A still from the movie Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, directed by Julien Temple <br />
"Anger can be power, if you know how to use it."
- Clampdown by The Clash
His voice is husky, with the genial slur of a man who's been keeping his throat wet through a long afternoon: "Hi," he says. "This is Kosmo. You think you could do this thing today?" Kosmo Vinyl, the flamboyant publicist for The Clash, is calling to set up an interview with the band's Joe Strummer. Arrangements are made for a few hours later, and Vinyl pauses, apparently lingering on the phone: "Is there anything else you'd like to know?" The conversation turns to how the world is according to Clash these days - about the break-up. For a while now, there have been rumors that there might be two Clashes: one under Strummer's direction and another run by guitarist Mick Jones, the founding member of the band fired last September.
No, says Vinyl, there's only one Clash, but all the royalties from the last album, the million-selling Combat Rock, as well as the money from a controversial appearance at last year's US Festival, is tied up in legal battles sparked by Jones' departure. (That the band consented to play at the US spectacle is generally considered a Clash embarrassment, but Vinyl hails it as a victory. "We proved we could compete with anyone. We outdrew David Bowie, who hadn't played in this country in six years. And we proved the strength of rebel rock.") In closing, Vinyl promises that "Joe will talk about anything, but he's a little sick about talking about the break-up with Mick, if that's all the same to you." There is a style to The Clash organization - conspiratorial, chummy and bluff - very with-us-or-against-us - and it has helped sustain the band's myth for the past seven years. The Clash used to bill itself as "the only band that matters," and undoubtedly it has been proved one of the great bands, with awesome live performances and some of rock's most muscular, anthemic and inspiring songs.
Back in 1977, when its members had bad teeth and looked malnourished, The Clash set the blueprint for hard-core political rock. Along with groups such as The Jam and The Sex Pistols, its sound - "like a sea lion barking over hydraulic drills," to borrow Strummer's description - instantly made traditional rock sound slack and old-fashioned.
Almost every act to emerge from England since then has been inspired by The Clash's early intensity, including the softer, young pop bands - who chose to ape England's ruling classes instead of spitting in their faces. Yet, with its unfashionable taste for leftist rhetoric and macho strutting, The Clash is by now pretty much old hat among many younger fans.
The band seemed to be flirting with self-destruction last fall when it announced the sacking of Jones because of "irreconcilable political differences." The guitarist - nicknamed "Keef" because he was so influenced by Rolling Stone Keith Richards - was the glamor boy of the group. He sang the prettiest hits, such as Should I Stay or Should I Go? and Train in Vain (Stand by Me), and he was the flashiest, sporting Edwardian sideburns and embroidered scarfs. Jones wanted to be a star, Strummer wanted to be a social hero, and the two just couldn't see eye to eye. At quarter to 4, Vinyl calls again and says Strummer is standing by, "only he just spent 20 minutes arguing with someone about the US Festival, so could you talk about something else?" Strummer comes on the line, with a rough-voiced "Hello]" sounding even more slurred and more friendly than his publicist. We start off with a question about The Clash's attitude to success.
Don Letts, the moviemaker who documented The Clash on film and who has made most of its music videos, has claimed that last year's problems began when the band was scared by its North American success and wanted to retrench. He says that while The Clash was trying to figure out how to maintain its commitment to "rebel rock," America was simply hankering for a rock and roll successor to those old sixties dinosaurs, The Stones and The Who.
"Nah," says Strummer. "You should never talk to a filmmaker about music. Our intention - right from the outset - was to be as big as we could. We wanted to remain radical, but to take on the heavyweights - The Rolling Stones and The Who or whomever - and beat them at their own game. That's why we played places like the US Festival. We were never interested in being pale imitations of those bands - we wanted it on our own terms.
"Don was talking about a fight we were having. The thing about Mick was - ah - he was accusing me of ruining his music. 'Cause I got in this producer, Glyn Johns, to remix Combat Rock, and I think . . . well, it isn't all good, but he shook some real rock and roll out of that record, and it sold a million and a half records in the States, and Mick calls it ruined music.
"He wanted to do his own producing, but I told him, I said, 'Mick, you got to learn to crawl before you can walk.' I was trying to save the guy from embarrassment - from another Ellen Foley debacle (Jones produced a record by Foley, his girl friend and a former singing partner of Meatloaf), but he wanted all the attention. That was Mick's whole problem - he wanted all the attention for himself. I can tell you it's a pleasure - it's really enjoyable not going on tour with someone who's trying to throw a spanner in the works all the time." It's a topic he's supposedly tired of discussing, but Strummer keeps returning to Jones like someone talking about betrayal by an old lover or, perhaps, more like the way your tongue keeps wandering back to a sore tooth.
"It's a constant walk up this ladder. From 1976, when we'd play a theatre and people would say, 'Oh, dear. Well, that's the end of The Clash.' I see it every day that we have a role to fill, though. Every day people walk up to me on the street - some complete stranger in upper state New York - and he says, you know, such-and-such song has changed my life, or that album has meant so much to me, and you know you're on the right track."
And the negative comments? "Oh, well, they come every other day. And sometimes, if things are going badly, it hits a tender spot, but I think about all the utter rubbish in music that is out there, and I go 'arrgghh - forget it. We've got a right to exist.' "We invite a lot of criticism. I know that. Even to do such a little thing as to mention the word 'ideal' in the music business will put most people on the floor laughing. I only wish people would apply the same standards to other groups as they do to us. I believe groups should work very hard at their music and do it properly, and I'll admit we haven't always done that. I want people to apply the standards to every group - to every part of their lives. Rather than review the latest Bowie album and say, 'Oh yeah, another great Bowie effort,' why don't the press say it was a pretty duff job, and maybe then they could encourage him to take it a bit more seriously next time?"
In one sense, Strummer doesn't take his own work seriously at all: "Dancing in the spotlight while the girls shout 'Go, baby, go?' No, that's not too tough a job." The tough part of the job is maintaining what he calls the "special prickle" of The Clash, which comes from an abrasive style that is quite consciously a role model for the kids. This has more than musical significance, of course. Anyone who accepts the argument that rock is an adolescent rite of passage - something that helps turn children into adults by giving them heroes and an experience to share with their peers - will recognize that the kinds of heroes they choose matters a good deal.
"It's very simple - guitar, bass and drums," Strummer continues. "So, how can we make a new form of music with that, one that's modern? I think the 'new music' now already sounds old-fashioned because it's so predictable. Those synthesizers just about run themselves. Who wants to watch machines on stage even if they are run by fashion models?"
When it comes to his specific politics, well, even faithful fans of The Clash might be surprised to hear how much Strummer sounds like any of a million slightly puritanical English corner-pub socialists. For example, he condemns drug use, which is "wasting the minds of half of the kids today," and he hates "all that woman-hating occult crap" in heavy metal music.
When asked about the army-surplus, terrorist chic the band adopts on stage, though, he seems surprised that anyone could consider it offensive: "It's just self-defence. You take the opposite of what you want to be. Say it's a Green Beret, who's this well-trained killing machine, which is what we're against. So how do we express what we're opposite to - by dressing like some shambling hippie stoned on acid? The point is, if you're going to defend yourself, you've got to be as fit and tough as the opposition."
So, The Clash isn't representing itself as a band of guerrilla fighters? "No, you're misunderstanding me," he says, quickly. "Real revolutions take place in the mind. They're not based on fear and intimidation. Mind you, I think there's really going to be an armed struggle between the have-nots and the haves of the world, and music will be a part of that. Capitalism needs war - either cold war or these odd bits of conflicts here and there - in order to survive. And music can help people become aware of that brutality in our society."
Good music, he insists, still comes before good politics. "The first tune I ever learned was Bony Moronie. Of course, the music comes first, but I see The Clash as continuing what it's always been - an experiment of a kind, that's never succeeded, mind you, in making rebel music for a mass audience. The point is to make people feel they can make a difference - to make them realize they exist at all, for God's sake. "Is there any art or poetry that makes any difference to kids these days? They could learn things in school, but most of them find school boring. So maybe it's important that rock, which is all they care for, has some lyrics that have sanity in them."