Over Easter 1994 Joe repeated his previous Barbados holiday, taking Lucinda and Eliza with him this time, again staying at Cobbler’s Cove. As before Paul and Tricia accompanied them. They spent more time with Eddie Grant. When a discussion arose as to the true worth of the Clash not being fully appreciated, the Guyanan musician had a simple solution: ‘It’s not old enough. When the material is twenty years old people will start to realize how great it is.’ ‘That’s exactly what happened,’ said Tricia Ronane. ‘When their music was twenty years old, almost to the day, offers started to come in from everywhere – films, TV, ads – all wanting to use it.’
In early 1994 a story swept the showbusiness sections of the British media: that the Clash had been made a multi-million dollar offer to re-form. In fact the sum involved was more like $50,000 a show, as part of the alternative Lollapalooza Festival which annually toured the USA. The offer came from the head of the William Morris agency; Perry Farrell from the group Jane’s Addiction, which had been involved with starting up Lollapalooza, was a William Morris client. ‘Perry really wanted the Clash to get back together,’ said Peter Kinnaird, who worked at William Morris in Los Angeles on the projected reunion. ‘Mick was calling him, and then Joe was calling him separately. When the rumour went out, all these young punk bands were dying to get on the bill. The story I heard about why they didn’t ultimately do it was that Joe went to an Elastica show at the Roxy on Sunset and some kid came up to him and said, “Are you going to rock the cashbah?” and I heard that that really put him off the idea.’
That may have been the case about Lollapalooza, yet ever since Joe had become involved with Lucinda he had been almost obsessively determined to get the Clash back together. He needed a job and a source of income and inspiration. ‘Paul was extremely cautious about these endless conversations,’ said Tricia. ‘They seemed to be going on and on and on every time we went down to stay with them. Then suddenly it’s apparent that no one has spoken to Mick yet.’
When Mick Jones – still the leader of BAD 2 – was contacted about Joe’s scheme, he was not against it, but he said that he would only be involved if this reconstituted Clash was to be managed by Gary Kurfirst, his own manager. ‘The others were against that,’ said Tricia. ‘Joe says we’ll get Kosmo, and have Gary Kurfirst as well. And we’ll all have some sort of representation. Which was quite unrealistic. Joe wanted to do it, but he also stopped it happening. Because he managed to throw a spanner in the works always, at some point.’ All the same, Tricia Ronane started having unofficial discussions with record companies to give her financial leverage with Sony, who would have been involved with any new work by the group. ‘They still hadn’t been in a room together. Whatever you said, Joe would say the opposite. “Well, Trish, I think I’ve got to retreat from the battlefield. Mick is going to want Kurfirst, I don’t want him.” It was all done by fax. Joe wouldn’t talk to me on the phone,’ Tricia added, recalling that the fax machine was adored by Joe for its ability to convey handwritten sentiment.
Finally there came an evening when Joe and Paul went to the Kensington Hilton by Shepherd’s Bush roundabout for a meeting with Mick and Kosmo Vinyl, who had flown over from New York. ‘Within half an hour,’ remembered Tricia, ‘the phone rang. It was Joe: “Can we come back to the house and do the meeting there?” Sure. They came back and we sat in the living-room at Oxford Gardens and had a conversation there.’
Joe’s first action was to apologize to Mick for having kicked him out of the Clash. Unexpectedly, at this moment Paul Simonon literally put his hand over Joe’s mouth. ‘I’m not apologizing,’ he said to Mick. ‘We were right to get rid of you.’
‘I feel like I’ve been taken down an alley and beaten up,’ said Mick.
‘He heard a lot of home truths. It was like get-it-out-on-the-table-time,’ said Tricia. ‘But Mick was really ready to have a chat and Joe suddenly announces, “I’ll mix some cocktails. You lot get on with it.” Then he spends twenty minutes over getting the drinks. Joe was avoiding Mick, because deep down he never wanted to have that conversation. Mick and Kosmo left together.’
‘Joe had said, “Come on, let’s get the Clash back together” on several occasions,’ said Mick. ‘In the Bahamas he had said it, but that was the wrong time. But when we were talking about getting back together in the first half of the Nineties, he suddenly said, “Perhaps we shouldn’t bother.” He was sitting there in the Union Chapel in Islington. There was a rave going on there: he’d just discovered raves, a bit late – suddenly he was like “Wow!” We were sitting in the pews next to each other and we’d been talking about it. He just came out with it suddenly: “Perhaps we shouldn’t bother.” I said “Okay,”’ Mick laughed. ‘And that was the end of that. That was probably the last time we were about to get back together again – maybe, possibly …
‘One good thing about that was that we remained close friends. We never got back together again, but our friendship remained. If we’d got back together, we probably would have rowed again. Although maybe not. Because we’d grown up and realised things. Maybe we’d have been able to keep it together.’ ‘I don’t think that Joe was ever jealous of Mick, but there might have been something of a sibling rivalry,’ said Lucinda. ‘Mick could drive him mad, though.
‘When Joe and I got together, this whole idea of re-forming the Clash started. Kosmo came over, and we had a meal in an Indian restaurant to discuss it. Before that we had been round at Paul and Tricia’s. Then Joe and I went over to Mick’s flat off the Harrow Road so Joe could talk to Mick. Joe was definitely quite nervous, because he wasn’t just going to hang with Mick, he was going to talk. We got round there – and I thought Mick was lovely. But Mick just sat there watching telly, smoking spliff after spliff, in a room surrounded by stacked-up videos. And he offered us endless cups of tea. I don’t smoke, but I could hardly stand, and was feeling ghastly. Joe was just sitting there in this fog, and nothing was discussed. When we left I knew that Joe was disappointed: he turned to me and said, “The problem with Mick is that he doesn’t drink enough.” Just tea. Joe always maintained that if we’d gone out to the pub and had a few beers, it might have been different. Smoking weed and drinking tea it wasn’t going to happen. But he loved and adored Mick.’
At this time Daisy Lawrence, who had split up with Mick Jones in 1990, threw a summer party at her home in nearby Queen’s Park to which Paul, Kosmo and Joe came team-handed, Joe accompanied by Lucinda, the first time I had seen her. Joe was all over his new love, edged into a corner of a room and kissing and cuddling, not speaking to anyone else. To the assembled throng it seemed very teenage lovey-dovey. But that evening in Joe’s face you could see something of his perpetual hurt; his new emotional release had broken down the defences of his façade and he had reverted to a shy, nervous, young boy; you could see that part of him almost wanted to cry, as though he was overwhelmed with gratitude for being loved and allowed to love. In the thralls of amour at Daisy’s party it seemed to me Joe returned to the frightened and needy young boy in the car that almost took out Johnny Green in Aberdeen: unguarded, almost shockingly vulnerable, and – here, now, with Lucinda – grateful. He looked about sixteen years old. Which, not to put too fine a shine on it, was the age of John Mellor when his brother David ended his days. You felt that night that you could see that part of Joe’s emotions were frozen at that age, in trauma: part of his neediness, part of his ambiguity in all its forms, even when he was in love. Prove to me that you really love me! his joy was screaming, even in the prettiness of his adoration.
For their first summer holiday together, Joe and Lucinda had reached a compromise. They would spend two weeks on the beautiful Spanish island of Majorca, where Luce had traditionally holidayed since she was ten, followed by another fortnight in San José. But a holiday with Joe always involved his crew. Accompanying them were Paul and Tricia Simonon, Jazz, Lola and Eliza, and the two Simonon boys, Louis and baby Claude; also along, helping out with the kids, was Luce’s mother. And a
newcomer, Dave Girvan, who had been present at that White Riot tour date in Swindon when the venue had burned down and the equipment was moved by fans to another venue. ‘From the first time I met him that evening Joe was shockingly delightful: a present, helpful, all-round great geezer,’ recalled Dave, whose surname ‘Girvan’ had briefly been Joe’s mother’s when she had married her first husband. In attendance at most Clash shows in the south of England, he had even paid to take three unemployed friends to Paris to see the group.
‘But then I didn’t see Joe for a few years. In 1990 I was at Harrow art school studying ceramics. I went to a party in Notting Hill in Codrington Mews, and he was there and we had a chat. I said I wanted to get pictures of people with some ceramics I was making and he gave me his number. I went round a couple of days later to Lancaster Road and took some pictures with my pots on the bonnet of his Morris. He was up in London from Rockfield, where he was producing the Pogues. We went for breakfast in the caff next to Nu-line builders and sat there going through a mountain of newspapers looking at pictures of Paul Gascoigne crying after being sent off in the World Cup.
Ole! Joe in the streets of Granada in Spain. (Lucinda Mellor)
‘In London when we were meeting for a pint in a pub he was quite chipper. But I think it was different when he was living in Hampshire. The home situation was difficult. On top of that he had his post-Clash depression. His major occupation then was being depressed: the days of treacle, as he called them. He was unaware at that point how many people he had affected. People would come up to him and say “You changed my life,” and his mindset seemed to be “You’re just being polite.”
‘It’s a tricky area to be in, summed up in that fantastic lyric, “If they tell you you are the chosen one / I defy you not to believe them, my son.” I love that not the least because he is aware that is happening to him and he is trying to do something about it by recognizing it. He obviously wasn’t stupid.’
Shortly after Joe and Lucinda had moved into Ivy Cottage, they had gone to visit Hugo Guinness. Hugo gave the pair a tour of his property, and took them into a building that had become a pottery. He introduced them to a man at work there. Before Hugo could finish his sentence Joe demanded, ‘What are you doing here?’ For it was Dave Girvan, who through a set of tangential connections had wound up working in Hampshire. Dave Girvan was himself ensconced only a few hundred yards away from where Joe and Lucinda were living at Ivy Cottage. Usefully for a friend of Joe Strummer, Dave has a large appetite for consumption, and is warm and intelligent, more easily able to be open than his pal. At Ivy Cottage he watched as Joe emptied out a small brick woodshed. He saw Joe transform it into a miniature recording studio, a double-glazer brought in to install two sets of glass dividing doors. ‘A percussionist might sit in one section, while Joe would be playing his guitar in the middle section. It was very Joe Meek style.’ The studio remained known as the Woodshed. Joe made an effort to live more conventional hours, going to sleep at the end of the evening with Lucinda, but his nocturnal habits soon returned. Sometimes with reason. One night Joe came over to the pottery, in his arms the body of a wire-haired fox-terrier to which Joe had given the name of Chaka Demus, after the Jamaican deejay. ‘Chaka Demus had got run over,’ said Dave, ‘and Joe buried him at the back of the pottery. It was perfect funeral weather: full moon, and trees, and one elongated cloud sliding past the moon slowly, Joe with a long black coat on outside the back window of the pottery, with a spade digging a grave, and me handing out slugs of brandy. Joe was digging the grave in floods of tears, talking about working in the graveyard in Newport, and how he didn’t actually dig graves there, but knew how it was done.
Artwork by ‘Art Dog’, faxed to Bob Gruen in 1994. Note the ‘Moggie’ Minor. (Bob Gruen)
‘The tears didn’t seem to be just about the dog. He’d go off on these flights: “I loved this dog more passionately than anyone could ever know, and now I’m burying it.” I’m sure that would have related to other stuff. To his brother David, of course. And his parents. Joe said to me and various people: “Families: you don’t need families. Families hold you back.” That’s bullshit. That he bothered to say it shows he doesn’t mean it.’
On 31 May 1995 John ‘Joe Strummer’ Mellor and Lucinda Tait, looking radiant, were married at Kensington and Chelsea Registry office on the King’s Road. After telling Gaby for years he couldn’t find Pamela Moolman, he’d finally divorced her. The actual ceremony was a small event. ‘I stole her,’ Joe later explained. ‘I had to keep it quiet.’ Josh Cheuse was Joe’s best man; also present at the wedding were Jazz, Lola, Eliza, and Lauren Jones, the daughter of Mick and Daisy, Kosmo Vinyl and his wife Jennifer, Lucinda’s sister Arabella and her husband and Tricia Ronane. The girls clutched small bunches of flowers. On the wedding certificate Joe listed his occupation as ‘producer’.
A sumptuous lunch followed at the elegant Belvedere restaurant in the heart of the leafy environs of Holland Park. Among the score or so of guests were Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Jim Jarmusch and Sara Driver, Don Letts and his wife Audrey de la Peyre, the actress Patsy Kensit, Bob Gruen and Hugo Guinness. ‘It was really nice, a lovely day,’ remembered Don.
The meal at the Belvedere was followed by a more rootsy party at the Earl Percy pub on the corner of Ladbroke Grove and Chesterton Road. In between the events Joe and Lucinda retired to their suite at the Halcyon. Unusually for a newly married couple they were accompanied by several members of Joe’s close posse: Mick Jones, Kosmo Vinyl, Josh Cheuse and Dave Girvan, among others, who ransacked the mini-bar with Joe while Lucinda changed and freshened up.
At the Earl Percy no food was provided, only large amounts of alcohol. Everyone present quickly became very drunk. When Alex Chetwynd attempted to make his excuses and leave, the groom would have none of it: Joe grabbed an unopened bottle of tequila and a pair of beer glasses and divided the liquor between them, handing one glass to Alex and downing the other himself. On his distinctly unsteady journey home Alex fell over, knocking out all his front teeth on the pavement. Following the bash at the Percy, there was another shindig on the agenda. Gerry Harrington was staying at the Notting Hill home of one of Duran Duran, who had volunteered his house as a location for an after-party. Alex Chetwynd was not alone in suffering from excessive alcohol consumption.
Something that at first must have seemed almost incidental to Joe’s life came in the form of a wedding present. Masa, a Japanese promoter, gifted a pair of tickets to that year’s Glastonbury Festival, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the event. Masa’s act of largesse would help transform Joe’s life and restore his career as a musical artist. But this was not immediately apparent.
Joe had been to Glastonbury in between the 1971 and 1995 festivals. In the early nineties he had gone to the festival on a couple of occasions, once with Gaz Mayall. Joe and Gaby had set up their tent in the late evening on what seemed to be the perfect site, only to be woken by security guards, telling them they’d camped in a prohibited area. But the visit he and Lucinda made to Glastonbury in 1995 became another adventure altogether. As the film director Julien Temple said to me, ‘You confront yourself when you go to Glastonbury: and each time it’s different.’ For Joe this personal confrontation would have an extremely positive consequence.
‘Joe was so excited,’ said Lucinda. ‘This was before Glastonbury had really got big, and we drive down with Jason Mayall, and we’ve got a granny shopping-trolley. We drove in on the Thursday night, and all the lights were up, and we drove straight to this corner of the field backstage, which was where the Mayalls always camped. But Joe said no, he wanted to camp up near the stone circle. We dragged everything there in this shopping-trolley and it was really hot. Blood was coursing through his veins, he was so excited. We got there but there was trouble: the fence was smashed down and it got a bit nasty. So we moved back – Jazzy and Lola came the next day – to Jason. And Gaz had the campfire going, and that’s kind of where it all started. Backstage it was very quiet, so he
could sit round the campfire and talk. He had his first “E” there. When Joe did drugs like that, he did it as a sort of ritual. He said that years and years ago you would literally have a blow-out every month. You’d take your magic mushrooms and dance around the stones, but they were administered by the druid or whoever. And everyone just got completely rat-arsed and then they were over it again. He adhered to that: he thought that was good. That’s what he liked about festivals: that you got together annually and just had a complete blow-out.
‘He totally believed in God. He just hated religion. Hated any form of organised religion. He said to me, “Do you believe in humankind?” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Do you believe that humankind will survive?” I said, “No, because I think we are inherently greedy: we will devour the planet and we will devour each other.” And he said, “You’re wrong.” And he never said, “You’re wrong.” And he said, “No, I believe that mankind is inherently good, and that good will always triumph.” He believed that man was good. He believed in the goodness of people.’
In cahoots with his friend the actor and comedian Keith Allen, Joe plotted up in the backstage area, getting all his mates together, bedecking the area with flags of all nations, and playing choice sounds non-stop for the duration of the festival. The centrepiece of his Glastonbury scene was a large campfire, in the construction of which he was tutored by Masa. To this flaming circular entity were attracted like moths those seeking a more rarefied entertainment than that provided by the nearby hospitality marquees. ‘Joe set up backstage because there were a lot of people who had young kids, and Glastonbury then wasn’t safe for toddlers to be mooching around,’ said Dave Girvan. ‘We just had a cool corner to camp out in. Within the beams of the fire was where it was happening – everything else going on around it didn’t matter. Jason and Gaz Mayall would turn up with vehicles and build a wall around us. Masa was there with a Japanese contingent. Bands would come over and hang out. Joe would just sit there. While he was being quiet he would figure out which people were smart and which were idiots, or which ones were smart idiots or idiots with smarts. Half the time Joe wasn’t even there.’
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