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[grand theme music]

- This isAmerican Morning

for Monday,
December 23rd, 2002.

- Legend of rock.

- Sad and sudden news.

Founding father of punk rock,
Joe Strummer, died yesterday.

- Strummer was the guitarist,

vocalist and songwriter
for the British punk band,

- The Clash.
- ...home in Somerset

and apparently peacefully
of a heart attack.

[reporter speaking
foreign language]

[reporter 2 speaking
foreign language]

- London Calling was named

the best album of
the 1980s byRolling Stone.

[reporter 3 speaking
foreign language]

- We need Joe Strummer
more than ever.

- I wouldn't be in a band
had I not heard The Clash.

- Joe, we're
gonna have your name on screen.

Would you like
anything under your name?

Would you like Mescaleros,

The Clash or anything like that?

[Joe] I'd like you to write
"punk rock warlord"

with warlord being one word.

♪ White riot ♪

♪ I wanna riot ♪

♪ White riot ♪

♪ A riot of my own ♪

♪ White riot ♪

♪ I wanna riot ♪

♪ White riot ♪

♪ A riot of my own ♪

♪ Black men got
a lot of problems ♪

♪ But they don't mind ♪

♪ Throwing a brick ♪

♪ White people go to school ♪

♪ Where they teach
you how to be thick ♪

♪ Everybody does ♪

♪ Just what they're told to ♪

♪ Nobody wants ♪

♪ To go to jail ♪

[glass shatters]

♪ White riot ♪

♪ I wanna riot ♪

♪ White riot ♪

♪ A riot of my own ♪

♪ White riot ♪

♪ I wanna riot ♪

♪ White riot ♪

♪ A riot of my own ♪

♪ All the power's in the hands ♪

♪ Of the people
rich enough to buy it ♪

♪ While we walk the street ♪

♪ Too chicken to even try it ♪

♪ And everybody's doing ♪

♪ Just what you're told to ♪

♪ And nobody wants ♪

♪ To go to jail ♪

[upbeat punk
rock music continues]

♪ Hey you, standing in line ♪

♪ Are we gonna sign
an agreement? ♪

[Joe singing indistinctly]

♪ White riot ♪

♪ I wanna riot ♪

♪ White riot ♪

♪ A riot of my own ♪

♪ White riot ♪

♪ I wanna riot ♪

♪ White riot ♪

♪ Hey ♪

[radio tuning]
[static crackling]

[distant sirens wailing]
[fire crackling]

[Joe] All transmitters to full.

All receivers to boost.

This isLondon Calling.

This isLondon Calling.

First of all,
welcome to the program.

All peoples of the world,

this is Joe Strummer
at the controls

in Bush House in
the heart of London.

This land is your land.

This world is your world.

[upbeat music]

[Joe] ♪ A lot of people
won't get no supper tonight ♪

[Joe]
We're gonna say the unsayable

and play the unplayable,

broadcasting
what needs to be cast.

If your radio's tuned here,

your radio's tuned right.

[upbeat music continues]

[electricity crackling]

My father was born in India.

He only became
an English citizen

two years before I was born.

After the war, he came to London

and joined the Foreign Office.

- He was very, very left wing,

which we thought
was quite surprising

because he spoke like
a very Pukka Englishman.

- What on earth Ron
was doing being a diplomat

was completely beyond me.

He questioned everything.

[Joe] My parents
weren't musical at all

and I think if I've got
any musical tradition,

it comes from my mother's side.

And she was born on a farm,

50 miles south of John O'Groats

in a town called Bonar Bridge

which is very highland
and very wild.

[bagpipe music]

- Anna was just
this Scottish heather.

And the great thing about Joe,

he's got those two
combinations, you know,

of the generosity of Anna
and the questioning of Ron.

[gong resounds]

- ♪ Fry's Turkish delights ♪

[Joe]
My father was posted to Turkey

and that's why
I was born there.

[soft music]

He was screaming in Turkish

when he was about three,

shouting down the stairs

some Turkish curse
that he'd learned.

- David was 18
months older than Joe

and they were just
like chalk and cheese.

[upbeat music]
[Joe shouting in Turkish]

[The Clash]
♪ Sharif don't like it ♪

♪ Rock the Casbah ♪

♪ Rock the Casbah ♪

♪ Sharif don't like it ♪

[Joe] My father was then
posted to Cairo for two years

and then to
Mexico City for two years.

[mariachi music]

I went to a Mexican school

where they spoke no English

and then to Bonn
in West Germany.

[Elvis] ♪ See, I got him ♪

♪ See the size ♪

♪ Stripped and
cleaned before your eyes ♪

♪ Sweet meat, look ♪

♪ Fresh and ready to be cooked ♪

♪ Crawfish ♪

[Joe]
That's the great Elvis Presley

and my favorite Elvis tune

because it's got
that New Orleans flavor in there

and you can feel
the heat on the street.

1960, I believe,

is the first time I saw him.

Johnny Mellor,
he was called then.

He was obsessed with
taking my sister's clothes off.

He said to me, "Let's take
your sister's clothes off

and hide them in
his uncle John's cupboard

'cause no one will
ever find them in there."

David would
just go along with us.

Even at that early age,

Joe seemed to be the leader

of the two of them.

[Joe] Then I came to England,

to boarding school.

I often think about my parents

and how I must
have felt about it

'cause it was
like being sent away

and seeing
them only once a year.

It really changed my life
because I just realized that

I had to forget
about my parents...

[tense music]

...and deal with this.

[somber music]

It was a school where
people hung themselves.

I quickly
realized that you either

became a power
or you were crushed.

I had a gang because I realized

you had to fight fire with fire.

It was either bully
or be bullied.

I was one of
the principal bullies.

[pig snorting]
[chickens whimpering]

[Joe]
And there was no protection

from anybody or anything.

[tense music]

I was happiest
at school because

I was in charge
of my own world.

My brother was very shy.

He was a little
bit older than me

in the year above.

They used to say in school,

"He hadn't
said a word all term,"

and I was the opposite.

I was a mouthy little git.

Joe kept himself out
of trouble very cleverly.

I mean, we'd all been
in the shit, weren't we?

- Most of the time.
- Joe, Joe always,

he knew how to handle people,

even the people
that were trying to hurt him.

[dramatic music]

[Harry Belafonte] ♪ Day-o ♪

♪ Day-ay-ay-o ♪

♪ Work all night
on a drink of rum ♪

- We were put in
the Scouts as a good way

of getting out of
school for a weekend,

I think was
the reason that we joined.

[Belafonte] ♪ Stack banana
till the morning come ♪

- We used to spend
a lot of time building camps

and campfires and all that.

[Belafonte]
♪ Come, Mr. Tally man ♪

♪ Tally me banana ♪

[Joe]
That's Harry Belafonte with

the magnificent "Day-o."

Takes me back to the old times.

- In all the time
that we were at school,

I never met his parents.

It was as if they didn't exist.

They'd go back for holidays.

[bright music]

[Joe] Come in, Africa,
are you receiving us?

Now we've got
Mzikayifani Buthelezi.

This is the sort of tune
that's like honey to the soul.

[upbeat music]

Malawi made
a big impression on him.

He liked the people.

I think it just gave him
a wider perspective of the world

at a very early age.

- He would always bring
stories back at the beginning

of each term, plus
a new collection of records.

- I can remember hearing
the Rolling Stones coming out

of this huge
wooden radio in the day room.

[upbeat rock music]
[fans screaming]

- Their sound was
so different

from what we were living

in our actual
day-to-day reality.

It was the sound
of another world.

[rocket blasts]
[girls scream]

[Joe] That's the moment
I think I decided

to only follow music forever.

That would be the way to live.

I was a lousy student.

[stick knocking]

[donkey braying]

[Joe]
I was always last in the class.

My reports
would be really terrible,

the worst
you can possibly imagine.

My relation with my father
was even worse.

I began to dread seeing him,
even the once a year,

because the report
would arrive in the post

and then all hell
would break loose.

I would say from my
upbringing that authority

was something to be
avoided, if possible, attacked.

If you could get in
and attack it and get away

without being burned,
I would say that was high

on the list of priorities.

[Rob Tyner] ♪ Kick out the jam,
motherfuckers ♪

["Kick Out the Jams" by MC5]

♪ Yeah ♪

Bastards!

[machine gun fires]

[Tyner] ♪ Well, I feel pretty
good and I guess that I could ♪

[Joe] In 1968, the whole
world was exploding.

There was Paris, Vietnam,
Grosvenor Square,

a counter-culture.

I think that gave me
an edge to put into punk.

It was a great
year to come of age.

[woman laughs]

[Tyner] ♪ You gotta have it,
baby, you can't do without ♪

♪ And when you get that feeling,
you gotta sock 'em out ♪

♪ Put a mic in my hand
and let me kick out the jam ♪

[music continues]
[crowds shouting]

♪ I'm gonna kick 'em out ♪

I can see in a way
why Joe was the way he was

but I could never understand
what happened to David.

- Almost on one day,

you know,
you walked into his bedroom.

It changed from being
a normal boy's bedroom

into being black, swastikas
and fascism and Mein Kampf.

Ultra, ultra right wing.

- David just went into
Regents Park one day

and took
an overdose of pills,

and finally went
onto this little island.

He decided that things
weren't satisfactory.

- Joe being
the first person to see him

and then had to
identify the body which...

must have been
a terrifying trauma.

He didn't talk about it.

I think he wanted to kind
of keep a lot of stuff at bay,

just keep it at a distance.

[Tim Harden]
♪ I'm the family's unowned boy ♪

♪ Golden curls of envied hair ♪

♪ Pretty girls with faces fair ♪

♪ See the shine in
the Black Sheep Boy ♪

[Joe] And that was
the great Tim Harden,

perhaps a lost genius of
music with "Black Sheep Boy."

["See Emily Play" by Pink Floyd]

♪ There is no other day ♪

♪ Let's try it another way ♪

♪ You'll lose
your mind and play ♪

[Joe]
I just walked straight out of

this dead strict environment
where you'd have to,

like, really struggle
to get out the gate

and straight into
this seething LSD orgy.

[music continues]

No!

[Joe] There was only one
answer to what you're gonna do

after school
and that is art school,

the last resort of
malingerers and bluffers

and people
who don't want to work.

[Woody Guthrie]
♪ And the rustlers ♪

Joe, whose name was John,
said, uh, "Oh, my name's Woody."

♪ In the dead hours of night ♪

- And I said to him,
"Oh, that's interesting.

How'd you get the name Woody?"

And he said, "Oh,
I just made it up on the spot."

[Guthrie] ♪ A battle to fight ♪

- I think 'cause of
Woody Guthrie.

I met him at art
college on the first day.

We lived together.

He was instantly charismatic.

Everything in
the room focused around him.

He always had a different
way of putting things,

a different,
different angle on things.

- He was thrown out
because he did a collage

of used Tampaxes as art.

That was too much for them.

♪ Bang goes society's door,
locked and bolted so secure ♪

♪ Once we find
our love and trust... ♪

[Joe] I started to
follow a musician around

called Tymon Dogg,
D-O double-G,

he had this years before
Snoop Doggy Dogg,

first collecting money
for him in a London underground

like a Mississippi
blues man's apprentice.

- Tymon was a guy
who taught and showed Joe

that music was the root.

[Joe] I bought a ukulele
because I figured

that had to be
easier than a guitar

having only four strings.

When I managed to get some
chords together, I was chuffed.

[singer vocalizing]

- When we went
down to play at some Tube,

and I said,
"Joe, we can't go down

and busk the one song
that we know."

And Joe said, "Why?

Because nobody's
ever gonna pass twice."

Tymon and Joe were walking
around in a park in Kilburn

and they came across
a guy who, I think had probably

just come out of mental home.

He was a bit strange
and he had nowhere to go

and he was very disoriented
and they brought him back

to live with us and
he stayed with us for a while.

I remember the name of the guy.

He's called "Savory."

And Joe installs this tramp

with huge
generosity in my bedroom.

- When the landlady
and landlord found out

about us having this Black guy,

the woman attacked
Tymon Dogg with a stiletto heel.

And they just went berserk.

They threw us out, chucked
all our gear out the window

and we called
the police and said, "Look!"

And they said,
"Fuck off, hippies."

I mean, he was bloody impossible
to live with, frankly.

You never knew where
you were, when you were.

He lived day for night.

He'd go off somewhere
to Glastonbury

or to the Isle of Wight

or somewhere and
he'd turn up a week later,

completely
unaware that you might

have actually
expected otherwise.

- They'd had their Summer
of Love, and by '72-3,

it was all over.

I always felt that it was
like coming on the field

of a great battle 12 hours
after the battle was over.

So the casualties
were all lying on the field

but the battle was gone.

- ♪ Come on, come on, come on,
love is comin' on that train ♪

♪ Come on, come on, come on ♪

♪ Love is comin' on that train ♪

♪ Oh, don't you wanna go ♪

- He did have a very
strong "boy's own" attitude

to things.

He'd have this kind
of spirit of adventure.

He'd sleep out
under the stars when it

was totally unnecessary
and he said,

"I'm gonna be a rock star."

So, he was right.

- ♪ Oh, don't you wanna go ♪

[Joe] That was Bukka White
and it's the syncopation there,

all that provided by
one man which I really liked.

- It was very difficult
'cause I still really loved him,

but I knew I had to get
away because he was dropping out

and I was absolutely
determined to carry on

with art college.

[Joe] And I hitched down
to Cardiff and she told me

to shove off and so
I started to hitch back

and the first
stop-off is Newport

and I had some friends there.

[ship horn honking]

- Newport in 1973 was
a very working class town.

You had the second-largest steel
works in Newport,

you had the coal
mines still active, docks,

there were boats coming out.

As far as the art college,

there's nothing PC
about Newport in those days.

You'd go out and there'd be
some punch-ups in the streets.

It was a tough place.

He'd come down from the south
of England, the leafy suburbs,

and he,
suddenly he found himself

in this industrial
South Wales town which

was completely alien to
anything he'd experienced

in the past.

But he loved it.

[bright music]

- He just appeared one
day in the entrance hall

of the college looking for me.

He came with
his guitar on his back.

- I had a feeling
that he was getting away

from or going to somewhere.

He didn't sort
of exactly fit in.

- He used to come
back to my bed sit

and we'd just used
to literally sit up all night

while I played my records.

["Somewhere Over the Rainbow"
by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole]

[singer vocalizing]

- He just looked
at me and he said,

"Is your mother
proud of your eyelashes?"

[Joe] That was
Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

from Hawai'i.

[metallic clanging]

- He used to sign on
and he got various jobs.

- He was working
in a carpet factory

and a rubber factory
and come back with rubber

all over his hair.

- He took a job in a graveyard.

[Joe] I wasn't strong
enough to dig graves.

First morning,
they told me to dig a grave.

When they come back, I'd
gone down about three inches.

- He'd got the sack
when he was found asleep

in the grave.

[Joe] Although I wasn't
at the art school,

I'd crash my way into
the art school rock band

that became
known as The Vultures.

Really make it nasty
and homemade,

do you know what I mean?

[guitar strumming]

Do you think it's loud enough?

- This is one of
the first songs he wrote.

[Joe] Everybody ready?

Take four.

[instruments
playing out of tune]

[Joe] I drew a cartoon
saying how brilliant we were.

♪ I been sittin' here
thinkin' in a corner drinkin' ♪

♪ A lot of stinking cars
and a lot of stinking things ♪

♪ He flied all around me like ♪

♪ There's a jamboree ♪

♪ Then go, I don't mind ♪

♪ I don't mind for me ♪

♪ But that was
all he done there ♪

[singing indistinctly]

♪ I'm sorry sir ♪

[singing indistinctly]

We conned this
poor booker to book us

into a big blues
club-type place in Bristol.

The crowd weren't having it.

They pelted us
with beer glasses.

[crashing and jeering]
[cymbal crashes]

So after that night,
I just realized I had

to get back to the capital.

And now we're
gonna turn over the controls

at the tower here to the great
originator of all rap and ting,

Mr. U-Roy, let it roll.

["Natty Rebel" by U-Roy]

- ♪ 'Stead of
fussin' and fightin' ♪

♪ Why not get
together and live ♪

♪ With one love and
one I'nity, you know ♪

- By this time, they had
this really huge squat scene

rolling in West Nine.

In 1974, there were
rows and rows of buildings

all boarded up by the council
and just left to rot.

There were hordes of people
in London who couldn't afford

to pay rent.

There was an estate agent's

called The Ruff, Tuff,
Cream Puff Agency

which put out a newsletter of
available houses.

- 18 Portland Road,
West Eleven,

access through the back door.

Has 11 large rooms,
but needs enormous attention.

There's a basement flat
corried up

at number 10 Paris Square,
West Eleven.

And at 56 Pembridge Villas,
West Eleven,

is totally corried up
except for the basement window

and you need to saw
through under the cover

of convenient bushes.

- The only thing
to do was to kick in

these abandoned buildings
and then live in them.

[U-Roy singing indistinctly]

- Joe decide to open up
a squat and went down there

with crowbars and
opened up 101 Walterton Road.

[Baaba Maal singing in Pulaar]
[bright guitar music]

- It wasn't just squatting
because we were down and out.

It was a political act that
you can't leave buildings empty

when there are people homeless.

[Joe] Like bathing in the cool
water of a fragrant ocean,

and that was
the sound of Ernest Ranglin

and the voice of
Baaba Maal of Senegal.

I gathered the best people,
i.e., people who were completely

out of their minds
into one squat

and we formed
a rock 'n roll band,

The 101'ers.

♪ Down the road
come a Junco Partner ♪

- And so a house band got going

and there was about six,
seven of us in it.

[Joe singing indistinctly]

- There were some people

running from the regime
in Chile.

I had a Chilean
drummer called Antonio,

but when he went on holiday,
Richard "Snakes" Dudanski,

he took over
after Antonio split.

I think he'd heard
me banging around.

I had a pair of bongos.

He said, "Look,
the drummer's gone.

We got a gig in two weeks."

[Joe] I thought we could
mount an attack on stage

and like, actually get paid.

[upbeat rock music]
[Joe singing indistinctly]

- They were playing
for the scene.

That was their contribution.

Communal entertainment,
initially.

- When we get short of
enough money for food,

Joe would go out and busk
and come back with money

to buy provisions
for the whole group.

- And he was,
like, half a community.

In fact, Julian
was the lead singer.

[Joe] Well, I got him in to sing

'cause I thought I was chronic.

I really did, right, 'cause
I thought he was better, right?

And Mickey Foote who was
working with me back then,

right, he said,
"That other singer you got in,

he just sounds just like you."

I thought, "Well, fuck it."

So I become the singer again.

- You got taken down to
the pub for a drink basically,

and then you got
told if you'd been fired.

- I remember I had
to tell Simon,

Simon the saxophone player.

"We're not having
saxophone anymore, Simon."

- We had harsh decisions.

We, you know, we got rid of
our mate, Mole, the bass player.

- I remember Joe saying, "Well,

I think we're
gonna take Mole for a drink."

- It's the process of forming.
You know, that's what happens.

[Joe] I figured out that I'd
sacked 48 people once.

- And then my sister came in
with her Bolivian boyfriend

and he said the day he saw her,

"I want to make this girl mine,"
and so he did.

- He took me on
a date and he said,

"You see that pub over there?

The Windsor Castle."

He said, "One day we're
gonna play there."

- We had the nerve
to rent a room

above a pub and
charge people 10p to get in.

That's how we learned to play,
by doing it for ourselves

which is like a punk ethos.

I mean, you've gotta
be able to go out there

and do it for yourself

because no one's
gonna give it to you.

["Shake Your Hips"
by the 101'ers]

[Joe] ♪ Wanna tell you 'bout
a dance that is goin' around ♪

♪ They're doin'
it in New York City ♪

♪ They're doin'
it in South London ♪

♪ Don't you lose it, baby ♪

- It soon became
like a real big mashup

[Joe] ♪ Don't use it, baby ♪

Gypsies would
come and rip everybody off.

- Handbags would be flying out

of the window and
somebody would be catching them

at the bottom.

[Joe] ♪ New York town ♪

- We were onstage playing

and the police raided the place.

And they didn't know
who to search with all these,

like, filthy squatters and
gypsies and God-knows-what

in this room.

Mayhem broke loose.

We carried on playing
to this crazy thing going on.

[music continues]
[crowd clamoring]

[music ends]
[crowd cheering]

Yeah, that was fun.

- He was never bothered
about money, never.

Money didn't mean anything
to him, but he did like fame.

- He decided to change
his name to Joe Strummer

and, of course, it was
really difficult for everyone

because we were all
saying, "Hey, Woody!"

And he'd just blank you.

He wouldn't respond.

He'd just say,
"I'm not called Woody,"

you know, "My name's Joe."

- Well, it was either
that or Johnny Caramello.

You know, I think
Joe Strummer sort of won,

just by a little nose.

[Joe] I still can only play
all six strings or none,

and not all the fiddly bits,

which is why I called
myself "Joe Strummer."

- Joe was a great
inventor of names.

He called me
"Snakehips Dudanski."

I got no idea
where he got it from.

- He called me "Dick the Shit"

because my
Christian name's Richard

and "Richard the Third,"

it was "Richard the Turd,"
then it was "Dick the Shit."

[upbeat rock music]

[Joe] We realized
that we had to start writing

our own material so
I wrote "Keys to Your Heart"

and I was just overjoyed
that it came out good.

- Well, it's
a love song, isn't it?

For Paloma.

["Keys to Your Heart"
by The 101'ers]

[Joe] ♪ They say that love
can move a mountain ♪

♪ Love's gonna
bring down trees ♪

♪ It's on this
that I'm counting ♪

♪ 'Cause for your heart ♪

♪ I found keys,
keys, oh, the keys to ♪

♪ Your heart, heart ♪

♪ That I got around ♪

♪ My chain, chain ♪

♪ When the doors come
apart, part ♪

♪ Now we'll never
be the same, same ♪

♪ Ah ♪

[music continues]

♪ I ♪

♪ I changed the lock on
your heart and I got the key ♪

♪ You call that a crime ♪

- We'd seen Joe play over

at the Akam Hall
and the Windsor Castle

and quite a few other places.

[Joe] ♪ Big, blue policeman,
little black book ♪

♪ Wrote it down
but he didn't look ♪

- Even members of
the Sex Pistols ended up there.

They were watching
our stuff while I was unaware

of them because
it was the only jumping spot

in West London on a Thursday.

[Joe] ♪ I didn't look, baby ♪

♪ I didn't look, baby ♪

- I liked the band,
but Joe was something special.

Best frontman out there.

- The 101'ers were about
to be the top band in London.

- They were at a point
that they were really making it.

Like, with the Roundhouse,

but that was not
really enough for him

and he just felt
he needed a breakthrough.

- Get off!

[explosion booming]

- The Pistols had to come
in and blow everything away.

They were the stun
grenade into the room

before the door could go.

They came out of
nowhere and they came

to support us one
night at the Nashville Rooms.

[Johnny Rotten singing
indistinctly]

[fast-paced rock music]

- It was electrifying.

[singing indistinctly]

- It was that different.

They were like
a million years ahead.

- I think Joe was the only
one that saw anything in it.

- They destroyed everything
that was going on in town.

It was completely over the
second they came out on stage.

- I imagine he would have
saw us play and then figured,

you know, the rockabilly
thing weren't working.

This was the way to go.

- And right at that time,

Bernie Rhodes
walks into the gig.

- We went to see him
at the Golden Lion,

all of us.

Keith went backstage and went,

"Can we talk to you?" [laughs]

[Joe] I think it was
good luck to meet Bernie,

the best bit of luck I ever had.

And he drove me
down to Shepherd's Bush.

There, in the rear bedroom,
was Mick Jones,

Paul Simonon, Keith Levene.

And me and Bernie
walked in and he introduced me

all around and then
we sat on whatever bits

of furniture we could
find and we kind of stared

at each other.

And he said, "I think
you should form a group."

And I thought about it.

I said, "Can you
give me 24 hours?"

And he said, "Sure."

- Sid and Keith Levene
came to the squat.

There was meetings in
rooms and people mumbling

and groaning.

- It was very obvious that

it was two different
kinds of people, really.

- He said, "Oh, I just
love the way you play guitar."

And I said, "Why don't
you be in the band, then?"

And then he went, "I will,
I'll do it! I'll do it!"

- That was it. He came out and
he said, "Right, that's it.

The 101'ers is finished."

[building crashing]

- It was a bombshell
to the rest of the band.

- I mean, I knew.

It was in the air, you know.

The 101'ers were, there was
a problem with the bass player.

We'd just got rid
of the guitar player.

So, I knew
something was happening.

Anyway, the following day,
I bumped into Bernie Rhodes

who was there.

- Let me say
something really quickly.

- Yeah.
- I formed the Sex Pistols,

not Malcolm.

You know that, don't you?
- Yeah.

- I found John.
- Yeah.

- Auditioned him.
- Yeah.

- Put him in the group.

You know, I don't take
the credit now, I take it later.

- And it was very clear that
he was the kind of guy that...

that called the shots.

- I'm the philosophy of it.
I'm the great engine of it.

I am punk.

- Yeah.
- Without me, there's nothing.

- I said, "Joe, you know,
right, The 101'ers is finished

but I'm not
going with this guy."

And he said,
"It's not possible, Snakes.

We gotta do it with this guy."
And that was it.

[loud crashing]

[Joe] You're either for
punk or against it,

and there's still people
today that don't talk to me down

in West London for
going over to the other side.

[ball crashing]

- To go on to this
new bit of his life, he...

he had to stop
associating with us,

and that was quite hurtful.

- It was a bit like walking
out on a whole lot of beliefs.

The house didn't
really last long after that.

[Joe]
The day that I joined The Clash

was very much back
to square one, Year Zero.

- It was a bold move for me to
jump into something different,

two guys in a back room
with a squat in Shepherd's Bush.

But I knew, you could
tell by looking at them.

You didn't even
have to speak to them.

Mick and Paul were different.

I think we started to
rehearse that afternoon.

[upbeat rock music]

[Joe] Bernie hired a warehouse
off British Rail in Camden town.

Sometimes, Bernie would
come down and throw us out

at night and we'd
break back in when he'd gone.

We were that keen.

- It was very much being like
in a 24-hour gang, you know?

We only had each other.

- I knew I wasn't fitting in
and I wanted to be in the band

and it really got me
down 'cause I realized,

"Shit, this isn't my band."

[fast-paced rock music]

I left the band.

And then it just worked.

It just made
it that it was gonna work.

- Paul was just
admitting that he couldn't play

and he admitted to me

that he had no idea what
this instrument was, right?

And for a minute I thought,
oh, God, a whole room of people

with no idea
how to play anything.

- Uhh!

Is Millie supposed to
be the producer of this?

- Yeah, he is.

- Get on with it. Cut it in.
- You've got to be joking.

- Oi, shut your mouth
and cut it in.

[guitar tuning]

Don't tell me
to shut my mouth.

- Oi, Mick, come on, do this.

- They'd get really
frustrated because I had

to quickly rush over and
do all this, "Give us an 'E.'"

[mimics guitar tuning]

[guitar strums]

- He just picked it up.

He could play as good
as me in about three weeks.

- One, two, three, four!

[electric guitar music]

- The one who can
really play in The Clash

is Mick Jones,
more than I'll ever be able to.

["What's My Name" by The Clash]

- ♪ What the hell
is wrong with you ♪

[Joe singing indistinctly]
- ♪ Ohh ♪

- What happened to your teeth?

[Joe] My teeth?
- Yeah.

[Joe] I've never brushed them.

I'm a walking
advocate for brushing teeth.

♪ What's my name ♪

- ♪ Hey-ey-ey-ey-ey ♪

[Joe] ♪ What's my name ♪

- ♪ Hey-ey-ey-ey-ey ♪

- That was what
was good about punk:

if you were ugly, you were in.

[Joe shouting]

- Sounds like a load of shit.

- Sounds great to me.

- At first, we will have
to work more and eat less.

- So you know in
the next couple of months,

this country's gonna have
it really hard the next couple

of years, maybe.

We ain't started yet, right?

But I do believe that if
you do it in your own way

and you have
two years of hardship,

and I really mean hardship,

you might get
out of it all right.

- I'd been
writing with The 101'ers

but with no focus or
idea what to write about

and Bernie Rhodes said,
"Write about what affects you."

- The Clash,
for me, right, is a chance

to get some great words going.

And for Mick,
he's really into the music.

Like, he can hear arrangements.

You know, he knows
what the bass should do,

he knows what
the drums should do,

he knows what
the guitar should do.

He can hear
it in his head, right?

I can't hear that stuff.

All you have to do is
look out there to write,

write a song, really.

You know, I mean,
it's all out there, isn't it?

What I'd see is a set of words
and a tune was sort of there

for me anyway, you know?

I could hear
the tune coming out of it.

- There's a roar of the city.

It does sound like our music.

[Joe] ♪ London's burning ♪

["London's Burning"
by The Clash]

♪ London's burning ♪

♪ London's burning
with boredom now ♪

♪ London's burning,
dial 9-9-9-9-9 ♪

♪ London's burning
with boredom now ♪

♪ London's burning,
dial 9-9-9-9-9 ♪

♪ All across the town
and all across the night ♪

♪ Everybody's
driving with full headlight ♪

♪ You're Black or white,
you turn it on ♪

♪ You face a new religion ♪

♪ Everybody's sitting
'round watching television ♪

♪ London's burning
with boredom now ♪

♪ London's burning,
dial 9-9-9-9-9 ♪

♪ Come on, come on ♪

♪ Yeah, we'll call the shots ♪

♪ London's burning ♪

♪ Let's call the shots ♪

♪ London's burning ♪

- I really believe
that you got to live something

to sing about
it in a convincing way.

Whenever you hear
a great song, someone's torn

that piece out of their life.

- You couldn't go
the full way with Joe.

There was something hidden
that was a very deep thing.

- I run up to him
and I jump on him.

He's with his cool friends
and they're all punked up

and there's this long-haired
hippie girl jumping on him.

And so he was kind of different,
like, a little awkward

and we never were like that.

We were always very close.

He was just very different,
like, troubled and,

like, serious, you know.

He'd say, "These hippies
are old farts smoking pot

and all that," and so I changed.

[punk music]

He had encouraged
me to be in The Slits.

He was showing me
how to play the drums.

He was supportive,

but very soon it became
not a good thing between us.

[music continues]

- We were almost Stalinist

in a way that you had
to shed all your friends

or everything
that you'd known or every way

that you'd played before.

- So that all might see
and agree:

The laws are
inscribed in a prominent place

to be remembered
and obeyed forever.

- I mean, do
you have a moralistic view

of anything you do?

- Hmm, yeah, I wouldn't
steal money off of a friend.

But I'd steal his girlfriend.

I think too much or not enough.

I mean, I think all the time.

I think thinking is,
like, real fun, you know?

I get a lot of
fun out of thinking.

I mean, I can't see any
other point to getting up

in the morning,
doing everything and going

to bed and getting up again.

Just, just thinking it makes
it, a point to it, you know?

["I'm So Bored With the USA"
by The Clash]

[all shouting]

- ♪ Yankee detectives
are always on the TV ♪

♪ 'Cause there's a murder in
America about every 10 seconds ♪

♪ But don't you think I care ♪

♪ About your
poncy baseball shirt ♪

♪ I'd rather wear
nothing than look like ♪

♪ I'm ready to bat ♪

♪ I'm so bored with the USA ♪

♪ I'm so bored with the USA ♪

♪ What do I do ♪

♪ Do ♪

♪ What do I do ♪

- And then The Clash
came along

and I went to see them.

- Happy New Fucking Year.

- "Hi, Joe, it's Dick.

It's Dick!"

And this shutter,
you know, came down.

It would have been nice
if Joe Strummer had said,

"Hi, Dick, how are you?"
But he didn't.

[audience shouting]

- It was almost impossible
for him to get out of character

and go back.

The next chapter had started.

- The only way you can
really change anything is

if you don't
repeat your mistakes

or other
people's mistakes, right?

So I can look back at
Jagger and all that lot, right,

and I can really pick their
mistakes out quite clearly

and I'm determined not
to repeat those mistakes.

["Best Dressed Chicken
in Town" by Dr. Alimantado]

- ♪ Yeah ♪

♪ The best, the best, the best ♪

♪ The best
dressed chicken in town ♪

♪ The best dressed
chicken in the town ♪

- I value my existence
by what I achieve,

you know, by what I create.

That's it.

Creation is everything,
you know.

- Yeah.

- Anything special?
- No, just blanket coverage.

I don't know what I'm after.

If I knew what I was after,
I'd probably wouldn't bother

to go after it.

- Give it a good hammering, Joe!

[singer vocalizing]

[Joe] And this is
Joe Strummer'sLondon Calling

on the World Service
coming out of one

of these basements
we have here in London,

throbbing in the summer heat.

That was "Best Dressed Chicken
in the Town"

by Doctor Alimantado.

Well worth checking out him.

- See, kids like me
didn't really read newspapers.

He kind of informed us
about events that were going on

in the world.

It made us
politically aware, I guess.

- One of the things
I'd like us to do tonight is

to try to stop
loads of kids joining up

to the national front
because of ignorance.

["1977" by The Clash]

♪ It's 1977 ♪

♪ There's knives
in West Eleven ♪

♪ It ain't so lucky to be rich ♪

♪ Sten guns in Knightsbridge ♪

♪ Danger, stranger ♪

♪ You better paint your face ♪

♪ No Elvis, Beatles
or the Rolling Stones ♪

♪ It's 1977 ♪

♪ You're on the never-never ♪

♪ You think
it can't go on forever ♪

♪ But the papers
say, "It's better" ♪

♪ I don't care ♪

♪ I'm not all there ♪

♪ No Elvis, Beatles
or the Rolling Stones ♪

♪ It's 1977 ♪

♪ In 1978 ♪

- ♪ Hate, hate ♪
- [Joe speaks indistinctly]

♪ In 1979 ♪

- ♪ Hate, hate, hate ♪

- ♪ In 1980 ♪

- ♪ Hate, hate, hate, hate ♪
- ♪ In 1981 ♪

- ♪ Hate, hate, hate, hate ♪

- ♪ In 1982 ♪

- ♪ Hate, hate, hate ♪

- ♪ In 1983 ♪

[chanting continues]

- ♪ In 1984 ♪

- Big Brother really is here.

It's worse now than
ever, even your oyster card.

They can tell where you were.

They can tell
where you're going.

I haven't got one.

- There was a moment
where the world stopped.

I mean, everything just stopped.

1976, 1977.

Suddenly, ideas became more
important than guitar solos and

a certain integrity
became more important

than driving a Rolls Royce
into a swimming pool.

Rock stars were like Greek gods.

You were lucky to
be in the room with them.

- Oh, look, that's me!

That's me there!

- All that came to
an end after The Clash.

[gun firing]

There was a feeling
that if The Clash could do it,

you could do it.

[feedback whines]

- I just want to preserve,
right, my personal freedom.

I just want
the right to choose, right?

I'm, it ain't no use me having
the right to choose, right,

and not everybody
else to have it, right?

Everyone's gotta have it.

- I just thought,
I joined a band to go to parties

and have fun, not to argue
about politics night and day.

It would feel like me
versus everyone else.

That's why I left

because it's such a grueling
onslaught the whole time.

- Mick found Topper
and Topper came down

and it just smoked.

["Garageland" by The Clash]

- It wasn't the sort
of music I was into.

You know,
when punk first started,

it was against all
the music that I was into.

And I thought, well,
I'll join, make my name

and then move on
to play proper music.

Paul said, "We gotta cut
your hair off," then Joe said,

"We gotta dye it."

I went home to me wife, right.

I left her in the morning
with long hair and flares

and I went home with short
and spiky blond hair and zits.

And I called him
Woody for some reason.

But I know the reason, okay?

Joe had little
pointed ears at the top

and I thought
he looked like Woody Woodpecker.

Now, I didn't know
that he'd been called Woody in,

before and I said, "Oi, Woody!"

And he went, "Don't
ever fucking call me that."

And I thought,
God, he's sensitive.

["Garageland" by The Clash]
- Fuck off!

♪ I don't want to hear
about what the rich are doing ♪

♪ I don't want to go to where,
where the rich are going ♪

- It's not a bad
thing to have The Clash

be your first ever rock show.

- ♪ You look very punk ♪

- 17 years old,
hanging out with my mates.

We got into
Trinity College Dublin.

At the back of the stage,
they had a picture

from the first album
which was a load of bobbies

running down
the street with truncheons,

which was what was going on
in London with the race riots.

Well, in Ireland,
it looked like Belfast,

so it was a very,
very, very tense moment

as this backdrop was opened up.

[crowd cheering]

- We'd like to roll
the tanks, cue the Air Force,

roll the Army and the Navy.

- And there was...

a real sense of jeopardy.

There was a violence in the air.

I was terrified,
I was excited

and rock 'n' roll was not
entertainment in that moment.

It was not
a matter of life or death,

something much more serious.

- One, two, three, four.

["Blitzkrieg Bop" by Ramones]

[overlapping singing]

- So me and my mates
stayed up trying to figure out

how we could all be in
bands that meant

as much as The Clash.

- ♪ Let's go ♪

♪ Hey, ho ♪

♪ Let's go ♪

♪ Hey, ho, let's go ♪

♪ They're
forming in a straight line ♪

♪ They're going
through a tight wind ♪

♪ The kids are
losing their minds ♪

♪ Blitzkrieg bop ♪

- Being in the right
time at the right place

with the right shit,
it's just explosive.

It was like pirates
slashing their way through.

- We just got
completely out of control.

- ♪ Blitzkrieg bop ♪

- We had crews of
people stealing cars,

hopping rides,
just following this thing.

♪ They're piling in
the backseats ♪

♪ They're
generating steam heat ♪

♪ Pulsating to the backbeat ♪

♪ Blitzkrieg bop ♪

- I remember once
a local TV station came

to shoot us in the dressing
room before the show.

We always used to
let people in because, hey,

the audience were our friends,
you know what I mean?

And behind me,
it was like one of these jokes

where 19 people
get out of a baby car.

Someone had opened
the dressing room window

and people were
climbing in from the alley

and there was like, I'm
not joking, 50 people,[laughs]

climbing through this window
like a Charlie Chaplin movie.

- ♪ Hey, ho, let's go ♪

♪ Hey, ho, let's go ♪

♪ Hey, ho, let's go ♪

[all screaming and cheering]

[Joe] All right,
"Blitzkrieg Bop"

by the godfathers of punk rock.

Ladies and gentlemen,
the Ramones.

- If the kids didn't
have money to get home,

he'd give 'em money to get home.

If they didn't have
money for drinks at the pub,

he'd give 'em money for drinks.

- The police would wait

till we were driving
across the mountains.

After a few motels, we'd started

to borrow the pillows
'cause it made it easier sitting

in a coach seat overnight,
if you had a pillow.

So when they couldn't
find any drugs,

the police searched
the bus and they came up

with something like 30 pillows.

And then they found
hundreds of hotel room keys.

- And they said,
"Right, that's theft,"

and then they threatened
to charge every one

of us individually with one each

and keep us there all night.

I said, "Joe,"
I said, "I'll do the pillows,

you take the rap for the keys."

And we were locked in the same
cell for, like, three nights.

- You're going to room 101.

- We really got close
and we just talked honestly

and I got to
speak to the real Joe.

Now, every time I've
spoken to him before,

there were people
watching or people listening,

then he wouldn't drop the act.

We both said we were
scared because at the time,

they were making a big
thing about the punk thing

and we thought,
you know, we might end up

in more trouble
than we were really in.

You know, we just
got honest with each other.

He still had this thing
about, he was a punk rocker

but he'd been
to a public school.

That always fucked him
up right from the beginning,

you know?

- I don't care what
he's from, he ain't a phony,

you know what I mean?

And he weren't acting of a role.

You know,
he believed what he was doing.

- I think Gaby
started going out with Joe

and I just remember this
guy walking around the flat,

our council flat,
with his shoulders up here

in his black
leather jacket, mumbling.

He never said much.

They moved to Ladbroke Grove.

I'd go there and
then I got to know Joe

and he was a great host.

He was a brilliant host, making
sure everybody had something

to drink and chairs to sit on.

- Coming from a family of
diplomats, he'd been taught,

you know, to bring out
the cocktails for other guests

when he was
staying with his parents.

- Hey, Mick.
- Yeah?

- You want some LSD?
- Yeah.

- Better have three.
- Yeah.

- If you want to
really get out there.

- I definitely
believe, because of punk,

that you can have
whatever you want, you know.

You can say, "Fuck
off, this is what I think."

I definitely think that's
what formulated me as an artist.

- I was a Clash fan.

Seen them in '78.

They came and played at
the Apollo and there was a riot.

The bouncers,
they were big Glasgow thugs

who really hated the punks.

The Clash had to
keep stopping the gig.

- I couldn't sing
if I felt that people

were being brutally mistreated.

- They're fucking dancing!

- All right, listen.
- They're dancing, not fighting!

- I really loved them because
they stood up to the bouncers.

- The audience are your friends

and you know better than them.

We were one with the audience.

You should
never feel above anyone.

["White Riot] by The Clash]

- ♪ To go to jail ♪

♪ White riot, I wanna riot ♪

♪ White riot, a riot of my own ♪

♪ White riot, I wanna riot ♪

♪ White riot, a riot of my own ♪

♪ White riot, I wanna riot ♪

♪ White riot, a riot of my own ♪

[mic whines with feedback]

- When punk first started,

it didn't seem
particularly Black friendly.

["Police and Thieves"
by The Clash]

And so when
The Clash's first album came out

and they got
"Police and Thieves" on there

and they'd got
singing from the carnival,

it sort of made
punk accessible to me.

- ♪ Police and
thieves in the street ♪

- Felt like it was a way
of saying

"Yeah, you know, come
in, this is for you as well."

- White music has
always taken from Black music.

The difference was
with people like The Clash

is that Strummer and
Jones were inspired by

people that were living
next door.

So the effect
was a lot more direct.

♪ White youth, Black youth ♪

♪ Better find another solution ♪

And they were saying
"You can't hear the words."

But the words are
really great, you know?

Really great and
you can't hear them.

Don't you think that's ironic?

- Joe had a way with words.

His sense of
narrative and drama.

Joe would have more
ideas in a rhyming couplet

than some people have
on their whole fucking album.

- I really connected
with Joe's lyrics,

anti-establishment,
anti-military, anti-work,

especially
the anti-work bit, you know?

Because I was
working in a factory then.

I thought, am I gonna
have to do this

for the rest of my life?

[music continues]

- ♪ Punk rockers in the UK ♪

♪ They won't notice ♪

- This is why we came
up with so much idealism

because we feel
we was gonna need that much

to combat a situation
like being rich and famous.

- All I had was those blokes.

I had to do
something with them, right?

I did as much as I could.

- Now, I used to consider
Bernie as a pain in the ass.

He always just
seemed to be stirring it up.

He always wanted trouble.

- Joe, I didn't realize
was such a coward, right?

Mick, I didn't realize
was such an egomaniac.

Paul, I didn't realize was
such a pussy-whipped guy

and the other one,
I couldn't stand.

- He called me, what was it?

- Provincial tosser.

- 'Cause I came from Dover.

- Bernie got sacked.

All of a sudden
we were on our own,

as if like Daddy had gone away

and I think this is where
we proved ourselves.

["London Calling" by The Clash]

- We stayed in some shit hole
in Pimlico for five months.

We were in trouble.

We'd lost our management.

We just sat there
every day and wrote and wrote

and we got that thing down
so good, we ran into a studio

and we knocked
the whole thing off in, like,

three weeks and two days.

- ♪ London calling
to the faraway towns ♪

♪ Now war is declared
and battle come down ♪

♪ London calling
to the underworld ♪

♪ Come out of the cupboard,
you boys and girls ♪

♪ London calling ♪

♪ Now don't lecture us ♪

♪ Phony Beatlemania
has bitten the dust ♪

♪ London calling,
see, we ain't got no swing ♪

♪ Except for the reign
of that truncheon thing ♪

♪ The Ice Age is coming,
the sun's zooming in ♪

♪ Meltdown expected,
the wheat is growing thin ♪

♪ Engines stop running ♪

♪ But I have no fear 'cause
London is drowning and I ♪

♪ Live by the river ♪

- At the time, I was
living right by the Thames.

I was following a lot
of the doom prophecies.

You know, the scientists
having a big argument

about who's
right and who's wrong.

One lot was saying,
"The Ice Age is coming"

and then another lot
was saying,

"We're gonna collide
with the sun,"

making you feel like,
I'm just an ant.

Is it worth living?

But then they were going on,

"Well, you better watch
out down there on the Thames.

You're due for
a flood on the spring tide

and you're all gonna drown."

I was cheering
myself up by putting

all these ridiculous
things into one basket.

- Played it to Mick and
he said he loved the song.

He tapped the lyric
sheet with his finger.

He told me to write the message

that we were gonna
call out around the world.

- ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh ♪

♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪

- We needed to break
out and reach America.

- ♪ Now get this ♪

♪ London calling,
yes, I was there too ♪

♪ And you know what they said,
well, some of it was true ♪

♪ London calling
at the top of the dial ♪

♪ And after all this,
won't you give me a smile ♪

♪ London calling ♪

♪ I never felt so much alive,
alive, alive ♪

- It says "The Sex Pistols
landed here, in 1869."

We're not particularly
talented, we try hard.

- What is it in
terms of the energy?

I mean, you put on more energy.

[Joe] We give it all
we got, that's all.

It's as simple as that.

Everybody's used
to paying eight dollars

and getting half measures
and, like, going home satisfied.

Well, in England,
they gave up being satisfied

three years ago.

You gotta give
it all you got or forget it.

[strumming bluesy song]

- He knew the,
the culture of America,

he knew the literature,
he knew the music of it

backwards and forwards.

And so we hit
it off immediately.

[guitar music continues]

- Here was this
unlikely meeting of guys

that grew up
thousands of miles apart

but the same things moved us.

♪ Robbing
- people with a six gun ♪

♪ I fought the law
and the, the law won ♪

♪ I fought the law ♪

- He was passionate, he sang
every word like he meant it.

He sang about things
that were deep down in his soul.

He sang about injustices
and he sang about everything

as if it was urgent.

- ♪ Guess my race is run ♪

- I don't know if
his politics could be separate

from his art.

They're kind of
a spiritual politics.

He didn't ask you to just
question authority,

he asked you to really explore
the very nature of authority.

What does it mean to be free?

- ♪ I fought
the law and the law won ♪

♪ I fought
the law and the law won ♪

- ♪ Yeah, I fought
the law and the, the law won ♪

♪ I fought the law
and the, the law won ♪

♪ I fought the law
and the, the law won ♪

♪ I fought the law but ♪

[crowd cheering]

- I suppose
the initial effect The Clash

had on me was...
was the proper effect.

You know, you were
experiencing a sincerity,

not only in the lyrics
but in the music as well.

You know, there was a,
there was a truth in the attack.

- They sort of pretended
that they hated America,

but Joe loved
cowboy stuff and big cars

and big pizzas and
when you went to the bar,

a single was a double.

[glass breaks]
[men shout]

- "Honey, I forgot to duck."

- So there was a lot of things
that they liked about America.

- I came out of the Vietnam war

and I was very much into
people's liberation struggles.

In '76, they got very
involved with the Sandinistas.

- It was a sort of
teenage revolution

where there were people
actually, for once, took control

of their own
country for the first time.

- I was given, as a gift,

these streetfighting scarves
that they used in Esteli,

Esteli's a small
town in Nicaragua,

so that the Somoza troops
wouldn't know who they were.

Then I gave
these to Joe and Nick.

- We decided to call
the recordSandinista

to redress
the lack of information

that was in the papers.

- I never knew
who the Sandinistas were

or where Nicaragua was.

The lyrics of
Joe Strummer were like an atlas:

They opened up the world
to me and to other people

who came from
a kind of blank suburbia.

- ♪ It's up to
you not to heed the call up ♪

♪ I don't want to die ♪

♪ It's up to you
not to heed the call up ♪

♪ I don't want to kill ♪

- As soon as the people
got hold of the idea that,

"All right, it's punk.

We get it.[growls]

We got it!"

And then when
we started to play other things,

you get a lot of abuse,
especially in Britain.

- My favorite Clash
record isSandinista,

and the whole
concept of that record,

of people standing up
for their brothers and sisters

and not taking any shit.

There's, like,
the same ethos of punk rock,

but they couldn't
have been my favorite band

of all time if every
record hadn't grown

and hadn't gotten
better and hadn't changed.

And it's the biggest inspiration
for me with our band,

with the Chili Peppers,
I mean, 'cause there's,

like, there's no
point in carrying on

if you don't have
something new to say.

- ♪ Over Kiev and
down to the sea ♪

- Sandinista,
the triple for the price of one.

- We wanted
it released for a low price

because we felt that records
were generally overpriced.

- And that's when
the record company freaked.

They were quite
happy to bury that one, I think.

- You learned a lot about life,

getting shafted royally.

- And anyway, afterSandinista,

I realized
that I wanted Bernie back.

I still think
Bernie's a creative individual

and I was missing his inputs.

- It was a question of
either Joe was gonna leave

or Bernie came back.

So Bernie came back.

- With a vengeance.

- The Clash,
it was a rusty old wreck

and I had to grab it and do
it up and put my engine in it,

my updated engine in it.

- Would you like to interview
our manager while he's here?

Catch him while he's--
- Bernie.

- Bernie.
- Bernie.

- Leave him, leave him, shh.

- So that's Bernie Rhodes.

- Sorry about that.
Come back.

- He invented punk,
it's obviously too much for him.

- The Clash became
like a family.

It was like warring brothers.

I think the others
kind of looked up to Joe.

Joe was like the big brother.

He was a bit older,
I think that made a difference,

and he was
probably the most forceful.

- Then we found
our greatest success

in commercial terms.

- The Clash invade America,
nextOff the Record.

[trumpet music]

- People still hate us
in England for making it

in America.

Somebody had to
break out and prove

that this thing
was a global thing.

It wasn't just
a neighborhood thing.

[crowd cheering]

- Only half the people
could get in.

They started
rioting in Times Square.

It was right across the states,

the first time
since Frank Sinatra

that they had to
close off Times Square.

- It's a madhouse in there.

It's crazy in there!

- The bond's manager,
Joel Hallard,

denied his club had
done anything wrong.

- [stammering]
I cannot say that we overbooked.

- All over New York,

you could hear
our stuff coming out.

There was a Black
mix of "Mag Seven"...

["Magnificent Seven"
by The Clash]

...that was coming out
of every ghetto blaster

in the city every hour.

That summer,
that moment, we had New York.

- ♪ You lot ♪
- ♪ What ♪

♪ Don't stop,
give it all you got ♪

- It was a romance that
The Clash had with New York

at that period in time.

I remember bumping
into a guy called Jack Checker.

He was a cab
driver and he told me

that they weren't
like other rock stars

who came to New York.

Their limousine
was Jack Checker's cab.

- Oh, he just wanted to see
the city, wanted to see Harlem,

he wanted to see Brooklyn.

He just wanted to see
the people and inter-react

with the people.

- Does this man
deserve to be in jail?

[all chanting and singing]

- ♪ You lot ♪
- ♪ What ♪

- I mean, they, they took
New York and all the artists

wanted to see them and
wanted to check them out.

- The Clash was a revelation.

It took us back to
the first, the first excitement

of hearing rock 'n' roll
for the first time.

- And all that sound
about Raging Bull.

- Interestingly enough,
inRaging Bull,

the music that is
there is music from the '40s

and '50s and opera,

but the place I went for
the source for creativity

came from The Clash, really.

[crowd cheers]
[camera shutters snap]

- I did see The Clash at Bond's

and Grandmaster Flash
opened for them

and they were
practically booed off the stage.

- It was crazy,
like, 3,000 people.

Like, "Everybody say, 'Ho!'"

And it was like,
"Fuck you!" Say, "Yeah!"

"Get the fuck out of here!"

- When The Clash came out,

Joe reprimanded the whole
place, you know, and said,

"You know,
you gotta give him a chance.

You know, you gotta
fucking, you gotta listen,"

you know, like, "Don't do that!"

You know, and the whole
crowd was, like, "Oh, shit!

Strummer just,
like, did a number on us."

[camera shutters snap]

- Even when I'm vomiting
on a carpet in an airport,

he was standing
up for me, having a go

at the journalists,
saying, "He's ill.

Leave him alone."

- Shut up, will you,
you stupid cunt!

- Oh, thanks very much--

- Yeah, that's what you deserve
with that sort of crap.

What do you think we are?

Do you think this is
1976 and you're talking

to the Sex Pistols?

Piss off or I'll fucking
piss all over you.

If he feels like throwing up,

it's because his stomach hurts.

He don't need your jokes
to fucking contend with.

If you haven't got something
serious to say, piss off!

- But it is serious.

- Well, you tell me
about life and death,

never mind
who pukes on stinking carpets.

- ♪ The dance is
going all night long ♪

- There were
parts of his character

that I didn't like.

I'd have my girlfriend
on the road with me.

Had a big argument
with her somewhere and said,

"Right, well, you're
not sleeping in my room."

I woke up the next morning,
she had spent the night

with Joe, you know,
and that kind of really hurt.

I felt really betrayed,
and he did it with me,

did it with other
people as well, you know?

We'd lost that unity.

I was already starting
to disappear up my own ass.

Joe was having doubts.

Think he was already
becoming embarrassed

by the fact
we were so successful

and Mick wouldn't travel on
the bus unless he had a spliff.

- Everybody's got their
weaknesses, you know? [laughs]

- ♪ I'm-a having
a nervous breakdown ♪

- We got so fed
up with each other.

We'd been living in
each other's pockets

for a year, full year.

We never had a holiday.

Groups now have a holiday.

They go away,
they get their heads together.

We never had any of that.

We just continually worked.

- And Mick
thought if he didn't want

to play "White Riot,"
none of us could.

- ♪ Nervous breakdown ♪

- I made a comment,
which was probably out of order

and probably shouldn't
have said it, but I did

and that's what
sparked the whole thing.

It was directly
related to his...

presence on the stage.

[Joe] You know, "You've got
no respect for the stage."

I said, "Don't fucking
tell me about the stage."

And then he threw his
vodka and orange in my face.

- ♪ You're a total wreck ♪

[Joe] So I hit him
as hard as I could

in the center of the forehead.
[laughs]

- [laughs] It was
one fuck of a punch

and it drew blood, you know?

That's what people called
"musical differences," ain't it?

Mick didn't like "White Riot."

But Joe looked as
shocked as Mick did.

"Fuck me, what have
I done here," you know?

- ♪ I'm-a having
a nervous breakdown ♪

[Joe] Well, I'm no boxer,
but I guess that

was a triple-hook combination
with a double uppercut.

Eddie Cochran there,
"Nervous Breakdown."

- And then it was
over and the next thing,

I was laughing my head off.

[audience laughs]

- Suddenly, you're
onSaturday Night Live,

you get onJohnny Carson,
you're on talk shows.

We weren't prepared,
funnily enough,

after all the years of
struggle to actually be there.

Everybody began
to get big-headed.

[audience shouting]

- It was just falling apart.

Never at any one
time were the four of us

in the studio at the same time.

I'd turn up at
Electric Ladyland Studios

and no one was there.

I've got this idea on the piano.

If I put the drums
down and I put the piano

over the top and
when the others come in,

I can say this is my idea.

So I put the drums down,
put the piano down

and still no one was there.

So I picked up the bass

and put the bass down quickly
and I did the percussion

and by the time
they came, I said,

"Listen, I've got this idea."

And I played it

to them and it was,
it was virtually completed.

It was Joe that actually
said, "Well, that's brilliant."

- Bernie came in and he said,

"Why does everything
have to be a raga?"

And we went, "What?"

He said, "Everything's
going on for six minutes.

How are we gonna
get this stuff on a record?"

And then he left, and we started
to laugh about the raga.

I went back to
the Iroquois Hotel on 44th

and it was
already daylight again.

I had a typewriter in the room

and I went over to
the typewriter and I typed,

"Now the king told
the boogie men,

'You have to
let that raga drop.'"

I was tired out of my mind
and that paper sticking

out of the typewriter
was irresistible.

I just sat down
and I did the whole lyric

to "Rock the Casbah."

There's no tenderness
or humanity in fanaticism.

That's what I was trying
to say in "Rock the Casbah."

- Mick and Joe's relationship

had become
really difficult, you know.

We used to drive
around there and he used

to post lyrics
through the letterbox.

He didn't want to see him, he
didn't want to write with him.

- I got worried at
that point that Mick

would lead us into disaster

through his complete
idealism and refusal

to compromise in order
to operate in the real world.

[funk music playing]

- You know, Mick's an emotional
guy who wears his heart

on his sleeve and,
quite often, was the fall guy

for things that Joe
was actually responsible for.

Mick took a lot of undue
flak and that was Joe doing

his Machiavellian
maneuvering number so

that he wasn't the bad guy.

- Well, we're not
very good at making life

easy for ourselves.

We never have been.

We keep going because,
like, we are the real McCoy.

We're not just gonna
fold up and in a few weeks,

you wonder
what all that was about.

We're gonna be here
and continue and get harder

and rougher and tough,
dreader than dread, you know?

- It was the eve of the tour.

The tickets in the UK

were not selling that well,
so Bernie Rhodes said,

"Look, you've got to disappear."

I said, "Well, Bernie,

if you really think
I should disappear, I will.

Where do you want
me to disappear to?"

And he said,
"Well, I don't know.

Go to Austin, Texas.

You know, that,
that fellow there,

Joe Ely, the country singer."

I said, "Okay,
Bernie, I'll be seeing you."

I took the boat train
to Paris instead

and I thought
it would be a good joke

if I never phoned Bernie at all.

He was gonna be thinking
he was gonna be acting,

you know,
"Oh, where's Joe gone?"

When really, he was going,
"Where has he gone?"

And I ran
the Paris Marathon, too.

Eventually, they hired
a private detective to find me.

- What is he up to
and what news is there

of his whereabouts?

Who can answer that, Cosmo?

- We don't know where
he is and we can't find him.

If you're listening,
Joe, I said this before,

please get in touch.
We need to talk to you.

- So in no way is this any kind
of publicity stunt?

- None whatsoever,
I'm telling you.

- He was just proving
"Without me,

this band can't go on,"

and when he came back,
it was either me or Topper.

- ♪ Who's got all
the blood in your hands ♪

- I can't deny

that I wasn't firing
on all cylinders.

[coughs]

When you use drugs,
you don't care anymore.

I was self-seeking,
I was dishonest,

I was, you know, I didn't
really give a fuck about anyone.

You'll have to undo my boots,
Micks, I can't undo 'em.

Oh, right, yeah.
Oh, yeah.

[Joe singing indistinctly]
[all laughing]

- I've gotta go sunbathin'.

- See you, then.
You go and sunbathe.

Good-bye, Topper.

Down the railway track.

- There wasn't
a lot of choice, really.

You can't have a band where
the drummer is so out of it,

he can hardly play
sometimes and he's always late.

[metal clangs]

I burst into tears, right?

Mick was crying and
then Joe kind of softened.

He said,
"Listen, it's not the end.

If you pull yourself together,

we'll say
you've been sacked for,

you've got nervous exhaustion

and if you get yourself together

by the time we come back,
you got the gig."

I tried to stop and about a week

after they started
the American tour,

I think Joe got
drunk and he said,

"Oh, we had to get rid of Topper

because he was a heroin addict."

And overnight, you know
what I mean, I was Topper

from The Clash, resting
through nervous exhaustion

to being sacked
for being a junkie.

And that's when
I started injecting.

- While I was playing hooky,
everybody had a row

and Topper just decided that,

he obviously didn't think
that I was ever coming back.

And he decided to cut out.

We're playing with
a guy called Terry Chimes

who played on our first album,

and maybe we'll stick with him.

- I was living in a squat
in Fulham with no windows,

sleeping with
the dog under the carpet.

I'm seeing my song, a video

with some other
bloke playing in it.

- ♪ Sharif don't like it ♪

♪ Rock the Casbah ♪

♪ Rock the Casbah ♪

♪ Sharif don't like it ♪

♪ Thinks it's not kosher ♪

- I don't think we played
a good gig

after Topper was fired.

- "Rock the Casbah" cracked
the top five in America.

- We want to be number one
in every country in the world.

Seriously, we do.

- Wake, made me
wake up to a lot of things

that are happening in the world.

- Kick-ass band.

- Revolutions, uh, nuclear
arms race, individual rights.

- But if that's gonna
destroy us,

then we're not
so sure we want it.

- What do you want to be doing
when you're 40 years old?

Do you want to stay
into this and continue to play?

- I want some dignity left.
- Yeah.

- They're not punk rock now.

- What are they now?

- They're just
what the Stones are.

- Obviously,
life's full of sick jokes

and we could have
seen that one coming, I guess,

but it's still of a shock
when it actually happens.

Now, we turned
into a load of pop stars.

I couldn't
believe that we turned

into the people
we were trying to destroy.

I'd rather go back to
busking, be a nobody,

than carry on like that.

- When The Clash
got really, really huge,

it must have on
some level, you know,

have been frightening, you know.

I mean, it must have
scared them on some level, like,

maybe they weren't
ready for it then.

Just afraid that that degree
of success or money

would taint their purity,
their ability to be honest.

- What is the question?

- I'm asking about
the kind of responsibility

that you feel
that you've got towards the fans

as the public
figures that you are.

- I just don't feel strong
enough to carry anything

at the moment,
let alone anything like that.

- Are you discouraged
with rock 'n' roll

in general though?

- It's no worse than any
other prostitution business.

[crowd cheers]

- What we got for you
tonight is,

we ain't got no baseball,
no baseball tonight!

We ain't got no football,
they're on strike!

But what we have
got here is a little bit

of what's going on in
London at the moment,

so will you welcome,
all the way from London town,

London W-10, The Clash!

Come on!

[crowd cheering loudly]

- One, two, three, four!

["Career Opportunities"
by The Clash]

- ♪ They offered me the office,
offered me the shop ♪

♪ They said I'd better
take anything they got ♪

Standing there singing
the songs while it got bigger

and bigger towards
the end, for some reason,

I began to feel
worse and worse.

It had something to do with
what those songs are saying.

♪ Career opportunities
are ones that never knock ♪

♪ Every job they offer you is
to keep you out the dock ♪

♪ Career opportunities
are ones that never knock ♪

All right when
we were part of the audience,

part of a movement.

♪ I hate the army,
I hate the RAF ♪

Once it became thousands
of miles removed from that

I began to freak out.

♪ I hate civil service rules ♪

♪ I won't open
letter bombs for you ♪

- Mick was probably
comfortable with success.

Joe was uneasy
with it, but didn't know

why he was unhappy
and it was just a struggle

inside him
that couldn't ever be resolved.

You know, he couldn't be happy

because he wanted
the band to be successful,

but when it was successful,
he wasn't comfortable, so,

there was nowhere to go.

[blowing air]

- The thing
that The Clash don't understand,

and the thing that a lot of
these bands don't understand,

is that you can't take life
so goddamn seriously, honey.

- "You make, you buy, you die."

That's the motto of America.

You get born to buy it.

And if there's
anything gonna be in the future,

it's got to be from
all parts of everything,

not just one white way
down the middle of the road.

I need some hostility here.

You know, grr.

[crowd cheers]

Yeah! I need some
feeling of some sort.

Hey, we're all alive at
the same time at once, you know.

["Should I Stay
or Should I Go?" By The Clash]

♪ Should I stay
or should I go now ♪

♪ Should I stay
or should I go now ♪

♪ If I go, there
will be trouble ♪

♪ And if I stay,
it will be double ♪

♪ So you got to let me know ♪

♪ This indecision's buggin' me ♪

Seven years ago, we decided

that we were gonna be
bigger than anybody else

but still keep our message.

♪ Exactly
whom I'm supposed to be ♪

♪ Digame tengo ser ♪

- ♪ Do you remember
which clothes fit me ♪

- ♪ Sabes que ropa
me "quedrá"? ♪

We had fallen into every pitfall

that you could possibly
fall into as a group starting

from nothing and
becoming something,

probably invented
a few new ones along the way.

- ♪ Waah! ♪

- The "Success Goes
to Your Head" pitfall,

the "ego trip" pitfall,
you think you're geniuses,

you become drug addicts,
you make overindulgent records,

you overdub
the sound of ants biting

through a wooden beam,
all these things,

we've gone through each
and every damn one of them,

and that's why
we come out a depleted force.

- ♪ Should I stay
or should I go now ♪

- ♪ Yo me enfrío o lo soplo ♪

- Mick was pretty
hard work to work with.

He was in his
prima donna phase.

- ♪ If I go, there
will be trouble ♪

- Bernie turned
round to me and said,

"Look, why don't
we sling this guy out?"

And I figured
it was a good idea,

'cause I don't like
being bummed out.

You know when
you go to work in a good mood

and there's some
guy always bumming out?

We weren't about to make any
music like that, so I thought,

"Fuck it, why not?"

[metal clangs]

- I think it was Joe
it was who managed

to muster up the courage to say

that he didn't want
to play with me anymore.

And when, when
somebody says that to you,

you know that you just,
I just packed my guitar up

and just, "Well, hey,"
you know, "Okay, bye."

And that was it.

I walked.

And Bernie come running
out after me with a check

in his hand, you know,
like a gold watch or something,

you know,
which added insult to injury.

But I took it anyway.

It was right at the time
of the carnival. [laughs]

It was awful, you know?

I mean, walking
around the carnival,

and you might see someone,
and you're, like, trying to,

I did everything.

I grew a beard.

I dyed my hair, you know,
blonde, for about two days.

It was a complete,
traumatic shock. [laughs]

But then, then that's
character-building, you know,

when those things happen to you.

[Joe] I hadn't understood that
the manager suddenly wanted

to become an artist.

Bernie conned me to get
rid of Mick to lay the way open

for him to step in.

Stupidly,
I allowed that to happen.

It's my fault
about the end, definitely.

- So he kind of thought,
"Yeah, well, maybe Mick

was the problem,"
like he thought Topper

was the problem, you know?

He didn't maybe
at that point think,

"We're all the problem."

- And he was a coward too.

You know, there
you go, I'm gonna say it.

I mean, Joe,
you know, he was a coward

and didn't like confrontation.

- What pisses me
off about The Clash

is that this extraordinary
band should still be here.

["[In the] Pouring Rain"
by The Clash]

- We had to restructure
our group

to get rocking again.

- Wessex!

♪ The ships were gone
and the pit fell in now ♪

This is Pete Howard, the,
the drummer, and Vince White,

guitar, and up top,
Nick Sheppard, guitar.

- Pete Howard and
Vince and Nick Sheppard,

they all felt really
intimidated,

which I can't blame them,

'cause they were entering
this scene

that was already so big.

- How do you feel about the band

at this point in time?
- Great!

Can you hear me?

Great!

Everything's bland-o,
bland-o, bland-o, you know?

Let's have
a revolt from the bottom up.

Drugs are over
from this minute now.

Anybody who takes
a drug is a hippie,

and hippies can shove off.

Accountants and lawyers
are writing the songs.

Attorneys are playing
the lead guitar solos.

♪ I can hear
the sharpen of the pain ♪

♪ Some lucky
stranger in the rain ♪

♪ Hear the sharpen of the pain ♪

Bernie Rhodes wanted
to really take over big time,

and he wanted to be
the producer,

and I let that happen.

Everything was wrong.

There was no vibe.

It was all Bernard's ego.

Eventually, I snapped.

- Strummer, he was
a bloke to do the job.

He was temporary.

He wasn't permanent.

[metal clangs]

[Joe]
And that was the end of it.

[metal clangs]

- ♪ Corrina, Corrina ♪

♪ Gal, where you been so long ♪

- They used to ask me,
"So you think you schmucks

can change the world,"
they'd say to us.

They said it so often
that you began to believe them,

which is fatal.

Trust thyself.

- ♪ Baby, please come home ♪

- Joe came into Manada in 1984.

He was looking for the
Federico Garcia Lorca things.

Quickly the gossip
spread in the city that this guy

who is like a hippie,
he's so dirty,

he seems to be Joe Strummer.

So I went to the bar and said,

"Hey, are you Joe Strummer?"

He told me in Spanish,
"Sí hombre, que quiéres beber?"

"So, what do you want to drink?"

He told me that he felt so
frustrated, so alone, so lonely.

He wasn't satisfied
with what he was doing,

and while watching
the Alhambra, said,

"My brother should be here.

If he knew Granada before,

he probably wouldn't
commit suicide."

And suddenly he told me
how wonderful it is to be alive.

[Joe] That's Bob Dylan
with "Corrina, Corrina"

and his wild scratching
posse of hip-hop artists,

recorded live at the Village
Vanguard down in old Manhattan.

- Even though Joe
was a natural preacher,

and even though he was
a really righteous preacher,

the very fact that he became
a preacher in some ways

was maybe a betrayal
of his own best instinct,

and I always sort
of felt like he spent

those kind of wilderness
years almost doing penance.

- You know, I had to
really disassemble myself

and examine all the pieces
and put myself back together.

I really felt
completely destroyed by that,

that experience, and also

my father had died
while we were on the last tour,

and when I came home,
my mother started

to sicken and then she died
after the end of that year.

You know, I'd lost
my parents, my group,

you want to think
about things, you know?

You become a different person.

No more was I an adolescent.

I am a London parent.

I've got kids now.

- Joe had to really
exorcise the ghost of The Clash.

It was a journey that he had
to take from where he'd been,

what he'd achieved, and
his part in it all exploding.

[upbeat rock music]

[Mick screams] How 'bout it?

- It's ironic that,
you know, after Mick was cast

out from The Clash,
he was really the first one

to break big,
with Big Audio Dynamite.

- ♪ Whoo ♪

- And Joe seemed to
be spending his time

doing a little bit of acting
work and the odd soundtrack.

- [inhales deeply]
The desert's beautiful at night.

Beautiful but lonely.

Some people
don't believe in God.

That was my first week
on the picture, you know,

and you have, gun twirling is,
takes about a month.

- I was 18 when I made
Straight to Hellwith Joe.

[coyote howls]

I was broke, I was busted,

I was in love with
a total loser,

and I had no place to go
in London, and I called Joe.

And him and
his wife and his children,

took me in like I was,
you know, their family.

- Aah!

[Joe] It's great
having kids, 'cause that

brings you back down to earth.

You do find yourself shouting,
"Turn the bloody music down!"

You know, "Turn that row off!"

I guess it's some
sort of learning thing

that we've got to go through.

Us rebels thought[chuckles]

that we could
somehow escape, you know?

But it's all in there
somewhere, isn't it?

We become
our parents slowly but surely.

- I saw him withdraw.

He would just completely
cut off and go to his cabin

or his cell or
his whatever he created

that was very private,
and he'd retreat to that

and he'd do his thing,
so I suppose

in the conventional term, he
wasn't a 100% brilliant father.

When he was on, he was
fantastic, and when he was off,

he was just not available.

- He really loved those girls.

There were a lot of
uncertainties with Joe,

but that was one
thing that was very clear.

- You were lead singer

of The Clash for
many years, and--

[Joe] Many, many.
- Now you're hanging around.

Are you looking
to form another band?

- No, I'm kind of just doing
some, a bit of music for film.

But I'm just, I'm not really
looking at that as something

to do long-term.

I'm more, like, trying to
get my bearings, you know?

It takes a while to
recover from, 10 years

on the road with
one group, you know?

I can't seem to
snap into it that quickly.

- I got a phone call
from him, like, you know,

"Zander, we're up
here in San Francisco,

you know, at Russian Hill Studio
and I want you

to come up and
bring your Spanish guitar,"

you know? [laughs]

It was, like,
that was the message.

That was my call
to arms to be a part

of thatWalker soundtrack.

[cannon fires]

- I thinkWalker was
one of the finest things

that he ever did.

He was really proud of that.

[Joe] No one's ever heard it,
but never mind.

I am actually in it
as an extra.

I grew a beard and
grew my hair really long.

I used to run
about wearing rags.

[women shout]

[man laughs]

[man blows raspberry]

- Whenever he tried
something new,

people weren't really prepared
to listen with new ears,

because what people
wanted was Joe Strummer

and they wanted The Clash,
and that spoiled a lot

of the work that he did.

[Joe] One day I was
standing on Portobello Road

and I thought, "You know,
it's time to cut down

on my drinking," and I walked
home and the phone rang,

and it was the Pogues going,

"Hey, you've got to come
on tour," so I did a US tour

depping for the rhythm
guitarist in the Pogues.

Okay, I'm gonna go out and
get vibed up, all right, guys?

- I think the Pogues
gave Joe a good appetite

to start playing live
again himself, you know?

[percussive music]

[Joe] ♪ In Trash City,
on Party Avenue ♪

I put together
a nice little group

for thisPermanent Record film.

I called
it the Latino Rockabilly War.

I wrote the music
and then I went out

for three nights
looking in all the little clubs

and bars and little
underground scenes happening

in Los Angeles and
I just picked the musicians

from watching them.

I already knew Zander
because he worked onWalker,

but I picked
the rest out from jazz clubs

and Bohemian dives.

♪ In Trash City,
at Party Avenue ♪

♪ I had a girl from Kalamazoo ♪

♪ In Trash City
on a transit line ♪

♪ I put you on hold
but you're lookin' fine ♪

- He was looking for
a drummer in his band,

and he said,
"I've got the guy!"

I said, "Who?"

He goes, "Ramon Bajaranda!"

I said, "Is he good?"

He goes, "I don't know,
but his name

is Ramon Bajaranda, man!

He's gotta be good!
We gotta hire him!"

Of course, he was not
in the band, unfortunately.

[Joe] ♪ Wanna see a movie
'bout a creeper on a house ♪

- He hired my former
drummer, Jack Irons,

and he's a pretty
phenomenal beat keeper.

[Joe] ♪ In Trash City,
on Party Avenue ♪

- I thought
that was pretty amazing,

because at the time, Jack
was in a mental institution,

and so Joe was like,
"That's okay, that's okay,

we'll, you know,
we'll get him a ride to

and fro every day, and
he'll come into the studio and,

you know, he'll have a job
and we'll make this record."

- ♪ And one time more, oh, oh ♪

- I think if your projects

are consistently failing,
if they weren't selling records

or people
weren't really listening,

I think ultimately
that wears you down.

[Joe] I'm still signed to
Epic from The Clash days.

- Mm-hmm.

And you have no great
desire to do a record for 'em?

[Joe] For Epic?
- Yeah.

- Well, you know, I expect
sometime in the last four years,

someone would ring me up and
heavy me, but nobody ever did.

[interviewer laughs]

- He was quite depressed.

He was not happy.

The whole process
of Earthquake Weather,

in retrospect,
I see it as he had masterminded

his own death at Epic,
you know?

"Just fucking
release me once and for all.

I mean, I'm gonna
take a $500,000 budget

and make a $500,000 art record."

And they hated it.

- I had the head of
the label and a bunch

of the, sort of,
brass from Epic assembled

at Baby-O studios in
Hollywood to hear the record.

I can't find him anywhere
and he's not at the studio,

and I go to the house
and I see in the driveway,

there's a yellow piece of
legal paper nailed to the door.

"Dear Gerry," colon,
"Don't be mad,"

dash, I wish I still had this.

"I've gone to the desert.

Will be back on," colon,

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday,

Friday, Saturday,

and then he circled Thursday.

Joe couldn't just write,
"I'll be back Thursday."

He probably didn't
even know until he saw

all the days of the week
written out in his own hand,

"Oh, Thursday."

And he came back
Thursday and it was too late,

everyone had gone back
to New York, and he sort of...

he made that record

a self-fulfilling prophecy,
I think.

He didn't have
his confidence back yet.

- The guy fucking
intended on shooting himself

in the foot, sabotaging
his career and possibly

any kind of
relationships that he had

that he didn't want to be in.

He needed to make some serious
changes in order to be happy.

- He had to find
a place in himself

where he was happy with
just being Joe and letting go.

[Joe] Part of the reason

why I shut down shop
after "Earthquake Weather,"

'cause I realized I was
contracted to these people

on a never-ending contract,
so I was kind of fucked,

and I decided to bore them out.

For the next eight years,
I figured out how

to get out of the contract.

[gun firing]

- I guess it was kind
of a dark period for him

in some ways when
we became friends, you know.

He had, a lot of
frustrations, about his...

his life in general.

I'm sure other people
have brought up, you know,

the Strummer's law
of no input, no output,

'cause he was always
interested in taking things in.

You know, that period
maybe was very important

for him and fertile,

but I think maybe
a little painful at times.

- And I cornered him in
the kitchen,

and I said to him,

I said, "Joe, do you think
we'll ever work together again?"

And it's one of the most
brilliant things he ever said

to me, he said,
"Don't be stupid, man."

It was like... [laughs]

Jesus, and it was like
one of those ambiguous,

like, Joe, Joe-isms.

It was like, "Don't be
stupid, man, of course,"

or "Don't be stupid,
man, move on, it's over."

- Jim asked me to be in
his film,Mystery Train.

He said that Strummer was
gonna play one of the parts.

I was as nervous
to work with him

than if you told me I was
gonna work with Marlon Brando

or De Niro or somebody,
you know? [laughs]

That it was Strummer.

I was like, "All right,
just, just calm down,

it's okay. [laughs]

You can, you can do this."

[Joe] I was hoping
that maturity would arrive.

I'm still waiting
at the station for it.

You know, I found
you can't just walk in there

and expect to get a result.

- Sorry.

[Joe] A bit like you couldn't
really walk into a studio

if you've never thought
about music

and put down a good album.

- He used to go
from high to down easily.

He was, he was really emotional.

- Good, morning, Saudi Arabia.

["Rock the Casbah" by The Clash]

[men shouting]

- Kicking off
Desert Shield Network, FM107,

and we started
off rockin' the Casbah.

- I saw him crying
because he saw

in the news a bomb,
an American bomb,

prepared to be thrown in Iraq

was written "Rock the Casbah."

He was crying.

He told me, "Hey, man,
I never could think that a song

of mine could be
written as a death symbol

in a fucking American bomb."

[strums piano strings]

[light piano music]

- I used to call him
Chief Thundercloud,

'cause he was in
a very dark space.

[Joe vocalizing]

[somber piano music]

I did this film
calledWhen Pigs Fly,

and I benefited,

because he was so anxious
to make music.

- ♪ Way down in a working town
where the boys you might find ♪

♪ Some happy and some sad,
but some drunk all around ♪

♪ But the breeze is
blowing in from home ♪

♪ The door is
shaking in the wind ♪

♪ Now, that's when
the boys are singing ♪

♪ To the rose of Eirin ♪

- He hadn't been in
the studio for a very long time,

and he kind of went nuts
and he, he gave me nine hours

of music in four days.

[Joe clapping rhythmically]

- Oh, no!

Bollocks.

I've forgotten the words.

Every time you get
something happening,

you always go
over it, later, you know?

In the fury of it.

Could you play
me the rest of the,

you haven't run back, have you?

Could you go right to the end?

See what's left after
that stupid fool clapped on it.

Bloody hell!

What a pillock!

Imagine that you're
a rock 'n' roller,

and say you were in a big band
like I was and what have you,

and time goes by, and then
you meet a 17-year-old guy.

He's never heard of The Clash,
and that's the moment

that my feet
touched the ground again.

I've got ideas
for the new role.

I can't go back.

It would be like
living in a museum.

No, I just want to go out
there and do something new,

and then you get your own
energy from the newness of it.

I think it says in the Bible,

"There's a time to dance
to techno and a time not to."

[upbeat techno music]

We've got new,
fresh sounds every week.

You can't even keep up with it.

Have you tried
keeping up with, like,

techno, hardcore,
trance, intellechno?

It's a hotbed of creativity,
and that's a fact.

[music continues]

Standing in a kitchen
listening to rave music,

I couldn't understand it.

I had to go to
a rave to understand it.

And after about four hours,

we were supposed
to go into a trance.

In fact, I was
going into a trance,

and I thought, let's
just say we were in a forest

and there was nothing to
do but these big, empty logs,

say we were pygmies
or something, we'd end up,

what we'd be doing
by about lunchtime,

we'd be standing
'round a log with big sticks

and we'd be going,
"Dong-dong-dong."

[music continues]

There's an anti-criminal justice
act in England which is

banning parties,
raves, repetitive beats,

more than 10 people in a field,

and it's only made
the underground stronger

because you have to
band together

to fight the common thing,

it was a case of
that as well with punk.

- You can see
the hippie thing about it,

you know what I mean?

Punks were hippies with zips.

- People began to
kick hippies around,

but, quite frankly,
I am a hippie.

I want to be a hippie, you know?

Punks and hippies are
now fighting together

here in England.

It's the same thing they want.

In fact,
you can't tell 'em apart,

and they're coming together
in some new, strange style.

- The first, original
Strummer Campfire

probably started
at Glastonbury.

He loved the kind
of community aspect

and the techno thing
he certainly got,

once it was there, once it was
instilled in his brain,

he instantly understood it
and became a champion for it.

- There is no better place to be

on this whole island
than right here, right now.

I think this is some sort of
gene memory, this is my theory.

It's in our blood over here to
have these kind of big needs.

I bet you, if we were
standing here, like,

maybe 2,000 years
ago or whatever, you know,

there would be
something like this going on.

- But Joe was
looking around the world

for different inspiration.

[Joe] This is
Andrés Landero, the King.

- Colombian music,
African music.

- Jason Mayo brought
this lovely music to us.

We are riding on it.

I love it,
I play it all the time.

- Joe was marrying Luce

and I just felt
really happy for him

'cause he seemed very happy.

It helped to ground
him and to help focus him

and give him a base
to grow from

and to start
his new music and give him

a bit more
confidence in himself,

and I think Joe really
appreciated being Joe Strummer

and not being
the ex-Clash member.

- Joe was a very
spiritual person.

He always had an interest
in, kind of, American Indians,

the Incas, Mexicans,
he did love the image

and the symbolism
attached to a campfire.

It was very,
very important to him.

He saw it as a great
opportunity to express himself,

but in a really quiet way.

I think Joe was
fed up with shouting,

and there's nothing better
than people wandering through

and sitting down,
'cause that campfire itself

is a very comforting thing.

You sit there,
you get warm and you talk.

- ♪ Last train to Nashville,
girl, you got on board ♪

♪ You packed up your medicine
and you left without a word ♪

- He would go off for
hours on end and come back

with people from all walks
of life, none of whom we knew.

He just enjoyed talking to
people, he enjoyed listening.

He used to learn so much.

- ♪ You don't dance
to techno anymore ♪

- He was always thinking
of other people all the time,

about extra tents, extra
sleeping bags for everyone.

- It was an extension of
the whole ethos of Glastonbury.

For him, it was
a form of alternative living

with your friends.

- In Rastafaria,
we say, "More fire,"

and it's not supposed
to be a violent thing.

It's about purging and cleansing
and rebirth and rising,

phoenix-like out of the ashes.

So maybe that's
what he was tuned into.

- ♪ No, you don't
dance to techno anymore ♪

- He had a lot to
teach about life in general,

and, like, sort of, the real
world, not the perfect world.

- Well, Joe's campfire
was utopian.

It was re-exploring
the rules, re-exploring

how you can make music,
and it's like going back

to the Druids.

Yet the experience
was pushing the envelope,

trying to find something new.

- ♪ Misty morning memory... ♪

- Well, we hadn't seen
each other

for nearly 25 years,
and Joe bumped into my daughter

and he gave her a note and it
just said, "Nothing's changed.

We're all old hippies at heart.

Come and have a campfire."

- The campfires
opened up the idea to Joe

that he could form
another band and it didn't have

to be Clash-type music,

that it could be
an amalgamation of everything

that he listened to.

It gave him
the confidence to think,

"Hey, maybe I can find
like-minded people

to play with me."

- Joe challenged you
and he provoked you.

In fact, the last time
I saw Joe, I had an argument

with him because he was trying

to tell me not to stop smoking.

[Joe] If you took cigarettes
away from the 20th century,

we wouldn't have any

of the writers you go on
about or anybody worships.

They just would not exist,
and I want this acknowledged.

In fact, I think
non-smokers should be barred

from buying any
product that a smoker created.

[Latin music playing]

- We spent a long
time trying to get Joe

back on the road.

We're talking
about two years here.

I mean, it started off,
we were trying to get him

to re-form The Clash,
but he was really adamant

that he wouldn't,
that he would not go back out

on the road again.

[Joe] If that was no
toe-tapper or no body shaker,

boy, you need to
see the undertaker.

That was Andrés Landero,
el rey del acordeón.

- I had my daughter on
my shoulders and I said,

"What's going on?"
And she said,

"Ooh, Dad, there's a naked
man dancing on the stage."

So I said, "Let me see!"

So I threw her on the ground
and stood on her recumbent body

so I could see,
and this is my first glimpse

of Anthony Genn.

[crowd cheering]
[upbeat rock music]

And then I met him
after that performance.

- I was kind of
drunkenly saying to him,

"Come on, man,
you're fucking Joe Strummer.

Get up off your ass and make
a fucking record," you know?

"We need you." [laughs]

I just didn't
expect him to turn 'round

and say, "Yeah, okay.

I'll do it with you."

[Joe] If you leave it too long,

there's a sort of magic
moment when it's too late

to come back
and I think I just got in

before the door closed.

Please welcome
Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros!

[crowd cheering]

- ♪ On a techno D-Day,
a techno D-Day ♪

♪ Out on Omaha Beach ♪

♪ Where the troops
believe in a life of freedom ♪

♪ This is all
about free speech ♪

- Because he hadn't
been on the road

for a long, long time,
he'd put a few pounds on.

[laughing] You could see he was
knackered after three tunes

because he hadn't
paced himself.

He was giving it all,
you know what I mean?

He was just sweating,
but nobody cared, it was Joe.

- You've got to fight
for your...for your crowd.

Excuse me, girls,
I'm trying to promote

a rock 'n' roll
show tonight, rock 'n' roll.

When you hustle,
you've got to have a hard shell.

Like Captain Beefheart said,

"One cold vibe won't
stop this here boogie."

I'll leave you with
a flyer in case you fancy going.

- Okay.

- It's the hippest
place in town tonight.

[both laughing]

- Okay.

- Great, we're building.

When I got back on the road,
my expectations were zero,

zilch, because
I don't like to be disappointed

so I keep my expectations
at a bare minimum.

[crowd cheering]

- It was constantly
about reinvention.

[Joe] All right, let's go!

♪ Tonight, there was a power
cut in the city of madness ♪

♪ And the conversation died
in the burst of a solar flare ♪

♪ In the darkness ♪

- Yeah, he loved it, he loved
it, he absolutely loved it.

He loved the whole deal.

Just as a beginning chapter
of a new period in his life.

- ♪ And shorted out
the eastern shore ♪

♪ We're left to shout out ♪

♪ We all need a little more ♪

Songs don't tend
to come to you, I mean,

if there's no outlet for them.

Because I couldn't
get any records out,

songs would occasionally
come but I knew that as soon

as we had a contract,
the floodgates would open.

I'd got reams of lyrics,
carrier bags full

of twisted napkins with
insane things written on them.

When you get
a great idea for a lyric,

just push people out
of the way, throw yourself

on the floor and write it down,

because it only
makes sense in the moment.

- He would always
just walk 'round the studio

and he had an A-4
sheet of paper and a pen

and he'd just write
reams and reams of lyrics,

and it went on for a few
hours and then, about midnight

or whatever, he went,
"Okay, I've got a song,"

and he'd just written
a song about his walk

from Willesden to Cricklewood.

And during that time,
I was fiddling around

with this little tune.

I wasn't thinking for a second
that Joe was going to go,

"Yeah, that's good."
I was just messing around.

There was Joe Strummer and
there was John Graham Mellor.

He talks about
his children in that song.

[all chattering]

- Go on. Do it!
- No, Dad!

- Do it!

One, two, three, action!

- Maybe that night I wrote
a song with John Mellor.

[Joe] ♪ Thought about
my babies grown ♪

♪ Thought about going home ♪

♪ Thought about
what's done is done ♪

♪ We're alive
and that's the one ♪

♪ From Willesden
to Cricklewood ♪

♪ From Willesden ♪

[girl laughing]

[Joe] So I'm pinching
myself sometimes.

Actually, you've got
a record, you're traveling,

you're going around,
you're in countries,

you're talking to people,
you're playing shows.

It's such a change from
10 years in the wilderness.

Yeah, it feels great.

I'm having Christmas every day.

- Now here's Joe Strummer!
Whoo!

- You know, when
The Clash were on tour

and we lost the beat,
chef would be, like, at the side

of the stage going,

"Don't forget,
pump your loins, children."

You know, that was,
like, his motto or something.

- Whoo!

♪ Well, it's a rockin' world ♪

♪ Make no mistake about it ♪

♪ It's a shockin' world ♪

♪ Could be
what's so great about it ♪

♪ It's a rockin' world ♪

- What the hell is this?

- Whenever we hung out,
all of us brought sunglasses

when Joe called, saying,
"We're going out," you know?

'Cause you knew you'd be
up at dawn somewhere with Joe.

- You would get a message,
like, "I'm coming into town,"

and you would take
your vitamins and get your rest.

- And if Joe could
find a piano,

he would play "Junco Partner."

Like, it's, you know,
five o'clock in the morning

and we're all
singing to "Junco Partner"

in some ground floor
apartment in the East Village.

- Slowly but
surely my drug addiction

became much more severe.

He's seen that movie.

He knows how that movie ends,
so there's only thing to do

and that's [blows raspberry]

cut that, cut that guy lose.

- I was staying in
Portsmouth at the time.

I hadn't seen
Joe for a few years,

and I saw him in
the bar and he kind of looks

at me, like, "Have you got an
instrument with you?" [laughs]

[Joe] I just said to him,
"Where is your violin?"

He said, "In the car."
I said, "Go and get it!"

[gentle music]

- And then we did like
that at every gig after that.

- Which part of life
do we find the truth?

Is it the beginning, the middle
or the end, or is it all,

quasi-truth?

I approach everything in my
life with a tranquil attitude.

In fact, being grown up
means exemplary manners

to your fellow human being.

I have a record program
on the world service.

I just play records
for half an hour.

When I asked, "How many people
are listening to the slot?"

And he flicked through a book
and he said, "40 million."

And I said,
"Are you kidding me?"

And he said, "No, 40 million."

It just brings the idea of
the globe sharply into focus.

Maybe that opened
my eyes to hearing things

that aren't in the complete
Western Music Groove.

I've always kept that going,
finding strange records

and trying to learn from them,

so as not to keep it
too narrow,

'cause if you keep it
very narrow,

it's gonna kill
the life in the music.

- ♪ Hey ♪

♪ Down along the road ♪

♪ Hey ♪

♪ Down on the road,
down on the road ♪

♪ Hey ♪

♪ If you're after getting
the honey ♪

♪ Hey ♪

♪ Hey ♪

♪ Then you don't
go killing all the bees ♪

[crowd cheering]

♪ Let the summertime sun ♪

- I saw Joe play with
the Mescaleros quite a bit.

I remember
it being just blissful.

There wasn't
anywhere else on the planet

I could conceivably want to be.

[crowd cheering]

- Tokyo, typhoon coming in.

[fireworks exploding outside]

And the city is saying...

[laughs]

[woman speaking
foreign language]

I love you.

- I think he knew
he had something else to do

and he hadn't found it,
and then with the Mescaleros,

he found what
he wanted to do again.

I think it was as
important to him as The Clash.

[Joe] I don't have any message
except,

don't forget you're alive,
because sometimes,

when you walk around the city
or when you yourself are

in a bad mood, you can think,

"Hey, wait a minute,
we're alive.

You know, we don't know what
the next second will bring."

[crowd cheering]

- ♪ Distance no object ♪

♪ Rasta, for I ♪

- We all thought
it might be we would play

at the Rock 'n' roll Hall of
Fame or something, you know,

we'd get back together.

[car horn beeps]

But it wasn't to be that,
and it was something,

more appropriate, in a way.

- The 2002 strike,
we felt we deserved more money.

We didn't think
it was being greedy,

we was actually
going for the average wage

of that particular sector.

We wasn't seeming to
get our message across.

Joe realized that
there was more to our cause

than what the papers and
the government were saying.

For Joe to come
out and do such a gig

for us was
a great morale booster.

- In the key of "A"!

[crowd cheering]

- I didn't really intend
to play.

Joe and I never
discussed it beforehand

and we didn't
pre-arrange anything.

It was just I felt
completely compelled.

I said, "Hold me coat.

I'm going out."

[Joe singing indistinctly]

♪ White riot, I wanna riot ♪

♪ White riot, a riot of my own ♪

♪ White riot, I wanna riot ♪

♪ White riot, a riot of my own ♪

[crowd cheering]

- Mick Jones,
ladies and gentlemen.

- That was actually
the first time that Mick

and Joe had
appeared on stage together

since the break-up of
The Clash.

- Well done!

- It was kind of cool,
'cause they did it

for the firemen and not
'cause somebody paid them

two million quid.

[Joe] And that's
the end of the first series

ofJoe Strummer's
London Calling.

If you want a second series,
please write in.

In fact, I'm not even going
to wait for you to write in.

I'm going to kick off
the second series, right now.

Let it roll with Nina Simone.

["To Love Somebody"
by Nina Simone]

♪ There's a light ♪

♪ A certain kind of light ♪

♪ That's never shone on me ♪

♪ I want my whole life to be ♪

- He did this
incredible Christmas card.

They were a series
of islands with campfires

on them and people
heading towards them,

drawn by the campfires,
in little boats.

- And it was
his vision of heaven, I think,

this place where people
joined and worked together.

- It was all done very
last-minute, as always.

I think I posted them
on December the 21st,

so a lot of people
received them the day he died.

- He was a genuinely happy man.

There was no pressure.

There was just joy
in what he was doing,

and he just went
like that, on the sofa,

readingThe Observer, I think.

- He died of
a congenital heart defect which

we were all totally
unaware that he had.

It could have struck
him down at any time.

- None of those things can
really last forever and I think,

in a way, it's kind of
greedy of people to expect it

to last forever
because that's people like,

that's their fire burning,
at extra strength,

for us, you know?

And that's kind of
a lot to ask of people,

to burn like that.

- Tens of thousands
of e-mails that came

in were saying,
"Joe, thank you.

You changed the way that
I thought and felt about life."

- His mythology is
cast in reinforced concrete,

and it's probably helping

to hold up
the Trellick Tower right now.

- You know, when I, you and
I carried him into that chapel,

he felt like he'd
put a bit of weight on.

I think that strat
must have been in there.

[stammers]

It's like
Hemingway said about Paris,

"There's never any end to it,"

and um...

it's the same with Joe.

[Joe] And so, now,
I'd like to say,

people can change
anything they want to,

and that means
everything in the world.

People are running about,
following their little tracks,

I am one of them,
but we've all got to stop

just following
our own little mouse trail.

People can do anything.

This is something
that I'm beginning to learn.

People are out there,
doing bad things to each other.

It's because
they've been dehumanized.

It's time to take the humanity
back into the center

of the ring and
follow that for a time.

Greed, it ain't going anywhere.

They should have
that on a big billboard

across Times Square.

Without people, we are nothing.

That's my spiel.

["Get Down Moses" by Joe
Strummer and the Mescaleros]

♪ Once I got to
the mountaintop ♪

♪ Tell you what I could see ♪

♪ Prairie full of
lost souls running ♪

♪ From the priests of iniquity ♪

♪ Where the hell was Elijah ♪

♪ And what do you do when
the prophecy game was through ♪

♪ Na, na, na-na-na-na-na ♪

♪ We gotta take
the walls of Jericho ♪

♪ Na, na, na-na-na-na-na ♪

♪ Put your lips
together and blow ♪

♪ Na, na, na-na-na-na-na ♪

♪ To the very top ♪

♪ Na, na, na-na-na-na-na ♪

♪ They say the truth ♪

♪ Crystallizes ♪

♪ Like jewels ♪

♪ In the rock ♪

♪ In the rock ♪

♪ Get down, Moses ♪

♪ Part another sea ♪

♪ Carve another
tablet out of LSD ♪

♪ Get down, Moses ♪

♪ Out in Tennessee ♪

♪ Get down, Moses ♪

♪ Down in the street ♪

♪ The blood is washing down
all the gravel to our feet ♪

♪ Get down, Moses ♪

♪ Down in the pit ♪

♪ Lying in a dream ♪

♪ Cross battlefield ♪

♪ Crashing on a downtown strip ♪

♪ Looking in the eyes ♪

♪ Of the diamonds
and the spies and the hip ♪

♪ Who's sponsoring
the crack ghetto ♪

♪ Who's lecturing ♪

♪ Who's in the know
and in the don't know ♪

♪ Na, na, na-na-na-na-na ♪

♪ You better take
the walls of Jericho ♪

♪ Na, na, na-na-na-na-na ♪

♪ Put your lips
together and blow ♪

♪ Na, na, na-na-na-na-na ♪

♪ Going to the very top ♪

♪ Na, na, na-na-na-na-na ♪

♪ Where the truth crystallizes ♪

♪ Like jewels ♪

♪ In the rock ♪

♪ In the rock ♪

♪ Get down, Moses ♪

♪ From the eagle's aerie ♪

♪ We gotta to make a new
friend out of old enemies ♪

♪ Get down, Moses ♪

♪ Back in Tennessee ♪

♪ Get down, Moses ♪

♪ Down with the dreads ♪

♪ They got a lotta
reasoning in a dreadhead ♪

♪ Get down, Moses ♪

♪ Down in the street ♪

♪ Get down, Moses ♪

♪ We need to eat ♪

♪ We gotta chew
it over with our wisdom teeth ♪

♪ Get down, Moses ♪

♪ Chuffin' ♪