Archives|Joe Strummer Is Dead at 50; Political Rebel of Punk Era
Joe Strummer Is Dead at 50; Political Rebel of Punk Era
By JON PARELES DEC. 23, 2002
Joe Strummer, who led the politically charged punk band the Clash, died on Sunday at his farmhouse in Broomfield, Somerset, in southwestern England. He was 50.
The cause was a heart attack, his recording company said.
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, tied punk's individual rage to mass rebellion, sparked by tensions of class, race and repression. "The Clash was the greatest rock band," Bono, the lead singer of U2, said today in an interview with the British Press Association. 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 an English foreign service officer. As a child, he lived in Egypt, Mexico and West Germany before going to boarding school in England; he visited his parents at postings in Iran and in Malawi.
He attended the London Central School of Art and Design, but dropped out. He lived as a squatter, with odd jobs as a gravedigger and a garbage hauler, and 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; the group 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, Paul Simonon on bass and Terry Chimes, also known as Tory Crimes, on drums; they had all been in a band called the London SS. 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 had a stake in the future. Its 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 both 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; it recorded with the Jamaican producer Lee Scratch Perry.
The Clash's first album, "The Clash," reached the Top 20 in England in 1977. But its American label, Epic, decided not to release it in the United States; instead, it became a best-selling import. The Clash's first American release was an EP, "Cost of Living," that included a remake of "I Fought the Law," 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 in concert and backstage. 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, however, Mr. Headon was fired from the band for heroin use. The band fragmented further as Mr. Strummer and Mr. Simonon ousted Mr. Jones, and 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 hosted a radio show, "London Calling," for the BBC World Service.
Mr. Strummer appeared on the second album by Mr. Jones's band, Big Audio Dynamite, and sang with the Pogues, who mixed Irish traditional music with Clash-style punk.
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 had also written a song, "48864," with Bono of U2 and Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics in honor of Nelson Mandela for an anti-AIDS benefit concert to be held Feb. 2 at Robben Island, where Mr. Mandela was imprisoned.
The Clash is to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next year.
Mr. Strummer is survived by his wife, Lucinda; his daughters from an earlier marriage, Jazz Domino Holly and Lola Maybellene, and a stepdaughter..
A version of this article appears in print on December 23, 2002 of the National edition with the headline: Joe Strummer Is Dead at 50; Political Rebel of Punk Era. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe