Let Fury Have the Hour
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A moment. The 1980s. Theft. Two detached leaders pushing the harshest of agendas, forging a partnership like a two-headed hydra that declared compassion a mortal weakness, a silly contrivance that goes against our human nature to get everything we can only for ourselves. If society doesn’t exist, then your community, your neighborhood, is a figment of the do-gooders’ imagination, people who really just want attention for themselves. Thinking for and about others is the very definition of selfishness. Thinking of only you is true selflessness. But didn’t they say the family was central? Family values? Last time I checked the family is the most basic form of social organization, the foundation of a society, the core group in a democracy bound together by sharing. The poor didn’t exist. AIDS didn’t exist. Civil rights didn’t exist. It’s so funny it makes you cry, the twisted logic of it all.
Reagan’s master plan sought to roll back the gains of Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Trickle down economics, an absurdist con trick that even the cleverest Dada prankster artist could never hope to pull off. Reagan and his clan pulled it off, shoved it down our throats, and patted each other on the back. Job well done. Trickle down on the many from the geyser flooding the bank accounts of the few. Thatcher’s cabinet memo consisted of one large bullet point: dismantle the social democratic state. One for one and all for none. The free ride was over. Public education. Health care. Good jobs. Pensions. Opportunities. Exhaled out like a puff of smoke. Gone. “It was the era of R&B—Reagan to Bush—that motivated me to do something about it,” Chuck D says in my film Let Fury Have the Hour. “And then do a lot about it.” “Indeed, Margaret Thatcher was my greatest influence,” Billy Bragg says. Reagan, Bush, and Thatcher too. They were united around one clear principle: against.
“Corporate Violence for Sale” from Artist Shepard Fairey ‘s Reagan & Friends mural series inspired by Antonino D’Ambrosio’s film Let Fury Have the Hour. (Courtesy Shepard Fairey.)
All these moments strung together established a politics and a culture that remain mean and nasty. Tug on those bootstraps even though your feet are bare. It’s your fault you failed. You’re a fool to be compassionate, to be a citizen, to take active participation in making the world around you work just a little bit better for everyone: all just a vainglorious attempt at getting attention. Wow! They couldn’t be serious, could they? No one would fall for this, would they? The answer is stuck in my throat. Morning in America again was more like mourning in America. Reagan and Thatcher were like a well-orchestrated three act theater piece reminiscent of an Oscar Wilde high farce minus the witty dialogue, taking everything to a new level of spellbinding unreality. Act I: wear the mask of populism. Act II: remove the mask, reveal the true face. Act III: erase and rewrite history. Done.
Thirty years later we’re still grieving over what could have been, what should have been, what might still be possible. Springsteen’s Telecaster-soaked declaration is a piercing feedback echoed by a June 1, 2009, New York Times headline: “Reagan Did It.” The article traced the root cause of the current economic meltdown straight back to “Reaganomics,” which relied heavily on deregulating financial markets. The outcome: the rise of “casino capitalism,” allowing private investors a free hand to gamble with tax dollars and loot the system. Now we find ourselves at a disquieting moment in history. Democracy is besieged, not rising. The current political movements and their leaders seem unable to comprehend the enormity of the global challenges that stare out at us to the vanishing point. The disintegrating markets are just a precursor to the real havoc under way around the world. With America currently caught in a tug-of-war between cultural clashes and dystopian debates, we linger oblivious to the fact that there is a remarkable geopolitical shift unfolding that requires creative response, not reactionary rancorousness. “Our problems are also all of our assets,” said Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, currently under house arrest. “Understanding this promising paradox helped us not to lose hope, and to be able to go on since we believe wherever in the world that we live, we are going to face problems, big or small. But it is our duty not to be defeated and to find solutions.” Instead, current political leaders choose to engage not with facts and consensus but via a “win at all costs” strategy, which is wildly out of step with what the historical moment demands. By rousing people with fear, flouting of the rule of law, and creating an illusory society via spectacle and outright lies, America finds itself a confused and misled country. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us and Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Both are proven right in today’s political culture.
On the surface, the original edition of this book seemed to be about an individual, a musician who was part of a group that was more like a gang and defined one generation, inspiring another and dreaming the next. But it wasn’t and still isn’t.
It’s about seeing the world as interconnected and interdependent, an urban territory inhabited by us all. My essays from the original book inspired the feature length film of the same name and along with my new essays in this new edition makes up the frame whose walls and roof are hammered into place by the imagination of those who read these words. It’s about constructing a counternarrative founded in the reality of being alive and not the falsely conceived reality show packaged and sold to us like our daily bread. “I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career,” Lloyd Dobler declares in Say Anything. “I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.” Lloyd, played by Strummer fan and friend John Cusack, proudly wears a Clash T-shirt during this soliloquy.
Artist Shepard Fairey’s Reagan & Friends mural series inspired by Antonino D’Ambrosio’s film Let Fury Have the Hour. Placed on wall in downtown IA by Shepard Fairey and OBEY Giant Team. (Courtesy Shepard Fairey.)
Following the first edition of this book, I came to work with many of the creative activists the book aimed to uplift: Chuck D, Billy Bragg, Wayne Kramer, Ian MacKaye, Edwidge Danticat, John Sayles, Hari Kunzru, Shepard Fairey, Eugene Hütz, Lewis Black, and more. And each, incomparably, stakes a claim in my film. Likewise, my work since has taken me around the world bringing into sharp focus something the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano once told me: “This is where, more than ever, I was able to confirm that a book can have fingers that touch those who read it because the process of writing . . . opened my eyes to the many undiscovered roads that exist.” These experiences also reaffirmed my deeply held belief in the profound power we share in our common humanity. “I felt a growing desire to reach out and touch my fellow creatures throughout the world. Perhaps evil forces dominate the course of events, but I sense in the hearts of men, if not a sense of fraternity, but at least one of inquiry. This curiosity is still on the surface but it is better than nothing.” That’s Jean Renoir discussing his 1951 film The River. Nothing could be better and that’s the spirit embedded in the new edition as well as the film Let Fury Have the Hour.
In the beginning, the Clash tapped on my window, waving me to come outside and see that there was something more. Life as a series of moments tied together, at once long and hard but also swift and beautiful. Not static but fluid and freely moving. The past, the present, and the future vividly on display with a kaleidoscopic sound that burst out from Brixton and Brooklyn. It was my town, your block, our world represented in a sonic documentary, recalibrating the historical moment, slipping into the gaps between the shallow and narrow-minded who never cease in trying to take control of the world. The Clash announced: “Are you taking over/or are you taking orders?/Are you going backwards/or are you going forwards?” Am I? Are you? These were not questions. This was the eternal challenge that art has always posed: what kind of world do you want to live in?
Call it rebel music, protest songs, the hymn of the disenfranchised and disposs
essed, crying out not from the record store bin but from the center of history. Anthems like no other for the people who wear “blue” and “brown.” People like my bricklayer father and uncles, like all the people I knew. It takes a nation of millions to kick out the jams, wait for the great leap forward, come rougher every time, and create dangerously. Stereoscopic CPR for me, painfully being left behind in the new world America was helping to transform. Ours was a generation shut out. Up until then, I floated through an old world my immigrant family existed in and a new world taking shape. One was slowly disappearing as the other erected barricades denying us entry. The light always flashing red: “Stay out! Your kind not welcome!” We were a generation given one choice: conform, hand in your citizenship, sit back, relax, consume. You can purchase your status and become somebody, anybody except yourself. If you can’t purchase your status, then you’re a nobody. A rigid era of reactionary politics and a culture defined by cynicism arose from the ashes of a society that once hoped to be great but instead wanted to dominate. The era of R&B plus T wanted to make cynics of us all. “What’s good for me and what can I get out of it” is all that matters, not what works well for everyone. Be skeptical, suspicious of anything not intended to make a profit. Trust only the freedom gained from the free market. They made everyone believe that what they were doing was natural and opposing it was some kind of slight against the divine order of things.
Grab the future by the face, the Clash said, and then I turned and the MC5 yelled in my ear, “Forget their logical desperation/utilize your imagination.” Contact. Connection. Music. Art. Life. Breath. Everything was bright and real for the first time. Everything was possible. My mind and heart could feel and see a world far beyond my lonely block. Forget about being nice and civil. Life was messy and hard and that was okay, actually a good thing. Don’t give in to what is easy and comfortable because in the course of one’s life that choice becomes difficult, a burden so emotionally heavy to maintain that it slowly saps your will to live. It’s a trap, caging our human spirit and preventing us from pushing forward to find the best of ourselves. Democracy is hard, but giving in, giving up was harder, much harder. The words reverberate, “Are you going backwards/or are you going forwards?” The answers are many and take different shapes but all point toward one thing: for, not against.
There was a huge world at the end of that block and the Clash was my initial navigator, but the journey never ends with new conductors and passengers jumping on and off for the ride. Time to sign up, become part of the gang, roll up our sleeves, and build. It’s not up to them, you, or me. It’s us. No in-between. No gray area. Hop on and join the movement of world citizenship. Reject cynicism and instead uplift creative response. Art can’t change things in and of itself, but it may just bring us together to communicate, harmonize, and create. Possibility. Reward. This isn’t a new discovery, a new revelation—but a timeless truth brought forward to the present in a way that makes anything possible. It’s easier than we’re conditioned to believe; we just have to dream. “The dream that we dream together is reality,” John Lennon once said. All good art comes from something ancient at its core, responding to and representing the quiet revolution of the human spirit, marching forward regardless of any obstacles in its path. “Art is the lie that tells the truth,” Picasso reminds us.
“Legislative Influence for Sale” from Shepard Fairey’s Reagan & Friends mural series inspired by Antonino D’Ambrosio’s film Let Fury Have the Hour. (Courtesy Shepard Fairey.)
These tensions are still white hot. They’re always walking alongside human history in the shadows, maybe even in our shadows. They just fade in and fade out. Much has happened in the time that’s passed since the first edition of this book was published. Wars started, seemingly lost, but without an end. Democracy spreading across South America. Maybe. The Arab Spring. Hurricanes, earthquakes, oil spills, nuclear meltdowns points west and east. The ghost of Tom Joad stirs as bank foreclosures reach historic levels. Austerity in Europe. Who are the cops and who are the robbers? They are one. “Police and thieves in the street (oh yeah)/Fighting the nation with their guns and ammunition,” Junior Murvin told us. The banks now rob us and the new robber barons, with leveraged buyouts and Ponzi schemes, rob everybody. “Police and thieves in the street (oh yeah)/Scaring the nation with their guns and ammunition,” the Clash reminded us. A onetime Chinese empire collapsed because it locked itself away from the rest of the world. A new one emerges with a neon sign flashing “open for business,” producing and selling anything to anyone, anywhere: a plastic trinket as disposable as the debt swallowing the world whole. Ai Weiwei knows the truth, deeming it all a “fake smile,” the words not even out of his mouth and then “bang, bang go the boots on the floor/clang clang go the Jail Guitar Doors.” Old political leaders are gone, new ones replace them. Was it change? The silence indicts us. Not handsome like the Seven Days of May’s sinister General Scott (played by Burt Lancaster) bent on taking over the government, the screams of protest come from a time-warped few stuck in a deluded, illusory loop of resurrecting a country that never died because it never lived. These aliens don’t require the dark sunglasses used in They Live! to see their true face. If they live, who dies?
Let Fury Have the Hour, the book and film, is a call to celebrate the art of living, of being for, not against. The Clash is our starting point, but they weren’t the first and certainly aren’t the last. They saw their role as storytellers, a new type of folk singer chronicling the demise of one revolution (industrial) and rise of another further alienating upheaval (technocratic). They drew a straight line back to those who went before (Erik Satie, Bartók, Woody Guthrie, Odetta, Nina Simone, the MC5) as well as those who followed (Public Enemy, Manu Chao, Fugazi, Le Tigre, Gogol Bordello, Sleater-Kinney, the Kominas). They belonged to a community of rebels, cultural activists who understand that as human beings we share, despite unique personal details, a universal outline of living in this world. The effect is an opportunity to authentically and sincerely create a new narrative, one that transcends deluded politics and the artificial borders that split us apart. Stand for, not against.
Music (as well as art of any kind) is most powerful when it illuminates the connections that should be clear but because of forces that conspire to separate and divide are now blurred, leading to a belief that these connections don’t exist. If no one knows they exist, they disappear, and all that’s left are the differences, manufactured and manipulated to continue splitting the world apart. Music counters this by serving as an antidote, injecting a luminosity of spirit that inspires a new generation to aspire to something more. By placing ourselves—this new “we”—on the historical continuum of creative responders—world citizens—who see their work as something more. It’s the mirror that returns not a reflection of who we are on the surface but a truer portrait of the essence of our humanity. It’s a challenge, a responsibility to go farther. An urgent plea that’s impossible to ignore: For.
Artist Shepard Fairey’s “Enjoy Small Privileges. Ignore Large Transgressions.” (Courtesy Shepard Fairey.)
The Clash—and more powerfully listening (music), moving (skateboarding), writing (graffiti), watching (film), and learning (literature)—allowed me to lay claim to the world that at one time felt foreign. I could reimagine what kind of world I wanted to live in but also imagine being a key player in shaping history. I could invent alternatives and then apply them in a way that I could do something to breakdown the illusion of separation. It awakened in me the connection we share with all people, engaging me to understand that I could speak the way I breathe. It gave me life as a participant. I knew that I could dream, awake in the moment, as each epoch imagines the one to follow. What emanated from the vinyl grooves spinning on the turntable while Reagan and Thatcher reduced and then eroded democracy was much more than music; it was an injection of courage and a rejection of fear, a creative birth that remains liberating. It broadcasts that the true war is between being for and being agai
nst. It still asks, Which side are you on?
Act I
MOVING OUT LOUD
Joe Strummer during the musician’s series of performances at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York, April 5, 2001. (Photo by Antonino D’Ambrosio.)
LET FURY HAVE THE HOUR
The Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer
By Antonino D’Ambrosio
Pioneering punk rock musician Joe Strummer, former front man of the Clash and political activist, died of a rare heart condition at his home in Somerset, Broomfield, England, at the age of fifty on December 22, 2002. Barely twenty-five years earlier the Clash had burst onto the London music scene to become one of the great rebel rock bands of all time. Fusing a mélange of musical styles with riotous live performances and left-wing political activism, it inspires many to this day.
By the mid-1970s, England’s postwar prosperity was melting away into rising unemployment, shrinking social service programs, and increasing poverty. The wrecked economy fueled an incendiary social situation as racism, xenophobia, and police brutality became the order of the day. Mounting feelings of anger and frustration, fused with a deepening sense of isolation, left much of English youth feeling hopeless. Trying to make sense of this mess, many found a means of expression in punk rock. More than just hard driving rock ’n’ roll, punk rock was heralded by many as a counterculture movement, a philosophy, and a way of life. Punk stood in direct opposition, aesthetically and politically, to the reigning rock establishment—then dominated by a style called “glam rock”—and it attacked conventional society. Glam was pretentious, overproduced, slick, and bourgeois. Punk rock, in stark contrast, was angry, loud, aggressive, and rooted in working-class alienation. With its four chords, simple melodies, fast tempo, and ironic lyrics, it proved irresistible.