Playing with Black Grape was a twenty-year-old multi-instrumentalist called Martin Slattery, from Hebden Bridge near Manchester. Much he was experiencing was from way outside his parameters of expectation. When Shaun Ryder attacked Ged Lynch, the group’s drummer, at a show in LA, Martin felt disturbed. ‘Joe just went, “Oh, don’t worry about it. It’ll be fine tomorrow. I’ve been in this situation a thousand times and I guarantee it will be fine.”’
At Westlake, which Kathy Nelson had block-booked for him to score out the soundtrack, Joe employed beer crates and camouflage netting to quickly erect a spliff bunker. Assorted Red Hot Chili Peppers would drop by. ‘Joe was incredibly sensitive,’ said Kathy Nelson. ‘On Grosse Pointe Blank, because he didn’t really know what he was doing as a composer, there were many times he would start to shut down. He required positive reinforcement when he entered an area where he was a little bit insecure. I don’t think he thought he wasn’t really good, it was more that he didn’t want to disappoint anyone. He would many times say, “Oh, I robbed you. I didn’t do a good enough job. Mrs Kathy, I always give her piece-of-shit songs.” He was very mindful of wanting to come through for you.’
One night in a bar Gerry Harrington and Joe had a big falling out, Gerry telling him he should remain true to his roots of reggae, ska, jazz and gospel. ‘I said he was doing himself a disservice by writing these little ditties for movies. I said, “Don’t do it with people who are lucky to be working with you. Work with people that are to their art what you are to yours. That is the only way you should be giving music away on film.” Joe said, “You could stack up on that table all the records I’ve sold in the last ten years.” I said, “I know, I’ve bought most of them. But I’m telling you, your way isn’t working. Trust me on this.”’ After a few moments, fired by the general consumption of the evening, they were shouting at each other. Joe stormed off. ‘I come to the office the next morning,’ recalled Gerry, ‘and there’s this really charming message from Joe, apologizing in the best possible way.’
In Los Angeles Joe also recorded a song entitled ‘Generations’, working with Rat and Seggs, under the nom de disque of ‘Electric Doghouse’; the name was the suggestion of the engineer. ‘We’re not going to think of anything better than that,’ said Joe. He had been contacted by Jason Rothberg, working as executive producer on a project entitled Generations I – A Punk Look at Human Rights, a charity project founded by Jack Healey, who had been behind the Amnesty International benefit concert at the Milton Keynes Bowl. Joe respected Healey, and signed on to record the Generations title track for the compilation record. ‘When Jason Rothberg called, I was inspired to put pen to paper,’ said Joe. ‘I was really taken by the concept of a punk album benefiting human rights, and doing this for Jack Healey. I wrote the track in a couple of hours, and with the help of Rat Scabies and Seggs we produced and recorded “Generations” in a day.’ The song was recorded on downtime at Westlake, with Seggs’s cab-driver waiting in the studio to take him to LAX for his flight back to London. For a short time Jason ended up as Joe’s manager.
His time in Los Angeles in 1996 was not at all unproductive for Joe. He also recorded a song, ‘It’s a Rockin’ World’, used in an episode of the iconoclastic cartoon series South Park; a cartoon Joe featured in the show. Recording the tune with Joe were Flea from the Chili Peppers on bass, drummer DJ Bonebrake from X, and Nick Hexum from 311 and Tom Morelo from Rage Against The Machine. ‘It’s a Rockin’ World’ was great, a fast-paced archetypal rock’n’roll tune, with some of Joe’s most witty lyrics. The line ‘the laws of chaos left us all in disarray’ reminded me how Joe complained that Chaos Theory was an exposition of what he believed he had personally come up with, tripping on acid. The tune was produced by Rick Rubin.
It was at the instigation of Tim Armstrong of Rancid that Joe had gone to the South Park sound studio. With Green Day and Offspring, Rancid formed a triumvirate of very successful 1990s US punk bands who owed much to the spirit of ’77. Now Joe forged a useful link with Rancid’s main man, even singing with his group on an unreleased ska version of Nick Lowe’s ‘[What’s So Funny ‘Bout] Peace, Love and Understanding’.
There was a downside to the work Joe did in southern California. In the film the studio used only two new Joe tunes, the already written ‘War Cry’ and ‘Yalla Yalla’. Kathy Nelson also got a couple of Clash songs into the rather good Grosse Pointe Blank, as well as ‘Lorca’s Novena’ by the Pogues, which Joe had produced. It must have seemed like a consolation prize; such blanket dismissal of those weeks of work at Westlake must have been deeply dispiriting. When you are trying to climb out of a low period, it sometimes hangs on tight enough to strangle you.
Joe argued with Rat over the dread subject of money, the drummer feeling that although Universal decided not to use Joe’s material he should still be paid as a session musician. At Joe’s wake at the Paradise bar, Rat Scabies changed his mind: ‘It was ridiculous. I should have gone with it. Working with Joe was immediately free, much, much looser than anything I’d experienced.’
More significantly, Joe Strummer and Richard Norris fell out, and their working collaboration ended. According to Norro, someone in LA told Joe that the Grid man considered him over the hill. Which, he insisted, could not have been further from the truth. But it was enough for their relationship to end in metaphorical tears. ‘All I could say was, “I didn’t say that. It’s not how I feel. I want to get on with doing the music.” So that was pretty much the end of it. Which was a shame. Fuck ’em!’ Norro laughed resignedly. ‘But I think what we did was a bridge to him getting back together and getting out there and making records. So something good came out of it.’
When ‘England’s Irie’, the Black Grape football song, was released towards the end of June 1996 to coincide with the Euro ’96 kick-off, the single reached number 6. The song was credited on the record’s label to Black Grape featuring Joe Strummer and Keith Allen. The success of the song finally obliged Joe to appear on Top of the Pops. Joe was still in LA and flew over to London for the television recording. ‘I met him at Heathrow,’ said Pockets, ‘he did Top of the Pops with Shaun, and then went back to LA the next day.’
Joe was not constrained by any necessity to get to Glastonbury: Michael Eavis, the festival organizer, had suspended the event for that year. And back in LA Joe had a big party to attend, for Gerry Harrington’s thirty-fifth birthday, at his sumptuous house in Belair. Gerry wanted to introduce Winona Ryder, a Clash fanatic, to Joe. But it didn’t happen. Gerry said sarcastically, ‘If you were a big enough loser or offensive enough or drunk enough you could go up to Joe and live in his house for the next couple of weeks.’
Joe returned to London for a second Top of the Pops appearance and again went back to LA, where he, Lucinda and Eliza remained until early autumn. Later in the year, back in England, he went with Luce at Gerry Harrington’s instigation to Paris to see the Rolling Stones’ Bridges to Babylon tour, afterwards having dinner with Mick Jagger.
When Joe went to London from Somerset, he and Lucinda stayed at the new house Paul Simonon had bought that year in Aldridge Road Villas, off Westbourne Park Road in Notting Hill. In the basement of the tall house, Joe set up camp, renting the space for £70 a week. ‘But he’d be upstairs the whole time anyway,’ said Tricia. ‘ If you let him he’d come back with loads of people, drink up all your wine, leave the place in a mess, and push off. We had nice times at home with him, and when Richard Norris was still around it was fine. But Paul and I wouldn’t let him abuse the situation.’
Back at Ivy Cottage Joe called up percussionist Pablo Cook, who had played on the Norro sessions. ‘I knew him and Richard had had this falling out. But on the phone Joe suddenly said to me, “You’re a good man – remember that.” I thought, That’s a very Joe Strummer thing to say, but I wonder what that’s about? Then he asked if I wanted to come down to the Woodshed. We were right bang into the cumbia. At the early campfires it was mostly cumbia being played, although you g
ot a lot of reggae thrown in there. The first thing we did was the music for a black-and-white short film called Tunnel of Love featuring Eddie Izzard and Tamara Beckwith.
‘Somebody heard it and Eric Cantona got in touch. Eric Cantona said, “Will you write the theme for this film I am making?”’ Joe flew to Paris for a meeting with the great footballer, who had just retired as striker with Manchester United. Although he thought a driver would be picking him up at Charles de Gaulle airport, he was impressed when he stepped out of the arrivals gate to find Cantona himself waiting. It was the sort of thing Joe might have done.
‘Cantona was making a film called Question of Honour,’ said Pablo. ‘It involved Eric and his three brothers pretending to be actors in the docks somewhere. They’d got Jake La Motta, who Scorsese’s Raging Bull was about, to play a part. I put together the theme and the score for it. Joe was doing guitar parts, with little bits of vocals here and there. I did most of the music and Joe did the words. He did a beautiful bit at the start of Question of Honour.’
In Chile that year Joe took part in what he insisted would be his last acting job. The film, a road-chase movie entitled Docteur Chance, was made by F.J. Ossang, a French director with his own rock’n’roll group and a sub-career as a poet. ‘F.J. Ossang and his producer contacted Joe by letter about three years previously to ask him if he would be interested in this film,’ recalled Lucinda. ‘Joe said no, but they persisted and we agreed to meet them in the Osteria Basilica in Kensington Park Road to talk. Joe just adored Ossang as he was so unbelievably enthusiastic and crazy and he said yes to the film.’ Although F.J. Ossang had considered Joe to be ‘rather fragile’ the first time they met, he noted that by the time filming started he seemed much stronger within himself. Joe was to play a character called Vince Taylor, an arms trafficker; the real Vince Taylor had of course written and recorded the original ‘Brand New Cadillac’ and had been approached to play the part before suddenly dying in 1991. Joe’s main role in the film was not until the final ten minutes, speaking entirely in French. ‘I was a rock’n’roll star,’ he defines his past. Earlier in Docteur Chance his image had flashed up on the screen for a moment as he delivered the cryptically mock-profound line: ‘Victory Lane – c’est un anagram de Vince Taylor.’ (The film is rather French.)
‘We flew to Santiago in Chile on 12 October 1996,’ said Lucinda. ‘We spent one day there and then flew up with the rest of the crew to Iqueque in the north. It was amazing. When we landed at the tiny airport our luggage was carried from the plane by porters and put on a weeny carousel. As Joe went to retrieve it the porter whisked the bags off again and said he would carry them to customs for us. He was completely in awe of Joe and asking him for autographs and saying he was a hero in Chile and his dream had come true now he had met him.’ (When Docteur Chance was previewed at the London Film Festival in October 1997, F.J. Ossang and Joe Strummer appeared together at London’s National Film Theatre, to answer audience questions after a screening. ‘Ah, fuck it. Let’s go to the bar. Anyone can talk to me there,’ Joe decided after a few minutes.)
Although nothing had come of it, Joe had had an exploratory management meeting with Tim Clark and David Enthoven, music business old hands who between them had formed IE Management. IE managed Bryan Ferry, Massive Attack, Faithless and – fresh from Take That – Robbie Williams. Massive Attack worked with the legendary London-based Jamaican singer Horace ‘Sleepy’ Andy, whose career IE attempted to guide when they could prise him away from the ganja chalice.
Searching for material for a prospective new Horace Andy album, Clark and Enthoven called Joe: Did he have any ideas? The number Joe came up with, co-writing with Pablo Cook, was entitled ‘Living in the Flood’, a suitably apocalyptic world vision to match Horace’s strict Rastafarian beliefs. ‘With the fire of truth / we will evaporate,’ wrote Joe. So effective a tune was ‘Living in the Flood’ that it had become the title track by the time the new set of Horace Andy songs was released in 1999. ‘Horace Andy came over,’ remembered Pablo. ‘That’s when we started to get to where I thought we were going with the music. I wasn’t sure how seriously Joe was taking it, if he was really trying to come out of the long silence he’d had. But I thought “Living in the Flood” was a beautiful piece of music with amazing lyrics by Joe.’
‘Horace came down to the Woodshed,’ said Pockets, ‘and liked the demos they had done there so much that he wanted to do his own vocals there. I was introduced to him as Pockets. I said, “Actually my name is Dave.” He said, “Every man needs a nickname. Mine is Sleepy.” A few hours later Joe asked me to bring him into the studio. Horace was in the sitting-room, lying asleep on the sofa, half an enormous reefer in the ashtray and the Dumbo cartoon playing on the TV.’
Bez was a frequent weekend visitor, often arriving with a crew of friends from Manchester. Invariably the garden of Ivy Cottage would glow with the light of a campfire. A close friend of Bez was Dermot Mitchell, who often accompanied him. ‘He was younger than we thought,’ said Pockets. ‘Which was why he was so quiet. But he was someone who Bez, Shaun Ryder and Joe trusted, and there aren’t many of those around. He’d gone from being a Manchester teenager with a rough upbringing to hanging out with some cool guys. He became one of Joe’s closest friends.’
From time to time at the Woodshed there were impediments to musical progress. ‘We were trying to write songs,’ said Pablo, ‘but a lot of the time we were too out of it to actually put them together. This West African hallucinogenic turned up – I didn’t get involved in it. The point was to try and record, but it would end up with Bez in tears beside the campfire because he thought a plane had crashed into his head, and Joe trying to find a cigarette machine out in the woods. I’d send him off: “Joe, can you try and find me a microphone?” “Yeah, man, I can find anything.” I’d see him wander into the wood, and you wouldn’t see him until the morning when he’d come back. I’d say, “Where have you been for seven hours?” “Oh, I’ve been in the wood, man, looking for cigarettes.” Fuck knows what was in that stuff.’
Joe and his good brethren Bez, at the Fuji Rock Festival in 1999, where the Mescaleros performed. (Gordon McHarg)
Pablo observed Joe’s state of mind. He could read the cloud of depression that overhung him, and felt this was why Joe was creatively blocked. ‘The actual picking up of the guitar seemed a big problem. I’ve seen it with other writers before: there’s always some little thing getting in the way. But one afternoon we decided, “We need to think of another style, man.” I told Joe that everything had been done – violins had been mixed with hiphop, for example. What did he say? “Yeah, but nobody’s done heavy metal with prog rock. Let’s do that.”’
‘I’m not sure about that, Joe.’
‘Fucking let’s do it.’
‘So I programmed up this piece of music, which went from 14/8 to 13/4, and then Joe got the guitars plugged in. “The guitar’s got to be as loud as possible.” I got him up to eleven, and he hit this chord and goes, “Oh man, that’s the worst idea we ever had.” So we went to the pub.’
The customary lines of legal copy on the ‘England’s Irie’ packaging had declared Joe Strummer appeared ‘courtesy of Epic Records’. But this was the last time such deference would be needed. On 25 March 1997 Joe was released by Epic’s parent company Sony as a solo artist, although he remained signed to the label in the event of any Clash reunion. Later Joe said he had been ‘waiting out his contract’ as an explanation as to why he had not released any of his own records since Earthquake Weather. Though there was an element of truth here, it was also a good cover-up for the personal creative inertia and confusion of the proud lion during his ‘Wilderness Years’. Yet it can’t be ignored that the moment Joe was free of his old contract, the upward arc of his creative trajectory grew markedly steeper. But there was something else taking up Joe’s time in 1997. He was house-moving.
On a chilly January day in 1997 Joe, Lucinda and Eliza had driven down to Devon and Somerset. They were lo
oking to buy somewhere. To help pay for this, 15 Court Farm Road, which Joe had kept intact ever since his mother had died just over ten years previously, had been put on the market. Tucked away in a red-soiled valley in the picturesque Quantock Hills to the north-west of Taunton Joe and Luce found a house that was what they were looking for. ‘We were the first people to see Yalway,’ said Lucinda. ‘It needed a lot of work and we continued to live at Ivy Cottage while the work was being done, making frequent visits to oversee the work. We actually moved there in December 1997. The work was done but there was still lots to do and it was very basic. We had started again. We couldn’t buy a house at the beginning. Ivy Cottage only cost £100 a week. Part of the reason we moved to Yalway was because the rent was going up. We knew we had to buy something because what we were spending was the same as a mortgage. So we sold Warlingham, which gave us enough to put down on the house. Initially Joe didn’t want to move. He didn’t like change. He loved Ivy Cottage. But once we were in … I remember we spent our first night there on the 17th of December. We were sleeping on the floor in the downstairs sitting-room, because the bedrooms still had missing floorboards, and he said, “I’m so happy. I’m so excited. This really feels like home.”
‘He loved Yalway. It’s funny, if you do Feng Shui, it has all the aspects that are right for a house: flowing water on the left, the kitchen faces south, all the things which you don’t actually notice unless you are aware of it. But then maybe that’s why he loved it. He loved the walks. The only thing he missed was a good pub. But he used to read a book a night. He read everything from The Koran to Mr Nice. Mainly biographies, books about the war. When we first got Sky he used to watch the History Channel a lot – he used to call it the Hitler channel. He used to love all that. Mick and Paul used to like all that too. Joe used to devour books.
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