Death or Glory
 From every dingy basement on every dingy street
I hear every dragging handclap over every dragging beat
That's just the beat of time-the beat that must go on
If you been trying for years-then we already heard your song
– “Death or Glory,” Joe Strummer and Mick Jones
12 hours and a bottle of wine later, I’m finally able to write something about Joe Strummer. For someone who was the most important musician of his generation, his sudden death is getting remarkably little attention. He was only 50 for christsake.
Why is Joe Strummer important? Leave aside the dozens of amazing songs and immortal performances he gave us in his five years with the Clash. Joe Strummer was the last major popular artist to really stand for something and not be ridiculous. He didn’t compromise the music, he didn’t compromise his politics, he didn’t hold back a goddamned thing. He didn’t burden us all with his problems or his ego, he didn’t smother us with false humility. He was a real guy, saying his bit, and it was brilliant. I doubt we’ll see his like again, and that’s worth crying about.
Of the punks of ’77, Syd and Johnny got more attention, but it was Joe Strummer’s voice that set the tone. “They said we’d be artistically free if we sign a bit of paper,” he screamed on “Complete Control,” the Clash’s most ferocious single. He thought he was being ironic. But he really was good enough to make it stick.
Whenever I hear “Tommy Gun,” I’m transported to a flat in East Kensington, summer of 1988 (long after the Clash were dead and gone), where I’d turned up for no good reason the night before and was waiting for my then-girlfriend to get home from work. I was watching “Rude Boy” on the video with a bunch of Australian guys. They didn’t know me from Adam – all they knew is that I was some cocky Yank fucking their cute flatmate. But, and this sounds dopey to see it in print, the music brought us together. Anyone who liked the Clash was cool enough to hang out with. True in ’77, true in ’88, true today.
You ever see “Rude Boy”? It’s a terrible film – handmade and rambling, without any kind of plot. The Clash are basically background characters to the main story about this confused kid. It was shot in ’77 and ’78, when it was all happening. The scene of the Clash playing the Rock Against Racism show is historic. Joe sang “London's Burning” like a man possessed. Nothing in rock history – not Elvis in ’55 or the Beatles at Shea Stadium or Jimi Hendrix at Monterey – compares to the visceral power of that moment. The man and his time were one, and the camera caught it all forever. Those 140 seconds of film are worth every plodding moment that comes before and after.
Strummer was so hard for the media to peg because he wasn’t some kind of caricature. He wasn’t a self-destructive moron like Syd Vicious or a preening cartoon character like Billy Idol. Sure, he was punk through and through, but he was about the music, first, last and always. It’s all there on the records. Just put them on and listen. No bullshit, no rockstar pose. There was nothing to make fun of about the Clash, nothing to reduce to cliché. The songs were great, the performances completely convincing, the adventurous spirit and musical chops 100% authentic.
The Clash were the anti-media. They were about the real experience, not some mediated simulation. Their politics weren’t from some weird point of view or reducible to some comfortable pigeonhole, but they were utterly in confrontation with the dominant culture. Their best songs were well-argued tracts set to an irresistible rhythm. You couldn’t listen to the Clash without getting upset about something. As a result, they had no value in commercial culture even as a sideshow like the Sex Pistols. If people saw the Clash on the evening news, they might take them seriously, and we couldn’t have that. Except for the annoying problem of all those people who bought their records, the media’s only response to a band like the Clash was to completely ignore them.
Now Joe decides to drop dead. No warning, no spectacular drug flameout or assassination by crazed fan. Just a poor workingman’s death. Heart attack at 50. It’s not a tragedy for the music, because the man said his piece. The Clash hung it up for all intents and purposes in 1982, and when I saw Strummer play in 1998 with his new band, they were a nostalgia act. Their new stuff was OK, but when Joe sang “White Man” or “I Fought the Law,” it was 1977 all over again. He was the moment, the moment was him. Now the moment is passed and all we have to mourn is the man.
Sorry to see you go, Joe. You done good while you were here.
10:19:23 PM 
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