Redemption Song

by Chris Salewicz

  Not that everyone seemed to appreciate Joe for who he simply was. ‘I got detoured on a train back down to Hampshire,’ he said. ‘I had a long wait until my connection. I went to get a drink in a pub. Some bloke said, “You look just like Joe Strummer.” I said, “I am Joe Strummer.”’ He said, “You wish!”’ Down at the farmhouse in Hampshire Joe set up a home studio, trying to grapple with modern technology, never his strongest point; he began to work on songs for the soundtrack of a film, When Pigs Fly, directed by Sara Driver, Mrs Jim Jarmusch. But matters between Joe and Gaby had hardly changed. Sometimes they seemed worse. To Paul and Tricia, Joe complained about living in what he said was spelt the ‘c-u-n-t-ry’. He was miserable that he couldn’t hear the excellent music programmes on BBC Radio London – eventually he erected a tall aerial mast behind the house to pick up the station – and that he couldn’t buy the London Evening Standard – despite that publication’s right-wing slant both Joe and Mick Jones were avid readers of the capital’s daily paper. ‘Down in the country there was no coffee-shop for him to go to for a breakfast sardine sandwich and he’d have to drive to the pub,’ said Tricia. ‘He had to work round that. When we stayed down there, we’d come down for breakfast, and Joe would be sitting outside in the Moggie Minor with his coffee and newspaper while everyone else was inside having breakfast. That’s the coffee-shop he’s created. He’s got to get out of the kitchen and have a bit of peace and quiet. I was allowed to sit in it with him once and have a chat.’ The ‘c-u-n-t-ry’ wasn’t all boring: one night, on the way back from an evening out in Winchester, John Govett rolled his car, Joe gripping on to his seatbelt in the front passenger seat as the vehicle tumbled over. But such fun aside, this was the beginning of what Joe would later define as ‘The Wilderness Years’. His frustrations were building up and the problems between himself and Gaby were coming to a head. To find some solace, Joe would take long hikes across the fields.

  Shortly before he went on tour as singer with the Pogues, Joe had taken Gaby to Pisa and Florence for a long weekend, to celebrate her thirtieth birthday, on 12 October 1991. In characteristic manner, as though – you might feel – to prevent the need for any unpalatable intimacy between himself and Gaby, Joe had also invited along John and Amanda Govett. Alcohol was consumed, especially by Joe. After their last evening out, back at their rather sumptuous hotel, Joe lost it. ‘He verbally attacked me. He came out with so much venom,’ said Gaby. ‘He told me I was a dreadful mother. He told me I was terrifying for the kids. He was projecting onto me about his childhood and his relationship with his mother, and it was the final straw. I said that was it: it was absolutely over between us. We discussed splitting up. He wanted to take the kids – I said that wasn’t even an issue. We came back and lived in separate rooms, as complete strangers.’

  Perhaps as compensation – at such times the delusion that you simply need a change of scenery can be strong – there were more holidays. At Easter 1992 Joe went with Gaby and the kids to Barbados. They had booked into the Cobbler’s Cove Hotel, a former plantation house on the west coast of the Caribbean island with its own sandy, palm-fringed cove. Clearly needing his habitual social back-up, but on another level operating from altruistic feelings towards his old spar, Joe called up Paul Simonon in London. Paul was grieving over the recent death from cancer of Nigel Dixon, the former Whirlwind singer with whom he had formed Havana 3 A.M., the man Paul had regarded as ‘his only friend’. It didn’t take much persuading before Paul, Tricia and their young son Louis were on a flight from London to Barbados. Exiting Grantley Adams International, they were greeted by the sight of Joe sitting at the wheel of a rented Mini-Moke, a pair of cocktails that he had bought for his friends melting in the tropical sun on the dashboard. ‘Come on. I’ve come to get you,’ said Joe, as they set off on the forty-minute drive to Cobbler’s Cove. ‘He was looking after Paul in his way,’ said Tricia. ‘We had a bag hanging out of the Mini-Moke, a baby hanging out the other side, Paul and I hanging on. “Come on. Let’s stop and have a drink,” says Joe. Joe was on his best efforts to cheer Paul up and give us a good time. It was really nice. Eddie Grant, who lives there, saw us one day at this bar and we got to know him. Joe was drinking a lot.’

  Joe and Paul Simonon, with Eddie Grant, whose ‘Police On My Back’ the Clash covered on Sandinista!; Joe and Paul ran into Eddie in Barbados, where he was resident. (Lucinda Mellor)

  On 21 August 1992, for Joe’s fortieth birthday, he, Gaby, John and Amanda Govett and their assorted children drove up to Granada from San José. This significant birthday was to be celebrated in considerable style, at the ritzy Alhambra Palace Hotel. As a present Amanda and John bought Joe a top-of-the-range Spanish acoustic guitar. What had been intended as a two-day stay turned into five nights. There was a pair of reasons: check-out time at the Alhambra Palace was 11 a.m.; each morning everyone would still be in bed then and their stay at the hotel would roll on to an additional night; and then it was learnt that during the day the kids had been raiding the mini-bars, meaning their parents didn’t have enough cash to pay the bill, and they had to send to San José for more money. Joe’s reluctance to use credit cards was sometimes an obstacle to the smooth running of his life.

  So Joe had hit forty, the signpost of middle-age. You know that that chapter marker in his life hit him like a sledgehammer. His depression and self-recrimination only intensified. All the holidays in the world couldn’t anaesthetize that.

  ‘He was very depressed,’ said Tricia Ronane. ‘I don’t think it was even about him and Gaby – although I think he thought it was. When you’re depressed, you take it out on the people closest. Paul and I would go to see them, they’d shout a lot, there was a lot of tension if she turned up in the pub, and they would be arguing all the time. I think Joe loved Gaby a lot, in spite of his philandering, and he adored his children. He did tell me once that in a row – when you do say horrible things – she’d told him he was no good and useless. That’s not what a guy like that wants to hear. Joe always needed someone he could talk to, and he didn’t have anyone like that down in the country. He’d try these different people he’d bump into. He is down there with not a lot going on, very depressed.’

  Part of Joe’s solution to his state of internal bewilderment was to spend more and more time in London, crashing with Paul. ‘Paul and Joe would sit up all night in our living-room,’ said Tricia. ‘But they weren’t doing drugs: they drank bottle after bottle of red wine, Joe would smoke some spliff. I’d come down at 7 in the morning, because of the kids, and the turntable would still be turning, ashtrays full of cigarette stubs, Joe asleep in the alcove by the window, Paul lying on the sofa, and I’d be: “You two, can’t you even drag yourselves up to a bed?” Night after night. They stayed up on conversations which were sometimes useless and sometimes enlightening, but they were always intense and fun. They would listen to music, and they would laugh their heads off. Smoke, drink, stay up all night.’

  Joe’s parenting skills were demonstrated just before Christmas 1992, when he was in London for the Notting Hill pantomime, a celebrated annual local event, held at the Tabernacle in Powis Square, with cameos from local celebrities. Joe gave my two-year-old son Cole such an endless supply of schoolboy-like sweets – involving much liquorice – that the boy threw up. Down in the country, as 1992 slid into 1993, Joe and Gaby threw a New Year’s Eve party. Paul and Tricia Simonon were also involved, party-goers congregating in fancy-dress at their house in Oxford Gardens to travel to Hampshire in a coach. The usual suspects were involved: Don Letts and his family, his brother Desmond, and Leo Williams, formerly bass-player with BAD, were all on the bus, as was Gordon McHarg, a pop artist from Canada who had met Joe through Paul. Gordon took down several packets of king-size blue Rizlas for Joe. ‘You can’t go to the shops in the country and ask for king-size Rizlas: it’s a dead giveaway,’ Joe had advised Gordon. ‘It seemed a fair exchange,’ thought Gordon, who partook of Joe’s omnipresent golfball-sized lump of high-grade hash. The co
ach taking everyone back to London departed at 1 a.m., a little early, it was generally felt.

  Gerry Harrington, who, despite no longer working with Joe, had remained friends, went to Hampshire. ‘I was in the living-room on a Sunday with Simonon in the middle of winter. All the women were in the kitchen. Suddenly – as though he was Tony Hancock or Sid James – Joe says to Simonon and me, “It’s pretty cold out there. Do you reckon you can run 100 yards in this kind of cold?”

  ‘“Yes, of course. But what are you getting at?”

  ‘“It’s just that if you fall it’s very icy …”

  ‘“Joe: where are we going with this?”

  ‘Paul doesn’t need to figure anything. He’s heard this a million times. Joe says, “It’s 1.30. We only have an hour’s worth of drinking before the pubs shut, if we leave now on foot and get there in three minutes. So we’ve got to go. You don’t have time to get your coat. Gerry, I’m begging you.” He doesn’t want Gaby knowing that he’s going to the pub. This is a guy who’s forty and he behaves like he’s fourteen.’

  ‘I told Gaby, “You two have got to confront this situation and do something about it,”’ said Tricia. ‘“Or one or the other of you is going to fall in love with someone else. Not even because you want to, but because it’s unavoidable when there’s no love going on in the relationship.”’

  Over the 1993 Easter holiday there was a big country picnic at the house of the artist Charlie Baird. Gordon McHarg took a photograph of Joe Strummer cheerily holding aloft a Roy Orbison CD, an artist whom Joe always loved. But later, walking in the fields, Gordon overheard Joe, pacing the grass in evident angst with Frances, Gaby’s mother, say to the woman who was effectively his mother-in-law: ‘I don’t know what I can do. I don’t know how to make her happy.’

  The Clash on Broadway box set, which Joe had gifted to the son of Nick and Connie Broughton, was an iconic, intimate and highly satisfying example of a then new form that enhanced the legend of the Clash – people who hadn’t listened to the group for years pricked up their ears again. It had brought Joe back into contact with Kosmo Vinyl; the two had not really spoken since the end of the Clash. Out of the blue Tricia Ronane called Kosmo, asking him to work on the Clash on Broadway project. He flew over to London and reacquainted himself with Paul and Mick. ‘Of course Joe was being elusive. I got him on the phone one day and he said, “Just fucking get over here!” He slammed down the phone. I can’t finish it without him, so I go over to his house in Lancaster Road. He does everything I need in about twelve minutes.’

  Kosmo was known for looking sharp. When he arrived at Lancaster Road, Joe also was dressed to the nines – ‘great shirt on, jacket, pegs. He said, “I don’t always dress like this any more, but you’re here.” He looked fantastic. We renewed friendship. He was completely on board with the Clash on Broadway thing. Fantastically cooperative.’ Kosmo threw an offer in the direction of Joe: ‘If you need any help on anything…’ Some time later Joe called him: ‘“If you want to help me, help me sort out this film.” ‘I said, “What film?” He said, “I’ve agreed to do this soundtrack for Sara Driver. They’ve got no money. We’ve got to do it fast. We really have got to do it: I’ve booked time at Rockfield and haven’t got any musicians.”’

  Kosmo came back to England and went down to the country to see Joe. ‘He’s out in Hampshire with Gaby and it seems to me that the situation is very bleak, very heavy there. Not in a combative way, but you can feel it in the air. That awesome quiet. There’s not much being said in the house.’

  When Pigs Fly, an Irish ghost story starring Marianne Faithfull, was the second film made by Sara Driver. ‘One of the reasons I wanted Joe to do the music for my film,’ said Sara, ‘was not only because of his knowledge of Irish music, but because he was like an archaeologist with music. He had such a love of different kinds of music that would influence his work. He would layer them, like an archaeologist.

  ‘Joe had an enormous ego, but he was also someone who was very sensitive. Insecurity often goes with big egos. Joe was more and more internalized. Big Chief Thunder Cloud was eating him up. He really did have a cloud over his head, a dark cloud.’

  The dark cloud allowed him to reject Sara’s suggestion, which Kosmo had tried to get him to go along with, to sing a duet with Marianne Faithfull. But Joe was absolutely ready for studio work – especially when the director, who could only offer a small fee, gave him the music publishing rights to the movie.

  Contrary to what Joe secretly feared, everyone jumped at the chance to work with him. Kosmo called Danny Thompson, the masterly English jazz stand-up bass-player who had worked so memorably with John Martyn, another eccentric genius. ‘Strummer’s name seemed to be good with everyone. Danny Thompson said, “I’ll be there.”’

  ‘I knew and loved his stuff, but I didn’t know him,’ said Danny. ‘I’d loved the Sex Pistols and the Clash. To me Joe seemed more of an intellectual with an outlook beyond music. He said, “I’m doing a film.” I said, “Who’s doing the arrangements?” He said, “It’s not like that. We’re just doing it. It’s only E and A – there’s no grammar-school chords.” I said, “Can I play to what’s on the screen and respond accordingly?” He said, “That’s how we’re going to do it.” I met him down at Rockfield and fell in love with him. But we were talking F sharp minor and B flat – it was more complex than he’d had me believe. He had great ideas. He would suggest things and gave me more freedom to express myself.’

  On drums was Terry Williams, who had played with Rockpile’s Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds, the owner of Rockfield. Joe and Kosmo brought in some Irish musicians he thought would understand the material. ‘I tried to get really good players,’ said Kosmo. ‘I figured the best thing to do was get in some guys who could really play, who he’d never really been around. But Joe didn’t really like that. I think it put too much pressure on him, but I wasn’t quite aware of that at the time.’

  ‘Joe’s boys’ club felt very male: as soon as these musicians would arrive, they would always ask me for a cup to tea,’ remembered Sara. ‘Joe would get a gleam in his eye and go, “She’s the director.” It would make him really happy to stick it to them a little bit.’

  Although there was no formal arrangement between the two men, Sara was under the impression that ‘Kosmo was organizing and helping manage Joe. He was my main contact when I was organizing all the music stuff. The money and the administration, it all went via Kosmo.’

  Joe went down to Wales on 19 March 1993 for a day’s pre-production at Rockfield, but the sessions proper started on 27 April, lasting until the 30th of that month, with another day of post-production on 2 May. As soon as they began, Joe steamed ahead. ‘From the four days at Rockfield he gave me nine hours of music,’ said Sara. ‘What am I going to do with all this music? It was the accumulation of all those years of not being in the studio. He was writing furiously. He had so much to show me when I arrived that was already sketched out. I have these napkins of Joe’s lyrics: his brain was so active that he was always doodling, always writing.’

  There were three specific songs with vocals – the title-track ‘When Pigs Fly’ (which ultimately was not used in the film), ‘Pouring Rain’ and ‘Rose of Erin’ – and one, ‘Free at Last’, on which Joe extemporized a scat-style, free-form spoken word rendition. Among the pieces of instrumental music in the film were ‘Ellis Island Line’, ‘Phantom County Fair’ and the thundering instrumental ‘Storm in a D-Cup’. On ‘When Pigs Fly’, a meditation on the thorny subject of romance (‘No -one knows if it comes and goes / it is a difficult thing, this thing called love’), his voice is buried even deeper than it appeared to be on Earthquake Weather. But still, no more so than on ‘White Riot’.

  ‘I’m a Moslem, and it was Ramadan,’ recalled Danny Thompson. ‘It got to 1 o’clock and he’d offer me sandwiches and tea. But I’d have something to eat at 4.30 a.m. and then when the sun went down. After about the third day he asked me why I wasn’t eating. I said, “I’m a Mos
lem. I fast for a month.” He said, “Blimey, that’s hard. All right, I won’t have a joint until you break your fast. At sunset I’ll skin one up.” He showed me he knew what I was doing and was understanding and courteous.

  ‘I knew from the word “Go” that I loved this bloke. Whether I played with him didn’t matter. It would have been all right to just have a picnic. He was a cartoonist with his words. I laugh when I think about him, that grin of his – he was a naughty boy.’

  As opposed to his previous work at Rockfield with the Pogues, when Joe had rigorously overseen every note, he now reverted to the hands-off method of the Walker soundtrack. ‘He would show the musicians just a little something of how the song should be,’ said Sara, ‘and then let them dance with it.’

  ‘He was very positive and impressive as a producer,’ said Danny Thompson. ‘Very nicely in control. He was aware he had a budget and had to match it. He wanted it right. He had a project to do and it was fantastic. He wasn’t drinking much, a person in complete control getting on with the project.’

  Sara did observe that Joe seemed somewhat hard of hearing, an occupational hazard for musicians: ‘We went to dinner and he couldn’t hear a word the waitress said. That’s when I realized. A lot of times he would say, “Oh, right!” to things that really shouldn’t get an “Oh, right!”’

  Accompanying Sara Driver at Rockfield was Jim Jarmusch, partially, she thought, because he was aware of Joe’s perpetual propensity for mischief. ‘I told Jim that I was going to be there for four days of hard work. After three days, I said, “See Jim, all we’re doing is working.” He said, “Yes, you’re working very hard.” Jim absolutely adored Joe. I think Joe had that effect on men: it was like they were in love with him, not in a sexual way but in an intellectual way, because of everything he stood for. It’s really interesting how the whole “family”, from near and far, would show up to things he was involved in.’