Redemption Song

by Chris Salewicz

  In archetypal Jamaican soon-come manner, the festival’s timings overran chronically. Bernie Rhodes said the Clash would pull out unless they were immediately given $20,000: ‘Joe said: “That’s fantastic – I thought we were doing it for free.” In fact, we were getting $200,000.’ The Clash went onstage at around 4.00 a.m. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, all the way from Ladbroke Grove, London, England: Vuh Clash,’ announced Kosmo Vinyl, an identity check for an area familiar to many Jamaicans. ‘Good morning to you, if there is anyone out there,’ Joe greeted the audience, ‘and I know you can hear me back at the chicken stall over on the very far side there. So next year if they’re going to have this beano, maybe they’ll let the natives in for free,’ he suggested, before launching into ‘London Calling’. The group made a selection from their songs that contained the most specific Jamaican influences. Though ‘Police and Thieves’ was not included, the interblending of ‘The Magnificent Seven’ and ‘Armagideon Time’ was inspired, masterful. ‘I think it took us years before we could jam down on “Armagideon Time”,’ said Joe. ‘It was like jazz. I had a few licks I’d go back to. There was no plan. A bit of singing. Jam. Lovely. That’s when we were really playing.’

  This, finally, was the last date Terry Chimes would ever play with the Clash, a decision he had come to himself.

  In London Joe, Mick and Paul, with Blockheads’ Micky Gallagher and drummer Charley Charles, went into the studio to record with Janie Jones, the woman who had inspired the song named after her on the first Clash album. Freed from a prison term, Joe had written a song for her with Mick: ‘House of the Ju-Ju Queen’, produced by Joe, backed by a version of James Brown’s ‘Sex Machine’, was released nearly a year later under the name ‘Janie Jones and the Lash’.

  On Christmas Eve 1982 the three Clash frontmen enjoyed a view of the Westway: Mick’s nan Stella cooked Christmas dinner for her grandson, Joe and Gaby, Paul and Pearl, Kosmo and Sean Carasov, who arrived with a black eye; he had fallen off his bicycle drunkenly riding home after an evening with Joe at the Warwick Castle the previous night. ‘Joe drank a lot then,’ said Sean. During the English Combat Rock tour, he recalled, there was a day off before a date in Bradford in Yorkshire; Joe decreed that he, Sean and Kosmo would be driven to it by Ray Jordan, stopping at each pub. Sean had become used to all-day sessions at the Warwick Castle on the corner of Portobello Road and Westbourne Park Road. English pubs then opened at 11.00 in the morning, closing at 3.00 p.m.: the landlord at the Warwick would let Joe and his cronies sleep off their morning consumption on the pub’s bench-seats before it could legally reopen at 5.30. After officially closing at 11.00 p.m., he would lock the doors and Joe and whoever remained would continue consuming alcohol into the early hours.

  After one such session, Joe decided he wanted to score some weed, wandering a few hundred yards with Sean over to a council estate at the junction of Westbourne Park Road and Ledbury Road. A Jamaican was hovering at the bottom of a stairwell. Joe handed him cash and the dealer said he would be back shortly, disappearing up the steps. ‘He’s gonna run up there and disappear down the steps at the other side,’ Joe suddenly realized. ‘Here, you’ll see.’ He led Sean round the block to where the dealer was running down the steps, to disappear away into the night. Seeing the slightly worse-for-wear pair, the man produced a blade, brandishing it at them, and rushed off. ‘It was as though Joe not only knew that was going to happen but wanted it to happen,’ said Sean, ‘as though he needed to have that experience. I was confused, but Joe was loving it. To him it was worth losing the money, seeing the expression on the guy’s face.’

  Joe introduced Sean to the Ladbroke Grove world of Jamaican shebeens, illegal basement drinking-dens with roughly constructed bars, the staff protected from hold-ups by chicken-wire in which a small slot had been cut to accept money and dispense cans of Tennant’s and Special Brew, the super-strength beers that guaranteed hangovers; in these barely lit dives, like the one run by reggae legend Alton Ellis at the top of Ladbroke Grove, the pair would stand and sway in the corners as the spine-jerking bass rumbled out of enormous sound system speakers; invariably they would be the only white people present. By contrast with the slumming element of himself that enjoyed the down-at-heel Warwick and illegal drinking-dens, Joe Strummer – who moved with ease through different social worlds – was also very partial to visits to 192, an award-winning wine bar and restaurant, on Kensington Park Road, a block west of Portobello Road. In the Warwick Joe would be public property and it would be hard to hold an in-depth conversation with him; at 192 he loved to perch on a stool at the bar and talk intimately for hours about matters of the soul; lubricated by bottles of ‘shampoo’, as he would archly refer to champagne, Joe’s attention was only distracted by the beautiful girls who frequented this watering-hole (part of the attraction, he admitted to me) favoured by local participants in the film and literary worlds; with actorly precision, he would play the gallant, offering his stool to women who attracted his attention. 192 was a symbol of the increasing gentrification of Notting Hill; the area’s substantial Victorian terrace houses, each once comprising a myriad hippie bedsits, were now being bought up by the well-heeled and turned back into family dwellings. Joe was beginning to think maybe he should do the same. After all, both Paul and Mick owned flats in the district; Joe was pouring rent money down the plughole each week.

  Joe and Gaby were still living in their flat above an antique shop in Portland Road in Holland Park. From Alex Chetwynd, the family friend of the Salters, Joe had borrowed an early video camera, eventually thrown into a bath by the children of Micky Gallagher. Joe had made a short film, starring himself, Gaby and her brother Mark. Mark played a burglar, breaking into a house as Gaby lay in bed, shaking with fear. Joe came to her rescue, fighting him on the streets of Holland Park. The brawl moved into the Kentucky Fried Chicken on Holland Park Avenue. Suddenly the pair of them looked up at the menu board. ‘I’ll have a chicken burger,’ announced Joe, the twist in the short film.

  At the beginning of 1983 Joe phoned Alex Chetwynd. He had had an idea. Could he come round to the flat? When he got there, Alex was surprised by what he saw: the living-room was painted black and it looked as though it was months since it had been given a clean; as well as an armoury of ghetto-blasters and recording equipment, the room was piled with empty pizza boxes, the mouldy contents of some of them still visible. Now, over the inevitable spliff, Joe told Alex he wanted to make a longer film: would he help him? Already he had a title: Hell W10. It would be a silent thriller, shot in black and white, starring the usual suspects.

  Around 10 o’clock on a Saturday night in the middle of February 1983 I drove east on Holland Park Avenue, heading to a party. Pulling up in heavy traffic by the tube station, I saw a clump of people on the pavement. There were film lights and someone was wielding a 16mm camera. Then I saw Joe, and others I recognized: Gaby, Sean Carasov, Kosmo. ‘Park your car,’ Joe shouted. ‘I need you.’ This was a shoot for Hell W10. ‘Here.’ Joe handed me a trun-cheon-like implement. ‘Go up behind Sean and mug him.’ Which I duly did. Several times. It didn’t make the final cut. Nor would the movie see the light of day for almost twenty years; the making of its soundtrack would have a disproportionate effect on the three-man front line of the Clash. ‘We loved doing that film but it is actually very boring,’ said Gaby. ‘Mick was supposed to be doing the music. He was doing all this hiphop stuff, totally different from what Joe was envisaging.’ ‘Joe didn’t want the music Mick was coming up with for the film,’ emphasized Alex Chetwynd. ‘Their musical tastes were completely different at that point. They seemed to fall out over this.’

  Mick was unaware that Joe was displeased with what he came up with for Hell W10. ‘Maybe it was a bit too hip,’ he laughed. ‘I thought it was good. It was already on the cards by Hell W10 that I was going to leave. Or something was going to happen. In rehearsals for the next album Bernie was on my case about what sort of record it was going to be. Which was really annoying. I said
, “It’s going to be a rock’n’roll record.” “Yeah, but watch it.” So it was all starting.’

  In March Joe and Gaby moved into a terraced house he had bought in Notting Hill, at 37 Lancaster Road, 100 yards from the West Indian Front Line of All Saints Road, suitably ‘street’. Although he didn’t have a driving licence, Joe also bought a car, a twenty-eight-year-old green Morris Minor with a hotrod engine modification – its big-bore exhaust woke up the town as it roared down the street. For the time being he gave it to Gaby to drive; it was used as a prop in Hell W10. He also got his father a Volkswagen camper van which – as though a comment on their relationship – had the initial letters ‘WAR’ on the number-plate. ‘That was the nearest they came to any bond between them,’ said Gaby. But Joe wasn’t a bad son: every month, to share his good fortune and help out, he paid money by direct debit into his father’s account. Spending Christmas Day with Ron and Anna was an annual ritual for Joe and Gaby.

  In April 1983 Joe again ran the London marathon, for charity, sponsored – surprisingly – by the Sun newspaper, whose right-wing stance he had previously abhorred. When Combat Rock was released, Joe – far more of a pragmatist than he superficially appeared – had been prepared to be interviewed in Rupert Murdoch’s huge-selling tabloid to promote the record and the Clash; this was not something of which Mick Jones approved. ‘That was the only marathon where he was an official entrant,’ said Gaby. ‘Previously he would just turn up and join in. It was also the only one he trained for, and it nearly killed him.’ Joe finished the course in a respectable time of 3 hours 20 minutes. ‘He was a fit guy,’ said Alex Chetwynd, who ran that marathon with him, ‘although I personally never saw him do any exercise. But he could definitely drink a lot. It’s not easy to drink as much as Joe drank.’

  Shortly after the filming of Hell W10, Joe heard bad news. Topper was in debt to the tune of £30,000, owed to a heroin dealer; if he couldn’t come up with the money he was going to get his legs broken. Joe went with Alex Chetwynd to the Midland Bank on Portobello Road where he had an account and took out thirty grand in cash. He handed it to Alex, asking him to stuff the bundled notes in his combat jacket and take them over to Topper, who lived to walk another day. (Topper sent Joe a heartfelt letter of thanks.) Considering the circumstance of Topper’s departure from the group, Joe may have been motivated by a sense of guilt. But in 1983 you could buy a sizeable home in London for that amount of cash. The Clash were now beginning to make very good money indeed, amounts that seemed to take a quantum leap with each album release. ‘One thing the Clash did,’ said Gaby, ‘was to pay high tax to continue to live in Britain. Joe could have taken off and become a tax exile. It would have been hypocritical but we could have done it. But he wanted to be in Ladbroke Grove. He wanted to be at the source of the dynamism of the movement he was involved in.’

  The Clash were about to contribute even more to the coffers of the Inland Revenue. Early in April they were offered a startling half a million dollars to headline New Music Day at the second annual Us Festival, promoted by Apple computer mogul Steve Wozniak, to be held at the end of May at the Glen Helen Regional Park in San Bernadino, southern California. (Van Halen were paid twice that money for headlining on Heavy Metal Day.)

  With Terry Chimes out of the picture, they didn’t have a drummer. Accordingly, the 23 April edition of Melody Maker carried an advertisement requesting a ‘young drummer for internationally successful group’. After over 300 people had been auditioned, Pete Howard, a drummer from Bath, was given the job. As money had not been mentioned, Pete had a friend, Falcon Stuart, once the manager of X-Ray Spex, broach the subject with Bernie. Bernie was furious – not an auspicious start. Quickly Pete Howard appreciated that Bernie’s response was par for the course. ‘It wasn’t very happy when I joined them. But I didn’t see Mick being a nightmare at any point. He made overtures of friendship, and indicated to me he thought I had some musicality he wanted to exploit. Joe was busy sniffing out any hint of muso-ness. Joe had a sense of humour, but when Mick was around there was a sense of “that cunt over there”. Joe wants to be Bukowski, and Mick is stoned with Daisy all the time. Everyone seemed to be drunk. Joe would get pissed and start ranting. You could get close to Joe, but then he’d turn and use what you’d given him as something to beat you with.’

  After rehearsals, the group headed for warm-up shows in Detroit, Wichita Falls, San Antonio and Tucson, Arizona, before arriving at the festival site on Saturday 28 May 1983.

  There was the habitual intricate set of ironies involved with the Clash’s appearance at the Us festival that one had come to associate with the group, not the least of which – considering their huge fee – was that they played beneath a banner that read CLASH NOT FOR SALE. But what took place before the event carried almost as great a significance as the performance by the Clash itself.

  Seven hours before they were due onstage, while the Australian group Men at Work were playing, the English act pulled a wobbler: they held a press conference at which it was declared they would not perform that evening unless Steve Wozniak donated $100,000 to send impoverished Latino youth of East Los Angeles to summer camp. At the press conference Joe was the spokesman; he had been infuriated when he discovered that tickets for the event, which he had been assured would be pegged at $17, cost up to $25; seizing his mood for a situationist prank, Bernie Rhodes thoroughly wound him up – hence the press conference. (‘They didn’t have a fully formed political agenda,’ said Pete Howard. ‘They thought anger was cooler.’)

  As so often with his capricious and quite evident contradictions, it is fascinating that yet again Joe largely should have been given a substantial benefit of the doubt over this, a tribute to the good will that he so often engendered. For what was really clear was that this situation was full of shit. If the Clash was receiving half a million dollars for their performance, why on earth could they not have contributed some of their fee to the charity they were so intent should receive a chunk of Wozniak’s money? Their cash, Joe conveniently claimed, already had been earmarked for expenses in London. While no one really fell for this argument, equally no one picked up on it as closely as you might have expected. Perhaps everyone simply had been worn down by the inconsistencies emanating from the group. Forced to give in to clear blackmail, Wozniak eventually coughed up in the region of $32,000, and the Clash moodily took the stage after having kept their audience waiting for two hours.

  Immediately prior to the show there was another moment of drama. ‘Bernie set up another press conference that he wanted us to do by the side of the stage immediately before we went on to play the gig,’ said Mick. ‘He wanted to get all the other acts to give some of their money. Joe was furious at doing this a minute before we were due onstage. He went out and turned his back on all the press, stood with his arms folded. So Kosmo grabbed Bernie out to speak. Bernie held the press conference and Joe stood with his back to them, wouldn’t say a thing, completely disgusted.’

  The Us Festival audience of 150,000 was the biggest the group had ever played in front of, larger than any of the Who stadium crowds. In the late spring evening heat of southern California, irritable from the fractious day, Joe proved anger really can be power: even though it was impossible for the spectator to dismiss the element of corporate ritualization of rebellion, Joe was in fine, hectoring form as he used his soapbox platform. He’d once said that he took his energy for a show from the last person who caught his eye as he stepped onstage, but now it was as though he had caught the eye of an entire society. ‘All right then,’ he declared as he stepped to the microphone, ‘here we are in the capital of the decadent US of A.’ Whether from self-knowledge, masochism, or blind enthusiasm for the headlining act, the audience responded with cheers to Joe’s geographically imprecise smear. ‘This here set of music,’ he continued somewhat ungrammatically, ‘is now dedicated to making sure that the people in the crowd who have children there is something left for them later in the centuries.’ (If that sounds a
n unusual preoccupation for Joe, there might have been something at the back of his mind; for Joe had a new influence in his life, something that often draws out strange undercurrents of previously repressed emotions and vulnerability in a man, something that can lead to radical decisions: Gaby had learnt that she was pregnant, a child due at the end of the year.) And the Clash pounded into their first song, the inevitable ‘London Calling’.

  Joe no longer wore his hair in a Mohican, but had it swept back into a quiff. He was dressed in a white sleeveless jeans jacket and white cotton pants; by contrast, Mick was in a silver-studded black jacket and red shirt; Paul wore a white T-shirt emblazoned with the first Clash album cover – available at the merchandising stand – and camouflage trousers. After the second tune, ‘Somebody Got Murdered’, Joe returned to his theme, addressing the source of the wealth that had staged the event, and, again throwing away grammatical speech constructions, taking up the issue of American consumption. ‘I know the human race is supposed to get down on its hands and knees in front of all this new technology and kiss the microchip circus,’ he barked, before – as Joe would – delivering an unmentionable truth. ‘But it don’t impress me over much that there ain’t nothing but You Buy. You-make-you-buy-you-die. That’s the motto of America – you get born to buy it.