Kevin Seal: Well, this is Mr. Joe Strummer, and welcome very much to New York, sir.
Joe Strummer: All right.
Kevin Seal: Tell us about some of the work you've been doing for the movies.
Joe Strummer: Well, I did a soundtrack for Walker. Alex Cox directed that, and I've just done one for Permanent Record, directed by Marisa Silva. It's coming out on the 22nd of April, I think.
Kevin Seal: Just right around the corner.
Joe Strummer: Yeah.
Kevin Seal: How is it working for Alex Cox? Did you guys work together pretty closely?
Joe Strummer: Yeah, I mean, I've done Sid and Nancy with him, and Straight to Hell, and Walker. He's a kind of crazy director. I don't think he's run-of-the-mill, you know? He's an outsider.
Kevin Seal: Is he an okay Joe to work with, though?
Joe Strummer: Well, I've always enjoyed it. But, you know, I'm a friend of his.
Kevin Seal: So he's nice to you. I thought Straight to Hell was a very funny movie, by the way.
Joe Strummer: Yeah, it really got panned, but I think in a few years it'll seem okay.
Kevin Seal: Yeah, yeah. Tell us a little bit about this new one, Permanent Record.
Joe Strummer: Well, it's about teenagers committing suicide, or a teenager committing suicide. Really, the film centers on his friends after the fact and how they come to terms with it. Because he was a popular guy, you know, he wasn't a moody, you know...
Kevin Seal: I think it was some loner or someone.
Joe Strummer: Yeah, he was a popular guy, talented.
Kevin Seal: And you wrote the score?
Joe Strummer: Yeah, I did most of it. There are some records from Bodine, Stranglers, Godfathers. There's a song by J.D. Souda and Lou Reed.
Kevin Seal: And you've got a new single coming out. In fact, it will premiere in the show in just a couple of seconds, Trash City.
Joe Strummer: Trash City, yeah. And I recorded that with a group I call the Latino Rockabilly War. It has Poncho Sanchez and Raymond Bander in it, and Xander Schloss, Willie McNeil, and Jim Donica, and myself.
Kevin Seal: So, like, mostly L.A. people.
Joe Strummer: Yeah, and also Tupelo Joe Altruda from Tupelo Chainsakes.
Kevin Seal: And, well, here we go. Do you want to give them the name?
Joe Strummer: Yeah, this is Trash City by Joe Strummer and the Latino Rockabilly War.
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Kevin Seal: How was the Pogues with If I Should Fall From Grace With God and this is Joe Strummer and How was it playing with the Pogues?
Joe Strummer: Well to me, you know, it's so physical, that music. It's very similar to punk in a way that we really bash the instruments. And even though they're playing a mandolin or accordion, they bash that stuff just in the same style. And it goes fast. So I felt right at home straight away.
Kevin Seal: Have you done stuff with them since?
Joe Strummer: Yeah. I did some backing singing when they recorded Fiesta the other day in London for a single to come out pretty soon.
Kevin Seal: Oh, it's very good. You just said he was with the Latino Rockabilly War. When did you become interested in Latino music?
Joe Strummer: Well, I lived when I was a kid in Mexico City. I was about four or five, and I went to a Mexican primary school. And I suppose I must have heard it there, but since then, Paul Simonon was always playing Perez Prado on the tour bus. Constantly, and do the Paul Simenon's tapes so that I began to get into that that beat you know that sound but I don't know anything about it really except that you like it.
Kevin Seal: Yeah, we'll be talking more with Mr. Strummer later on in the show. We're gonna have videos from The Cure, The Stranglers and Zodiac Mind Warp and the Love Reaction coming up and all sorts of stuff after this.
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Narration: You're watching 120 Minutes. I'm Kevin Seale and this is Joe Strummer sitting next to me here in this scrap bar in New York City.
Kevin Seale: When you were working on Walker, you went down to Nicaragua for months and months and such?
Joe Strummer: Yeah, about three months.
Kevin Seale: And how did that then affect your political convictions?
Joe Strummer: The main thing I know of this is how much stuff we waste here in the West. Because they don't have very much stuff down there, and they make use of everything. This table would be back in the lorry, driving the chain, you know? We're making use of it here. But when I got back to London, I saw all the stuff we're chucking in the streets, people throwing TVs and refrigerators out that maybe have just clapped out. I may repair everything and use it, and I began to feel we were really wasteful. That was the main thing that I got out of it.
Kevin Seale: Is it neat and thrifty there? I mean, the people are...
Joe Strummer: Yeah, out of necessity.
Kevin Seale: And how do the people feel? Is it like they feel like they're getting something done, that things are moving, or...?
Joe Strummer: You know, a lot of people complain about the war because it's been dragging on 10 years, but apart from that, it seemed like a happy country, as far as I knew. But we were in a city in the South, you know?
Kevin Seale: Tell us something about Rock Against the Rich.
Joe Strummer: It's a tour that I'm doing in England in July and August. I'm going to try and get the guys from the Latino Rockabilly War over there, but I can't seem to raise them on the phone at the moment, but I'm trying. And if I succeed, I'll take them over to England, and we're going to play. It's just a stream of concerts, and the money from each concert might go, say, to defend people who were caught stealing coal off a coal train, you know, during the miners' strike when there wasn't any money around. You know, more or less people who need the money are going to get it. It's not going to raise a lot of money because it's in, like, smallish halls and large clubs, you know. It's not really that big a deal.
Kevin Seale: Kind of a live-aid kind of...
Joe Strummer: No, not at all, but it's receiving some hysteria in the English newspapers, you know. They're starting to pillory me as a... as a hypocrite for doing the tour, you know?
Kevin Seale: Because they want you to, like, give the money to them?
Joe Strummer: No, no, they say, you know, hey, you're rich, why don't you shut your mouth, you know? And I'm going, you never mentioned me until I was doing this tour, and now you're getting on my case, you know?
Kevin Seale: Well, we've got something from the Clash coming up just now, as a matter of fact. Rock the Casbah.
Kevin Seale: Mr. Strummer, thank you very much for talking with us.
Joe Strummer: Okay, pleasure. It's a pleasure.
Kevin Seale: Rock the Casbah from the Clash.
