By Bill Flanagan
GQ June 1997
Paul McCartney has a term for the letdown the public feels when a new song by an old group fails to make them feel young again: anticipointment. In recent years, anticipointment has been epidemic. Each of rock’s great Never Agains - CSNY, Led Zeppelin, Steely Dan, the Velvet Underground, the Eagles - has grouped for its victory lap, its old-timer’s game and its members’ kids’ college tuitions. Since the Beatles have come together for "Free As a Bird" and the Sex Pistols finished their reunion tour, the weary rock fan can truly say, "Now I’ve seen everything."
There is a sense in the music industry that we are entering the last days when people will much care if great bands of the 60’s and 70’s get back together. I suspect that’s why we’re seeing so many boxed sets, memoirs, re-releases and video retrospectives - to cash in on those valuable collector’s items before they revert to being junk. There may always be a market for the Beatles and Bob Dylan, but there is a general feeling that Fleetwood Mac should make its move as soon as possible.
Standing quietly on the sidelines during these reunions and rummage sales has been one of rock’s greatest disappearing acts: Joe Strummer, the former leader of the Clash. When the 80’s began, it looked as if the Clash was going to replace the Stones and the Who. The critics worshipped the band from its 1977 get-go. The Clash was more than the greatest punk group; it was "the only band that matters." It said so right on the album sticker. And as the Clash poured out a steady stream of singles, EPs and terrific albums like Give ‘Em Enough Rope and London Calling, the public caught on. By the early ‘80s, its records were going gold and platinum. The band filled arenas. By the time of "Rock the Casbah" and "should I Stay or Should I Go," it even had hit singles.
Then Joe Strummer had a very public crisis of conscience. Long before Kurt Cobain tied himself in a knot over the compromises of playing to a huge audience and Eddie Vedder declared war on Ticket-master, Strummer wondered aloud if massive success was not antithetical to punk values. He vanished before one tour, came back for a while and then ousted his partner Mick Jones from the band for having become more interested in being a rock star than in staying true to the Utopian values of the Clash. At the time, Strummer said he didn’t want his band to end up like the Rolling Stones. To which Keith Richards replied, "The Rolling Stones haven’t ended up yet. And we’ve never kicked anybody out of our band for ideological reasons."
Before long Strummer broke up the Clash and mended his friendship with Jones for personal, not professional, reasons. Other bands, most obviously U2, picked up the every and audience the Clash abandoned and ran with them.
For the last dozen years, former Clash fanatics have often been heard asking, "Where is Joe Strummer?" The truth is he has been roaming the world like some Sergio Leone gunslinger with a tragic past, taking on odd jobs - -a movie score in Central America, a temporary gig with the Pogues, an acting role in Spain. He has scattered good songs on other people’s albums and sound-track records.
One time I arranged for filmmaker Hart Perry to interview Strummer for a VH1 documentary about the ‘70s. Strummer told me to have Hart meet him at a tent under three flags (Jamaican, American and the Union Jack) at England’s Woodstock-like WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance) festival. Hart was not heard from for days, and when he came back it was with world tales of Strummer orchestrating an all-night tribal dance around a great bonfire. At dawn Strummer pressed the discombobulated Hart into service tying an abandoned organ he’d found to the top of his car, which they lost control of on the way home and crashed through a hedge onto some old lady’s lawn, sending the organ flying off ahead of them.
A couple of years ago, when punk became a million-dollar fad and Strummer-influenced Green Day had the number - one album, the Clash was offered big money to reunite and headline the Lollapalooza tour. They talked about it - Strummer, Jones, Paul Simonon and Topper Headon see one another socially - but decided it gave them the creeps.
"Obviously," Strummer says at his home outside London, "if my kids are starving, I’m going to bloody by up there going, ‘ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR!’" He laughs. "I’m going to be the first one up there. That well could happen. But…it’s just so odd. I gave it 101 percent back then. And I can’t think how it would be any better.
"Before the group started, we sort of nicked Paul Simonon from an art college. We said, ‘Throw those old paintbrushes away! Look, here’s a bass guitar.’ He has a show in London last October in a reputable gallery and did well and was critically well received. A Clash reunion would be taking Paul away from what he really should be doing."
To start an argument with Joe Strummer, just present him with a topic; he’ll take both sides. "Would it be just a one-off?" he asks of the imaginary Clash ’97 tour. "Around the world, like the Pistols? Well, fair enough - everyone could do with a pension. And I did love that Pistols reunion, because that was the band that rocked London - the Glenn Matlock version. Brilliant, just brilliant.
"But I was watching the Velvet Underground in the field at Glastonbury [the British rock festival . Our man Lou [Reed is not the most communicative. After the last number, everyone started shuffling around in different directions, and I was sort of leaning on a wall thinking, Well, so what?
"The only reason you’d want to do that was when everyone’s broke. No one would begrudge you that. But I’m a bit worried that nothing would come of that but a repetition of the tunes. If you’re not creative, you’re dead, you know."
To prove it, Strummer pulls out a track he recorded at home last week with a reggae singer named Horace Andy called "Living in the Flood." It’s terrific , a sparse, haunted song that demonstrates how the reggae rhythm can be stripped of its usual thick, echoey production and take on an effect that is specific to no culture. It’s of a piece with another recent Strummer recording, a song called "Generations" that showed up on a benefit compilation for the Human Rights Action Center. Both recordings continue a style the Clash touched on in songs like "Straight to Hell" and albums like Sandinista!, an Angelo-Latino marriage that erases the lines between the First World and the Third.
When the '80s began, the Clash was going to replace the Stones and the Who. Then Strummer broke up the band. |
He turns off the new song and sighs: "We’re really happy with it. But it’s strange, because I do have long periods of inactivity as well.
"I’ve also worked with a techno group called the Grid. We knocked out two ro three lovely tracks and then went our separate ways. Everybody who hears them says, ‘Wow, you should release that.’ So…" Strummer seems unsure of himself, not his usual condition. "I might collect all these things together and put them out."
I say that seems like a good idea, but Strummer’s not really talking to me.
"It’s going to be difficult," he says, "but it hit me last week that I kept feeling sad. Every time I did something that came out pretty damn good, I’d also feel bittersweet because I realized, Oh, it’s never going to get out. I’d get up and pace the room. I’ve been able to chill myself out by saying, Well, perhaps without too much to-ing and fro-ing, I could get these things together and put them out."
I give him a moment, and sure enough, Strummer makes the counterarguement: "I think it’s a real crime to put our a bad record or a worthless piece of shite. I’d hate to do that."
I tell him that many important artists have stymied themselves by thinking nothing they do -
"- is good enough. Yeah! You’re right. It’s a king of ego trip, isn’t it?"
That’s why deadlines are good. Otherwise no creative person would ever let go of anything. With "Generations," former Amnesty International chief Jack Healey had asked Strummer for a song, and his only opportunity to write and cut it was on his last day in the L.A. studio where he was scoring John Cusack’s new movie, Grosse Pointe Blank.
"Not only has we run out of studio time," Strummer says, "but they were ready to print they were ready to master. So that stopped us from having too much time to worry about it. And it came out fresh."
Does Strummer have the financial base to support his family if he continues to follow his heart rather than his bankbook?
"I live on royalties from songwriting. One year you might get a good check, and another year you might get a lousy one. It’s a bit weird. Most people can figure out where they are financially; this kind of existence leads to insecurity a bit."
You have to wonder if he ever indulges in wishing he’d kept the Clash together. Wishing it was his band and not U2 playing the football stadiums this summer.
"No." Strummer says forcefully. "I never think like that. Never. You’ll get sick in the head and then sick in the body if you think like that. We must have split up because we came to the end of the road. If I felt my mind was drifting toward that thought, I’d stamp it out."
He realizes again and says softly, "and anyway, the hell with it. Life’s about your friendships, the way you love your partner, the way you care for your children. That is what life is about. Not anything about earning a hundred zillion dollars because you toured America more than anyone else. I want life to be about creativity."
And unlike all the other rock musicians who might tell you the same thing, when Joe Strummer says it, you believe he’s telling the truth.
Bill Flanagan is the editorial director of VH1 and the author of U2 at the End of the World (Delacorte Press)
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