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Joe Strummer of The Clash, R.I.P. UPI, December 24, 2002 |
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Joe Strummer, the lead singer and chief lyricist for The Clash, who died on Sunday at age 50 in his rural home in the West of England, was a man of passion, paradoxes, and poses. From 1977 to 1982, Strummer and Clash lead guitarist Mick Jones wrote enough great songs to ultimately rank below only Lennon-McCartney and Jagger-Richard in the pantheon of British rock songwriting duos. Many rock critics are eulogizing Strummer for being the embodiment of leftist working class surliness and the scourge of neocolonialism in the Third World. Yet, these were largely invented facades. The truth was more interesting. Like most artists, Strummer was from a comfortable background. He was actually a well-bred offshoot of the British Empire. John Graham Mellor (Strummer's real name) was born in Turkey in 1952, where his father was a clerk in the British diplomatic service. His paternal grandfather had been an official with the Indian railways during the British Raj. Young John spent a cosmopolitan childhood accompanying his father on his postings around the world. He was then enrolled in an old-fashioned English boarding school, where he rose to the exalted position of prefect, or head boy. Eventually, he became a street musician, taking the literal-minded name Joe Strummer. He also developed a style of enunciation that sounded like Eliza Doolittle's dad after his teeth have been smashed in during a pub brawl. It has jokingly been said that for Strummer to replace his posh accent with the incomprehensible Cockney accent with which he gargled out his brilliant lyrics, he had to not brush his teeth for years. However, the Clash was not the first band Strummer was in. Before that, he was in a hard rocking pub-rock band called the 101'ers (legend has it that the band was named after the torture room in George Orwell's "1984"). The band would frequently open for pioneering British punk rockers the Sex Pistols (former Clash guitarist Keith Levene would later go on to become guitarist for Pistol's lead singer John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon's band, Public Image Ltd). After being inspired by the Pistols, Strummer quit the 101'ers and joined Mick Jones to join the rising punk revolution and create the Clash. Strummer was almost unique among top rock lyricists in his boyish disdain for love songs, which he treated as if they came infested with girl cooties. While hugely refreshing, this significantly limited The Clash's popular appeal, particularly in America, where they only enjoyed three Top 40 hits: "Train in Vain (You Didn't Stand by Me)," "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" and "Rock the Casbah." And the first two of those were boy-girl songs sung by Jones, who had more normal tastes than Strummer did in song topics. Strummer was fascinated with subjects that engage highly intelligent twelve year old boys: fighting injustice and tyranny ("Clampdown"), military history ("Spanish Bombs"), the end of the world ("London Calling"), and heroism ("Death or Glory," perhaps the essential Clash song). He packed his songs densely with allusions that often went over listeners' heads, but made him a favorite of male critics. I'm not going to quote any of his individual lines here because Strummer's technique of building up the resonances in his lyrics through multitudinous references means that they are particularly flashy outside of the complete song's context. There's no doubt that Strummer's idealistically leftist lyrics were sincere, but they also served a convenient purpose in providing a worthy justification for The Clash's furiously aggressive and even militaristic music. The sight of Joe (in live shows as energetic as Bruce Springsteen) dressed in army surplus combat gear, pounding out a martial rhythm on his guitar, and shouting in a hoarse voice that made him sound like the longest-serving sergeant on the Western Front appealed to belligerent young males on a far more visceral level than did Joe's progressive lyrics. Indeed, The Clash's sound attracted a fair number of thugs. At a 1982 Clash concert I attended in Hollywood, an entire high school football team of guys with necks thicker than their heads showed up and started shoving other fans to the floor. The band's first album, 1977's "The Clash," was as good as punk rock ever got, but that wasn't good enough for The Clash. With their notorious first single "White Riot," they had launched their career by imitating the power chording of The Ramones. These pathbreaking New York punks had developed an alternative to blues-based rock by stripping away most of the African-American elements of rock and roll, reducing it to its linear fundamentals. But as more imitators poured into punk rock, The Clash grew impatient with the genre's limits. They slowed their songs down so they could add complexity. And they reopened themselves to black influences. They increasingly explored Caribbean styles such as reggae, ska, and calypso, and American forms such as soul, disco, 50's rock, and rap. Strummer had always had a fascination with reggae and the Jamaican culture. By infusing their fast punk rock with reggae and ska, they influenced many bands today in the punk-ska genre, such as No Doubt, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Rancid, and 311. In 1979, they reached a creative climax from which emerged their extraordinarily varied masterpiece, "London Calling." A decade later, Rolling Stone magazine declared it the best album of the 1980s (although it was released in late December, 1979). While it may lack a single overwhelming cut, it was the most consistently strong double album of the Vinyl Era. Only twelve months later, The Clash followed up with what perhaps could have been the greatest single album ever. With their artistic progress going to their heads, however, they let "Sandinista" expand into a bloated triple album. The last Strummer-Jones album, 1982's "Combat Rock," featured one outstanding side and one side of pure self-indulgent experimentalism. The usual "VH1: Behind the Music" problems broke Strummer and Jones apart after 1983. Lacking his composer and thoroughly burnt out by the five-year comet ride that was The Clash, Strummer stumbled creatively for years. Fortunately, he found his footing again in the last three years with his world-music band, The Mescaleros. Appropriately, Strummer's haunting and heroic version of the Celtic folk march "Minstrel Boy," (which was also the theme song of "The Man Who Would Be King") was played over the closing credits of last year's devastating war movie "Black Hawk Down." Rest in peace, Joe.
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