"McKenna, Kristine. 'Joe Strummer: A Man That Mattered.' ARTHUR, no. 3, Mar. 2003, pp. 20–27. Van Pelt, Carter. 'When the Two Sevens Clashed.' ARTHUR, no. 3, Mar. 2003, pp. 20. [Additional contributors: Ann Summa (photography), Mikey Dread (interview)].
Joe Strummer Feature
The March 2003 issue of ARTHUR is a tribute to Joe Strummer, featuring interviews, retrospectives, and rare photos. Key highlights:
Stories and Authors:
Kristine McKenna, "Joe Strummer: A Man That Mattered" – A personal essay on Strummer's stage presence, post-Clash struggles, and punk ethos.
Interview with Joe Strummer (Oct. 2001) – Reflections on punk's failures, Blair-era UK politics, and reggae's influence.
Carter Van Pelt, "When the Two Sevens Clashed" – Explores The Clash's reggae connections, with insights from producer Mikey Dread.
Slash Magazine excerpts – Accounts of 1979 Clash shows in London and Santa Monica, including a chaotic press conference.
Rebel Wood: Strummer's environmental activism (Future Forests) and rare photos by Ann Summa. A tribute to punk's conscience.
Concerts Referenced:
The Clash's 1979 Santa Monica Civic show (notorious for security violence)
1981 Bond's NYC residency (shut down by fire marshals)
1982 Hollywood Palladium performance (Strummer "conducting chaos")
arthur
march 2003
JOE STRUMMER: A MAN THAT MATTERED
Ann Summa
A WAKE IN PRINT WITH MCKENNA, SUMMA, MIKEY DREAD OTHERS
Note: The main interview flows though all pages with side stories. The text below has combined the text into stories and does not exactly follow the text on the each page
A Man That Mattered
JOE STRUMMER was a spectacular, inspirational human being.
by Kristine McKenna
When The Clash first burst on the scene in 1977 I dismissed them for the same reason I've always hated U2. Their music struck me as humorless, self-important political blather that wasn't remotely sexy or fun. Definitely not for me. Nonetheless, being a dedicated punk I had to check them out when they made their Los Angeles debut at the Santa Monica Civic on February 9th, 1979, and what I saw that night changed my mind just a little, though. As expected, Mick Jones came off as a typical rock fop who clearly spent far too much time thinking about neckerchiefs and trousers. Joe Strummer, however, was something else. With the exception of Jerry Lee Lewis, I'd never seen anyone that furiously alive on stage. Legs pumping, racing back and forth across the stage, singing with a frantic desperation that was simultaneously fascinating and puzzling, he was an incredibly electric presence.
At the press conference following the show that night, L.A.'s ranking punk scribe, Claude Bessy, jumped up and snarled, "This isn't a press conference this is a depressing conference!" (Jeez, tempers always ran so high during that first incarnation of the punk scene—who knows why the hell our panties were in such a twist!) I remember that Strummer looked genuinely hurt by the comment. Mind you, he was a working class Brit so he wasn't about to start sniffling in his sleeve, but he didn't cop an attitude either. I was touched by how unguarded and open he was and I was certainly impressed by the man's vigor. [Slash magazine's report on that press conference is reprinted on page 26. Completist Ed.] I wasn't surprised when I subsequently learned that Strummer ran three marathons without having trained at all. His preparation? "Drink ten pints of beer the night before the race and don't run a single step for at least four weeks before the race."
That first show at the Santa Monica Civic didn't transform me into a Clash fan but Strummer interested me, so when the band showed up in 1981 in Manhattan, where I was living at the time, I decided to see what he was up to. The Clash had booked a nine show engagement at Bond's, an old department store on Times Square in Manhattan, and this turned out to be not a good idea. The place wasn't designed to handle the crowds the band drew, and the engagement turned into a nine day stand-off between the band and the fire marshals. I attended three nights in a row and can't recall them ever actually making it to the stage and performing. But then, that was business as usual during the glory days of punk, when gigs were forever being shut down, aborted, abruptly canceled.
This was political theater, not just music, and nobody embodied that idea more dramatically than The Clash. Cut to June 14 of the following year and I finally saw The Clash succeed in completing a full set at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. By then, I'd finally begun to appreciate the breadth and fearlessly experimental nature of The Clash's music, and Strummer was at the peak of his powers as a showman at that point. The huge hall was packed, and it was as if Strummer was a maestro conducting this undulating mass of sweaty people, with the mysterious power to raise or lower the pitch at will.
Boots, beer bottles and articles of clothing flew through the air, people leapt on stage, leapt back into the arms of their friends, Strummer stood at the microphone stoking the fire, and somehow managed to keep the proceedings just a hairsbreadth short of total chaos for two hours. It was a commanding display from a man who clearly knew his job and knew his audience.
Following the break-up of The Clash in 1985, Strummer charged head-on into a busy schedule of disparate projects. He acted in several independent films and composed six film soundtracks, including one for Alex Cox's lousy 1988 film, Walker—that was remarkably beautiful. I wrote an admiring review of the score for Musician Magazine, and a few months after it was published Strummer was passing through L.A. and he invited me to lunch in appreciation for the supportive words.
We were to meet at a Thai restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, and though I was nervous on the way there, he put me at ease the minute we met. Strummer was such a genuine person that it was impossible to feel uncomfortable around him—I know it sounds corny, but he truly was a man of the people. He was funny and generous in his assessments of people, but he didn't sugar coat things either—he had no trouble calling an asshole an asshole when it was called for.
The thing that ultimately made Strummer such a spectacular human being, however, is so simple that it barely seems worth mentioning: he was interested in people. He wanted to hear your story and know what was going on in your neighborhood, he asked how you felt about things and was an empathetic listener—he paid attention! The other thing I immediately loved about him was that he was an enthusiast and a fan. Just how big a fan he was became clear to me a few months later when he guest hosted a radio show I had at the time on KCRW.
My show was at midnight on Saturday, and KCRW's office is hard to find, so our plan was to meet behind the Foster's Freeze at Pico and 14th at 11:00 P.M. He roared into the parking lot exactly on time in a car with four pals, and the lot of them tore into the record library at the station looking for the records on Strummer's playlist. His plan was to play all the records that shaped his musical taste as a teenager in the order that he discovered them, and the show he put together was equal parts history lesson and autobiography.
Included in the far-flung set were tracks by Sonny Boy Williamson, Lee Dorsey, Captain Beefheart, Bo Diddley, Hank Williams, and loads of fabulous, rare reggae and dub. His loving introduction to The Beach Boys' "Do It Again" brought tears to my eyes. Several fans crashed the studio when they heard him on the air and realized he was in town, and he welcomed them all. It was a wonderful night. He had fun too, and as he thanked me and said goodnight, he kissed me on the cheek and I blushed.
Strummer spent the next ten years struggling to re-start his career post-Clash and stumbling repeatedly. "The only thing that got me through was sheer bloody-mindedness—I just won't quit!" he told me when I interviewed him in October of 2001. We were talking on the occasion of the release of his second album with his five-man line-up, the Mescaleros, Global A Go-Go, which was rightfully hailed as the best work Strummer had done in years. He was happy with the record, and when I saw him perform at The Troubadour a few weeks after we spoke, he seemed happy in general.
"I've enjoyed my life because I've had to deal with all kinds of things, from failure to success to failure again," Strummer told a journalist from Penthouse Magazine in 2000. "I don't think there's any point in being famous if you lose that thing of being a human being."
That's something that was never a danger for Strummer. During that last interview (printed below, most of it never before published), I asked him what the great achievement of punk rock had been, and he replied, "it gave a lot of people something to do." I loved the complete lack of self-importance in that answer. However, this isn't to suggest that Strummer ever broke faith with punk. "Punk rock isn't something you grow out of," he told Penthouse. "Punk rock is like the Mafia, and once you're made, you're made. Punk rock is an attitude, and the essence of the attitude is 'give us some truth.'"
"And, whatever happens next is going to be bland unless you and I nause everything up," he added. "This is our mission, to nause everything up! Get in there and nause it out, upset the apple cart, destroy the best-laid plans—we have to do this! Back on the street, I say. Turn everything off in the pad and get back on the street. As long as people are still here, rock-'n'-roll can be great again."
Thank you Joe for bringing us the good news.
Photos: Ann Summa
20 Arthur March 2003
Photo: Ann Summa
Interview with Joe Strummer
"It's not a good idea to run away. You gotta smile, whistle, look self-assured, and try and fix things up a bit."
The following conversation with Strummer took place in October 2001, on the eve of his final U.S. tour during the winter of 2001-2002.
Kristine McKenna: You say the great achievement of punk rock was that 'it gave a lot of people something to do.' What was its great failure?
Joe Strummer: That we didn't mobilize our forces when we had them and focus our energies in a way that could've brought about concrete social change—trying to get a repressive law repealed, for instance. We're stuck in a kind of horrible holding pattern now, and it seems to me that the only way to change it is if we get hipsters to stay in one place long enough to get elected. The problem is that no hipster wants to get elected.
Kristine McKenna: I saw the Clash several times during their U.S. tours of the late '70s and early '80s, and I remember the sense that something profoundly important was at stake at those shows, that they were about something much larger than pop trends. What was at stake?
Joe Strummer: In the rush of youth you assume too much and so it should be, but we felt that the whole machine was teetering on the brink of collapse. Some amazing things went down in Britain during the '70s—the government decided they could disempower the unions by having a three-day week, for instance. Can you imagine that? Monday morning you wake up, and suddenly there's only a three-day week, from Monday to Wednesday. There were garbage strikes, train strikes, power strikes, the lights were going out—everything seemed on the brink, and looking through youthful, excitable eyes it seemed the very future of England was at stake. Obviously, that's very far from the feeling these days, when everything's pretty much smugly buttoned down.
Kristine McKenna: Has England recovered from the Thatcherism that dominated the country during the years you were with the Clash?
Joe Strummer: It will never recover—and now we've got Blairism. We are so completely confused. If you think of England as a patient lying on the couch in a shrink's office, I'd say it's time for the straitjacket. Imagine the party we had in England when Blair got into office after all those years of Thatcher. Everyone was cheering, this is the dawn of a new day, but since then we've had no vision or justice. The Blair administration just wants to get into bed with the richest corporations, and the very notion of labor has vanished into the mist. Obviously, the worse it gets, the better it gets for artists, so culturally, England is doing okay. But politically, it's total mixed-up confusion.
Kristine McKenna: What's the proper course of action when everything around you is falling apart?
Joe Strummer: It's not a good idea to run away. You gotta smile, whistle, look self-assured, and try and fix things up a bit.
Kristine McKenna: Given that the Clash's music grew out of a situation specific to England, did it strike you as odd that it was embraced in America?
Joe Strummer: No, because everybody feels the same on a certain level. The Zeitgeist is a real force of nature, and although we don't know how it's transmitted, it's like an invisible tidal wave.
Kristine McKenna: How would you characterize the Zeitgeist now?
Joe Strummer: I think people are feeling a bit cheated and frustrated. They've come to realize that voting is basically useless because either side you vote for has no more than a shade of difference from the other side, and ultimately politics is about nothing but the mighty dollar. So okay, say the people, let's forget politics and get into drugs or skateboarding—anything that passes the time and gives you some sense of freedom. People want to feel free, and it's a hard feeling to come by in this world. People have a right to change their consciousness, too, and in the back of their minds they know they have that right. So people are gonna flout the laws established to prevent them from smoking marijuana or experimenting with Ecstasy, because they know that nobody—especially a politician half pissed on gin—has the right to tell you what goes on in your mind.
Kristine McKenna: You say it's hard to experience the feeling of freedom: do you feel free?
Joe Strummer: No, I do not. If I invited nine friends over to my house right now and put on an acid house record, and we stood in the garden listening to it, we'd all be arrested and fined a thousand pounds each, because in the United Kingdom it's illegal for ten or more people to listen to repetitive beats—this is in the statute books, 'repetitive beats!' People in Britain are much less free than people in many other countries because we've got really repressive laws. All bars here must close at 11:00pm, for instance. As to why I continue to live here, I really think all British people have a streak of sado-masochism. I live in the middle of nowhere, so you'd think I could get away with playing a record, but such is not the case.
Kristine McKenna: Why do you live in the middle of nowhere?
Joe Strummer: I've got no idea! If you wanted to be harsh you could describe the area where I live as nothing but an agri-business abattoir—all you see is people wearing masks, riding tractors, and spraying god knows what onto the ground. I'm a townie, and I don't know what I'm doing out here, although it is nice being able to see all the stars in the heavens at night.
Kristine McKenna: As a rule, people tend to resist change; why is this so?
Joe Strummer: Because they're afraid of the new and the unknown, and familiarity is comforting. For instance, when you live out in the middle of nowhere as I do, you really appreciate small things, and one of the things I'd come to appreciate was this small bar not far from where I live. The guy who ran it was cool, he kept the lights low, and there would always be interesting jazz playing when you popped in there. In the middle of nowhere, that's like a gold mine. I popped in the other day and the music was gone, it was brightly lit, and a smiling woman chirped, 'can I help you?' The bar had been sold, so the place I knew no longer exists. Arthur Rimbaud said 'some destructions are necessary,' and that's a lesson I'm really trying to learn.
Photos: Ann Summa
"Somebody [powerful] must've seen the Clash as some kind of threat because we were constantly being arrested. They'd pull over our cars, search us, shake down our motel rooms—it was all very petty."
Kristine McKenna: An overriding theme in all of your music is personal and political conflict. Why can't people get along?
Joe Strummer: I think fear is the corrupting agent, and I don't know how we can eliminate that. Of course, there's no way to eliminate the most terrifying reality—that we all have to die—but at least the sun shines, and we've got a bit of time, so it's not all sniveling. Maybe if every child in the world was shown a really good time, a new breed of human beings would appear. On the other hand, I believe some people are just born bad—I've met a few of them, too. Whether they were born bad, what happened to them was bad, or it was a combination of the two, by the time they're teenagers you can see they're gonna flip. No matter who loves them or what happens to them, they're gonna smash up the room.
Kristine McKenna: Do you believe in karma, or do some people get away with smashing up the room?
Joe Strummer: Surely karma must be one of the few things we can believe in. Even if it were proved to me that it wasn't in play here on earth, I'd still hope that in another dimension, in the spirit world, it does exist. I do think it operates in this world.
Kristine McKenna: What forces played a role in shaping your sense of morality?
Joe Strummer: My mother was Scottish, and a no-nonsense kind of woman, and maybe I got some vibes from her.
Kristine McKenna: What's been the most difficult year of your life?
Joe Strummer: I took a long breather after the Clash broke up, and I had a really hard time about halfway through that. I needed a rest, so I was kind of grateful for the break, but at a certain point I became overwhelmed by a sense of self-doubt. In the music business, an 11-year lay-off is like a hundred and eleven years, and I felt like I'd blown it and would never get up there again. The only thing that got me through was sheer bloody-mindedness—I just won't quit! Every time I think 'you've had your lot, now just shut up,' a larger part of me says, 'no, there are things you can say better than anyone, and you must say them.' The other thing that carried me through that period was the fact that I had a lot of responsibilities—I'd managed to have children, and both my parents died during those years, as well.
Kristine McKenna: How were you affected by the death of your parents?
Joe Strummer: I wasn't close to them, because when I was eight years old I was sent to a boarding school, where I spent nine years. I saw my father once a year between the ages of nine and twelve, then twice a year from then on. As to whether I felt cheated by his absence, I didn't bother with that, because I was in a hard place. You know Tom Brown's Schooldays? Imagine being in a second-rate boarding school in South London in 1961. You had to punch or be punched, so I became hard and ceased being a mama's boy pretty quickly.
Kristine McKenna: You've been referred to in the press on several occasions as "the son of a diplomat who dropped out of art school to be a bohemian." Is that an accurate description?
Joe Strummer: No. In my first-ever interview in the Melody Maker, when I was suddenly regarded as 'somebody,' I said that my father was a diplomat simply because I wanted to give him his due for one time in his life. My father was an excellent eccentric who liked nothing better than dressing up for a party, and he was great fun, but he was basically a low-level worker in the hierarchy of the British embassy, and we actually had fuck all. A four-room bungalow in Croyton was all he managed to accrue during his life, and Croyton is not much of a salubrious suburb.
Kristine McKenna: When you were 20 years old, your older brother, David, committed suicide. How did that mark you?
Joe Strummer: I was deeply affected by it, and I don't know if I've come to terms with it yet, because it's a mysterious thing to try and understand. We were only separated by 18 months, but we were opposites: whereas I was the loud-mouth ringleader who was always getting everybody into trouble, he was quiet and never said much. When we were teenagers in the '60s, there was a load of shouting about Rhodesia, and that led to his becoming a member of the National Front in 1968. At the time, I was too busy listening to Jimi Hendrix to really understand what was going on with him, but I don't think his politics had anything to do with his suicide. I think it had more to do with his shyness.
Kristine McKenna: What's the most valuable thing you could teach your children?
Joe Strummer: I don't think I've taught them anything, and don't feel like I've been a very good father. My first marriage split up after fourteen years when my two daughters were still relatively young, and you feel guilty about that forever. They get born, and suddenly the thing they were born into is pulled apart. It eats away at my mind, particularly since my parents stayed together.
Kristine McKenna: You married again in 1995; what's the secret of a successful marriage?
Joe Strummer: You have to love your partner more than you love yourself—and I do.
Kristine McKenna: What's the most widely-held misconception about you?
Joe Strummer: That I'm some kind of political thinker. I definitely am not. I think about politics all the time, but it's become increasingly difficult to know what's going on in the world. I grew up hearing my parents go on about World War II, which was an episode of history that seemed very clear: Hitler bad, everyone else good. People are basically lazy and we want to see a good guy and a bad guy. Obviously, nothing is black or white, yet we yearn for that beautiful clarity, but I'm finding it more and more difficult to come to those kinds of conclusions—possibly because we're getting more information and we have to sift through it. I used to believe it was possible to learn what was going on in the world by reading the newspaper, but that began to change around the time that the Balkans thing kicked off. Either the newspapers aren't up to snuff or I'm losing my mind, but I found it very difficult to get a grasp on what was going on there.
Kristine McKenna: Do you believe music has a responsibility to address social and political issues?
Joe Strummer: I do, but I would add that the climate of the times dictates the way people write.
Kristine McKenna: How are you evolving as a songwriter?
Joe Strummer: Oh god, backwards man! I'm trying to be less idiotic. Every writer likes to feel that when he sits down to write he's gonna zoom off into a new field he didn't even know existed, but the truth is that writing is basically a process of blundering in the dark, and there's a lot of luck that comes into play.
"The problem is that no hipster wants to get elected."
Kristine McKenna: Are there specific issues that are particularly well suited to being addressed in music?
Joe Strummer: Love—because with music, you have the extra dimension of melody to communicate things that are beyond language.
Kristine McKenna: Name a song that never fails to make you cry?
Joe Strummer: Hoagy Carmichael's 'Georgia.' It has a quality of yearning and reminiscence that are incredibly moving to me.
Kristine McKenna: What was the last record you bought?
Joe Strummer: 'The Call,' by Alan Skidmore, who was a be-bop saxophone player who could probably be described as washed-up, not to be too rude. He went to South Africa and hooked up with a group called Amampondo, and they made this record together that's basically a bunch of crazed drumming with a be-bop guy free-falling all over it. It's not bad, but when I put it on everyone else leaves.
Kristine McKenna: What's your favorite Clash song?
Joe Strummer: I really like the song, 'If Music Could Talk,' which is on side 21 of Sandinista! [laughs] I like it because it's quite weird, and it shows we were willing to try stupid things all the time.
Kristine McKenna: What do you miss about being in the Clash?
Joe Strummer: That was so long ago that it's all faded, and I'm never on the nostalgia tit, but we did have a very good camaraderie and an extremely acute sense of humor. It was fun being in the Clash.
Kristine McKenna: Was there ever a time when you believed the myth of the Clash?
Joe Strummer: No, and that's why I managed to survive. They say you should never read your press, and that comes in handy when they're saying you suck.
Kristine McKenna: Does the adversarial nature of the music press help keep musicians honest, or does it simply undermine them?
Joe Strummer: On several occasions it's definitely knocked me for six, but then I'd grudgingly get up and dust my clothes off, and say better that than the other way. The press is harsher in England than it is other places, but I think it's a good thing because it keeps you on your toes and prevents you from getting too pretentious. Yes-men tend to collect around famous people, so the conditions are really conducive to becoming pretentious. So you might as well get the mean guys in to flay you alive.
Kristine McKenna: How has fame been of use to you?
Joe Strummer: It obviously has its uses, but it's really more of a liability than an asset to anyone interested in writing. If you want to write, the first thing is, you've got to experience life like everyone else experiences it. Secondly, you need room to think. If you're incredibly famous, all you can think about is, 'Oh my god, has that person over there recognized me, and did I bring enough bodyguards to the supermarket with me.' By accident I managed this quite well, because the Clash never went on television in Britain. If you wanted to see the Clash you had to actually get up and go out to one of the shows. Consequently, I'm able to move about Britain without being recognized, for the most part.
Kristine McKenna: Are fame and money invariably corrupting?
Joe Strummer: Definitely. The Clash never had to struggle with the latter of those two things, however, because we never got any money. The music business is a bad racket, and the people on the first crest of a wave never get paid. I don't like to moan on about money, but you have to realize that although you might've heard of the Clash, we didn't sell any records.
"There's no way to eliminate the most terrifying reality—that we all have to die—but at least the sun shines, and we've got a bit of time, so it's not all sniveling."
Joe Strummer: Nobody sends me five pounds every time somebody's heard of the group. We never had any real power, either, other than in an abstract, poetic way. What I wrote on a piece of paper might influence someone somewhere down the line, and that's something I still take great care with. Not writing things that are stupid, or easily misconstrued is something I keep onboard at all times. But it would've been nice to have the power to say, '50,000 people down to the Houses of Parliament now!' We might've been able to get 1,500 people at the height of our power, but ultimately, it's the big money men who have the power. Then again, I suppose somebody must've seen us as some kind of threat back in the day, because we were constantly being arrested for petty shit. We'd go to play small towns in the North of England and you could almost hear them thinking, 'here they come, those punk rockers from London—we're not having any of that!' So they'd pull over our cars, search us, shake down our motel rooms—it was all very petty.
Kristine McKenna: Does the legacy of the Clash continue to get in your way?
Joe Strummer: Not anymore, because enough time has passed, but certainly, for ten years after the group broke up, I found it difficult to deal with. But I managed to chill long enough that it's allowable for me to come back and knock in a few good albums. It's not pissing anybody off.
Kristine McKenna: You've traveled quite a bit as a touring musician; what's the scariest place you've ever been?
Joe Strummer: Mozambique. There was a war going on there, and I was only there for a day, but the entire time I was there I was nervous about who might be lurking in the bushes along the roadside. It was also a little unnerving playing Ireland with the Clash, but you have to laugh. You fly in there, you check into the Europa Hotel in Belfast, and the clerk cheerfully informs you that this is the most bombed hotel in Europe. 28 bombings so far! Then you go up to your room where you ask yourself; should I crawl under the bed? Do I dare stand at the window? We were quite pragmatic and decided to just get on with things, because we couldn't see how either side could gain anything politically by blowing up a rock'n'roll show. It wasn't as if the whole world was saying, 'oh wow, the Clash are in Belfast.' The only people who cared that we were there were the other scrawny punk rockers walking around Belfast.
Kristine McKenna: In A Riot of Our Own, the 1999 book about the Clash written by Johnny Green and Garry Barker, everyone in the band comes off well, with the exception of Mick Jones, who's depicted as being ridiculously obsessed with his wardrobe. Is the book accurate?
Joe Strummer: Yes it is, but you need some of that in a rock'n'roll band! If Paul Simonon hadn't been in the Clash I doubt that we would've been as successful as we were, because you need to look stylish. People don't think of Bob Dylan as a glamorous guy, but he was actually pretty good looking. When you think of his Cuban heel phase, with the curly head, the Carnaby Street clothes, the polka-dot tab collars, the tight jeans, the boots—he was pretty styling.
Kristine McKenna: Rumor has it that Bob's had a face-lift.
Joe Strummer: That's probably a good idea. You have to remember, this is show biz, and it's not as if Bob's a merchant banker or a film critic or something. If he wants to go out on the road for another 20 or 30 years, he's gonna want to tuck it up a bit. It's not as if we're novelists who can hide in our studies like J.D. Salinger and never have our photos taken. It's easy for those people to say what the heck. You don't know what it's like having photos taken of yourself all the time. It's appalling to regularly see the destruction of age marked out sharply on your face in photos, videos, and on television. This is a visual thing we do. Johnny Cash dyes his hair, and I think it's only right that we try and scruff up a shambling face.
Kristine McKenna: At what point did you become an adult?
Joe Strummer: Are you kidding?! I'm nowhere near becoming an adult.
Kristine McKenna: What do you think you represent to the people who admire you?
Joe Strummer: Maybe they see a good soul.
Kristine McKenna: Tell me about someone who inspires you.
Joe Strummer: Bo Diddley is inspiring. When he was a young musician starting out he needed some maracas, so he went to the local scrap yard, got some of those floating balls that sit in the tank of a toilet, filled them with black-eyed peas, then used them to invent a whole new kind of music. That's heroic and inspiring.
Kristine McKenna: What's the biggest obstacle you've overcome in your life?
Joe Strummer: I wouldn't say I've overcome it yet, but it's my sheer laziness. I'd rather sit and watch 'Popeye' cartoons than do anything. Nowadays I'm into 'The Simpsons,' 'South Park,' and 'SpongeBob SquarePants.'
Kristine McKenna: The second album by your current band, the Mescaleros, is dedicated to the late Joey Ramone. What was the nature of his genius?
Joe Strummer: A sharp intelligence. People think of spirit when they think of the Ramones, but the more I listen to those records the more I'm struck by how smart they are.
Kristine McKenna: Where do you think Joey is now?
Joe Strummer: He's in heaven.
Kristine McKenna: Do you believe in heaven?
Joe Strummer: Maybe not for me, but certainly for Joey Ramone.
Kristine McKenna: What's the most one can hope for in life?
Joe Strummer: The sense of having accomplished something—and I don't have that feeling yet. Being in the line of work I'm in, you hold yourself up against the real greats like Dylan, Ray Davies, Jagger & Richards, Paul Simon, Lennon & McCartney, and John Fogerty. I'm not in that pantheon yet, but I'm gonna get there.
--
Kristine McKenna is a Los Angeles-based writer and curator. She is presently organizing "Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle," an exhibition that will begin a national tour of four museums beginning in September, 2004. A second volume of her collected interviews will be published later this year by Fantagraphics, and her biography of Wallace Berman will be out in 2005.
Photos: Ann Summa
Slash Magazine
Slash Magazine was launched in May of 1977 to cover L.A.'s nascent punk scene, and it played a hugely influential role in galvanizing the growth of L.A. punk, and shaping the direction it took. It was a central presence in this community for three years, then its authority began to wane in October of 1980. At that point founding editors Claude Bessy and Philomena Winstanley moved to England, where Bessy worked as a V.J. at the legendary Hacienda Club in Manchester (Bessy died of lung cancer in 1991); founding publishers Steve Samiof and Melanie Nissen moved on to other projects; and L.A.'s original punk scene was corrupted by record company money and heroin.
Today, Slash stands as an invaluable record of a fabulous episode of history. The excerpts from Slash Magazine presented here and on page 26 are reprinted with the generous permission of Steve Samlof.
KRISTINE MCKENNA
SPECIAL EXTRA:
The Clash on stage in London (twice), Santa Monica (once), facts, opinions, and...still no interview.
December something, in London. The Clash are playing a "Sid Vicious Defense Fund" benefit at the Music Machine. No press passes, everyone must pay, it's for the cause. Naturally it is sold out before you have time to search your pockets for the dough. I have never seen The Clash before, I shift from fear to anticipation with every tube stop. Security galore at the door and around the entrances, I suppose benefits for criminals do deserve extra loving care. Inside it looks just like them books about punk and how it used to be: scene time, the IN gig to be at tonight. Sid sure got lots of friends.
First band on is The Innocents, an almost all-girl band (the exception is an ex-Electric Chair) that have been adopted by The Clash as their current opening band. They're all right with nothing special, it goes by without any impact, background noise to fill the void while waiting for something. They play a rather long set with virtually no response from the crowd. There are beers to score, friends to look for and strangers to be judged by their looks so no one has time to spare for the band. The music has become just one of the many elements of THE SCENE, an increasingly disturbing aspect of some gigs. Soon young bands may simply refuse to open those "special" shows once they realize it's the surest way to stay anonymous.
After a long posing break some guys walked on, one of them Mick Jones on guitar, don't know and after a while didn't care who the others were. Innocuous America-influenced music (even did a Dylan tune), maybe they were together for a laugh, Mick seemed to be having a good time being flash on the guitar, certainly a less demanding job playing with this bunch than being a fourth of The Clash, and a lot less imposing. The band disappeared but hardly anyone noticed.
After them the legendary Slits took over and good-naturedly slobbered their own brand of everyday music all over the joint, Ari Up decked out for the night in her version of classical entertainment gear; tired tutu probably full of cigarette holes and fishwife hairdo miraculously grown overnight to jungle proportions. Their songs came across with more punch and focus than one should expect from this type of stubbornly unconcerned assembly of misfits—after all, Palmolive had been replaced by a genuine rock drummer, so there must be hidden somewhere in this carefree parade a genuine thought or two about the future of the band. Not that The Slits are yet on the verge of an EMI offer, or any kind of offer for that matter. They should be granted the honorary Los Angeles New Wave Spirit Medal for having lasted that long without any faint hint of a brighter future having materialized en route. Keep at it, girls (and boy), you must be doing something right!
The Clash stormed on, and until then it had been more waiting than live music, and most of THAT wasn't what you'd call memorable. Anyway here they were, just like in the pictures: Mick hair shorter than his L.A. visit, scarf and swagger and very very rock 'n' roll (check early vintage pics for comparisons and private conclusions); Joe having no choice but to look like Joe and as real and likeable as I wanted him to be; Topper way back in sweat suit and sea of drums; and Paul on the right minus his spike, serious and low key.
They exploded into a series of songs off the "Rope" album, giving every tune that extra raw franticness that the record lacks and not losing any of the melodic sophistication in the process. Like erasing the Sandy Pearlman gloss and being blasted by a breath of fresh air. And here I was, liking them quite a lot in other ways than I had expected, getting adjusted to the fact that they were a hell of a unique rock/punk band with potential for being THE essential street band of the next decade—and with flaws, weaknesses and an occasional lack of scope in their own self-limitations that made you wonder how they ever got that far on such shaky ground.
That night Strummer's vocals came close to critical depths; once he offhandedly acknowledged the fact that it wasn't up to standards and gratingly yowled the opening lines to the next tune (could have been "Police and Thieves", the worst possible live version of this seemingly undemanding tune, a butcher job that effectively proved that nothing is as easy as it sounds on record, especially them slower tunes that show the gaps in the seams and the studio bluffs behind the cracks). Yet "Stay Free", a tune that I can happily skip over on vinyl, was honest and straightforward—Mick Jones gave Joe a breather on vocals, and although he has none (and does not try for) of the manic "I-mean-it-man" edge of Strummer, he handled that particular song with class and style.
Later thru the set they brought in the old classics of the first album, and it was reassuring to see that the newer cuts had been accepted as enthusiastically by the fans as the standards, and in most cases performed with much more challenge and audacity. There is always trouble brewing when a band, no matter how good and clever they can be, have to rely on the older stuff to get the place jumping. Thank god The Clash audience is still right there with them, with fans and band nicely progressing along to being the best band and the best audience of rock history. And if you think we've moved away from strictly punk matters by getting into this rock history business, you're quite right.
The Clash have a lot going for them, some of it in the right direction as defined by this paper's particular stand, and some of it toward various shiny shortcuts to mass acceptance and commercial relevance, with the negligible price of image shifting and aesthetic streamlining (Sandy Pearlman in complete control of next album would be a way to get there fast) to pay for the material bonuses that would fall like rain on our ex-culture guerrillas. Do you know how much one of the big commercial enterprises would pay for a really good, modern, challenging and exciting but ultimately SAFE new band? Why do you think they're spending millions on The Cars and their like? The way they see it, they're bound to score one of these days with the new Beatles/Rolling Stones, the catalyst of the '80s, the big prize in the sweepstakes to the future. If only The Clash would agree on being just a bit... easier to hug and dream about. Will they, won't they???
Part two. Later in the same month, at the Lyceum.
This was a genuine tour gig (the "Sort It Out" tour that preceded the American "Pearl Harbor '79" tour that swiftly got renamed—who chickened out and who agreed to soften the image??—the "Give 'Em Enough Rope" tour, creative labelling that one, must originate from record company think tank) with two dates at the worn-out Lyceum (a third one was added due to public demand) featuring The Innocents, The Slits, and the old boys.
The Innocents continued to be real troupers and played their hearts out to mild gobbing and can throwing; The Slits played The Slits again with many real fans giving them the roots support they must treasure since nothing else has come from the sky above as it did for almost every other odd assortment of misfits with stolen instruments. Yet I kept thinking ugly stuff like them being The Clash's gutter credibility token, the Wild Man Fischers to the Frank Zappas, the naive fools in the court of the king. Maybe they're just good friends and I am a paranoid twisted hair-splitter. That's what happens when a section of our flesh like The Clash gets accepted and coveted by the other side: everyone left behind in our day-to-day insecurities and rages hopes for the best and keeps expecting the worst. Upward mobility can be a bitch on relationships. I know: back to music.
Okay. The Clash. The stage. The audience. Mix the three, shake well, pour. It was pretty much the same set as the benefit, but this time I felt the power, I saw the myth in action. You guessed it, they were HOT. Strummer effortlessly carried the tunes to the very end, the rest felt more secure and willing to relax (which in The Clash handbook has never meant mellowing out), and every moment felt true and right. The few weak lapses were immediately erased by the next explosion—The Clash and their music were everything they should be, which is a lot.
Honorable mention to Topper Headon, the invisible heartbeat, the long-distance runner behind the 50-yard dash experts. Second honorable mention to the audience, so beautifully necessary to the show (try to find thousands of paying customers that know the lyrics to every song YOUR band has ever done, and sing them and dance them and will not drop until you do!), so energized by the music, the meaning behind the music, and each other that even skeptics and mutterers gawk and envy (an impossible task to achieve during a wham-bam American tour in front of brand-new customers with curiosity as their main motive for being there). The Clash are not the REAL Clash without their audience, and so what we all saw in America was like a sketch that hasn't been filled in—and without imagination, the fuss about these four guys might have seemed a bit exaggerated. It wasn't, we're just in the wrong place, as usual.
THE CLASH, BO DIDDLEY, THE DILS Feb. 9, Santa Monica Civic
The Dils said they'd be on at 8:30, but at the last minute Avalon Productions had other ideas and 8:00 was the real starting point. So I missed them. People I talked to reported they played well, though a little tensely. As I was soon to find out, they weren't the only ones supercharged from the pressurized atmosphere. Some—record company people? Clash people? individual crooks?—sold silk-screen T-shirts and buttons in the lobby at the customary ripoff prices. For lack of business, they quickly folded their tents and disappeared into the stampeding horde.
The less said about Bo Diddley the better. Lay it at the feet of his pudgy, hippie back-up musicians and you'll have pretty much hit the nail on the head. The show, by this time, was moving along at a breakneck pace; it was only 9:30, Bo was off, and The Clash were only moments away. Meanwhile, the British DJ played "New Wave" hits that were better than the standard hardrock/MOR fare usually found at concerts this size but still proved little more than background static. It's a sad comment that the only American record played (that I heard) was the abysmal single by the unfunny, out-crowd swingers, The Rotters. No other local bands received any airplay period.
It's heavy praise that The Clash, taking the stage, immediately vanquished the uncomfortably slimy shiver that was slowly working its way up my spine. I've only had this feeling of expectation fulfilled a few times: Bowie (the first Ziggy tour), The Stooges at the Whisky, The Sex Pistols, X...
They were all a little nervous, Joe especially, sublimating the tension into a quaking, shaking fury—every song in fast, epileptic motion. I could swear that "White Man in Hammersmith Palais" came in under two minutes. And through the mud wall of sound, Joe made the translation. You couldn't comprehend a fucking, deafening word, but he made himself understood. Veins popped and the blood was ready to burst from his eye sockets. He trembled, swayed, and rambled on with an undeniable authority, moving into a kind of Old Testament place, the realm of the possessed. A simple description can't do him justice. He brought down the wrath of the gods on everyone's heads, while Mick and Paul jumped, splaying their legs, rending their instruments in two with what Lee Perry has described as playing "with an iron fist." Nicky was the coal stoking fire.
Then they were gone and back again, Kickboy joining them onstage for an encore of "London's Burning." Joe seemed simultaneously delighted/terrified at seeing him. Two bars and the honeymoon was over. Football bouncers descended on Kickboy like a swarm of hungry locusts and, once backstage, proceeded to beat the living shit out of him under the eve of a merciless Caroline Coon. And suddenly you could understand the apprehension in Joe's eyes—here was evidence of something monstrous and sick afoot in the house of Dread, something that Joe had very little control over.
More of this evidence came to light in the following backstage press conference. One got the feeling of gunpoint coercion on The Clash to force them to face these guardians of the "people's voice." And once you heard and saw the, mostly, idiotic representatives of the press, you understood The Clash's hesitancy to indulge what could turn out to be just more of the same lame, image-making and out-of-context publicity. A barely repressed hostility hung in the air, detectable somewhere in between the odor of Heineken and eau de cologne.
When The Clash at last filed in, they looked tired and on edge. When they spoke, they were sullen, yet totally unafraid in letting their true feelings be known, no matter what the "professional cost."
Chris D.
Clash Press Conference
The following are rough quotes from the Clash press conference held in a conventioneer room following the concert. Due to overzealous security, Slash was allowed only 2 representatives and, as last minute substitutes we didn't have tape recorder or camera. These remarks were scribbled in ballpoint pen on the back of the CBS Epic Clash fact sheet which gave such useful information as the population of England and the correct spellings of the band members' names.
The following remarks are not verbatim.
Q: Aren't press conferences sad?
(Jones) You mean depressed conferences?
Q: How do you like America?
Lovely...we don't like television...but there seems to be a healthy scene everywhere we've been. We're coming back in June.
Q: Who will produce your next album?
We are.
Q: Did Patti Smith give you money to get started?
(Simonon) 3 quid to get me shoes repaired.
Q: Are you planning to fill the gap left by the Sex Pistols?
What gap?
Q: How do you feel about being stars?
We can still walk the streets in London. We avoid the big pop star bit. We'd never play in big stadiums garage band...we still stand by all that stuff. Periodically feel just as suicidal.
Q: Do you want success?
We want to be the best band in the world.
Q: How do you feel about your record company?
I wish they'd fucking leave us alone. They don't know what we're about. I wish they'd stop putting out ads for us with the Statue of Liberty all bundled up in bits of rope.
Q: What's your next single going to be?
A cover of "I Fought the Law" by the Bobby Fuller Four.
Q: What do think of the criticism that people can't hear the words in your records?
(Strummer) Well, you know 'The medium is the message'? We like to slobber the message.
Q: What kind of politics are you into?
Personal politics.
Q: When's your next gig for Rock Against Racism?
Never. The shows are not together, bad sound, bad organization.
Q: Are American fans victims of the same repression as English fans?
There are lots of angry people here in America.
Q: What English bands do you like?
The Slits. Subway Sect.
Q: What do you think of people who refuse to accept the new music?
(Jones) They're prematurely senile. Maybe they think Kiss, Foreigner and all that are what they want. After all, they've already got a Mick Jones... and when we're blown out, you'll have somebody else.
Q: What about reggae music?
It's a big thing in England. In Jamaica, it's turning into disco.
Q: Why did you have Bo Diddley on the bill? Shouldn't you give a chance to the local bands in areas you play in?
We like Bo Diddley's music... but sure, we think local bands deserve a chance, that's why we had the Dils. Others deserve it too, like the Germs (Much applause here as Lorna Doom had just been allowed into the press conference after totally disrupting it by banging on the windows outside)
Q: Can't you better control security, sound, etc?
In England we've got our own security, our own sound man. We brought along our own lighting man and our own DJ. We like to put together a good show.
(Referring to the incident of a Slash editor getting beaten up by security)
Strummer: We never said it was going to be a utopia. Rock and roll is played on enemy ground. You can go on about getting the shit kicked out of you, you can talk about the bloke who got murdered by security guards in England, but we've stopped much more (violence) than you can imagine.
(Referring to the incident at the Azteca Club in North Hollywood when the Dils played and the LAPD riot squad jumped on stage to try to stop the show because they thought the pogoers were fighting)
Jones: That was one of the stories I took home. I said, you ain't seen nothing until you've seen the guys on stage with the machine guns.
Q: Do you think we're losing the battle?
(Strummer) Sometimes I do. But sometimes you've got to wake up in the morning and think, we're gonna win the bloody battle.
- JB
When the Two Sevens Clashed
Joe Strummer and The Clash helped start the punky reggae party—and did more than anyone to keep it going.
Jamaican reggae deejay/producer MIKEY DREAD was there.
by Carter Van Pelt
"Joe Strummer is the one who was like, 'Go get them Mikey, don't let them tell you what to do!'"
When Bob Marley sang his 1977 reggae-stepper "Punky Reggae Party," he called out "The Damned, The Jam, The Clash..." Marley may have overlooked the Pistols' reggae-loving Johnny Rotten, but few in the London punk movement were drawn to the party with the passion of The Clash's Joe Strummer, Paul Simonon and Mick Jones, and nobody did more to represent reggae to the punk rock scene.
Members of The Clash had grown up in close proximity to the Jamaican community that relocated to England in the post-WWII period. Paul Simonon's "Guns of Brixton" is a direct reflection of this experience, as is Strummer's "White Man in Hammersmith Palais." The latter documents Strummer's night in a Jamaican dancehall in West London, as he explained in 1991: "All over the world people are oppressed and in London there were the dreads and there were the punks, and we had an alliance. England is a very repressive country... Immigrants were treated badly... So these people had a sense of pride and dignity, and when we went into their concerts, where we should have had the grace to have left them alone... And they didn't jump us, they didn't stomp us, they didn't beat the seven shades of you-know-what out of us.... They understood that maybe we needed a drop of this roots culture. And 'White Man in Hammersmith Palais' is a song that was going through my mind while I was standing in the middle of the Hammersmith Palais...in a sea of thousands of rastas and dreads and natty rebels. That song was trying to say something realistic."
Evidence of the group's interest in reggae could be seen before it was heard. The cover of the first single, "1977," strongly resembles the cover of Joe Gibbs and The Professionals' State of Emergency album—men lined up with their backs to the camera, hands on a wall, on the verge of arrest. On the "1977" cover, this was augmented by the Jamaican political slogans on Strummer's clothes: "Heavy Manners" and "Heavy Duty Discipline." These ideas were likely gleaned from Prince Far I's Under Heavy Manners album, an oft-cited Clash favorite. Later visual references to the group's cultural interests include the cover of Black Market Clash, which features a picture of a lone Rasta in defiance of riot police at the 1976 Notting Hill Carnival. Strummer's and Jones' experiences at Notting Hill in 1976 were the inspiration for the song "White Riot."
The Clash's first attempt to work with reggae musicians was a short alliance in 1977 with the Rasputin of reggae, Lee Perry. The result, "Complete Control," was less than inspired, but the group kept at it, achieving intercultural consanguinity in 1980 when they brought Jamaican deejay/producer Mikey Dread to the controls. Their collaboration on "Bank Robber" and "Robber Dub" (off Black Market Clash) was followed by the "Train In Vain" b-side "Rockers Galore-UK Tour" and the tracks "Junco Partner," "Living In Fame," "One More Time," "One More Dub," "If Music Could Talk," and "Shepherd's Delight" on the massive Sandinista album. Mikey's voice can be heard on "Living in Fame," "One More Time" and "If Music Could Talk."
While Mikey is still in contention today with The Clash's management over alleged unpaid publishing and lack of recognition for the album sales garnered by Sandinista, his respect for Strummer's and Simonon's "reggae mission" remains.
"I see Joe Strummer as a leader in the rock world who never got the recognition that he deserved for his upfrontness, addressing issues that other people were reluctant to address—'White Riot' and all dem tings deh," he told ARTHUR, on the phone from his home in Florida. "When I met them, I was surprised that these people were supporting reggae, buying reggae every week, and up-to-date with what's going on..."
"One thing I can say about the Clash, they were no racists. There were a lot of times I been to places where skinheads and punks wanted to kick my butt, as a black man, and [the Clash] would warn me, 'Tomorrow don't go out alone, have one of us follow you.' They start to wear their Doctor Martin shoes, and they buy me a pair as well so they know we're on the war path. Anybody come, we just mess them up."
Mikey Dread's live performances with The Clash involved taking the stage alone to sing over recordings of his own "Dread At The Controls" rhythm productions and later joining The Clash for encores. This Jamaican dancehall-style performance was understood and received enthusiastically in Europe, but Mikey ran into problems at his first US appearance.
"I wasn't supposed to be on tour with them, but they asked me to come along. They wanted to introduce me to their crowd, but I got a bad reception in LA. I'll never forget Los Angeles. We played all over the world and when we came to Los Angeles, all the punkers tried to boo me off stage.
The punks got really mad, and I'm looking at like 20,000 people and wondering what the hell is gonna go on. I told the guys, 'I'm not playing tonight, 'cause they don't want to see a black man out there.' We had one black bouncer and me. That is it for blacks. And it was pure white man out there, some bad punks! They wanted to eat me alive!
Joe Strummer is the one who was like, 'Go get them Mikey, don't let them tell you what to do!' And me just go out there and get serious and say, 'You know I'm coming to the United States I was thinking I was going to be meeting a lot of intelligent people, people who are open-minded, people who are cosmopolitan, people who are not prejudiced and racist, people who want the world to live in unity.'
I give them a speech and chastise them for their rude behavior. And trust me mon, the crowd went quiet like you could hear a pin drop. Then I said, 'I know you're here to see the Clash, but I'm going to introduce you to some reggae music, from the roots! Are you ready?' And they say, 'yea!!' And we just start lick some tune and that was it. We broke the ice."
Not only did The Clash cover reggae tracks like Willi Williams' "Armagideon Time," Jr. Murvin's "Police and Thieves," and The Maytals' "Pressure Drop," they name-dropped and referenced their reggae heroes in their lyrics—Prince Far I in "Clash City Rockers," Dr. Alimantado in "Rudy Can't Fail," The Abyssinians' "Sattamassaga" in "Jimmy Jazz," and Dillinger, Leroy Smart, Ken Boothe, and Delroy Wilson in "White Man In Hammersmith Palais." Strummer even documented his and Jones' chaotic jaunt to Kingston in "Safe European Home." (Curiously, Simonon—arguably the band's biggest reggae head—was left behind in England, a major slight that he talks about with obvious residual bitterness in Don Letts' Clash doc, Westway to the World.)
Strummer's love of Jamaican music continued in his solo career. The lyrics on "Techno D-Day" from the Mescaleros' Rock Art & The X-Ray Style describe "using the headphones for a mike, for Tenor Saw's delight, I sang another new sound is dying," a reference to Tenor Saw's "Ring The Alarm." Strummer also recorded a cover of Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come" with deejay Tippa Irie and The Long Beach Dub Allstars on the Free The Memphis 3 benefit album, and co-wrote the disquieting title track for Horace Andy's Living in the Flood album, released on Massive Attack's Melankolic label.
Over the last 20 years, The Clash's embrace of Jamaican music has continued to inspire like-minded efforts by musicians like Bad Brains, Massive Attack, 311, Rancid, Sublime, Long Beach Dub Allstars and No Doubt. The punky reggae party that started so improbably way back in '77 has never really stopped.
Thanks to Jim Dooley and Stanley Whyte for the fact assists.
A Radical Puts Down Roots
It was Joe's inspiration and energy backstage at Glastonbury 1996 that got Future Forests going. Joe said "Bands must be contributing to global warming by their buses, equipment trucks and the diesel used to power the stages. Can you imagine how much carbon dioxide the pressing and the distribution of a CD creates? What shall we do about it?" Dan Morrell's response: Plant trees to re-absorb the CO2. Joe then decided that he would have his own forest planted to offset the emissions from his CDs and became the world's first carbon-neutral artist. He then put Future Forests in touch with many other people in the industry. With Joe's credibility, blessings and contacts, Future Forests has attracted support from Pink Floyd, Pulp, Beth Orton, Foo Fighters and Massive Attack.
Joe's Forest is hidden away on the shores of Loch Bracadale, North West Skye. This beautiful site is being recreated into a forest of native broadleaves. Interspersed within the greenery are areas of archaeological interest, mainly ancient crafting infrastructures, which the forest will help to protect from the elements. Overshadowed by the majestic Macleod's Table, Orbost Forest will provide a home to hundreds of species of wildlife, including otters, red deer, foxes, and a haven to the increasingly threatened nesting sea-eagle. A popular local walk travels the scenic route from Orbost to the nearby sea stacks known as McCloud's Maidens. As a community woodland, planting at Orbost has generated a huge amount of local enthusiasm and will be carried out by the Orbost Trust, comprised of residents of the local area. Species planted here will be predominantly birch, oak, rowan, alder and willow, with some woody shrubs in-between.
To plant a tree in Joe's memory, log onto www.futureforests.com.
Arthur March 2003