Redemption Song

by Chris Salewicz

  Joe needed all his abilities to bring out the best in the group’s singer. Shane MacGowan was so off his head for much of the time, his voice accordingly slurred, that Joe was obliged to oversee the way in which much of the Hell’s Ditch vocals were recorded, not line by line or word by word, but often literally syllable by syllable, the vocals assembled like a jigsaw. ‘Shane wasn’t at his best,’ said James Fearnley. ‘He walked into the studio well turned out in a grey suit, but as you looked upwards from his shoes, by the time you got to his head he looked terrible. There was a lot of work needed on the vocals.’

  ‘Shane was my artist,’ Joe told me. ‘If you’re in the producer’s chair, he’s your singer. You’ve got to understand what his spirit is feeling, and when to record him. You’re dealing with an artist. I know Shane well.’ ‘Joe did a brilliant job,’ recalled Spider Stacey. ‘Given the state Shane was in, he saved what could have been a nightmare and turned it into something very good, by doing the vocals word by word. It was a great idea to use Joe.’

  James Fearnley agreed: ‘Hell’s Ditch was not as belting as our previous albums. But it was a reflection of what was happening in the group. Shane was on his way out. It was manifestly hard to work with him and him with us. I think he wanted to go. A lot of the songs on the record – like ‘Sayanora’ – are saying goodbye. The ones about Thailand are to do with Shane’s disillusionment. Joe did a fantastic job. He got us to play instruments we hadn’t used before, like fingerpiano and electric sitar. The Thailand feel fitted in perfectly.’

  ‘The only way it went wrong,’ said Jem Finer, ‘was the ultimate choice of the tracks on the record, which ended with an all-night session in my house with him and I arguing about it.’

  Until almost dawn phone calls criss-crossed North London about the final Hell’s Ditch track-listing. Several hours were spent on the subject of whether or not to include ‘Six to Go’, a Terry Woods song about the ‘unsafe’ conviction of the alleged IRA bombers of a Birmingham pub in 1974. ‘It’s all about the Birmingham Six,’ Joe justified its inclusion to Jem Finer. ‘Have you ever spent fifteen years in prison for something you haven’t done?’ he said to Spider Stacey on the phone. Although both Jem and Spider appreciated Joe’s argument – ‘I liked that ferocity he had. But the song wasn’t good,’ maintained Jem – they were both against its inclusion. But the tune stayed on the record.

  ‘Joe decided that was the way it was,’ said Jem. ‘We had a very long night and in the end I just gave up and said I wanted to go to bed. I told him he was wrong and an idiot, but hoped he’d realize he was a twat one day.

  ‘Later – I think we were at the Electric Ballroom – he came up to me,’ remembered Jem, ‘and said, “You were fucking right, man.” I said, “Too late now. Listen to me next time.”’

  Joe’s work with the Pogues was not over. In LA in September, Joe rang James Fearnley, who was living with Danielle von Zerneck, his old flame. ‘Do you fancy a beer?’ ‘Sure,’ said James. The pair met in the Powerhouse, a bar on Highland in Hollywood. A few weeks later Joe told me the surprising information with which James Fearnley had then presented him. ‘He said, “I’m sorry to have to do this to you, but we parted company with Shane three days ago, and we’ve got tours booked until March around the world.”’

  Joe knew that he was being asked to stand in for Shane MacGowan. ‘I had a glass halfway to my lips, and I went, “Uhhh?!?” I nearly spat my beer out. I went, “You what?????”’

  After an acrimonious few days in Japan, Shane MacGowan had left the Pogues. With a world tour to be completed, and no manager – Frank Murray was no longer there – they were in a spot. Until James Fearnley had had his brainwave.

  ‘I couldn’t believe what he’d said. To me it was another normal day in my life. I didn’t expect this. I thought about it for maybe three long seconds, and all my intelligence was screaming, “No, no, no. You don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for.” And then I said, “Fuck it. I’m in.” I like to make instant decisions, and go the whole hog with them. Because when I was young I remember reading about the Cherokees, how when a Cherokee is faced with a decision, he always takes the more reckless alternative. That briefly flashed through my mind, and I thought, “Go for it. What’s life for but to make reckless decisions?”’

  In his description of his Cherokee-inspired instant decision we encounter Joe’s love of drama. For James Fearnley recalled this pivotal moment differently: ‘He wouldn’t give me an answer. The next day he called me and said, “OK.” It must have come to him as an insane idea.’

  So Joe had a new job, singer with the Pogues, the next leg of their tour kicking off in under two weeks in New York City, on 26 and 27 September, at the Beacon Theater. Shane MacGowan was reported to have been upset at being replaced by Joe Strummer.

  In Los Angeles the Pogues played at the Wiltern, a beautiful art deco theatre in Korea Town on Wilshire Boulevard. Joe’s presence on the bill pushed up ticket sales; they ended up playing three nights. ‘Me and Joe had a competition,’ said James Fearnley, ‘to see how many we could get on the guest-list. When we used to play “London Calling”, “Straight to Hell” and “I Fought the Law”, he very much directed us.’

  As opposed to the anti-front-man role that belonged to Shane MacGowan, Joe stamped his authority from the off. A typical set was studded with Pogues’ favourites: “If I Should Fall from Grace with God”, “Dirty Old Town”, as well as “Sayonara” and “Sunnyside of the Street”, both from Hell’s Ditch. (‘Never forget MacGowan,’ Joe reminded the audience at the beginning of “Sunnyside” in Dublin on 16 December 1991.) Halfway through he stuck in ‘London Calling’, followed a couple of numbers later by ‘Straight to Hell’, with ‘I Fought the Law’ and ‘Brand New Cadillac’ bringing up the rear of the show. The lead singer’s onstage pronouncements increasingly took on the sneering nasal intonations of his hero John Lennon – as though the origins of many Pogues had caused the character of Joe Strummer to mutate in the direction of Irish-dominated Merseyside.

  ‘He jumped into the audience at a show, and we kept on playing,’ recalled James Fearnley. ‘I didn’t know what was happening. Having worked with Shane, we knew it was best to let things like that carry on. Then he got on at me for not helping out: a girl was being given a hard time in the audience by some bloke. Was he being romantically cavalier in the extreme? Was he really angry at something else? Or was he testing us?’

  In the bar of the Chateau Marmont one night, Joe found Bruce Springsteen coming over and putting an arm around him. ‘I really like what you’re doing, man,’ said the Boss. ‘I loved Joe’s stories about his encounters with the big boys of rock’n’roll. They were always full of the same enthusiasm as a fan,’ said Marcia Finer. ‘I think it was to do with his school experience. He’s been accepted. There’s something nice about that.’ In LA the Pogues supported Bob Dylan. ‘I hope you don’t meet him, he might be a disappointment to you,’ Joe suggested to Marcia. ‘What he was suggesting wasn’t a put-down of Dylan,’ she considered. ‘People were always wanting to meet Joe and from that he understood what people wanted from other stars. He knew I would be looking to find something that might not be there.’ Once when Joe phoned Jesse Dylan, he was told, ‘Sorry, Dad. I can’t talk right now,’ and Jesse hung up. Joe was amused Bob Dylan’s son had mistaken him for his father.

  ‘The start of the tour was really relaxed,’ said Jem Finer. ‘But there’s always a weird routine in touring, where you’ve got all this adrenaline after the show, so then you have a bit of a party, and so you’re a bit tired the next day. And you get tireder and tireder. As the front-man, Joe had to psyche himself up into the character of Joe Strummer to do the gig. After the gig he’d slowly become John Mellor again, but as the tour went on it look longer and longer for him to come down after the show, until he was Joe Strummer the whole time – which was not always pleasant.

  ‘Joe turned up for rehearsal with this bag full of Hawaiian shirts. He was trying to s
tamp some collective identity on the band. Control, power. He would create his own environment wherever he was, a lot of which was to do with sound. He’d always have a ghetto-blaster playing his choice of music. If you’re playing music you’re making a whole atmosphere, another kind of power. When we would be getting off the bus waiting for the bags, Joe’s ghetto-blaster already would be out on the street playing. For a few minutes even that section of the pavement would become Joe’s world. He was creating this bubble to travel round in, to isolate or insulate himself in.’

  At the end of November, after the shows in the United States and Europe, the Pogues hit Britain for an eleven-date UK tour, ending on 12 December at the Town and Country Club in London. On the blustery Monday night of 29 November I went up to the first date, at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge. I had been commissioned by the arts pages of the Daily Telegraph to write an article, a simple pitch: the singer with the Clash becomes the singer with the Pogues. In March that year the Clash had had their first number 1 single in the UK, ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’, on the back of that Levi’s commercial. ‘Rock the Casbah’, re-released as a follow-up two months later, got to number 15. But Joe’s status wasn’t hip and the piece was never run, which I found embarrassing. I had, after all, sat in his dressing-room with him for ninety minutes or so before the show and conducted an interview with him.

  He had been in chirpy spirits, singing Brian Wilson’s ‘Vegetables’ to himself when I had gone into the dressing-room. Even though he would only be there for a brief time, he had customized it to his liking, putting gels over the lights, and establishing a mood through the tape of Bobby Darin songs that he began to play on his ghetto-blaster. Before we began talking, he hawked up a lump of phlegm into the sink. Then he rolled a spliff.

  Q. What’s going on with Shane?

  A. Maybe Shane needs a rest – he’s entitled to one. These guys work, in the flicker of an eye they tour and tour and tour. They walk it like they talk it, the Pogues.

  Q. How does it feel doing Shane’s songs?

  A. It’s not the singer, it’s the song. Now these songs are great material. I love getting my teeth into them. They’d already parted company with Shane, there are seven other men, trying to scrape and make ends meet. I felt I could do my mates a favour, so they didn’t have to cancel a tour, because it costs you money to cancel. It’ll take everything you got. So I felt righteous. I realized after a while that the public didn’t see it like that sometimes. They thought, ‘Oh, they’ve got Strummer in instead of MacGowan.’ I can understand if people want to shout abuse. But I feel completely honourable, and his material is great to sing.

  Q. You knew what you were letting yourself in for: you’d been on that previous tour, and now you’re the singer in the group …

  A. I had five days notice on that one. To learn twenty-four numbers, and 1,000 chord changes. I was just concentrating on the rhythm guitar. I never thought about fronting the outfit.

  Q. How do you feel about the live experience these days?

  A. We are proud of it being live. The more stuff that gets pre-recorded – backing tapes and all this stuff – the prouder we feel that we’re the real thing. Even when you’re all feeling knackered and it’s a bit shabby, I’d rather live with that because at least it’s human. Life is unpredictable. If everything is pre-recorded, then everything is monotonously the same, whether you’re up or down.

  Q. Have audiences been surprised to see you singing with the Pogues?

  A. In America the Clash are still really enormous, but the Germans never took to the Clash and they didn’t really know who I was. So I had to win them by dint of making great art, now, on the spot. That keeps you sharp. They are very free there, man. It showed up again how people like to restrict us in England: they don’t want you to have fun in England.

  Q. How’s your voice these days?

  A. Raspy. Two or three gigs and it starts to tune up. Just like a car, you’ve got to fill it with gas to make it down to The Smoke tonight. Hey, there’s four lines coming up with no breaks, so you fill every cavity within you with air before that, and you feed it out gradually, hoping to get to the last syllable with enough juice to grunt out that last syllable. There are no clear notes required from me. [Laughter] Who can say what singing is? People understand that you’re out there, and you’re going to come back with some strange murmuring or whimpering from where you’ve been in your thoughts. That’s what singing is. You’re relating some emotional experiences you had – that you shouldn’t have had if you wanted to retain your sanity.

  [At this moment, a member of the road-crew knocked on the door to present Joe with a tumbler of brandy, a pre-show ritual. ‘Exactly half that would be fine,’ he said. ‘It’s like being in the British navy before the battle. This is the Pogues’ cannon-room. He serves one out to everyone in the group and crew – everyone gets a tot, even the people who don’t need one.’]

  Q. All the projects you’ve done since the Clash have been interesting …

  A. A long time ago I realized my stuff was never going to reach a wide audience. So that’s a hard thing to realize, and to come to terms with, especially after you’ve been big. The Clash had massive record sales and reached a lot of people. After that broke up some years have to pass before you get perspective on it, and then pieces drop into place, and you understand that you’re never going to get that surge again, because youth, adolescence, and rock’n’roll, combined with people doing the right things in the right place at the right time, is a rocket-propelled jet-fuelled mix that’s going to last you into the stratosphere. After that you realize you’ve got to approach life differently, that it’s another stage. So I just decided that I would try and do interesting things. I’d try and keep my lifestyle at a low enough level so I could coast along for a while on Clash royalties and not have to go and drive a cab.

  I instinctively knew there’d be a long period where I’d have to go into the wilderness. After it broke up I never had the will to form a supergroup with God knows who. I realized we’d had a great crack at it. So I’ve always tried to do little interesting things down the years. I knew they’d never reach any audience. When Walker came out 15,000 people bought it. And rather than say, ‘What a downer,’ my attitude was: ‘This is great. There are 15,000 hipsters out there tuning in, and they are the people who’ll always be with you.’

  Q. I know that Earthquake Weather sold badly, but you seem very sanguine about it. I’m impressed with your cold realism.

  A. I am coldly real. It’s OK. I’ve beaten myself with the biggest stick. [Pause] When you’re in the Clash it’s very clear. Here’s a new group. Dig this sound. They’re coming at you: BOOOOOM! But when that disintegrates it all gets murky and people have to get to move on and have wives or partners and children and buy and sell Ford Cortinas. I understood I could never hope to command their attention like that ever again, because the world is so full of things and there’s not time to check everyone out. I just had to make do with the ones that have drifted into Tower Records. Life is interesting. Anything can happen. But you’ve got to be tough enough to take a spell in the wilderness, instead of hoping to be in the spotlight the whole fucking time. People get sick to death of you. But I was able to become a human again after being in Shea Stadium.

  Q. Have you anything left to give?

  A. That’s another good thing about being on the road for almost twenty years. I was sitting backstage in some gig in Germany the other day, and I knew we were going to go out and do a great set any second. And I was destroyed beyond the frontiers of endurance, at the end of everything. But I still had it and I could walk to the stage and rip it up. But that’s as much as I had. Afterwards a German youth came up to me, with a cool analytical mind. He said, ‘The gig was really great.’ I said, ‘Thanks.’ But he said, ‘Of course, I expected that.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Because you are a singer without a band and they are a band without a singer.’ It seemed very clear why it worked after he spok
e. I hadn’t thought of it like that.

  After the British and Irish dates there was an ecstatic response to the addition of Joe Strummer to the Pogues on further Japanese dates, where his legend lingered strongly. When they had been playing in Germany Joe and Jem had had talks about writing and recording, either together or with the Pogues. Jem gave him ‘a load of half-finished songs’. But these plans would never come to fruition.

  By the time that the English tour was halfway through Joe had made a decision. ‘I’ve got a letter he wrote to me,’ said Jem. ‘He didn’t want people to think he was letting them down. But he didn’t want to carry on.’ ‘I’ve helped you out three times, man,’ Joe wrote. ‘But this time you gotta let me go. I gotta go out on my own and find it.’

  But where was it? Not in Notting Hill any longer. A big change was about to take place.

  It’s a good thing Joe never put down the notepad: THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN? (Lucinda Mellor)

  24

  THE COOL IMPOSSIBLE

  1991–1993

  Damien Hirst: ‘What’s the biggest thing you’ve ever killed?’ Joe Strummer: ‘My career.’

  Joe had told Jem Finer he’d ‘gotta go out on my own and find it’. But he would need to look hard. For Joe Strummer nothing seemed to be going quite right.

  To the external world Joe appeared a wise man, almost a Solomon figure, whose knowledge had been honed by overcoming external and internal challenges with honesty and insight. With the apparent philosophical overview that came from long experience, he would listen deeply, watch closely and speak last. In the end, his apparent even-handedness and objectivity had earned him the respect he received, and those who could not work out their problems would come to him voluntarily for advice – although they might not always like what they heard.