SOUTH WALES ECHO, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1989, Page 33

POP - ENTERTAINMENT - PEOPLE

The rebel without a pause

Strummer: "It seems that all the tabloids, ranting Tory MPs and police authorities are after is cheap publicity."

Photo: Earthquake Weather weatherman Joe Strummer

DAVID OWENS talks to the Godfather of Punk, ex-Clash frontman JOE STRUMMER ... the anti-hero who refuses to lay his outspoken musical and social ideals to rest

TEN years after the last gasp of breath was drag-ged from the lungs of punk, Strummer is hitting the headlines once again.

Back in 1977 when glam rock and all inadequacies were being given a severe kick up the proverbial by the rebel-lious spirit of punk a number of angry young men were standing up to be counted among the unruly masses.

While The Jam's Paul Weller was preaching his sermon upon the mount of socialism, The Clash and their outspoken frontman Joe Strummer were inciting the punksome ones to a White Riot and stealing The Pistol's lime-light with their candid brand of rebel rousing songs, while whip-ping the establishment into regular bouts of excessive hys-teria.

When The Clash split and the dust settled on a disrupted rock scene, Mr Strummer packed up his soapbox and disappeared into the relative obscurity of film soundtracks, (Sid and Nancy, Walker), movie bit parts, (Straight To Hell, Mystery Train), and various benefit tours, (Rock Against The Rich).

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This year he's recorded his first solo album, Earthquake Weather, a fine return to his rock-reggae roots and embarked on an extensive British tour.

While out playing live this week Strummer sent the tabloids into reams of caustic, damning headlines and vitriolic copy after what seemed like his condoning of English football thugs, with the line, "To tell you the truth I get a strange swell of pride when I hear of our football hooligans causing trouble abroad."

His reply is simple. "What I said was probably wrong but what I was getting at is the way in which all the fans are tarred with the same brush.

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"It disgusts me the way the tab-loids treat football fans as if they were all hooligans or animals.

"If you treat people like animals they'll behave like animals.

What would you do?

"I really haven't got the answers to solve hooliganism, I just think that the fans should start to be treated like humans.

"That'll never happen if the government and the tabloids adopt this profane attitude.

"Their self-righteous stance un-fortunately seems like a by-product of Thatcherism.

"People forget this country was built on aggression and the fighting spirit. How do you think we won two world wars?

"I guess it's in our blood.

"I'm not condoning football viol-ence, I'm giving my reasons for it."

Were you suprised at the uproar you caused?

"I honestly didn't think my com-ments were worth that much.

"It seems that all the tabloids, ranting Tory MPs and police autho-rities are after is cheap publicity.

"Nobody is free from it, everybo-dy's mad for publicity, be it DJs or scum journalists.

"It reminds me of outright McCarthyism in 50s America. Imagine if I'd dared to say that com-munists were human, there would have been uproar.

"Football fans are human beings as are communists.

"I reckon Britain has taken a big step backwards in humanitarian Issues."

Do you think people still look upon you as some sort of leader, still an outspoken working class rebel?

"I've got to make it clear that I've always admitted to being middle class.

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"Weller and Billy Bragg have taken away any mantle I ever had, around the time of that Red Wedge Tour.

"I still have people coming up to talk to me after gigs, albeit very rarely, and sometimes I get the feel-ing it's because they see me as some sort of role model.

"It can be quite embarrassing but I do my best to diffuse the situ-ation man, I'm just as normal as the next person you know!"

Have you ever worried about your image?

"Everyone's got to worry about it but the more you worry about it the less important it comes until you reach the stage where you couldn't care less.

"Now I couldn't care less what my image is!"

Do you fear the onset of old age?

"Only sometimes, usually only when I'm in a bad mood, that brings out the fears in me. I can see myself staying in the music business for a few years yet, but not under the situation of bands like The Who, that's just an embar-rasment."

So you wouldn't reform The Clash?

"I hope not - no, no way, that's dead and buried. Who wants to be a rock dinosaur anyway!"

Is there anything around on the music scene at the moment that surprises you?

"I'm a fan of the underground club scene that's spawned all those dance hits. The whole dance, hip hop, house movement is very exciting, but it's the only real bright spot in today's dull music charts. The Top 40 is a chart for kids more so than it ever used to be - my kids love it."

Do they like Stock, Aitken and Waterman puppets like Kylie and Jason?

"They love Kylie but don't like Jason too much, which I'm pretty pleased about!

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What plans have you for your band?

"After this tour we're gonna be touring Europe for two weeks, then heading for the east and west coasts of America."

Do you like touring the States?

"No, not really, it means I'll be away from my kids, which is obvi-ously not an ideal situation. Being in Britain means I can be near the kids."

Can we expect to see you in any more acting roles?

"No, I think Mystery Train, the movie I've just completed, will be the last film I do. It was fun trying it out, but I never intended to be an actor, the music always came first."

Is there anything else you'd like to achieve?

"I tell you, I've never been one to look ahead, basically I've never been able to plan my life, I've al-ways tended to drift into different things. I would say I'll have a look ar-ound but probably move into something musical, who knows!"

The eternal wanderer lugs his suitcase and trusty six string into Cardiff on Tuesday when he plays Cardiff University.

In ten years time, Joe, you'll be supporting Jerry Sadowitz... The godlike genius Strummer refusing to believe that fate could be so cruel.

THE CLASH
The Clash
Give 'Em Enough Rope
London Calling
Sandinista
Combat Rock
Cut The Crap (all CBS midprice range)

THE FIRST record still sounds immense. It is sulphate-mad, twisty and jagged, and you can find the development of a new idiom there; disaffected yobbo with good brain and bad dental work, kicking around the Westway and screaming out for adolescent communion.

It was 18 months until the songbook arrived to document the fineries of Joe Strummer's spray-can splurge poetry, but even at the onset, his roarings had a unique, thrilling eloquence. This CD version follows the American pressing by including the early Clash singles—'Complete Control', 'White Man' and 'Clash City Rockers'—therefore it is altogether orgasmic. (9)

'Give 'Em Enough Rope' has not been so durable. Too much of it is gaseous and rock, like bad Mott The Hoople or something, and the American production sounds even more flakey on CD. So we'll ignore the embarrassing parts about civil war, cheapskates and such, and enjoy our squiffy recollections of 'Stay Free' and the emotive gush of 'All The Young Punks'. (6) For the memory.

Then came the big double one; a brylcreened, monster bunk-up between the previously-mistrustful Brits and their romantic overview of American culture. 'London Calling' is realised with a handsome exuberance; taking valid ideas from political, personal and historical experience, then pumping them into the most fluent rock music of the decade. A mighty (10), no less.

With 'Sandinista', they were clearly losing the plot. Some of this enormous creative splatter is worthwhile now; 'Washington Bullets' is a proof that Strummer's rhetoric could move in subtle and persuasive ways, and 'The Magnificent Seven' is a rowdy approximation of the emergent US rapping style. But there are too many dodgy reggae mixes and cooked-up fillers to merit this kind of triple-decker expanse. (6).

The spliff-heavy atmosphere of 'Combat Rock' winds the story off with a morose flourish (we're ignoring 'Cut The Crap' (4) 'cause it was only Strummer and Simeon involved, and it was mostly a work of lunacy). But even at this tense, fractured stage, you could hear The Clash working up an emotional charge that was their special signature.

The fast stuff is fine, if a little perfunctory, but the truly resonant tracks involve Strummer and his spacey, beat poetry. 'Straight To Hell' is maybe his best ever lyric; a bunch of weary associations that somehow connect unemployed steel workers in the North of England with Vietnamese war babies and smackheads in Central Park. And on this high-tech format, there is an eeriness which gives the record an extra significance. (8)

Strummer's pay-off line There ain't no asylum here, King Solomon he never lived round here is a long way from the riot manifestos and the first-pumping sureties of the early Clash. But it's a decent, honourable admission too, and fair play to them for having any conscientious leanings during the mega-platinum, drug-dissolute period.

So it goes. They weren't exactly The Right Stuff, and maybe they weren't the best rock 'n' roll band ever, but The Clash still knock the shit out of anything that's come along since. Remember them this way.

Photo: PENNIE SMITH

Clash: The Clash; Give 'Em Enough Rope; London Calling; Sandinista!; Combat Rock; Cut The Crap

Mat Snow, Q, June 1989

UNLIKE THE Sex Pistols, the other great London punk-rock group had ambitions beyond delivering the short, sharp shock to the system suggested by the sudden impact of their name – The Clash.

They wanted to make a lasting difference to a rock scene which they believed had lost sight of its original rebel values, and as such they needed however long it took for that vision to be restored. What they got was an eight-year career which started with an album and clutch of singles that in their energy and invention within a tight stylistic focus did indeed add a new chapter to rock history.

Now issued on CD 12 years after its original release, such a mark of respect would be more appreciated if the CD that in its title and artwork proclaims itself to be that milestone debut were the genuine article. Instead, four of the original tracks, namely 'Deny', the live 'White Riot', 'Protex Blue' and, most criminally of all, '48 Hours', are replaced by non-album singles, including such high-octane rockers as 'Complete Control', 'Jail Guitar Doors' and the great version of The Bobby Fuller Four's I Fought The Law, plus the rock-reggae 'White Man In Hammersmith Palais' (most of which are already available on The Story Of The Clash CD). Fortunately, the original saw-toothed soundtrack to the spiky-haired Spring of '77 will be released on CD later this summer after "technical delays". As it is, the CD imposter here will still triple the pulse-rate, though the wilfully crude recording – especially of Joe Strummer's even more wilfully crude voice – benefits not a jot from digitalisation.

Having successfully forged the "sound of the Westway" in 1977 and played their part in the punkification of British rock, The Clash turned their burning sense of mission towards the great Satan itself – America, where rock had been invented but had since grown as "bloated" (the buzzword of the time) as the recently deceased King himself, Elvis. To compete with the likes of Boston and Aerosmith for the American teenage ear, The Clash abandoned their towerblock tones for a sumptuously soaraway sound produced by Sandy Pearlman, who had layered the Blue Oyster Cult's highly regarded LPs. Despite its FM-friendly sound and East vs West sleeve-art theme, Give 'Em Enough Rope lyrically sticks to British turf – with an honest admission in the opening track 'Safe European Home' (a contender for the most exciting rocker ever recorded) that if you think life in Blighty is heavy, you ain't seen nothing yet. Meanwhile, The Clash developed their rebel-rock personality cult in such songs as 'Last Gang In Town', the melodramatic 'Guns On The Roof' (about bassist Paul Simonon's arrest for potting pigeons with an air-rifle), 'Stay Free' (in which the increasingly Keef-alike guitarist Mick Jones reedily intones in a manner to make Joe Strummer sound like Pavarotti) and 'All The Young Punks (New Boots And Contracts)', a tribute not only to Ian Dury And The Blockheads but also to The Clash's proto-punk heroes Mott The Hoople.

Mott The Hoople were partly the creation of Guy Stevens, legendary '60s club DJ and tastemaker who later went into production. A hyper-enthusiastic personality, his talents were neglected by the rock scene until The Clash chose him to helm London Calling, an ambitious double-album (now on single CD) which thrillingly synthesised their notion of rebel music, from '50s rockabilly (the version of Vince Taylor's 'Brand New Cadillac' is surely among the best of its kind not come out of Memphis) to Trenchtown sounds (the Marley-inspired punky-reggae party was in full swing), all spiced from the width of the New York radio waveband, a growing influence as The Clash expanded their horizons and musical palette. The CD not only redoubles this LP's punch but brings its nuances into focus. "I believe in this, and it's been tested by research/That he who fucks nuns will later join the church" ('Death or Glory') is but one of many vivid if sometimes cryptic couplets Joe Strummer sings; and in his typically plangent rocker 'Train In Vain', even Mick Jones sounds good.

In 'English Civil War' (from Rope), 'The Card Sharp' and 'Spanish Bombs' (both from London Calling), Strummer had revealed a romantic attachment to the International Brigade and other righteous men-at-arms: this theme would become more explicit in The Clash's next album, Sandinista! (1980), a double-CD endurance test in which the London/New York/Jamaica triangle almost swallowed them up. Most fans agree which of the 36 tracks here might have comprised a great single album; mostly they are dramatic, even reflective mid-paced rockers such as 'The Magnificent Seven', 'Somebody Got Murdered', 'Up In Heaven', the gospel-embellished 'Corner Soul', 'Police On My Back', 'The Call Up' and the anti-US foreign policy 'Washington Bullets'. Much of the rest doodles in what can only be described as a spaced-out cod-reggae style of little accomplishment, bearing eloquent witness to Strummer's later admission that he was smoking so much dope he almost "turned into a bush". Yet precisely because of its sporadic bouts of spine-tingling excitement, Sandinista! cannot be recommended as background music for gentle conversation and "skinning up".

Sandinista!, however, did little to damage The Clash's hip credibility; moreover, having now clearly got all the flatulence out of their system, they were groomed to hone a killer album and deliver it to the massive markets of Middle America by supporting The Who on their farewell stadium tour – thereby also inheriting their mantle of The World's Greatest Rock'n'Roll Band. Though hearkening to rock's revered past, on Combat Rock The Clash were still spinning the dial of New York street sounds. Yet they also kept both feet in 1982's mainstream; such tunes as 'Rock The Casbah' sounded as good on MTV as from a street-corner boom-box but are considerably enhanced on CD. In their pursuit of the perfect mongrel groove, however, The Clash never hit the panic-button of all-out rock, though Strummer's cinematic eye for a lyric and mood was maintained in the pensive melancholy of 'Straight To Hell'.

Just as Combat Rock was propelling The Clash into rock's top flights, drug and ego-fuelled ructions split the band asunder. In 1985 Strummer and Simonon returned with three new henchmen and a vow to retrieve the punk purity the old Clash had lost somewhere along the way. What resulted was Cut The Crap, false-punk where rabble-rousing was confused with populism and shouting with sincerity. That The Clash were straining to recover their identity was all too evident in 'We Are The Clash', which not only did protest too much but sounded like a pastiche of the Sex Pistols. Yet, on 'Dirty Punk' and 'Cool Under Heat', for example, Strummer's gift for the tersely addictive musical and lyrical phrase is still audible beneath all the huffing and puffing. But only 'This Is England' is a guttersnipe anthem of which the writer of 'Career Opportunities' eight years previously could be wholly proud.

Audiences and even Strummer himself came to the same conclusion. He has since ploughed a similar course between the inspirational and the half-baked in film soundtracks (a logical career move), while drummer Topper Headon has wrestled with drug problems and bassist Simonon has taken his time to assemble a new band in Los Angeles. Oddly enough, it is perhaps The Clash's outcast, Mick Jones, who most keeps the old flame alight with his band Big Audio Dynamite. But that, as they say, is another story.

What would you hope that The Clash would be remembered for?

Video 1

Interviewer: What would you hope that The Clash would be remembered for? Some good records, some good concerts. Is there any particular achievement that you're most proud of with the band?

Joe Strummer:  Yeah, I really like that photo on the front of London Calling taken here at the Palladium where Paul smashes his favourite Fender jazz bass. And all through the years after he was heard to moan, why did I do it? Why did I do it? But at least it's got a great photo. I think the sound of that bass hitting the stage is probably the best sound we ever made.

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Video 2

Interview with Joe Strummer (1989)

MTV Transcript – "Earthquake Weather" Era

[00:00]

Interviewer:
Since The Clash fizzled out, it’s been guitarist Mick Jones who’s made the most noise with his dance-oriented outfit Big Audio Dynamite. Clash vocalist Joe Strummer has kept a lower profile—writing movie soundtracks and occasionally acting in them too. But now Joe is back on the bandwagon with a new album called Earthquake Weather.

[Music fades in]

Joe Strummer:
I’ve got mixed feelings about this current 11-city US tour. It’s got a lot to do with where we’re playing. Nights like New York? Great. But for every great night in New York, there’s a night in Trenton, New Jersey—or Pipsy or Ooso—somewhere you really have to be good in a hostile environment. That’s how it works.

We’ve got an LP out called Earthquake Weather. It’s so named because of the quakes that hit the studio while we were putting it down.

[01:37]

The first single and video from the album is Gangsterville—a song that gives this die-hard punk disciple another chance to rail against the evils of pop music.

Joe Strummer:
I’m a pigheaded guy. To me, this was a secret, dumb protest against the… pop-ness of the airwaves in England. I thought, I’ll just put out something with content in the lyrics—a calling card to say, Hey, I’m back.

[02:16]

Interviewer:
Speaking of comebacks, The Clash’s classic 1980 album London Calling was just named Album of the Decade by Rolling Stone. What do you remember most about it?

Joe Strummer:
That photo on the front—taken at the Palladium where Paul [Simonon] smashes his Fender Jazz Bass. The sound of that bass hitting the stage? Probably the best sound we ever made.

Interviewer:
You haven’t abandoned acting either—your latest role was in Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train as an Englishman in Memphis.

Joe Strummer:
[Laughs] Musicians shouldn’t act—we’ve ruined too many films. Eddie Murphy’s in the studio, Don Johnson thinks he’s… whatever. They wanna cut in on our action? All’s fair in love and war.

I’m just born with a talent to be at odds with everything. Without trying, I can make a simple thing difficult. Learned in The Clash: it’s best to go up the hill backwards—makes it more interesting. Don’t know why.

[03:18]
[Music: Gangsterville plays]

APPEARING in Chevy's on Wednesday are Kiev Exocet, a band who have been around for quite a while and have played with some of the big names of recent years.

They supported the legendary Clash a few years ago, albeit long after that band had passed their peak, and also went out on tour with former frontman of the aforementioned Camden foursome, Joe Strummer.

This time out the band are headlining a 25-date U.K.-wide tour of their own, which takes their raunchy guitar sound all over the country.