Redemption Song

by Chris Salewicz

  ‘What’s going on ?’ she demanded.

  ‘I didn’t feel like getting on the plane so I caught a cab.’

  ‘How did you know my address?’

  ‘I had your address.’

  ‘At the time I thought he was an oddball. But he was probably completely out of it. I was about twenty-five years old and I thought “How odd.” I remember going up the street, thinking, “Oh my God. What’s he doing here?” He was kind of aimless. He just said, “I didn’t want to go home.”’

  Late in October 1987 Joe did go back to London, but not for as long as he had expected. ‘After Walker I wanted to go back to London and think,’ he said. ‘Then the phone rings. I had just looked at my horoscope. It said, “You will receive an interesting call.”’

  It came from Frank Murray. In less than a week the Pogues were due to set off on an American tour. But a long-standing ailment of Philip Chevron, the guitarist, had been finally diagnosed as a stomach ulcer. So Frank came to a decision. ‘I rang up Joe to ask him to join the Pogues. Phil wouldn’t survive a US tour. “Do you want to be rhythm guitar player?” Joe said, “You’re not trying to get rid of Phil?” I then rang every member of the Pogues and said Joe had offered to do it. Which wasn’t true. They all said OK. Then I rang Joe back and said the group were all into it. He had one day’s rehearsal. He sellotaped the set to his guitar, and made a note of the keys. Three days later we hit New York and did two nights at the Ritz. Nobody knew Joe Strummer was playing with the Pogues in America until people saw him walk on stage at the Ritz that first night. Half the audience didn’t even know Joe Strummer – and I mean no disrespect to Joe. He had the time of his life. He got that hunger back, you could see it up on the stage in how he played. It gathered momentum as we crossed America.’

  So Frank Murray’s wish to manage Joe Strummer had almost come true. Scottish Joe fitted in well with the mostly Irish Pogues, a union of Celts; their world seemed comfortable for him. On stage with the Pogues Joe subsumed himself into the group, rather as he had done with the Soul Vendors, the reconstituted 101’ers. But at the end of the set he would return for the encores as front-man, performing ‘London Calling’ and ‘I Fought the Law’. ‘When Joe was with the Pogues he just liked being with the band,’ said Frank. ‘What he was getting was crazy sold-out audiences, and I think that floored him. He had to sing during the encores. But the rest of the night he was there enjoying himself. He was a total professional. He was conscientious about everything he did. He thought that the hour or two on stage was the most important thing. He made sure he was there when he was supposed to be there.’

  The Pogues’ shows at the Ritz Ballroom coincided with the New York Film Festival. Gaby was in town for the event and went with Joe and Bob Gruen. ‘I was standing on the sidewalk with him,’ said Bob, ‘and Spike Lee saw Joe and just bee-lined over: “Hey, how you doing?” They had an instant, great conversation. So many people like that were thrilled or impressed to meet him. I think his innocence was one of the things that kept him normal. In the sense that he didn’t really think he was that different from anybody else.’ After the show at the Ritz Joe went out drinking in the East Village with the usual gang, including his friend, the actor Matt Dillon, who had grown up listening to Irish folk music. ‘When I heard the Clash I got a little bit of that sense,’ said Matt. ‘Sure enough, Joe was into that music. I thought when he joined up with the Pogues that was a great move. Great call, a total natural move for Strummer to come and step with them. I thought it was great the way the Pogues invited him in. That was a great period for Joe. Because certainly there was a part of him – I understood it creatively – that was having a little trouble finding his niche. He did that great score for Walker, which was beautiful, but musically he was like a soldier without an army. He didn’t have his cannon. But he seemed more at ease with the Pogues. You know who he reminded me of? He looked a bit like Alec Guinness. I remember busting his chops once, telling him that he looked like Margaret Thatcher. Because he kind of did also.’

  ‘At a party for a charity Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were involved with, they were interested in what Joe had to say,’ recalled Gerry Harrington. ‘But Joe Strummer would never think that Paul Newman had ever heard of him. In fact, everyone from Paul Newman to hot girls in clubs, to the hiphop gods of the day, all had time for Joe in New York. But he would hunker down with some quite depressing guys. He’d sit up all night with them. They drag you down, reduce your self-esteem, then your ambition.’

  Also at the event was Danielle von Zerneck: ‘We’d been together for a while by the time he came back to do the Pogues: the New York Film Festival coincided with that. Gaby was there, so it was very strange for me and my New York friends, who knew what had been going on. He was trying to work on a broader canvas, and was full of ideas. He had a new spurt of energy. He’d get rolls of paper and write and write and hang them from mantelpieces and other places, and create his own world.’

  In the course of the tour Danielle found that she was often engaged in conversation with James Fearnley, the group’s accordionist. At the end of the dates James asked if he could write to her. No one had ever asked Danielle that before.

  The Ulcer Says No Tour, as it became known, criss-crossed America and Canada for three weeks. ‘There’s something about thrashing an instrument to the limit,’ Joe Strummer said later, ‘and what really appeals to me about the Pogues is the sheer physicality of the music. I loved the way we could really rock the house with a tiny little thing like a mandolin, rather than bludgeoning the audience into submission with a huge wall of sound. On “Medley” we’d all gather round Terry Woods and he’d raise one eyebrow which was the signal to go double time. It was scary enough just to learn all that stuff, let alone try and play it at 900 miles per hour.’

  Although Jem Finer did notice the increasing tendency of his friend John Mellor to metamorphose into the character of Joe Strummer, the long journeys across the United States gave them plenty of time to talk. ‘Joe did sometimes talk about problems, the politics of a band, specially when things were getting difficult in the Pogues,’ said Jem, referring to the well-known propensity for drinking and drugging by Shane MacGowan. ‘He’d talk about the Clash, he’d talk about difficulties he’d had with Mick. He’d say it with a trace of regret. He called both Mick and Shane “poobahs”, and went on to define it: “poobahs” are people who believe that the world revolves around them to such an extent that the whole world does revolve around them. Their opinion of themselves is so strong that it creates a vortex in which things do spin around them, which can be quite annoying, destructive and difficult. But it seemed to me that he was beginning to realize what Mick had been trying to do musically. Mick was into more adventurous musical development, taking on board dance and hiphop. Joe was a bit conservative. In the end Joe realized that Mick was on the ball and he hadn’t been.’

  Marcia Finer, Jem’s wife, had had similar conversations with Joe. When I mentioned to her that sometimes you didn’t exactly know where you stood with Joe Strummer, she suggested, insightfully, ‘Wouldn’t you say that’s because he didn’t know where he was? Mick Jones was a really dignified man, one who really knew that about Joe. I always had this feeling that Joe really loved Mick and he would say every now and then, “I’ve done damage to people.” Big Audio Dynamite was brilliant. Jem was going, “Ha-ha, look what they threw out.” Mick was a person brought into conversations by Joe with respect and reverence.’

  The Ulcer Says No Tour crossed the Atlantic. In March 1988 Joe played with the Pogues at the Town and Country Club in Kentish Town in London, a low-key return to the stage in his home town. Joe did promotion for the Walker soundtrack – tied to a flop film, the record only sold 15,000 copies (‘He was incredibly proud of the Walker soundtrack, but maybe he didn’t appreciate that soundtracks don’t sell,’ said Danielle von Zerneck), nothing compared to the sales of Combat Rock. In a Melody Maker interview he described an insight that had come to him on Rus
sian Hill: ‘I do remember thinking, “Rock’n’roll is better than this. Rock’n’roll’s much better than this.”’

  In April Joe was back in LA. With Danielle he went to see a screening of a film, Permanent Record, directed by Marisa Silver. It had been suggested that Joe might be interested in writing the film’s soundtrack. Joe was after more work in this area. Already he had been offered the soundtrack of Martin Brest’s intelligent chase movie, Midnight Run, starring his old New York compadre Robert de Niro, but curiously had turned it down. Perhaps that was an example of Joe’s lack of confidence: in a big-budget movie like Midnight Run his work would leave him exposed to criticism. Although it was backed by Paramount, Permanent Record, which starred Keanu Reeves, had the feel of an independent film, including a cameo performance by Lou Reed. But as a study of teenage suicide, it was a subject to which Joe would feel close. ‘We went to Paramount to see a rough cut,’ remembered Danielle. ‘During the film Joe was crying, tears pouring down. He said, “I’ll do it.” It really resonated with him. What was so memorable was the level of emotion he showed. But when I tried to talk to Joe about his brother, the tension was like a nuclear bomb.’

  The four songs Joe wrote for Permanent Record that were included in the soundtrack – ‘Trash City’, ‘Baby the Trans’, ‘Nefertiti Rock’, ‘Nothin’ ’Bout Nothin’’ – were much more in the vein of those he had come up with for the Clash. ‘Trash City’, in particular, has such a terrific rhythmic melody it has even been described as ‘the last great Clash song’; it hinges around the lines ‘In Trash City on party avenue / I’ve got a girl from Kalamazoo,’ a lift from the Glenn Miller song title ‘I Got a Gal in Kalamazoo’. Joe sounds freed up, at ease with himself, confident, his vocals mixed clear and positive. He also wrote a particularly plangent score for Permanent Record; he had assembled some musicians to play on the recording. ‘He was really enthusiastic,’ said Marisa Silver. ‘He didn’t write to time. But he’d have a feel for the scene and would write to that. It was somewhat improvisatory. In the studio he brought in a little grocery cart and played that at one point. He really had a strong feel for the film. He was in great spirits and into it, so enthusiastic and happy with the result. It was a great experience.’ Predictably, the executives at Paramount, the studio producing the film, hated what Joe had done. ‘It was way too obscure for them,’ believed Marisa. ‘It felt too much like an independent film for them.’ The musicians Joe had brought together formed the heart of the first group Joe had established since the demise of the Clash.

  Jason Mayall was the younger brother of Gaz Mayall, who ran Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues, the shebeen-like one-nighter club in London’s Soho of which Joe was very fond – he had even taken his friend ‘Bobby’ de Niro down there a couple of times. They were the two eldest sons of John Mayall, the British bluesman. In 1976 Jason moved to Los Angeles to live with his father at his pretty hillside house in Laurel Canyon. On return visits to London he would see Gaby, a family friend, and through her met Joe. ‘This was at the end of the Clash, so I didn’t meet him as a big punk figurehead. He was just “Joe”. I was never in awe of him. In subsequent years I saw him grow into a fantastic human being.’

  Jason was managing a group called Tupelo Chainsex, a cult punk-jazz act. Joe hit it off with a couple of the group’s musicians, Joey Altruda, who played stand-up bass and a guitar made out of a toiletpan, and Willie MacNeill, the drummer. Joe was looking to put together a group that incorporated Latin, jazz and rock’n’roll. With Joe adding Zander Schloss to the mix of Joey Altruda and Willie MacNeill, they formed what would become known as the Latino Rockabilly War. This was the team of musicians Joe took into the studio to work on the Permanent Record soundtrack.

  The soundtrack had been recorded at Baby O Recorders, located on Sunset Boulevard behind the Hollywood Athletic Club – and opposite an English-style pub called the Cat and Fiddle which Joe already had discovered. Although Gerry Harrington had disliked Permanent Record when he had seen it, he had recommended Joe take the soundtrack project. Use the studio time that Paramount will pay for, he suggested to Joe, and work on your own stuff.

  Contrary to the clichéd punk rock view of Los Angeles as a superficial city which is where you went when you were Rod Stewart, Joe Strummer felt at home in this vast urban conurbation, where the furthest extremities of the West collide with those of the Third World in a largely idyllic setting. The still calm and serene confidence of the vast, palm-fringed metropolis offers a reassuring, creative cocoon for artists. Paul Simonon and Sex Pistols’ guitarist Steve Jones were already in residence; although Paul would soon return to Britain, Steve Jones lives there to this day. These English punks were the kings of a gang of owners of vintage Harley-Davidsons that would prowl the city in leather-jacketed packs – the actor Mickey Rourke was an honorary member. So Joe was not alone there: he had a scene to fit into – when he wanted.

  When Joe was recording Permanent Record, Kate Simon’s husband David Johansen had a part as the Ghost of Christmas Past in the Bill Murray vehicle Scrooged. ‘Joe was living in the Sunset Marquis,’ said Kate. ‘Everyone’s stayed there, but only Strummer would take this pretty nice-sized room and make it like that place on Albany Street in Sebastian’s house. Everything was on an angle, and the light was completely covered. His aesthetic sense hadn’t changed.’

  Joe had taken the advice of Gerry Harrington, and had tried to work up material during the Permanent Record sessions at Baby O. But he didn’t really have time; there were only a couple of songs and a few outlines. On ‘Turnpike’ he had got the secretary from Baby O to sing the vocal, and then there was a tune called ‘Sleepwalk’, which he entrusted to Gerry, saying he had written it for Frank Sinatra, and giving his agent the task of placing it in the hands of Nelson Riddle, the arranger of Sinatra’s great 1950s’ material. Trying to get a tune to Sinatra alone suggested a returned self-assurance. And now, his confidence bolstered by his work on the Walker and Permanent Record soundtracks, Joe was insistent he was ready to make his own record.

  But his appetite for live performance had been whetted by the live dates with the Pogues. So first he had something to do.

  Unsurprisingly, Joe Strummer’s return to fronting a rock’n’roll group began at a Saturday afternoon drinking session, in the spring of 1988, in the Warwick in Portobello Road. The notion unveiled contained the usual set of complex paradoxes that one might associate with Joe, especially as these dates would be billed as the Class War ‘Rock Against the Rich’ Tour.

  Class War had started out as an anarchist publication, its thinkglobally-act-locally credo appealing to the punk and anarchist movements. With the miners’ strike that began in 1984 Class War took on a larger mantle, which really appealed to the natural troublemaker in Joe, although as one of Class War’s targets was the yuppification of areas like Notting Hill, where he had bought his house, he was obliged to do more fence-straddling. But he had been sold on it that Saturday afternoon in the Warwick, when Ian Bone, the Class War ‘leader’, told Joe about his plan to hold a free festival on the Isle of Dogs in the Thames, being transformed from abandoned wasteland to a prime real estate site. The Class War organizers vowed that they would ‘start a riot and burn every fucking yuppie flat to the ground’. As the pints flowed in the Warwick that Saturday afternoon, it must have sounded fantastic. Even better, who would be playing onstage as the Isle of Dogs burned? None other than Joe Strummer, with the Latino Rockabilly War, the musicians he had put together for the Permanent Record tunes. On such a vast stage, as Babylon flamed all about him, he would make his return as a headlining act for the first time since the final show by the ‘dodgy’ Clash in Athens in August 1985.

  Except that it didn’t happen. The offer of land for this festival on the Isle of Dogs was withdrawn: ‘hopefully he now rots in a grave and will go down in history as a traitor to the working class,’ read a Class War missive on the individual responsible. Instead a national tour was arranged, a Class War ‘Rock Against the Rich’ T
our, intended as the biggest rock’n’roll threat since the Pistols’ Anarchy dates at the end of 1976. Joe was totally up for it, enthused by the local protest issues at each different venue, as well as the potential for mayhem. Class War put him on the cover.

  Playing with the Pogues on tour had made Joe realize what he had been missing. Since making the two movie soundtracks he had a body of work of his own, separate from anything he had done with the Clash. He had material to promote – ‘Trash City’ was released as a single in June, to strong reviews, though it didn’t sell. ‘There were a few posters around and stickers and patches, and some press,’ said Gerry Harrington, who came to England for the dates. ‘But it didn’t feel like there was anyone pushing it, because it was on Epic Soundtracks. Then it became a self-fulfilling prophecy of “No one wants to hear my music any more.”’

  Joe Strummer and the Latino Rockabilly War kicked off the Rock Against the Rich Tour on Friday 17 June 1988 with the kind of ‘secret’ gig with which the Clash would often set off on tour. The show was at the Tabernacle in Powis Square where Joe had played with the Soul Vendors, a home ground gig, only a few hundred yards from 37 Lancaster Road; it was a benefit for Green Wedge, a Green Party fund-raising venture. Joe’s introduction to the audience by the show’s compère conjoined the inspired amateurism of squat-rock with a reference to his position in the rock’n’roll deity, in a manner that may have calmed Joe’s pre-show nerves and given a fillip to his ego. ‘The old fuckin’ technology is playing us up a bit,’ the compère said, ‘because the confetti has got in the fuckin’ amps. Let me welcome a neighbour of mine, local boy makes God: Joe Strummer and the Latino Rockabilly War.’