrics have taken an Anti-American stance and notably their foreign policy involvement in central America and the far east what first brought that particular part of their policy to your attention
44:35 Joe Strummer: why America became important to me was i realized that that everybody realizes now that we were just a a lapdog of theirs you know the present government's policies and their missiles on our turf and you know they call us the aircraft carrier great britain it's true that we're just a lapdog of theirs so what they were deciding in the pentagon and in the white house was directly affecting our destiny here or well and all over the world really because of their armament power and what incensed me to get into songs like Washington Bullets and stuff was because how can a country that's supposed to be a superpower so economically and militarily enormous as the united states worry about whether Nicaragua has a socialist or or what kind of government.
45:25 Interviewer: Does straight to hell reflect that Anti-american feeling
45:54 Joe Strummer: Well Straight to Hell really, I wanted to cast around the world. I wanted to see if a song could straddle the world. And it struck me that the message that the young people are receiving is, you don't exist, or too bad, mate.
You know, too bad. Go over there and don't bother us. And they condensed it down as much to someone going to you, go straight to hell. Imagine we're in a pub and you ask somebody something for a light or a fag or a 10p. They would go straight to hell. You know, it'd be very clear. And this is how I felt the message that was increasingly being put to use around the world. Like, for a start, to the youth in Britain, they were being told, who born you? I mean, that's bad English, but who born you.
Interviewer: What do you mean, rights?
That's what punk gave, which is long gone now, and too far gone for living memory, but it gave that sense of feeling of, I am a human being and I have my rights. You know, I have a birthright. And a lot of young people today are being cheesed off that, they don't even dare even tiptoe up to that glowing truth.
The first verse of Straight to Hell is about that, you know? I'm sorry, but we've got to talk about politics when we're talking about these lyrics, because the life that is lived in Milton Keynes is because of the decisions that are took in Westminster, and the life that is lived in Bradford is the same. So we've got to talk about politics, and I just feel that squeezing the manufacturing heart out of our country is going to bring us to our knees, and it's just going very rapidly towards that. You know, I can't see the sense of it.
47:35 Interviewer: What's the third verse in Straight to Hell about? I think the second one's self-explanatory.
47:35 Joe Strummer: The third verse is about the solution that the dispossessed have found, which is drugs, "in Parkland International. Ha! Junkiedom, USA." You know, it's just about the fact that city life centres around these parks in America where everybody goes to get their painkillers.
Having seen so many of my friends go down that way, you know, I mean, into the coffin, I know how attractive it is when you've got no solution. Hell, take a five pound bag of that and you can forget all about it for a few hours. You know, what an attractive solution. I'm hoping that that realization will make some draw back from the brink because it's only a one way street. You know, you've got nothing to do. You're going to end up in that heroin flat. 48:32 Sooner or later.
48:32 Interviewer: Do you think of yourself as a protest songwriter, Joe?
48:32 Joe Strummer: Well, now, I call protests complaining.
48:32 Interviewer: Are you complaining?
48:32 Joe Strummer: Yeah, or whoever is singing it is complaining. And I don't think complaining music goes a long way to anything. See, there is a difference between protest and complaining, and I don't think it's known widely enough.
And I don't think even a lot of writers have even thought that there is a difference. You know, a protest song to me goes a long way, but a complaining song stops short. Just a complaining song like, 'we don't want no government'. It just doesn't go far enough. In fact, there's a school called calling the kettle black, which must be avoided because it's just not good enough. You know, it's like we all know that the kettle is black.
You know, when it's been on the fire and it's all black underneath. There's no point picking it up and going, "the kettle is black". No, no, no. Because we all know that. I'm looking for something that goes beyond.
49:26 Interviewer: So do you complain with subtlety?
49:26 Joe Strummer: Yeah. Excellent. Complain with subtlety, you know, and if possible with poetry too. You know, I love this comment Johnny Rotten made when they were slagging him off in the early days for his songs. And he went, what do you expect, some kind of poetry? I just thought that was good because it was some kind of poetry. You know, eat your heart off a plastic tray. Tell me that ain't poetry.
50:14 Interviewer: Joe Strummer, thank you very much indeed. Adios, amigo.
