I was close enough to see his teeth, those stumpy, rotten, yellow-and-brown tombstones that signified he’d lived a HARD life. That jagged mouth spat thunderous fury against the rich and powerful.
I was close enough to see his teeth, those stumpy, rotten, yellow-and-brown tombstones that signified he’d lived a HARD life. That jagged mouth spat thunderous fury against the rich and powerful. A Clash fanatic, I had muscled my way up to front-and-center stage and stood the entire concert about three feet away from Joe Strummer, that honest outlaw, that wrathful prophet of the dispossessed, that man whose bad teeth sought to leave deep fang marks in the ass of global injustice.
I’d never seen anyone sweat so much. The sweat poured from his face down his neck, down his guitar strap, and onto the stage. After a few songs, he stood on a sweat puddle three feet in diameter. I feared he might even electrocute himself.
It was like being attacked by an army, mercilessly pummeled by massive sonic steel artillery. I wondered how sounds of such magnitude could come from mere guitars. It was the most powerful musical performance I’ve ever witnessed. No one else ever came remotely close. The Clash had stolen Thor’s hammer and beat me up with it.
This was back in 1980 at the Tower Theater right outside of Philly. The Clash were on tour to promote “London Calling,” an album that didn’t have nearly the force of their live show. The next night, me and some friends drove over to Jersey to see The Ramones, who had visited Britain in 1976 and were subsequently plagiarized by every British punk band that followed, including The Clash.
But there was no comparison. The Clash blew them away. The Ramones were a good rock ‘n’ roll band. The Clash were something blinding, something frightening, a primordial fist knocking out all your teeth.
At the time, rock critics led me to understand that the reason for this was because The Clash’s music was POLITICAL, whereas The Ramones sang about sniffin’ shoe polish with girls. Joe Strummer was described as “a highly articulate rabble-rouser for the dispossessed,” a man who was “working-class,” even “proletarian.” Every Clash song was an anti-rich, pro-poor rave-up about how fucked-up the wealthy are, and isn’t it great we’re a little garage band from garageland, and the truth is only known by guttersnipes, and wouldn’t it be cool if one day pasty-white Joe Strummer woke up as a dreadlocked Jamaican musician, à la Watermelon Man?
The problem, for me at least, is that Joe Strummer was born to wealth. His father was a British diplomat…a representative of the nation which colonized Africa and Asia and caused many of the Third World problems that fashionably leftist Joey-come-latelys could come along and decry…all while making millions and doing little to solve the problems. Joe spent his youth not in the Cockney London which he would later ape as part of his stage persona, but as a diplomat’s son in Turkey, Egypt, Germany, and Mexico. When he returned to England, he enrolled in a private boarding school.
He learned the gentle art of slumming very well, though. He even dropped out of art school! As a London subway busker in the early 70s, he fused his birth name (John Graham Mellor) with that of American folk singer Woody Guthrie and called himself “Woody Mellor.” He also spent some time squatting in flats, presumably to see how “real people” lived. In 1982, at the height of The Clash’s popularity, millionaire Joe disappeared for three weeks to try “living like a bum.” How cute! The pro-Marxist Clash even once tried to arrange a concert in communist East Germany, but German authorities were frightened of their “inflammatory” lyrics and denied them.
Wonderful! That stands right up there with psycho feminist author Andrea Dworkin helping to write such strict anti-pornography laws in Canada, her OWN BOOKS were seized by Canadian Customs as being obscene. The Clash, who waved a Red flag wherever they went, would have been silenced and probably jailed…or even lobotomized…in the sort of Red People’s Utopia they championed from afar. Communism proposed to uplift common people but wound up killing and torturing those commoners in numbers that would have made the Nazis jealous.
Over the years following that transcendent live show in 1980, I watched The Clash devolve from an unstoppable force of nature to a cheesy arena-rock band whose horrible doodlings in 3rd World riddim were not only insulting to everyone in the 3rd World, but to anyone who was forced to endure their sloppy, embarrassingly self-indulgent three-album sets. When me and my droogies were tooling around Philly in our car and heard the insipid “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” for the first time on the radio, we laughed at how low the band had fallen. Still, we went to see them again in 1982, only to witness a heartbreakingly hollow, mannered performance sucked clean of all The Clash’s prior atom-splitting energy. To compensate, they now had a fucking LIGHT SHOW with scary POLICE LIGHTS and everything. The Clash, probably because they now sucked, went on to become MTV stars and were touring with The Who. These strident anti-capitalists eventually allowed “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” to be used in a Levi’s commercial.
Worst of all, there were even rumors that Joe Strummer had used some of his lucre to buy himself a spankin’-white new set of teeth.
Wealth doesn’t bother me. Neither does celebrity. And I don’t think it’s wrong for rich people to feel BAD about the poor. But it bothers the FUCK out of me when they PRETEND they’re poor. And I’m irked that Joe Strummer, who SEEMED so authentic, was just another in a long tradition of rich white kids pretending they’re oppressed…and getting away with it. In the end, he was just a studio gangsta. Fool wasn’t even FROM Compton.
He died of a heart attack right before Christmas in 2002, and officials were summoned to remove him from his million-dollar home. I was saddened. I’m also confused. If he was a phony, why was that show back in 1980 so powerful? I can only conclude that Joe Strummer was angry he WASN’T poor. REALLY, REALLY angry about it. Not angry enough about it to sell off his belongings and go live with poor people, but angry nonetheless.
It still doesn’t explain the bad teeth, though.
Originally posted on
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why don’t you just post the link to the future is unwritten.
For the record, I hung out with Joe Strummer a few times and found him to be one of the realest niggas I ever met – almost to a fault. If a kid came up to him and wanted a picture taken, he’d do a whole shoot with the kid and trade clothes for the camera etc. It took him about an hour to walk a block because everyone who stopped him got their 15 minutes of famous time (I think the Clash got that whole concept from Mott the Hoople who never denied kids access to backstage).
He had the wide-eyed optimism of someone who was just unfrozen after 100 years and if he wasn’t poking through garbage on the street he was asking someone where they got that hat. He was funny and self-effacing and just, incredibly enthusiastic about life.
I think he was devastated by what happened with the Clash and never forgave himself for fucking over Mick Jones. He never really recovered from that. Anyway, I get what Jim is saying here. Just not so sure Joe Strummer personifies this tendency.
give me the Pistols
Strummer was enrolled in a boarding school along with his brother. A lot of angst in his life is attributed to that because he felt as if he was abandoned. His brother, after some involvement with the national front, ended up killing himself while Joe was still at a young age and he had to fucking identify him because his parents were abroad. He was a bully, a hippie, a punk and an ectasy popping raver playing country round a campfire. Critics say a lot of things but the message I get out of all of it is you can be whomever you want to be as long as you yourself can achieve it. Relying on the powers that be or even the members of your community is useless so you might as well do it yourself.
Keep the Aspidistra Flying.
one of the rarest types of musical genius comes from the “rich kid” who has “it”. it’s the paradox of musical genius at work. poor people make better “artists” because art comes from friction and friction is everywhere in the everyday struggles of the poor. but a more rare diamond is when the “rich kid” has been gifted with the muse of creativity. often times what they produce is incredibly captivating. rare but effective and powerful.
I don’t understand the anti-Combat Rock sentiment of this article. Most of that album is pretty good.
Well shiiiiit, I’m not sure what to think after reading Goad’s words, then reading what Gavin and Jimmy said. Ultimately I suppose it doesn’t really matter all that much to me, he made a ton of good music.
The Clash were pretty gay until they turned into an art band. In retrospect, though, all of their music was bad. Who cares if they were real? I like flashing lights at my pop concerts.
Also, everybody knows that rich “rebels” are less tedious than poor ones. Like, take Mcinnes vs. Goad for example.
I was fortunate enough to meet Joe Strummer and he had a hell of a lot more of a sense of self and took himself way less seriously than you’ve taken him. Gavine’s right, the man never was above stopping on the street for someone, and never saw his wealth as something that made him separate from the average guy.
Besides you wanna talk about slumming it, take a hard look at the fucking Stones, those guys basically wrote the text book on upper middle class, art school kids slumming it. Meanwhile the Beatles, who actually were all poor working class hard asses from Liver Pool, caught the rep as pansies because they had management that polished and molded them for popular consumption.
Jim Goad’s a hater.
Yo, quit dawggin’ rich kids, we just wanna be down.
yeah, i think all this is covered in the future is unwritten…none of it is suprising, or wrong, or right. just a run of the mill human being who spends their life trying to figure themself out.
Ha, I was thinking about this a few weeks ago when I was listening to Rachid Taha’s version of “Rock the Casbah” a lot, which is, I guess, a 3rd world iconoclast covering a 1st world iconoclast imitating 3rd world iconoclasts. It can be pretty easy to dis the privileged for making a show of getting their hands dirty with the sounds of the “oppressed,” but I think Strummer had his heart in the right place.
My favorite Clash song is “Paper Planes”
I see Monsieur Goad’s rant up there as a sort of relatable example of the spoiled liberal cabal that not only holds sway over the entire world right now, but whose ass is projectile puking into my soul on a daily basis. Look at that multi-million dollar wedding ghostface and chucky just put on for equine puss. It’s a ridiculous scam, and yes, Joe Strummer was a part of it. No reason to think otherwise. I’m also pretty sure that an artful fake like him would put on his “realest nigga” mask in the presence of a journalist. Regarding their music…gave me some good times when I was a glue sniffing 11 year old.
Che Guevara would be a good example of this.
so jim goad hates poseurs, huh? fascinating
on a related note, those “do’s and don’ts” you did w/ strummer were the worst of the lot
You are half right in here. You may want to read one of the many books on Joe and The Clash, you will understand much more and you might not have written this from the same point of view. Who they are and what they did is amazing. Just because Joe came from money doesn’t make him a dink. Joe thirsted to see things in their rawest forms. Music, art, life, whatever. The Clash went out of their way to let kids into their shows for free via the backstage entrance. Sure, they got into plenty of scrapes for it too. Not all of the Clash were from money, some of them came from dirt poor beginnings. They were good enough to be able to relate to each other. Besides, you can’t choose your parents, can you? I’m glad no one faults my lifestyle because of something my dad did before I was born. Haa! I hung out with Joe a few times during his Mescaleros days. What an awesome dude. I’m not saying that because he was some ex rockstar, he was just a very well grounded guy that was a straight shooter and didn’t bullshit. And so what if he fixed his teeth? I’m sure we all like getting laid and biting into a nice piece of corn the next day. His teeth were jacked yo. If you were to time machine the 1980 Clash into the world of todays pink sea of sissyshit bands you know who would come out on top. Dig it or don’t, you still rock.
I read somewhere that Strummer’s estate was valued at just under a million pounds. On a related note, Bruce Springsteen never worked a real job in his life. That bothers me a bit, but I still like him. He’s an ok tipper, at least.
this article is literally about nothing
it’s written like shit and has no point or purpose at all
honestly, jim. what do you even care? relax, motherfucker, it’s only rock’n'roll!
i slam danced w/the clash and the rest of the drunken nuts in the first few rows of the audience as a wee lass teen. security didn’t even attempt to break things up, as strummer was the one screaming into the mic for it. still my all-time favorite concert and one of my all-time favorite bands.
like something a 15 year old would write…
Didn’t you guys get the memo?
If you’re rich but you happen to parrot ideas and mantras that are considered “liberal” or “revolutionary” (the evils of WESTERN IMPERIALISM!!!) , it doesn’t matter how much money you have. Think of it as a modern day indulgence from the church of progress: you get to keep most of your money and your “cool” rep, just so long as you pay token acknowledgment to a specific faith.
Of course many members of this church only feel obliged to fulfill their “altruistic” impulses out of a primal fear that “eat the rich” could maybe catch on. You know, like in Soviet Russia, Cambodia, Cuba etc.
Big surprise that.
You know, I come from a real shithole called Saginaw MI, and coming up there I was the only black kid for miles (city’s 43% black) who listened to the Clash and the Strokes when I was 15/16(who also catch flak for this). And I knew they were rich kids, but I didn’t care, they made records that sounded like the feeling of being a square peg, like Strummer said “you gotta have some music what you feel like”. I never felt like I was being pandered to, on the contrary, I felt understood.
I’m pretty sure someone somewhere once said something along the lines of “the best art is usually made by the very poor or the very rich, because neither has anything to lose”.
I just like to point this out. The Sex Pistols and the Clash are the punk rock equivalent of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. British and praised by assholes.
He was a fucking singer in a band ya retard! What do you expect? Che Guevara with better riffs? How old are you Goad? Whining on that your punk hero went to private school… What a fanny…
If you look at the Goadster’s fashion sense, it’s surprising that Cut the Crap wasn’t his fav alblum of all time.
Wow! Great article. And its got me thinking: maybe Easy E didn’t smoke muthafuKKKa’s like it ain’t no thing. Maybe Freddie Mercury wasn’t really into Fat Bottomed Girls. Maybe Johnny Cash didn’t even shoot a man in Folsom… This is really deep stuff. Mindblowing!
I’m not sure why anyone would want to champion the working classes – but if s/he did why would going to private school, or your father being a diplomat preclude that? Wouldn’t it make it more admirable that you arrive at that viewpoint through choice rather than necessity? You don’t need to be born working class to be a communist, and you don’t need to be a retard to know that this article is childish nonsense…
a) You used the word preclude.
b) Every sentence in your post reeks of T-21.
This is communism in a nutshell: some rich kid figures out that he can take control of the state if he convinces enough poor people and rural folk that they can rape and kill the rich people that they envy, and all get swimming pools when its over. Then the raping and killing happens, noobody gets a swimming pool, and the country goes to shit.
^
What’s T-21? And the beef with preclude…?
I never really checked out the clash. it couldn’t relate to the anthemic ness of it. it seemed like some big british thing that I couldn’t really be a part of because I wasn’t an anglo phile.
This is communism in a nutshell: everyone shares resources and wealth through the control of the state to achieve as equal a society as possible. That it doesn’t work has been proved many times, but its got fuck all to do with swimming pools and the ‘rich kids’…
Then how else do they sell it to the farmers and other poor fucks you moron? In every pinko revolution that has ever happened, some rich kid blows a whistle, and then the farmers descend from the hills and eat the rich. Then they hang out in the rich peoples’ houses until they collapse from neglect. As if the ignorant uneducated hordes ever give a fuck about equality and the whole communist ideology – they’re too stupid to understand it.
Equality is a myth.
they infiltrated bedrooms everywhere and changed lives. who cares if he came from money? i don’t get this piece. it wasn’t about “where you come from?” it was “where you going next?”
“But…but…but…he was my HERO, so who CARES if he was lying?”
They changed lives? Really? How so? What did The Clash change? Be specific.
Topper was the only one worth a turd.
People that vehemently denounce communism as if it were one thing for all people and mindlessly praise capitalism clearly have not studied the CIA’s involvement in 3rd world countries throughout the 20th century. Consistently backing brutal right wing regimes does not equal good times for people who are not Americans. It also actually does not equal good times for Americans either (e.g. 9-11).
Clash never had anything to do with Communism. Yeah right, he lived in squats for years playing music because he really wanted to be rich.
I really wish I had listened to “Rotten to the Core” by Rudimentary Peni instead of reading this.
Imagine how Strummer would feel about you, Goad, if he could force himself to give a shit.
@ reality is a downer
So because some assholes supported brutal right wing regimes under the name of capitalism that means that not only does their behavior represent capitalism, but it also means that we should go running into the arms of socialism? Yeah, that makes sense.
“They changed lives? Really? How so? What did The Clash change? Be specific.”
if you’re truly that ignorant, you could begin by reading at the link above or talking to any number of longtime fans to get your desperately sought answer, mommy’s little dingus.
I checked the link. You’re right. Before The Clash, there were no hopelessly deluded websites that were unaware “World Citizenship” implies “World Government” and the resultant chokehold on freedom such an arrangement would necessitate.
Useful idiots.
good litle dingus, you did your job.
any point made will be a moot point to one who has no life and needs to desperately tear down someone who found a purpose, a medium for his message, and impacted generations with it. go see mommy now and get your lolly, such a good little contrarian you are today.
I suppose it sharpens one edge by knowing one’s idol’s faults and foibles, but as time elders into remission , a clearance space or valve should be a given for some and not for others. Not so much an open gate per say, but a broadened perspective.
I don’t know, toothless singers got soul too. I just discovered the ‘Why Don’t You Give It to Me’ with Nathaniel Mayer album when all I knew was Village of Love and first tipped off by ‘I had a Dream’ through the Gibson Bros. and The Hound off the internet.
To each his own and the discovery is bliss.
death comes to all.
a) you missed the point
b) i didn’t say or even vaguely imply that we should go “running into the arms of socialism.” What are you, a politician with that rhetoric?
Next up: Jim Goad writes an article about how pissed off he was when he found out Santa Claus wasn’t real..
(and finds some way to tie it in to Santa being a spoilt bourgeois white kid pretending to be poor)
he had an idealized view of human nature. it’s fine it’s just when they manage to get the government involved to the point they can coerce peoples property from them that the good intentions lead to hell. the basic liberal ideas are good. like “health care is a right”. shouldn’ it be? I mean why should you have to pay for the war in irq if you can’t pay to go to the hospital. it’s just when thye try and make it a law it ends up being so corrupted and ridiculous tht the original thing is lost.
Isn’t it fantastic how, 30 years later, a grown man can’t accept that what he saw was a PERFORMANCE?
All I can remember about Strummer and Gavin is when Joe gave props to some girl in foam platforms or something.
The father of somebody I dated once used to live next door to Strummer’s squat in Notting Hill, and said that he spent a lot of time practicing speaking in a more suitably working-class accent. I can believe it.
Overly class-conscious punks have always annoyed the hell out of me. It doesn’t matter whether or not someone is rich and “pretending to be poor.” Would you honestly have preferred that Joe had just followed the path of his father, he enjoyed the itinerant punk lifestyle, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. And if anyone says that real working class punks “don’t have a choice”, get out of town. There’s working class, and then there’s “I want to play guitar and smoke weed instead of lay bricks”-class, and punks were usually the latter. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, the ideal traveling songster of America, was the son of a surgeon from Brooklyn, but he felt his calling was coming from lower circles. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, every cripple’s got their own way of walking.