[PEN-L:33459] Joe Strummer

["Michael Hoover" <hooverm@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The New York Times
December 24, 2002
Joe Strummer Is Dead at 50; Political Rebel of Punk Era
By JON PARELES

Joe Strummer, whose raw voice and fervent songs for the Clash showed
the punk generation that rebellion could be not just personal but also
political, died of a heart attack on Sunday at his farmhouse in
Broomfield, Somerset, in southwestern England, his recording company
said. He was 50.

Mr. Strummer's hoarse, bawling voice and choppy rhythm guitar were at
the center of the Clash, the band that played punk-rock with a world
of troubles and insurgencies in mind. "If you ain't thinkin' about man
and God and law, then you ain't thinkin' about nothin'," Mr. Strummer
said in a 1988 interview. In Clash songs like "White Riot" and "London
Calling," Mr. Strummer and his songwriting partner, Mick Jones,
connected punk's individual rage to tensions of class, race and
repression.

"The Clash was the greatest rock band," Bono, the lead singer of U2,
said on Monday, the British Press Association reported. Early in the
Clash's career the band delved into Jamaican reggae, and after the
Clash broke up in 1986, Mr. Strummer's own band, the Mescaleros, went
on to merge punk with international styles.

Mr. Strummer, whose real name was John Graham Mellor, was born in
Ankara, Turkey, the son of a British foreign service officer. He lived
in Egypt, Mexico and West Germany before going to boarding school in
England, where he attended the London Central School of Art and
Design. He soon dropped out and lived as a squatter, with odd jobs as
a gravedigger and a garbage hauler. He earned his stage name playing
guitar in the subway, inspired by Woody Guthrie.

In 1974 Mr. Strummer formed the 101ers, playing soul-influenced rock
on the London pub circuit; it released two singles, "Keys to Your
Heart" and "Sweet Revenge." But hearing the Sex Pistols converted him
to punk-rock. In 1976 he joined Mr. Jones on guitar and Paul Simonon
on bass, who had been in a band called the London SS, and Terry Chimes
(also known as Tory Crimes) on drums. They called their new band the
Clash because the word was in so many newspaper headlines.

The Clash toured as an opening act for the Sex Pistols, who were
already becoming notorious for their nose-thumbing, nihilistic songs;
the two groups became cornerstones of British punk-rock. But their
attitudes were as dissimilar as their music, particularly after Topper
Headon replaced Mr. Chimes on drums.

Where the Sex Pistols insisted there was "no future," the Clash's
songs railed against apathy, powerlessness, police brutality, American
cultural domination and poseurs of all sorts. "You think it's funny
turning rebellion into money," Mr. Strummer sang in "White Man in
Hammersmith Palais" in 1977. Along with the fast blare that the Sex
Pistols and the Clash both learned from the Ramones, the Clash drew on
reggae as a badge of interracial solidarity and a musical exploration.

>From 1977 to 1982 the Clash were at the vanguard of punk, a term the
members came to reject. The Clash blasted out songs like "I'm So Bored
with the U.S.A." and "Safe European Home" and mixed rock with reggae
and ska. The group's first album, "The Clash," reached the Top 20 in
England in 1977. But the band's American label, Epic, wouldn't release
it in the United States, so it became a best-selling import. The
Clash's first American release was an EP, "Cost of Living," followed
by its second album, "Give 'Em Enough Rope" in 1978. Both "The Clash"
and "London Calling" were released in the United States in 1979, when
the band made its first American tours.

"London Calling," a double album, expanded the Clash's music further,
with anthems like "Death or Glory" along with reggae, rockabilly and
the Clash's first American hit single, "Train in Vain (Stand by Me),"
which was written by Mr. Jones. "Rude Boy," a 1980 film about a punk
fan, featured the Clash. The Clash's 1981 album, "Sandinista!," was a
sprawling, ambitious three-LP set that tried gospel, funk,
mock-Motown, dub reggae, a waltz, sound collages and more; the band
fought with its label to keep the price lower than most double-LP
albums.

"Combat Rock" in 1982 included both a cameo appearance by the poet
Allen Ginsberg and the Clash's biggest hit: "Rock the Casbah," written
by Mr. Headon. Soon after it was released Mr. Headon was fired from
the band for heroin use. After a final album in 1985 the Clash
disbanded.

Mr. Strummer went on to a diverse, fitful solo career. He wrote "Love
Kills," the theme for the movie "Sid and Nancy" (about Sid Vicious of
the Sex Pistols), and appeared in the films "Straight to Hell" (1986),
"Mystery Train" (1988), "Walker" (1989), "I Hired a Contract Killer"
(1990) and "Super 8 Stories" (2001). He wrote soundtrack music for
"Permanent Record" (with his short-lived late-1980's band, Latino
Rockabilly War), "Walker" and "Grosse Point Blank." He was host of a
radio show, "London Calling," for the BBC World Service.

Mr. Strummer is survived by his wife, Lucinda; his daughters from an
earlier marriage, Jazz Domino Holly and Lola Maybellene, and his
stepdaughter, Eliza.

He made a solo album, "Earthquake Weather," in 1989. And in 1999 he
began recording and touring as the leader of the gleefully eclectic
Mescaleros, who juggled Latin, African, Irish, Indian, Arabic and
hip-hop elements along with punk and reggae. The band made two albums,
"Global a Go-Go" and "Rock Art and the X-Ray Style." Mr. Strummer also
wrote a song, "48864," with Bono and Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics in
honor of Nelson Mandela for an anti-AIDS benefit concert to be held on
Feb. 2 at Robben Island, where Mr. Mandela was imprisoned.

The Clash are to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next
year.