Strummer told me the Clash was inspired by groups like the MC5 of Detroit, a cultural organ of the White Panthers. “We wanted to be more like them, using our music as a loud voice of protest . . . punk rock, at the heart of it, should be protest music.” While most bands spiraled into ridiculous caricatures of themselves, the Clash, under Strummer’s influence, became the definitive punk rock band. They drew a line in the sand and dared all to cross it and join them. While the Sex Pistols spent their time being reactionary, tawdry, and snide, the Clash were active, thoughtful, and serious.
Throughout his twenty-five years in music, Strummer touched millions. Billy Bragg, a fellow English musician and activist inspired by Strummer’s socially conscious music, said it best, describing Strummer as unwavering in “his commitment to making political pop culture.” Living true to his words, Strummer held on to his political ideals throughout his life in spite of intense media rancor and the demanding expectations of fans, who clung to his every word as if it were scripture. The pressure would have crushed a lesser talent.
Like many others growing up during the Reagan era, I discovered the Clash and had my worldview transformed. It was nothing like I had ever heard before. The music’s energy, spirit, and searing lyrics gave voice to feelings of alienation and hopelessness, as well as anger and defiance, that I had not yet articulated.
Through his songwriting Strummer consistently critiqued capitalism, advocated racial justice, and opposed imperialism. He showed young people alternatives to the complacency, opportunism, and political ambivalence that dominate popular culture. Strummer’s music remains an enduring legacy of radicalism, defiance, and resistance.
CREATIVE RESISTANCE
In April 2002, I had the good fortune to meet with Joe Strummer and discuss a wide range of issues. One theme emerged repeatedly in these conversations—using the past to better understand the present and shape the future. This outlook was fundamental to Strummer’s creative activism. The events of May 1968 in Paris, the student and labor movements of Italy’s hot autumn, and the election and overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile were key events that Strummer cited to explain his politicization. Punk rock, and Strummer in particular, would borrow heavily from these movements—not just ideologically but aesthetically as well. “Punk rock for me was a social movement,” he states. “We tried to do the things politically we thought were important to our generation and hopefully would inspire another generation to go even further.”
As a musician, Strummer redefined music and reaffirmed the principles of committed and intelligent opposition. He became involved in many different movements and supported many causes before they were fashionable. The Clash were at the forefront of the Rock Against Racism movement founded in the 1970s to combat the rise of the far-right National Front. Never afraid of controversy, Strummer pushed the Clash to support publicly the H-Block protests in Northern Ireland, which began in 1976 when the British took away the political status of IRA “prisoners.” He performed for the last time on November 15, 2002, at a benefit for striking London firefighters. For someone who used his music to galvanize and promote progressive action, this final performance was most fitting.
Strummer’s unique partnership with Mick Jones, his main collaborator and lead guitarist in the Clash, brought a revolutionary sense of excitement to modern music. Strummer and Jones quickly recognized the power of rap music that was just emerging from New York City’s underground in the late 1970s. “When we came to the U.S., Mick stumbled upon a music shop in Brooklyn that carried the music of Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five, the Sugar Hill Gang . . . these groups were radically changing music and they changed everything for us.”
With typical Clash inventiveness, they became one of the first white groups to incorporate rap into their music. As a tribute to the pathbreaking Sugar Hill Gang, the Clash recorded “The Magnificent Seven,” one of their best-known and most important singles. Exemplifying the Clash’s commitment to challenging social conventions, they enlisted several New York City rap groups to join their huge Clash on Broadway tour. This was extremely controversial at the time, since combining the two disparate audiences and musical genres was widely predicted to result in racial mayhem.
Reflecting on the group’s influence, I suggested to Strummer that hip-hop has replaced punk rock as the dominant political pop cultural force in spirit, vitality, and creativity. He responded, “No doubt about it, particularly in respect to addressing the ills of capitalism and providing a smart class analysis, underground hip-hop, not the pop-culture stuff, picked up where punk left off and ran full steam ahead.”
THE GREATEST REBEL ROCK BAND OF ALL TIME
On New Year’s Eve 1976, the Clash opened for the top-billed Sex Pistols. Impressed, the Sex Pistols asked the Clash to join them on the infamous 1977 Anarchy in the UK tour. The wild antics by some of the bands drew intense media scrutiny and caused punk rock to be labeled public enemy number one. While parents, police, and politicians sounded the alarm, young people were hooked.
Strummer, a former busker and squatter, characterized the early days as filled with hope and frustration. “Many in the punk scene were confused, mixing various political ideologies.” The effect was that punk rock musicians were easy targets for ridicule and attack by the monarchy, media, Parliament, and the police. According to Strummer, the objective was to present a clearer, unified stance with a more thoughtful and relevant political message. It was obvious to Strummer early on that punk rock was vulnerable to cooptation by the music industry with the eager assistance of opportunistic musicians. He issued an indictment in a song, “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais”:
Punk rockers in the UK
They won’t notice anyway
They’re all too busy fighting
For a good place under the lighting
The new groups are not concerned
With what there is to be learned
They got Burton suits, hah you think it’s funny
Turning rebellion into money
All over people changing their votes
Along with their overcoats
If Adolf Hitler flew in today
They’d send a limousine anyway
Strummer blamed many of the bands of the time for allowing punk rock to degenerate into a “shameful product hawked by the record companies” and “used to promote right wing ideals.” He refused to join the effort to dilute the creative and social aspects of the punk rock philosophy. The Clash’s eponymous first studio album clearly marked where they stood on things.
The album addressed social issues, including classism, racism, and police and state-sanctioned brutality. By bringing together a broad range of musical influences that had previously been segregated by music industry marketing strategies, it significantly changed modern music. There were brilliant covers of old rock classics, infusions of R&B, fractured pop, a well-balanced mix of ska, dub, and reggae, and of course what became the signature sound of the Clash: thought provoking lyrics sung in Strummer’s unique cockney accent, a blistering and angry style layered over aggressive compositions.
The Clash’s music, coupled with its explosive live performances, let people know that they had something important to say on the state of things. Although produced for next to nothing, the Clash’s first album became the largest selling American import in music history. Americans loved the Clash’s music and message, and the record companies took note.
“The same issues we were struggling against then are even more important now like British and U.S. imperialism.” Strummer continues, “when we wrote ‘I’m So Bored with the U.S.A.,’ it touched a nerve for young people on both sides of the Atlantic.” The lyrics are sharp and compelling:
Yankee dollar talk
To the dictators of the world
In fact it’s giving orders
An’ they can’t afford to miss a word
Other songs addressed the growing disaffection young people felt as they faced the harsh reali
ties of the job market in 1976. “Career Opportunities” became a classic protest song for many:
They offered me the office, offered me the shop
They said I’d better take anything they’d got
Do you wanna make tea at the BBC?
Do you wanna be, do you really wanna be a cop?
Career opportunities are the ones that never knock . . .
Every job they offer you is to keep you out the dock
Career opportunity, the ones that never knock
“Industrial society offered nothing really, and as we moved to this more fragmented society with more emphasis on technology the state was looking for us to work according to our class . . . it all seemed about controlling class, particularly the lower classes.”
CLASHING WITH AMERICA
In 1979, the Clash headed to America. In between this tour and the first album the Clash had conquered the UK and Europe. They released another album, Give ’Em Enough Rope, and were in the process of putting together the Clash “masterpiece,” London Calling. “Two devastating things happened at this time,” Strummer recalls. “Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of England and Ronald Reagan became President of the U.S. . . . it was hard to tell who would be worse but we knew that a tremendous struggle was ahead . . . their tendencies leaned to the far-right if not fascism.”
The Clash always drew inspiration from, and paid homage to, other rebel musicians, especially black musicians from the United States and the Caribbean. But collaborating with these musicians brought them face-to-face with the racism of the music industry and some of their fans. While touring the United States, the Clash featured pioneering American rock ’n’ roll artist Bo Diddley as their opening act. Diddley was a hero to Strummer. The Clash were excited that the tour would help them connect with their American audience. However, they were shocked by the intense racism that Diddley’s presence elicited in the South. “The record label was unsupportive from the word go because Give ’Em [Enough Rope] did not sell like our first album, they hated our choice of Bo Diddley and we refused to pick a different support act and resisted their attempt to repackage us as new wave.” Strummer and his band mates were determined to resist pressure from industry bosses to refashion punk rock into the more commercial, less political, and more docile new wave mold.
The lack of support from the record label was just the start. Strummer recalled the bad press that greeted the Clash in the United States labeling them “evil punk rockers” looking to “spread communism to American youth.” The short eight-date tour further politicized Strummer. It opened his eyes to the “commodification of music” and “exposed the terrible resistance and hatred of anything that attempts to grow outside the dominant economic and social structure.” On the other hand, shows like the legendary performance at New York’s Palladium taught Strummer an important lesson. “We must use negative situations,” Strummer said, “to refocus and redirect anger and frustration and fashion music that is powerful to all who listen, always upsetting the status quo.”
LONDON CALLS AND SO DO THE SANDINISTAS
Following the American tour, the Clash began their next album, London Calling. It showed maturity and growth in many areas. Musically it incorporated roots music, folk, New Orleans R&B, reggae, pop, lounge jazz, ska, hard rock, and punk. Recorded in New York City, the landmark album remains influential. I related to Strummer my own experience of hearing the album for the first time. The themes, music, and attitude sharply mirrored my own reality as a kid in an immigrant family growing up in an industrial park in the mid-1980s.
The song “Clampdown” affected me deeply. It is a stark account of work in a Darwinian capitalist society. At its core, the song presents the contradictions which lead us to believe that if we work hard, don’t complain, and don’t rock the boat, we can get ahead. Step on anybody, it doesn’t matter; just look out for number one.
The song expresses the anxieties of working-class youth who are restricted to menial jobs, positions in the state’s repressive apparatus, or membership in racist right-wing movements.
You grow up and you calm down
You’re working for the clampdown
You start wearing the blue and brown
You’re working for the clampdown
So you got someone to boss around
It makes you feel big now
You drift until you brutalize
You made your first kill now
The same song advocates an alternative, a common Strummer theme, the need for working-class rebellion:
The judge said five to ten—but I say double that again
I’m not working for the clampdown
No man born with a living soul
Can be working for the clampdown
Kick over the wall, cause governments to fall
How can you refuse it?
Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
D’you know that you can use it?
“Yeah” Strummer begins, “this song and our overall message was to wake-up, pay attention to what really is going on around you, politically, socially all of it . . . before you know it you have become what you despise.” The album catapulted the Clash into the international spotlight. They played and the world listened. Being the biggest rock band on the planet at the time brought the inevitable harsh criticism, particularly in regard to the group’s politics.
The red baiting and right-wing attacks increased tenfold when the Clash publicly supported the Sandinista revolution. “Our support of the Sandinistas was the worst thing in the world we could do, according to our record label,” Strummer recalled. “The label heads said our music would not sell—too political—especially in America where the Reagan administration was conspiring to destroy the Sandinistas.” Strummer wrote “Washington Bullets” criticizing U.S. involvement in Central and South America, while noting Jimmy Carter’s last-minute withdrawal of aid to the Somoza regime:
As every cell in Chile will tell
The cries of the tortured men
Remember Allende, and the days before,
Before the army came
Please remember Victor Jara,
In the Santiago Stadium,
Es verdad—those Washington bullets again
For the very first time ever,
When they had a revolution in Nicaragua,
There was no interference from America
Human rights in America
Well the people fought the leader,
And up he flew,
With no Washington bullets what else could he do?
In 1980, the Clash released the triple album Sandinista! Their long simmering dispute with their label, Epic, became a pitched battle when the band demanded that the album be priced affordably as the usual price of one album. Epic finally relented, but only after the Clash agreed to cover the difference out of their pockets. “Political decisions never balance out well with business unless of course they’re capitalist-based political decisions . . . if we did an album in support of the Contras it would have been different,” Strummer joked. Whether due to Epic’s resistance, the political controversy, or to fans put off by the group’s constant musical experimentation, Sandinista! sales were disappointing compared to London Calling. Nonetheless, the Clash inspired a lively following.
A BIG HIT AND THEN A CRASH
Combat Rock, released in 1982, again highlighted the social consciousness and leftist politics that forever distinguish the band and Strummer. With the release of the single “Rock the Casbah,” the Clash had a huge hit on their hands. The song had been written as an exuberant response to an Islamic cleric’s ban on rock music. In an ironic twist, imperialists have appropriated the song to their own ends. “You know the U.S. military played this song in the first Gulf War to the troops and now are using it again as they prepare for war,” Strummer shared. “This is just typical and despicable.”
At Shea Stadium in Queens, New York, in 1982, the Clash played a series of sold-out s
hows reminiscent of the Beatles performance there many years before. These were the last shows with Mick Jones, who was forced out of the band by Strummer and the band’s manager. Strummer confided, “I committed one of the greatest mistakes of my life with the sacking of Mick.” After releasing an atrocious album in 1985, the Clash broke up for good. Sadly, Strummer and Jones did not share a stage again until the benefit concert that would be Strummer’s final public performance.
“I’M GONNA KEEP FIGHTIN’ FOR WHAT I BELIEVE IS RIGHT”
Strummer’s originality characterizes the man and the musician. With the backing band Mescaleros, Strummer was reborn. Remarkably, his new music displays a steadfast work ethic both creatively and politically. Irrespective of what he had accomplished up to this point in his career, he seemed to believe that his best work lay ahead.
Strummer and the Mescaleros recorded two highly innovative studio albums, Rock Art and the X-Ray Style in 1999, and Global A Go-Go in 2001. The music Strummer recorded with the Mescaleros is as culturally diverse a sound as I’ve heard. There are the familiar influences of rockabilly, traditional rock ’n’ roll, and R&B, but added to the mix are new sounds. Strummer brought together music from Africa, Latin America, and the West Indies as well as heavy doses of hip-hop style beats.
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