Joe Strummer was one of the most important members of The Clash, and one of their most important songwriters. In this episode of Get Off My Lawn, I talk to him about his life, the band, and the song, London Calling.
Transcript
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00:03:26.000I'm guessing if I go to the Nigerian Museum of Portraits, I'm not exactly going to be drowning in gavs.
00:03:34.000So I think that's a beautiful song from a beautiful time and a beautiful moment in The Clash's life.
00:03:41.000In this episode, obviously I want it to be for people who don't like The Clash.
00:03:45.000That's sort of always been my motto with any content is make sure, make my mom want to read it.
00:03:51.000But I think the story of The Clash is really interesting because it's sort of like Glenn Beck's book, Miracles and Massacres, where they fucked up by trusting authority.
00:04:04.000And what Glenn Beck does in that fantastic book, it's in my top 10, you really got to read it, Miracles and Massacres.
00:04:10.000He talks about how the good guys always win.
00:04:15.000And the only time the good guys lose is when the good guys lose faith in themselves and they let the bad guys win.
00:04:21.000And he talks about, was it Trail of Tears?
00:04:24.000What was the one where they shot all the Indians in the back?
00:04:27.000So that's one of our worst moments, obviously.
00:05:24.000They go, no, go confiscate all their guns.
00:05:26.000And just like the NYPD in New York City right now, arresting kids for fucking not being vaxed, throwing people in jail for not being tyrannical enough, that's what they did.
00:05:39.000And the top brass created a problem where there wasn't one.
00:05:42.000And that's what happened with the clash.
00:05:45.000They let their manager destroy the band and destroy the friendship between Mick Jones and Joe Strummer, which almost killed him, that betrayal.
00:06:27.000They don't move from their neighborhoods.
00:06:29.000They end up living down the street from where they grew up.
00:06:32.000Middle class are much more mobile, much less sedentary.
00:06:36.000And like with the Beastie Boys, they were happy to just stab the fat chick in the back and become a guy band.
00:06:46.000It was what's, and it turned out pretty good for them.
00:06:49.000And with Joe Strummer, he was like a rock folk guy who was in a rockabilly, folky hippie band.
00:06:57.000His biggest inspiration is Captain Beefheart, which we've argued about before.
00:07:02.000He fucking sucks, even worse than Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart.
00:07:06.000But then Bernie Rhodes was discovering punk and he had put the sex pistols together and he's like, you need to, Mick Jones and Joe, you guys need to can the 101ers.
00:07:16.000Mick Jones was in a band called London SS.
00:07:19.000Mick Jones is Jewish and the SS was the Nazi symbol.
00:07:22.000We used to have a sense of humor about stuff.
00:07:28.000Everyone says it was Malcolm McLaren, but Bernie Rhodes was a huge influence.
00:07:31.000But that doesn't mean he's your daddy.
00:07:33.000And being fatherless, Joe Strummer listened to him too much and convinced him to kick Mick Jones out of the band and that was the end of the band.
00:07:43.000And then they did Cut the Crap, which is considered one of the worst albums of all time.
00:08:50.000You know, speaking of this Sandinista thing, I did like it for a while and then I lost the ability to like it.
00:08:57.000But when I was young, you had so little access to music that sometimes you just listened to the album that you had because it was the album you had.
00:09:07.000For example, I won, we did an Airband competition in like junior high, and our band won.
00:09:14.000And one of the prizes was some random records no one gave a shit about.
00:09:17.000And I got Mondo Bongo by the Boomtown Rats, which if you just dropped it out of the sky right now, you'd go, this sucks, this is garbage.
00:09:26.000But it was the only record I had back then.
00:10:56.000I mean, what I went through with Vice was somewhat similar to what happened with Mick Jones and the Clash.
00:11:03.000We became incompatible, and no one's sure who kicked who out.
00:11:10.000And it'll happen to you if you're a young man.
00:11:12.000Actually, if you're any age, like my 13-year-old, last year there was a huge split in his crew and he got turfed and was persona non grata.
00:11:21.000I think it's because the main guy or one of the top alphas in the pack liked a girl and the girl liked my son.
00:12:39.000The 60s was a cold time, especially in Britain, where they had just survived a world war, everyone was dead, and people were just heartless.
00:12:50.000Here in New York City, you had that orphanage where they took identical twins, including triplets, identical triplets.
00:12:58.000Well, of course, you can't Have heterogeneous triplets, can you?
00:13:04.000But anyway, they wanted to do experiments on nature versus nurture, which is a noble cause, but not a noble system, where they would take the three twins.
00:13:13.000There's a movie about this, a documentary.
00:13:44.000And though we fought the Nazis, we were sort of behaving like them in many ways in this sort of cold, rational, inhuman way.
00:13:54.000I mean, maybe Hitler changed the global culture for a while because we were not sweethearts, especially the British upper class, which is what Joe Strummer was.
00:14:05.000Joe Strummer was the son of a diplomat who his dad was in India with the railroads over there.
00:15:20.000I hate this rewriting of history where there's a documentary about polystyrene of X-ray specs coming out, and you know it's going to be all about her blackness and how she was Ethiopian.
00:16:30.000They don't go to some disgusting rural village where there's no electricity and people put their mattresses out on the road because they heat up with the sun and they might be warm that night and they work 15-hour days in inhumane conditions and are whisked away to prison for speaking against the president,
00:17:15.000I'm convinced Glasgow was deemed the city of culture because whoever the judge was just landed at that one little student area with the cobblestone streets and didn't go to the Gorbels or East or Shaolin's or Pollock Shaws and saw the grime and the soot.
00:17:31.000So you get this pro-multicultural thing where you end up with cultural relativism and you go, all of the world is beautiful.
00:18:22.000So the reason that the West is better than the East, better than Russia and China and all these other places, is that we have more wealth, more freedom, more joy.
00:18:31.000You think we're all the same because you're rich and you only check out the nicest parts of all these places.
00:18:38.000Yes, Bosnia has the most beautiful beaches in the world.
00:18:41.000It also has a fucking civil war where Milosevic was playing soccer with human heads.
00:19:10.000But when we were kids, we were genuinely scared of the Sex Pistols.
00:19:14.000Like, we thought Johnny Ralton was going to come out from under the bed and bite our legs.
00:19:20.000So because the Sex Pistols were just the villains, they were like the slayer of the scene, the evil monsters, the Clash had to be the voice of punk.
00:19:29.000They were called the only Band that mattered.
00:19:31.000And because of Joe's politics and his dense knowledge of history, he had a lot to say.
00:19:37.000And so they became the voice of punk, really.
00:19:40.000And that voice was typical rich stuff.
00:19:43.000It was all about rock against racism and how we have to fight against fascism and shit like that, which is as ridiculous back then as it is now.
00:20:26.000And I feel that way about like that commercial we watched with Kumia last week where the guy's sipping coffee and he goes in the white guy's face.
00:20:37.000There's plenty of riots when a loser like George Floyd dies, but how many young girls have been murdered by decrepit monsters and we don't go near it because we don't want to be offensive.
00:20:47.000Even that whole trans rally that we had a couple years ago by the Brooklyn Museum and there was like, it looked like 100,000 people really.
00:20:56.000Wouldn't it be cool if you had the guys who killed the trans people?
00:23:10.000So this was in some, I don't know, fucking alleyway in Shepherd's Bush where they recorded this first album, this super raw album with White Riot on it.
00:23:18.000And he was with his daughters, Lola and Jazz.
00:23:22.000And his 99, it would have been his girlfriend.
00:23:27.000He couldn't marry the mother of his children because he got paid 100 pounds to marry some South African because she wanted citizenship.
00:23:35.000And then when it was time to really marry her, what was her name, Gabby?
00:23:38.000When it was time to really marry Gabby, yeah, I put a picture of her in the emails.
00:27:48.000The 101ers, Joe's first band, opened for the Sex Pistols, and there was this electric energy in the air, which unfortunately is constantly linked to the Ramones.
00:27:56.000We talked about this in my History of Punk.
00:37:08.000Because they kept record sales as low as possible.
00:37:10.000They'd argue with the promoters and make sure the ticket prices weren't too high.
00:37:15.000When they opened for The Who, they couldn't control the ticket prices, so they made the promoter donate part of their share to some fucking bullshit charity.
00:37:26.000But London Calling is a fucking damn...
00:37:56.000When they got signed to CBS, they were called sellouts, and everyone hated them.
00:38:01.000Sex Missiles did okay with EMI and everything, and they weren't really seen as vile, I guess, because they were literally, you know, monsters.
00:38:40.000The people who declared International Class Day is the radio station KEXP over in Seattle.
00:38:46.000And the thing I used to love about it is the variety.
00:38:48.000Like you'd wake up and you'd hear Grandmaster Flash and then Helmet and then the Pixies and then fucking the Bundu Boys and then Death by Milk Float and then the rolling stones, and then the jam.
00:39:04.000It was just all over the map, but well mixed.
00:39:46.000And the thing, like, I always get in shit for saying the West is the best and they think you mean white.
00:39:51.000And I have said, like, I guess predominantly Westerners are white, if you really want to get into that.
00:39:57.000But I realized this the other day because it sounds like a contradiction when I say, no, Western doesn't mean white, and then most Westerners are white.
00:40:04.000I realized, like, white culture is diverse.
00:45:55.000There's a funny scene in it where the main character, Ray Gans, who was their roadie, they must have been real mad at him for doing that movie.
00:46:04.000He's like, I don't know if you should do...
00:48:04.000And I want to have a Rolls-Royce common and a country mansion and a house in Beverly Hills and everything, like servants running around and doing what I want.
00:48:16.000I've just thought about it a lot and I just think that there's nothing, there's nothing there.
00:48:21.000You can get all the Rolls-Royce's, all the Doe, all the country houses, all the servants you want.
00:48:29.000I just think there's nothing at the end of that road.
00:48:34.000And that's why I just don't want to go that way.
00:48:37.000That's why I think that it's all of us or none.
00:48:42.000I don't see the point in getting all rich and locking yourself up in that country mansion because sooner or later some cunt's going to come around with a shotgun and blow your head off or whatever.
00:58:46.000Everyone would have gone, give me the biggest balalaika.
00:58:49.000You know, people, we were open about stuff.
00:58:52.000Mick Jones bringing in the new sound of New York and stuff, and Simo with his reggae thing, and me with my rhythm and blues thing, and Toppa with all his soul chops.
00:59:58.000He ran the Paris Marathon of all things.
01:00:02.000One thing about Joe's drummer is he had his girlfriend that gave him his beautiful daughters, and I think he was a good dad, but he wasn't a great husband.
01:00:13.000He would cheat on everyone at all times.
01:00:16.000He eventually got monogamous with this aristocrat named Lucinda, I think.
01:01:28.000He's there in the middle there, not for long.
01:01:30.000And everyone's doing drugs, getting shit faced, getting in trouble, cheating on their significant others, traveling the world, and getting more and more popular.
01:07:15.000I'm stealing this from David Cross, but he always said, if I had a time machine, I wouldn't go like changing the world and killing Hitler and saving people from drowning.
01:07:24.000He goes, I'd want to see The Who's first show, The Sex Pistol's first show.
01:09:15.000And I don't know exactly who was first.
01:09:18.000I mean, Mick, a lot of the times with a divorce, they go, oh, the woman instituted the divorce.
01:09:23.000Yeah, but because the husband was totally absent, he hadn't fucked her in a year.
01:09:28.000And he would just go up and play video games in his room and not talk to her.
01:09:32.000So I don't know if Mick forced himself out of the band or if Bernie forced him out of the band or Joe did, but Mick was late and late and late and showing zero interest.
01:09:43.000And Joe said, I don't want to play with you anymore.
01:13:02.000He started doing solo stuff, and he did a really good song for the Sid and Nancy movie, Love Kills, which Johnny Rotten was not consulted on, much to his chagrin.
01:15:41.000Or else you were just that thing and you weren't the driving force.
01:15:44.000To be totally honest, I was very concerned after Vice that I would just vanish and I wouldn't be able to do anything and I wouldn't have a second act.
01:15:53.000And then with this punditry and the Proud Boys, I'm very happy that Vice wasn't my only thing.
01:15:59.000In fact, most people are shocked to find out I had anything to do with Vice, which is ideal.
01:17:18.000That's the first time they'd played together.
01:17:20.000I can tell Mick Jones was like, I forgive Joe, but I'll tell you what, the second I walk out of that studio, I'm never fucking playing with them ever again.
01:17:28.000And then it was 2002, so it had been 85, seven years later.
01:21:02.000A hoser is a Canadian redneck, but the term comes from making ice rinks in the backyard.
01:21:08.000You would take your garden hose and you'd be sitting there hosing for hours and hours and hours, getting enough ice for your backyard skating rink.
01:28:36.000That's all you've got to have a hard shell.
01:28:38.000Like Captain Beef said that one cold vibe won't stop this hill.
01:28:51.000The crucial thing is when you make the pitch, like on this type of huckster businesses, the body space between you and the punter is very, very measured and very normal millimetres.
01:32:33.000Yeah, get the counting crows guy out of there.
01:32:37.000So Chris Robinson's being all cool, rock and roll.
01:32:41.000And then I thought his girlfriend was pretty cool, because after I said the Chris Rock thing, his girlfriend goes, yeah, Chris gets progressively more black the drunker he gets.
01:32:50.000Again, 1999, back when you could joke around.
01:32:55.000We went out that night and I kept in touch with him a little bit.
01:32:58.000And the next thing I know, he's sending me a goodbye from the grave in the version of a song.
01:34:40.000We're allowed to be very free and express ourselves and I think that's where we both kind of grew into our own sort of art forms, you being a musician yourself and me being a sort of DIYer.
01:34:53.000Yeah, we were allowed to have total freedom of expression which was very lucky and perhaps unusual in hindsight.
01:35:22.000Yeah, our dad had grown up from quite an authoritarian background, our grandfather being a diplomat and very concerned with sort of the world of academia.
01:35:32.000And he was obviously quite a free spirit growing up and he kind of didn't, wasn't kind of confining himself to, you know, his kind of boarding school background and was a bit of a free spirit and a wild child.
01:35:47.000And I think he had a lot of tension with his own father about this kind of relationship.
01:35:52.000And so when we grew up, he decided that he was never going to read our school reports.
01:35:57.000And, you know, we were totally allowed to do what we wanted.
01:35:59.000And there were no rules implied whatsoever.
01:36:02.000So Lola and I were left to just be completely crazy.
01:36:05.000I think as a result, though, I was more concerned about my school reports.
01:36:20.000But you know, we both turned out incredibly sensible and so perhaps you know we're very well adjusted young women so I think in one sense that kind of total freedom really works.
01:36:34.000You know it could have gone one way or the other but in our case luckily we've turned out all right.
01:36:41.000Yeah we were naughty as children but who isn't you know is that okay?
01:36:57.000The last song we'll go out with is Mick Jones and Tony James.
01:37:01.000Tony James was the genius behind Generation X. He wrote Dancing with Myself that gave Billie Idol a career.
01:37:07.000So Mick Jones and Tony James have a band called the fuck is it called silicon carbon silicon carbon silicon I was going to say cobalt got cobalt on the brain from the farts so we'll end with that song Mick Jones is newest but um Horace Greeley was a newspaper magnate in in New York City in the Early 1900s,
01:38:36.000And I would add to that, that the only reason that it's important to have character is because it's the only important thing, not fame, not money, not any of this, that you can impart to your children and leave as an impact.
01:38:50.000Oh, you're going to make me cry with that little money.