Original subtitles

This is American Morning,

- for Monday, December 23, 2002... - Legend of rock...

Sad and sudden news, founding father of punk rock,

- Joe Strummer, died yesterday. - Guitarist, vocalist and songwriter for

- the British punk band The Clash... - ...right here at his home in Sommerset,

apparently peacefully of a heart attack.

London Calling was named the best album of the 1980s by...

The times live in we need Joe Strummer more than ever.

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

Joe, we're going to have your name on screen,

would you like anything under your name?

Would you like Mescaleros, The Clash? Anything like that?

I'd like you to write Punk Rock Warlord.

With "Warlord" being one word.

White riot - I want to riot

White riot - a riot of my own

White riot - I want to riot

White riot - a riot of my own

Black men gotta lot a 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

An' nobody wants

To go to jail!

White riot - I want to riot

White riot - a riot of my own

White riot - I want to riot

White riot - a riot of my own

All the power in the hands

Of the people rich enough to buy it

While we walk the street

Too chicken to even try it

An' everybody's doing

Just what they're told to

An' nobody wants

To go to jail!

All transmitters to full. All receivers to boost.

This is London calling, this is London 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.

We're gonna say the unsayable and we play the unplayable.

Broadcasting what needs to be cast.

If your radio's tuned here, your radio's tuned right.

My father was born in India.

He only became an English citizen two years before I was born.

And after the war he came to London and joined the foreign office.

He was very, very left-wing which we though was quite surprising,

because he spoke like a very pucker Englishman.

What on earth Ron was doing, being a diplomat,

was completely beyond me. He questioned everything.

My parents weren't musical at all,

and I think if I got any musical tradition it comes from my mother's side,

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.

Anna was just this Scottish Heather and the great thing about Joe,

he's got those two combinations:

of the generosity of Anna, and the questioning of Ron.

My father was posted to Turkey and that's why I was born there.

He was screaming in Turkish when he was about three.

Throwing 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.

My father was then posted to Cairo for two years,

and then to Mexico-City for two years.

I went to a Mexican school where they spoke no English.

And then to Bonn in West Germany.

That's a great Elvis Presley and my favorite Elvis tune because

it's got a New Orleans flavor, 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.

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 I had to forget about my parents...

...and deal with this.

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 'cause I realized you had to fight fire with fire.

It was either bully or be bullied.

I was one of the principal bullies.

And there was no protection from anybody or anything.

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 and 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.

Or we'd all be in the shit.

Joe always...

...he knew how to handle people even the people that were trying to hurt him.

Reporting to Scouts was a good way of getting out of school for a weekend...

...I think was the reason that we joined.

We used to spend a lot of time putting camps and campfires into the land.

And that's Harry Belafonte with a reminiscent "Day-O",

takes you back to the old times.

In all the time they were at school, I never met his parents.

It was as if they didn't exist.

He'd go back for holidays.

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.

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.

It sounded so different from what we were living

in our actual day-to-day reality. It was the sound of another world.

This moment I think I decided to only follow music forever.

That would be the way to live.

I was a lousy student.

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 reports 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.

Bastards!

In 1968 the whole world was exploding.

There was Paris, Vietnam, Grosvenor Square,

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

It was a great year to come of age.

I could 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 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 were unsatisfactory.

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.

And that was the great Tim Harden, perhaps a lost genius of music,

with "Black Sheep Boy".

I just went straight out of this... dead strict environment

where you had to like really struggle to get out of the game.

And straight into this seeding LSD orgy.

There was only one answer to what you were going to do after school,

and that is art school.

The last resort of malingerers and bluffers and people who don't want to work.

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

I said to him, "That's interesting, how'd you get the name Woody?"

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

I think because 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. I guess that was too much for them.

I decided to follow a musician around called Tymon Dogg, D-O-G-G.

He had this years before Snoop Doggy Dogg.

First collecting money for him in the London underground

like a Mississippi Blues Man's apprentice.

Tymon was the guy who taught and showed Joe that music was the root.

I bought a Ukulele, because I figured

that had to be easier than a guitar having only four strings.

But I managed to get some chords together. I was chuffed.

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 going to 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 was 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 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", by '72/3 it was all over.

I always felt 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.

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.

That was Bukka White, and the syncopation there,

all that provided by one man, who so I really like.

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.

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.

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 up as far as the art college.

There's nothing PC about Newport in those days.

You'd go out and there'd be punch-ups in the streets, it was a tough place.

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

and he'd suddenly found himself in this industrial South Wales town

which was completely alien to anything he'd experienced in the past.

But he loved it.

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 the felling 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 bedsit

and we just used to literally sit up all night while I played my records.

He just looked at me and he said,

"Is your mother proud of your eye lashes?"

That was Israel Kamakiwiwo'ole from Hawaii.

He used to sign on and he got various jobs.

He was working in a carpet factory and a rubber factory.

He'd come back with rubber all over his hair.

He took a job in a graveyard.

I wasn't strong enough to dig graves. First morning they told me to dig a grave,

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

He'd got the sack when he was found asleep in a grave.

While I wasn't at the art school, I crashed my way into the art school rock band.

that became known as "The Vultures".

Really make it rusty and homemade, you know what I mean?

Is that loud enough?

This is one of the first songs he wrote.

Everybody ready? Take 4.

I drew a cartoon saying how brilliant we were.

We conned this poor booker to book us into a big blues club type place in Bristol.

But the crowd weren't having it. They pelted us with beer glasses.

So after that night I just realized I had to get back to the capital.

Now we're going to turn over the controls of the tower here

to the great originator of all rap and ting,

Mr. U-Roy, let it roll.

By this time they had this really huge squat scene rolling in West 9.

In 1974 there were rows and rows of buildings

that were boarded up by the council and just left to rot.

There were hoards of people in London who couldn't afford to pay rent.

There was an estate agency, the Ruff, Tuff, Cream Puff agency,

which put out a newsletter of available houses.

1A Portland Road, West 11. Access through the back door.

Has eleven large rooms but needs enormous attention.

There's a basement flat cluttered up at Number 10, Paris Square, West 11

and at 56 Pemridge Villas, West 11,

it's totally cluttered up except for the basement window.

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.

Joe decided to open up a squat

and went down there with crowbars opened up 101 Walterton Road.

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.

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 weren't completely out of their minds,

into one squat.

And we formed a rock 'n roll band, "The 101ers".

And so our house band got going, there was about six, seven of us in it.

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 heard me banging around when I had a pair of bongos.

He said, "Look, the drummer's gone, we got a gig in two weeks."

I thought we could mount an attack on the stage and like potentially get paid.

They were playing for the scene that was their contribution,

community entertainment, initially.

When we'd 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.

He was like half the community. In fact Julian was the lead singer.

I got him in to sing because I thought I was crying.

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

And Micky Foote who was working with me back then, he said,

"That new singer you got in, he just sounds just like you."

I thought, "Oh, fuck it. So I'll become the singer again."

You got taken down to the pub for a drink basically

and then you got told you've been fired.

I remember I had to tell Simon, Simon the saxophone player,

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

We had hard decisions, 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, it's what happens.

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, Windsor Castle?"

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

We had the nerve to rent a room above a pub

and charged 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 gotta be able to go out there and do it for yourself

because no one's going to give it to you.

It soon became like a real big mash-up.

Gypsies were coming, ripping everybody off.

Handbags would be flying out of the windows

and somebody would be catching them at the bottom.

We were on stage playing and the police raided the place.

They didn't know who to search

with all these filthy squatters and gypsies and God knows what in this room.

Mayhem broke loose.

We carried on playing to this crazy thing going on.

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 all kept saying "Hey Woody!" and he'd just blank you, he wouldn't respond.

He'd just say, "I'm not called Woody, my name's Joe."

Well, it was either that or Johnny Caramello.

I think "Joe Strummer" sort of won just by a little nose.

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", and I've got no idea where he got it from.

He called me "Dick The Shit", because my Christian name is Richard,

and then it was "Richard III", it was "Richard The Turd", it was "Dick The Shit".

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.

We'd seen Joe play over at the Akam Hall, and in Windsor Castle

and quite a few other places.

Even members of the Sex Pistols ended up there,

they were watching our stuff while I was unaware of them.

'Cause it was the only jumping spot in West London on a Thursday.

I liked the band but Joe was something special. Best front man out there.

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

They were at a point that they were really making it,

like the Roundhouse, but that was not really enough for him.

He just felt he needed a breakthrough.

The Pistols had to come in and blow everything away.

They were that stun grenade into the room before the door kicked off.

They came out of nowhere

and they come to support us one night in the Nashville Rooms.

It was electrifying.

It was so different. They were like a million years ahead.

I think Joe was the only one who 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.

Right at that time Bernie Rhodes walks into the gig.

We managed to see him at the Golden Lion, all of us. Keith went backstage and went:

"Can we talk to you?"

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 and 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 though about it and I said, "Can you give me 24 hours?"

And he said, "Sure."

Sid and Pete 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 he went, "I will, I'll do it, I'll do it."

That was it, he came out and said, "Right, that's it, the 101ers is finished."

And it was a bombshell to the rest of the band.

I mean I knew, it was in the air, you know, the 101ers were...

problems with the bass player then we got to get rid of the guitar player...

So I knew something was happening.

Anyway the following day I bumped into Bernie Rhodes, who was...

Let me state something really quickly.

I formed the Sex Pistols, not Malcolm, you know that don't you?

I found John, auditioned him, put him in the group.

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

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

I'm the philosopher of it, I'm the great engine of it.

I am punk. Without me there's nothing.

And I said, "Joe, right..."

"The 101ers is finished but, I'm not going with this guy."

And he said, "Oh, it's not possible Snakes, You got to do it with this guy".

And that was it.

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.

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.

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 the back room of a squat in Shepard'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.

Bernie hired a warehouse off British Rail in Camden Town.

Sometimes Bernie would come down, throw us out at night

and we'd break back in when he was gone. We were that keen.

It was very much being like in a 24 hour gang.

We only had each other.

I knew I wasn't fitting in, I wanted to be in the band.

And it really got me down 'cause I realized, "Shit, this isn't my band."

I left the band.

And then it just worked, it just made it that it was going to work.

Paul was just admitting that he couldn't play.

And he admitted to me that he had no idea what this instrument was.

And for a minute I thought,

"Oh God, a whole room of people with no idea how to play anything."

- Is Millie going to be the producer of this? - Yeah, he is. Get on with it.

Shut your mouth and get going.

- Don't tell me to shut my mouth. - Come on, Mick, go on with it.

They got really frustrated, 'cause I had to quickly rush over

and do all of this. Give us an E.

Keith picked it up, he could play as good as me in about three weeks.

One who could really play in The Clash was Mick Jones,

more than I'll ever be able to.

- What happened to your teeth? - My teeth?

- Yeah. - I've never brushed them.

I'm a walking advert for brushing your teeth.

That was what's good about punk. If you were ugly, you were in.

- Sounds like a load of shit. - Sounds great to me.

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

You know in the next couple of months this country is 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,

you'll have two years of hardship and I really mean hardship,

you might get out of it all right.

I'd been writing with the 101ers 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.

He can hear arrangements, you know, he knows what a bass should do,

he knows what the drums should do, he knows what the guitars should do,

He can hear it in his head, right. I can't heart that stuff.

All you have to do is look out there to write a song, really.

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

What I'd see is certain words, the tune was sort of there for me anyway,

and I could hear the tune coming out of it.

There's a roar of the city, it does sound like our music.

I really believe you gotta 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 very deep within.

I ran up to him and I jump on him and 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 open.

And we never were like that, we were always very close.

He was just very different,

like troubled, and serious.

He said, "These hippies are old farts smoking pot and all that."

So I changed.

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.

We were almost Stalinist, in the way 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 principle in anything you do?

Yeah, I wouldn't steal money off a friend.

But I'd steal his girl friend.

I think too much. Or not enough. I mean I think all the time.

I think, thinking is like real fun. 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.

It's just the thinking that makes it the point, you know?

Yankee detectives Are always on the TV

'Cause there's a murder in America About every ten seconds

And don't you think I care About your poxy 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 But what can 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 came down.

It would have been nice if Joe Strummer had said, "Hey Dick, how are you?" but he didn't.

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.

I value my existence by what I achieve, you know, by what I create, that's it.

Creation is everything you know.

- Anything special? - No, just blanket cover.

I don't know what I'm after.

If I knew what I was after I probably wouldn't bother to go after it.

Give it a good hammering, Joe.

And this is Joe Strummer's "London Calling" on the world service,

coming out of one of these basements we have here in London,

throbbing in summer heat.

That was "Best Dressed Chicken In The Town" by Doctor Alimantado,

well worth checking out him.

So kids like me who didn't really read newspapers,

he kind of informed us about events that were going on in the world.

He made us politically aware I guess.

One of the things I'd like us to do,

so I have to try to stop kids joining up the National Front because of ignorance.

In 1977

Knives in West 11

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

In 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 'cause I'm not all there

No Elvis, Beatles, or The Rolling Stones

In 1977

In 1978

- It's too late - Hate! Hate!

In 1979

Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate!

In 1980

Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate!

In 1981

- The toilets don't work - Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate!

In 1982

Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate!

In 1983

Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate!

In 1984

Big Brother really is here.

It's worse now than ever. Even your Oyster Card,

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

when 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.

It was a feeling that if The Clash could do it, you could do it.

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

I just want the right to choose, right?

And it ain't no use me having the right to choose, right?

And not everybody else to have it, right? Everyone's got to have it.

I just thought I'd join the band to go to parties and have fun.

Not to argue about politics night and day.

It felt 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 smugged.

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, I will join to make a name and then move on to play proper music.

Paul said, "We got to cut your hair off," then Joe said, "We got to dye it."

I went home to my wife, I left her in the morning with long hair and fez,

and I went home with short spiky blonde hair and zips.

And I called him Woody for some reason. But I know the reason:

Joe had little pointed ears at the top

and I thought he looked like Woody Woodpecker.

Now I didn't know he had been called Woody before.

And I said, "Oi, Woody," and he went, "Don't ever fucking call me that."

And I thought, "God, he's sensitive."

It's not a bad thing to have The Clash be your first ever rock show.

17 years old, hanging out with my mates

and we got into Trinity College, Dublin.

At the back of the stage they had a picture from the first album

which was a lot of bobbies running down the street with truncheons.

Which was what was going on in London at the race riots.

But in Ireland it looked like Belfast.

So it was a very, very, very,

tense moment as this backdrop was opened up.

We want to roll the tanks, queue the Air Force,

roll out 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 at that moment.

It was not a matter of life and death, something much more serious.

One, two, three, four.

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.

Being in the right time at the right place with the right ship.

It was just explosive. It was like pirates slashing their way through.

It just got completely out of control.

We had crews of people, stealing cars, hopping rides, just following this thing.

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.

And behind me, it was like one of those 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 it was like, I'm not joking, 50 people,

diving through this window like a Charlie Chaplin movie.

"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 them money to get home

if they didn't have money for drinks at the pub, he'd give them money for drinks.

The police would wait until we were driving across the mountains.

After a few motels we had started to borrow the pillows

because 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.

Said Joe, "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'd spoken to him before there were people watching or people listening.

And he wouldn't drop the act.

We both said we were scared.

'Cause at the time they were making a big thing about the punk thing.

And we thought we might end up in more trouble than we were really in.

We just got honest with each other.

He still had this thing about, he was a punk rocker but he'd been to a private school.

That always fucked him up right from the beginning.

I don't care what he comes from, he ain't a phony, you know what I mean?

He weren't acting up a role, you know? He believed what he was doing.

I think Gaby started going out with Joe, I just remember this guy walking around,

shoulders up here and his black leather jacket,

mumbling, he never said much.

And they'd move to Ladbroke Grove and I'd go there and then I got to know Joe.

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, do you want some LSD? - Yeah.

Better have three. You want to really get out there.

I definitely believe because of punk that you can have whatever you want.

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

I definitely think that's what formed me an amazing artist.

I was a Clash fan.

I seen them in '78 they came and played at the Apollo and there was a riot.

The bouncers were big Glasgow thugs.

They 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.

Let them go! They're fucking dancing!

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

The audience, they're your friends.

And you're no better than them. We were one with the audience.

You should never feel above anyone.

When punk first started, it didn't seem particularly black-friendly.

And so when The Clash's first album came out and they got "Police and Thieves" on there,

and they got a scene from the Carnival, it sort of made punk accessible to me.

So it was a way of saying, "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.

I mean, they're saying you can't hear the words.

But the words are really great. They're really great and you can't hear them.

Don't you think that's ironic?

Joe had a way with words. A sense of narrative and drama.

Joe would have more ideas in a rhyming couplet

than some people would 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 and I thought

I'm going to have to do this for the rest of my life.

This is why we came up with so much idealism 'cause we figured

we was going to need that much to combat a situation like being rich and famous.

All that 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 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.

Because I came from Dover.

Bernie got sacked.

All the sudden we were on our own. As if like daddy had gone away.

And I think this is where we proved ourselves.

We stayed in some shithole 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 the studio

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 look to us

Phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust

London calling, see we ain't got no swing

Except for the ring of that truncheon thing

The ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in

Meltdown expected, the wheat is growin' thin

Engines stop running, but I have no fear

'Cause London is drowning, and I, I live by the river

At the time I was living right by the Themse.

I was following a lot of the doom prophecies.

You know the scientists having the big arguments

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 going to collide with the sun

making you feel like you're some kind of ant who isn't worth living.

Then they were going on, "You better watch out down there on the Themse."

"It's due for a flood on the spring tide and you're 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.

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 alike alike alike

Says the Sex Pistols landed here.

In 1869.

We're not particularly talented, we try on.

What is it in terms of the energy? You mean you put out more energy.

We give it all we got, that's all. It's so simple as that.

Everybody's used to paying eight dollars and getting half measures,

and like going home satisfied.

Well, in England they go back being satisfied three years ago.

You got to give it all you got or forget it.

He knew the culture of America, he knew

he knew the literature, he knew the music of it.

backwards and forwards. And so we hit if off immediately.

Here was this unlikely meeting of guys that grew up thousands of miles apart,

but the same things moved us.

Robbin' people with a six-gun

I fought the law and the law won

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.

I don't know if his politics can 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 suppose the initial effect The Clash had on me was

was the proper effect.

You know, you were experiencing a

a sincerity.

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

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.

When you went to the bar, a single was a double.

Honey, I forgot to duck.

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

I came out of the Vietnam war,

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

In '76 I got very involved with the Sandinistas.

It was a sort of teenage revolution where the people actually for once

took control of their own country for the first time.

I was given, as a gift, these street fighting scarves

that they used in Esteli, Esteli's a small town in Nicaragua,

so that the Samosa troupes wouldn't know who they were.

Then I gave these to Joe and Mick

We decided to call the record "Sandinista",

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 hear 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, 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 is "Sandinista",

and the whole concept of that record

of people standing up for their brothers and sisters

and not taking any shit just 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, this means that 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 turned the record company freak.

They were quite happy to bury that one I think.

You learn a lot about life getting shafted royally.

Anyway after "Sandinista" I realized that I wanted Bernie back.

I still think that Bernie is a creative individual, I was missing his input.

It was a question of either Joe was gonna leave or Bernie came back.

So Bernie came back.

With a vengeance.

The Clash was a rusty old wreck and I grabbed it and put it up,

and put my engine in it, my updated engine.

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

Catch him while he's hot.

- Yeah, Bernie. Bernie. - Bernie.

- Leave him. Leave him. - Sorry, 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 other 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. Next, Off The Record.

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.

Only half the people could get in and they started rioting in front of the square.

And it was live 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, I can't...

The Bond's manager, Joel Heller denied his club had done anything wrong.

Can I say that we overbooked?

All over New York you could hear our stuff coming up.

There was a black mix of "Mag Seven",

that's coming out of every ghetto blaster in the city, every hour.

That summer, that moment, we had New York.

There was a romance that The Clash had with New York at that period in time.

I remember bumping into a guy called Jack Checker who 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.

He wanted to see Harlem, he wanted to see Brooklyn.

He just wanted to see the people and to interact with the people.

Does this man deserve to be in jail?

I mean 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.

Interestingly enough in Raging Bull

the music that is there is music from the 40s and 50s,

and opera.

But the place I went for the source, the creativity came from The Clash, really.

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 3000 people "Everybody say hoo!"

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, you gotta give them a chance, you gotta fucking listen. Don't do that."

And the whole crowd was like, "Oh, shit. Strummer just, like, did a number on us."

Even when I'm vomiting on a carpet at 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. - Thanks very much for that.

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

What do you think we are? 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.

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

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

- Well, it's serious. - Well you tell me.

How about life and death and not about who pukes on stinking carpets.

There were parts of his character that I didn't like.

I had 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'd spent the night with Joe.

You know, and that kind of really hurt.

I felt really betrayed and he did it with me, he did it with other people as well.

We'd lost that unity. I was already starting to disappear up my own ass.

Joe was having doubts. I think he was already becoming embarrassed

by the fact that we were so successful.

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

Everybody's got their weaknesses, you know?

We were fed up with each other.

We'd been living in each other's pocket for year upon 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.

I made a comment which was

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

and that's what sparked the whole thing up.

And it's directly related to his

presence on the stage.

He said, "You've got no respect for the stage."

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

And then he threw his Vodka-Orange in my face.

So I hit him as hard as I could the center of the forehead.

It was one fuck of a punch and it drew blood, you know?

That's what people call 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?

Well I'm no boxer but I guess that was a triple hook combination

with a double uppercut.

Eddie Cochran there, "Nervous Breakdown".

And it was over the next thing, and I was laughing my head off.

Suddenly you're on the Saturday Night Live,

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

We weren't prepared funnily enough.

After all the years of struggle to actually be there.

Everyone began to get big-headed.

It was just falling apart.

Never any one time were all four of us in the studio at the same time.

I'd turn up a little later at the studios and yet no one was there.

I've got this idea on the piano, if I put the drums down

then I can 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 added percussion and by the time they came

I said I got this idea and I played it to them and 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 going to get this stuff on the 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.

And I had a typewriter in the room and I went over to the bureau 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.

You know Mick's an emotional guy, 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,

but that was Joe doing his Machiavellian maneuvering number

so that he wasn't the bad guy.

So we're not very good at making life easy for ourselves, we never have been.

We keep going because

we are the real McCoy.

We're not just going to fold up

and in a few weeks you'll wonder what all that was about.

We're going to be here and continue and get harder and rougher than tough.

Dreader than dread, you know?

It was the eve of our 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 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'd be a good joke if I never phoned Bernie at all.

If he was going to be thinking he was going to 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.

And if you're listening, Joe, and 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.

I can't deny that I wasn't firing on all cylinders

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 have to undo my boots Mick, I can't undo them.

Oh, right. Oh, yeah.

I gotta go sunbathing.

You go sunbathing. Poor Tops.

Bye, Topper. Down the railway track.

There wasn't a lot of choice, really.

You can't have a band with a drummer

who's so out of it he can hardly play sometimes, and he's always late.

I burst into tears, right? Mick was crying. 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 nervous exhaustion."

"And if you get yourself together by the time you come back, you've got the gig."

I tried to stop.

And about a week after the start of the American tour

I think Joe got drunk and he said

"We had to get rid of Topper, because he's a heroin addict."

And overnight I was Topper from The Clash, resting from 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 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 my dog under the carpet

and I'm seeing my song, a video, and some old bloke playing in it.

Shareef don't like it

Rock the Casbah Rock the Casbah

Shareef don't like it He thinks it's not kosher

I don't think we played a good gig after Topper was fired.

"Rock The Casbah" cracked the Top 5 in America.

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

Seriously, we do.

They made me wake up to a lot of things that are happening in the world.

Kick-ass band.

Revolutions, nuclear arms race, individual rights.

But if that's going to 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 you could have seen that one coming I guess.

But it's still 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, been frightening.

I mean it must have scared them on some level.

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 you 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.

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.

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 Ladbroke Grove, London, W10

The Clash! Come on!

They offered me the office, offered me the shop

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

Standing there, singing the songs while they got bigger and bigger towards the end

for some reason I began to feel worse and worse.

It's something to do with what those songs are saying.

Career opportunities, the ones that never knock

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

Career opportunities, the ones that never knock

It was all right when we were part of the audience, part of the movement.

I hate the army and I hate the RAF

Once it became thousands of miles removed from that

I began to freak out.

I hate the civil service rules

I won't open letter bombs for you

Mick was probably comfortable with success, Joe was uneasy with it.

But he didn't know why he was unhappy

and there was a struggle inside of him that couldn't ever be resolved.

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.

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 going to 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?

I need some feelings.

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

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 bugging 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 que tengo ser

Do you remember which clothes fit me? no sabes que ropas me queda

We have fallen into every pitfall

that you can possibly fall into

as a group starting from nothing and becoming something

and we invented a few new ones along the way.

The "success goes to your head" pitfall, the "ego-trip" pitfall,

you think you're geniuses, you become drug addicts,

you make over-indulgent records,

you over-dub 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'd come out a depleted force.

Mick was pretty hard work to work with, he was in his prima donna phase.

Bernie came up to me and said, "Look, why don't we sling this guy out?"

And I figured it was a good idea because 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 though, fuck it, why not?

I think it was Joe who managed to muster up

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

And when somebody says that to you...

I just packed my guitar up and just went, "Hey,"

"Okay. Bye." And that was it.

And I walked.

And Bernie come right out after me with a check in his hand,

you know like a gold watch.

Or something, which added insult to injury. But I took it anyway.

It was right at the time of the carnival.

It was awful, you know.

I'm walking around the carnival and then you might see someone, you're trying to...

I did everything.

I grew a beard. I dyed my hair blonde.

For about two days I was in complete

traumatic shock.

But then that's character building, you know

when those things happen to you.

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.

There you go, I got to 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.

We had to restructure our group to get rocking again.

Where's Mick?

The ships were gone and the pit fell in

This is Pete Howard, the drummer.

And Vince White, guitar, and up top, Nick Sheppard, guitar.

Pete Howard, Vince and Nick Sheppard, they all felt really intimidated

which I can't blame them

because they were entering the scenes already so big.

How do you feel about the band at this point in time?

Great. Can you hear me?

- Yes. - Great.

Everything's blando, blando, blando. 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 rain

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 Bernie's ego.

Eventually I snapped.

Strummer, he was a bloke to do the job, he was temporary, he wasn't permanent.

And that was the end of it.

They used to ask me:

"So you think you shmucks 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.

Joe came in to Granada 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?" And he told me in Spanish

"Si, hombre. ¿Qué quieres beber?"

So, what do you want to drink.

He told me that he felt so frustrated,

so alone, so lonely.

He was unsatisfied 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."

That's Bob Dylan with "Corrina, Corrina" and his wild scratching posse of hiphop 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 become a different person.

No more was I an adolescent.

I'm 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.

Where he'd been, what he'd achieved.

And his part in it all exploding.

It's ironic that after Mick was cast out from The Clash

he was really the first one to break big with Big Audio Dynamite.

And Joe seemed to be spending his time

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

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?

Gun twirling takes about a month.

I was 18 when I made "Straight to Hell" with Joe.

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 their family.

It's great having kids because that brings you back down to earth.

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

I guess it's some sort of learning thing that we've got to go through.

Us rebels thought that we could somehow escape.

But it's over in a summer, 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.

It was very private.

And he'd retreat to that and he'd do his thing.

So I suppose in a conventional term he wasn't 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 with The Clash for many years and

- Many, many. - now you're hanging around.

Are you going to form another band?

No, I'm kind of just doing 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 ten 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."

"I want you to come up and bring your Spanish guitar."

You know it was like, that was the message.

That was my call to arms to be a part of that "Walker" soundtrack.

I think "Walker" is one of the finest things that he ever did.

He was really proud of that.

No one's ever heard of it but never mind.

I'm actually in it as an extra. I grew a beard and grew my hair really long.

I used to run about wearing rags.

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.

One day I was standing on Portobello Road

and I thought, "Do 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 go to come on tour."

So I did a US tour deputying for the rhythm guitarist in The Pogues.

OK, I'm gonna go out and get vibed up.

I think The Pogues gave Joe a good appetite

to start playing live again himself, you know?

In Trash City on Party Avenue

I put together a nice little group for this "Permanent 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 'cause he was on "Walker".

But I picked the rest out from Jazz-Clubs and Bohemian dives.

In Trash City that's Party Avenue

I got a girl from Kalamazoo

In Trash City on a transit line

I put you on hold but you're looking 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's Ramon Bajaranda, man."

"He's gotta be good, we gotta hire him."

Of course he wasn't ultimately in the band unfortunately.

Wanna see a movie 'bout a creeper on the house

He hired my former drummer

Jack Irons, and he's a pretty phenomenal beat-keeper.

In Trash City on Party Avenue

I got a girl from Kalamazoo

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 give him a ride to and fro every day and he'll come into the studio and"

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

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.

I'm still signed to Epic from the Clash days.

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

- For Epic? - Yeah.

Well you know I suspected sometime in the last four years

someone would ring me up and have at me but nobody ever did.

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 sort of the brass from Epic

assembled at BBO 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 Jerry"

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,

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 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.

It was part of the reason why I shut down shop after "Earthquake Weather".

'Cause I realized I was contracted to this label 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.

I guess it was kind of a dark period for him in some way when we became friends.

You know, he had a lot of frustration

about 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 a little painful at times.

And I cornered him in the kitchen

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

It's one of the most brilliant things he ever said to me, he said,

"Don't be stupid man."

And it was like one of those ambiguous like "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 going to play one of the parts.

I was as nervous to work with him

than if he told me I was gonna work with Marlon Brando or De Niro or somebody.

It was "Strummer", I was like, "Just, just calm down."

"It's okay, you can do this."

I was hoping that maturity would arrive I'm still waiting at the station for it.

You know I've found you can't just walk in there and expect to get a result.

A bit like you couldn't walk into a studio if you never thought about music

and put down a good album.

He used to go from high to down easily.

He was really emotional.

Good morning, Saudi-Arabia.

Kicking off Desert Shield Network

FM 107.

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 Irak 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."

I used to call him Chief Thundercloud because he was in a very dark space.

I did this film called "When Pigs Fly" and I benefited because

he was so anxious to make music.

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

And he kind of went nuts, and he gave me nine hours of music in four days.

Oh no!

Bollocks.

Every time you get something happening, you always go over it later.

And the fury of it.

Could you play me the rest of it? You haven't gone back, have you?

Could you go right to the end?

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

Bloody hell!

What a pinhead!

Imagine that you're a rock and roller and say you were in a big band

like I was and what have you, and then time goes by

and you meet a 17-year old guy, who's never heard of The Clash.

And that's the moment that my feet touch the ground again.

I've got ideas for the new world I can't go back.

I'd be like a living museum.

I just want to get out there and do something new.

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

I think it say in the bible "There's a time to dance to techno and a time not to."

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.

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, I was going into a trance.

And I thought, let's just say we're in a forest.

And there was nothing to do but with 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 around a log with big sticks and we'd be going dong, dong, dong.

There's an anti criminal justice act in England

which is banning parties, raves, repetitive beats all the tenting people in the fields.

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 them 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 suddenly got

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

he instantly understood it. And became a champion for it.

There's 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 meets.

I bet you if we were standing here like maybe

2000 years ago or whatever, you know there'd be something like this going on.

But Joe was looking around the world for different inspiration.

This is Andres Landero, the king.

Cumbian music, African music,

Jason Mayo brought this lovely music to us.

We are riding on it.

I love it. I play it all of 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's a very spiritual person. He always had an interest in kind of

American Indians, the Incas, Mexicans.

He did love the image, 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, get warm and you talk.

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.

He was always thinking of other people all the time

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 Rastafari we say, "More fire,"

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

And rebirth, a rising phoenix like out of the ashes.

So maybe that's what he was tuned into.

He had a lot to teach about

life in general.

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

Joe's campfire was utopia.

It was re-exploring rules

re-exploring how you can make music as, like, going back to the druids.

Yet the experience was pushing the envelope.

Trying to find something new.

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 have a campfire."

Campfires opened up the idea to Joe that he could form another band.

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.

You took cigarettes away from the 20th century

we wouldn't have any of the writers you go on about or anybody worships.

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.

We spent a long time, trying to get Joe back on the road.

We're talking about two years here.

And it started off me 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 with them.

If that was no toe tapper or no body shaker boy you need to see the undertaker.

That was Andres Landero, El Rey del Acordeón.

I had my daughter on my shoulders and I said, "What's going on?"

And she said, "Uh, 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 recumberent body so that I could see.

And this is my first glimpse of Antony Genn.

And then I met him after that performance.

I was kind of drunk and I said to him, "Come on, you're fucking Joe Strummer."

"Get up off your ass and make a fucking record."

"We need you."

I just didn't expect him to turn around and say "Yeah, okay. I'll do it with you."

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.

On a techno D-day, a techno D-day

Out on Omaha beach

Where the troops believe in a life of freedom

And this is all about free speech

'Cause he hadn't been on the road for a long, long time.

Put a few pounds on

He was knackered after three tunes

'cause he hadn't paced himself he was giving it all.

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

You gotta 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 the flyer in case you fancy going.

All right.

It's the hippest place in town tonight.

Hurray.

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.

It was constantly about reinvention.

Tonight there was a power cut in the city of madness

And all conversations died in the burst of a solar flare

Yeah, he loved it, he loved it.

He absolutely loved it, he loved the whole deal.

It was the beginning chapter of a new period in his life.

And shorted out the eastern shore

Were left to shout out, "We all need a little more."

Songs don't tend to come to you, I think, if there's no outlet for them.

Because I couldn't get any records out, the songs would occasionally come but

I knew that as soon as we had a contract the flood gates would open

I 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 around the studio and he had an A4 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 then 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.

Do it. One, two, three, action.

Maybe that night I wrote a song with John Mellor.

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 to Cricklewood

I'm pinching myself sometimes.

You actually 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 ten years in the wilderness.

Yeah, it feels great and I'm having Christmas every day.

So here's Joe Strummer.

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 groins, children."

You know, that was like his motto or something.

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'd get a message like, "I'm coming into town,"

and you'd take your vitamins and get your rest.

And if Joe could find a piano, he would go play Junco Partner.

Like it's, you know, 5 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 one thing to do and that's cut that guy loose.

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 and he's going

"Have you got an instrument with you?"

I just said to him, "Where's you violin? Is it in the car?"

I said, "Go and get it."

And then we did like virtually 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 punk rock attitude.

In fact punk rock 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 this 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."

Just brings the idea of a 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 to kill the life in the music.

Hey, down along the road

Down on the road, down on the road

If you're after getting the honey, hey

Then you don't go killing all the bees

Let the summertime sun

I saw Joe playing with the Mescaleros quite a bit.

I remember it being just blissful.

There wasn't anywhere on the planet I could conceivably want to be.

Tokyo, taifun coming in

in the city of sin.

I love you.

I think he knew he had something else to do and he hadn't found it.

And in The Mescaleros he found what he wanted to do again.

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

I don't have any message except don't forget you're alive.

'Cause sometimes when you walk around the city

or when you yourself are in a bad mood

you think, "Hey wait a minute, we're alive, you know?"

"We don't know what the next second will bring."

We all though it might be we play at the Rock 'n' Roll hall of fame or something.

You know, we'd get back together.

But it wasn't to be that. 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 it was actually going for

the average wage of that particular sector.

It wasn't seeing we were getting our message across.

Joe realized 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 it was a great morale booster.

I didn't really intend to play with Joe and I'd never discussed it before

and we didn't pre-arrange anything.

It was just I felt completely compelled. I said, "Hold my coat, I'm going up."

Mick Jones ladies and gentlemen.

That was actually the first time that Mick and Joe appeared on stage together

since the breakup of The Clash.

It was kind of cool because they did it for the firemen

and not because somebody paid them 2 million quid.

And that's the end of the first series of Joe Strummer's "London Calling".

If you want a second series, please write in.

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

I'm gonna kick off the second series right now.

"Let It Roll" with Nina Simone.

He did this incredible Christmas card.

It was 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 were together.

It was all done very last-minute as always.

I think I posted them on December 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.

He just went like that, on the sofa. Reading "The 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.

An 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 emails that came in were saying

Joe, thank you, you've changed the way that I thought and felt about life.

His mythology is cast in reinforced concrete

and is probably helping to hold up the Trellick Tower right now.

You now when you and I carried him into that chapel

it felt like you put a bit of weight on.

I think that Fender Telecaster must have been in there.

He doesn't...

It's like Hemingway said it with Paris, there's never any end to it.

It's the same with Joe.

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 de-humanized.

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 in a big billboard across Times Square.

Without people you're nothing.

That's my spiel.

.