This was sent to dallasmusic for all of you to enjoy and reflect on.
The Day The Punk Music Died -- a lost never printed interview
with Joe Strummer
Posted by: wifiguy14k on 12/23/2004
I have kept the tape recordings of my Clash interviews in
various safe
places for the last 20 years … always hoping to produce some radio
program … A small percentage of the interview was used during my
college journalism stint. Most of the stuff has never been seen or
heard before. And most of the photos have never been published before
(see photo gallery on this site).
Even now, I enjoy reading over the comments, but it is so much better
hearing Strummer’s thick British accent on the tapes. It takes me back
to that morning … so long ago … he and I sat in a booth at a taco joint
in Amarillo, Texas … smoking cigs and letting the tape roll. I laugh
when I hear the “f-bombs” dropping so freely … but it was the way he
talked, part of his rough exterior. (For this site, however, I will
delete the expletives and mark those spots with an asterisk so you get
the flavor without the bitter aftertaste.) At points in the interview,
Strummer sang … or made rhythmic sounds to illustrate a musical point.
At one point, he did a pompous, female British voice … mocking
then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher … It was classic. (Sounded a bit
like Julia Childs, too.)
“And that’s what you lot were getting away from. You know when you had
a war against England, you wanted to start fresh. You didn’t want to,
all that *bleep*ty Victorian *bleep* that we inherited and that we’re
trying to live with, that Margaret Thatcher wants us to return to. You
know she made a speech last month, “ … a return to Victorian values,
good old values.’ You know, we don’t want to go back.”
Yes, I normally procrastinate … but in this case … the delay was
because I haven’t had a “pulpit” (until www.wifi-guy.com). So, I would
have preferred to do a tribute to Joe Strummer on the first anniversary
of his death. But as it turned out … this may be better … because,
earlier this month Strummer was nominated for a Grammy for his
recording of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” with Johnny Cash.
See: http://www.strummersite.com/FRAMED%20PAGE.htm
Somehow it seems fitting that Strummer is getting this recognition for
work with a rebel from another generation – someone who shared an
affection for all things black -- and big, long Cadillacs.
But, if it is hard to get over the fact that Cash is gone, it is
unbelievable that Strummer, a marathon runner, died of heart failure at
50. It seems Strummer was always running against time.
So many years ago, Strummer told me that “Rock The Casbah” – perhaps
the most widely known Clash song -- deals with time and the lack there
of.
“I really enjoyed writing the lyric of that song. That lyric’s a goof
off. You know how it is when you can sweat and slave over some
masterpiece for days, weeks and months, and then you can goof off in
the corner for two minutes and when you look at it, you got to admit
it, the goof off beats hands down all this sweat and toil.
“See in the studio we have a natural tendency to ramble on and on,
right … forever and ever. And to ‘take the piss out’ of ourselves, we
started calling any song that we recorded that was normally six minutes
… we called it a raga -- after those long Indian pieces of sitar music.
Then our manager was kind of like, ‘Every f*ing thing in here is six
minutes long! We’re never going to get all of them onto the record.’ So
that’s why the first line of the song goes ‘the king told the boogie
man, you have to let that raga drop.’
Bottom line is, it’s just goofing off, and there’s nothing really wrong
with that. And it’s strange, kind of ironic that we got a hit with a
goof off. Because it was never intended to be a single, just an album
track.”
The RTC video was a music television classic in its day, with oil
derricks pumping; military footage; The Clash in camouflage; a comical
sheik and a guest appearance by a Texas armadillo. Rock The Casbah
receive lots of airplay, just prior to The Clash’s appearance in
Amarillo. The band used the small venue as one of several warm-up
performances in preparation for their appearance at Apple Computers’ US
Festival in California. Prior to the few warm-up dates, The Clash had
not played for several months … the last date a gig in Jamaica.
See:
http://www.gpjones.free-online.co.uk/Bands/Clash/recordings/1983/83-05-28_SanBerdino/83-05-28_SanBerdino.html
“I suppose you have all been used as guinea pigs.”
For that final tour, there was a new drummer Peter Howard, who joined
original members Strummer, lead guitarist Mick Jones and bassist Paul
Simenon. And, when they played “Rock The Casbah,” they were joined on
stage by “The Amarillo Armadillo” (a guy in a sports mascot costume).
“While we were playing ‘Rock the Casbah,’ I was thinking, the Amarillo
Armadillo is not going to show up. You see when I was walking downtown
earlier, this guy pulled his car up at the light and jumped out in
front of me: ‘Just watch me man!’ And he did a backwards summersault
standing there on the pavement. I thought he was going to break his
brains out on the floor. And he brought his picture out and he goes,
‘Look, I’m the Amarillo Armadillo, what about me doing back flips while
you play ‘Rock the Casbah’? I thought great idea! So, backstage, I
hadn’t seen him around. We we’re playing the song, I was thinking ‘oh
he’s lost his balls.’ He’s not going to come out. And I just turned
around and he was doing his gig. Can you imagine walking downtown and
some guy goes ‘hey just look at this’ …”
Despite the armadillo acrobatics, Strummer and company said their
Amarillo performance was rough. I was shocked to hear the veteran
rocker say, that even in a small city, he was nervous.
“If you get it all sounding perfect during sound check and then come
back later and the audience is there … I was nervous as *bleep*. It
sounded like absolute crap. Even though it might suddenly sound
terrible, you can’t stop. The only thing you can do is to keep going.”
“It can be like that 58 days into a 60-day tour. By then, you’re really
able to play the set in your sleep, you can play the tunes behind your
neck you know. It’s really just living dead then.
“You get the fear, naturally … feel the bullet coming – especially
since we haven’t played, and then again, with a new drummer. You hope
the band remembers the stuff, you know, remember when it ends or… And
then again, we were trying to learn our stuff in our back catalog that
we never touched to play live, you know we just written the song,
recorded it and then forgotten about it. And we’ve been going back over
our back catalog and fishing out songs that we never ever played, we
played quite few of them last night, but we never played live before.
The lyrics won’t be tattooed on my mind.”
“If you’re going to say something dumb in life, you should know what
you’re going to say and say it, right? But I was always looking for the
great time when … but it hardly ever happens to me … where I would just
be talking to the to audience and doing songs, going through the sets
and it’s like you’re actually f* Bruce, the comedian … that moment when
you’re thinking of something, a new thought, and you’re telling it to
the audience straight away and it’s happening all at once. You know,
it’s not like something you thought before and then you’re going to say
it to them later, like a routine joke or something, but there’s always
that magic moment you’re looking for and you find yourself speaking to
the audience and saying something that’s sensible and constructive and
not nonsense and it’s spontaneous. I didn’t speak for a long time
during that concert. I was too nervous to ever get to the point.”
“It might sound stupid, but when you’re unsure -- because it was our
first gig on the thing -- it’d really piss me off to look at people.
But when I know that it’s good, and I know that we know what we’re
doing and we’re doing it well, then I can really ‘screw the crowd’ as
we say it. But last night, I wasn’t looking at them, because I was
concentrating on trying to keep it together.
Throughout the concert, Strummer closed his eyes and did his trademark
hand to the side of the head.
“All I’m doing, right … the voice has got to tune up okay. You don’t
use it, you don’t shout really loud for an hour every day. It won’t be
tuned up so I haven’t sung a concert in five months or whatever so my
voice is pretty, it’s not … you know muscled. So after a couple of
shows, I’ll be able to tune up and throw it out loud. But until I can,
what I’m doing is that. I’m blocking one ear just so that I can hear my
voice because I don’t want to go out of tune.
“Because we play really loud. We’re a terribly loud band. We’re too
damn loud. We play really loud and we all got those two monitors
banging my voice back at me. And as I’m really putting a lot down the
mike, a lot will come back on the monitors. You see what I mean, it
depends on how much sheer physical force I’m projecting the voice
system. Like last night, I was kind of not in good, not in top form,
right so I had to keep doing that to locate the note I was looking for.
It makes me feel confident. Like it is going …rrrrrrrgh … you can’t and
you can’t hear what you’re saying. And they’re like it’s not happening
man.
“So I was desperately jamming it in (finger in ear). … Almost got stuck
in my ear I was sticking it in so much.”
Among the songs revived from the back catalogue, The Clash played a
song first in Amarillo, and then at The US Festival -- from the
three-disc recording, “Sandinista” -- “The Sound of the Sinners.”
“It’s an old tune, but I brought a lyric to it. I just kind of, I had
this lyric about Jesus, right, so I started singing it to the first
tune of … of the first gospel tune … It’s probably a traditional gospel
tune. I wrote that in 1980, early 1980. About two months after … the
lyric goes on about floods of lava flowing down the mountain … there
hadn’t been a volcano eruption for years and years as far as I knew.
And that one, was it Mount Saint Helens?
It went off and then they started popping off all over the world since
then.
Quite a coincidence?
I don’t know. But whatever I thought, see we never played that one live
ever, we never even attempted to play it since we recorded it and that
was the first time we did it last night (in Amarillo). … Came off
better than we thought.”
So what was the message exactly?
“I’d say 75 percent of everything has always got a message going on
with our songs. I find myself writing about those things, you know. It
doesn’t appeal to me to, haven’t really got into, you know, people like
Elvis Costello, they get into analyzing personal relationships between
say men and women and being all tainted and getting right in there and
analyzing that and that’s never appealed to us you know. I just prefer
thinking about the world.”
Where ever The Clash went, the topic of nuclear disarmament followed.
I almost feel like saying let’s get it over - a nuclear holocaust, you
know because they’re saying we need a balance of arms to be secure. But
I don’t feel very secure I decided. That’s what the conservative
politicians are saying. ‘Look we get rid of these missiles, NATO will
crumble, the Russians will be just what the Russians want, which is
true but it’s too f* insane to contemplate. I’m almost like, ‘Let’s get
it over with.’”
Well, Joe, that sounds a bit fanatical.
“We were much more like religious fanatics. You know what a religious
fanatic is, right? We were very fanatical about what we were doing. I
mean, in the way that young men can be, you know, when they’re young.
We were very fanatical about everything. Oh it was so great to change
anything. I’m talking about music and then bang! The Sex Pistols
happened right? And we followed their lead and we really took it
seriously. Everything had to go. We changed everything. We changed
ourselves. You know, a real process and we were real fanatical about
what we were saying.
“We had written some (pop) songs and we denounced them as irrelevant,
you know what I mean? Like we had some songs in the beginning that we
rehearsed up and we kind of had big arguments get in the way. Like this
song is irrelevant, but there’s it no time for that, no time about
teenage love. That made us stick together for so long because me, Mick
and Paul went through that and I don’t think anyone else would
understand it.”
After The US Festival, the band planned to return to the recording
studio … (But, of course Mick Jones left for creative differences and
formed his own group, Big Audio Dynamite. Strummer and a remnant of The
Clash eventually recorded “Cut The Crap.”)
“It’s been 18 months since the last recording. After we’ve done this
little talk and we done the arts festival, then we go back to England
and start rehearsing and writing some songs and then we’ll see what
we’ve got. And then we’ll record, I don’t know where we’ll be. We’ll
have to come out with something eventually you see. But I like a lay
off you know. Hell … It gives you time to step back. And I don’t like
to be writing songs all the time, because you become … It can drive you
out of your mind you know?
Although The Clash experimented with dub, rap, reggae, synthesizers and
more, it seemed that Jones’ BAD would later prove to be much more
electronically inclined than The Clash.
“ I’m one of these people that likes old records you know. And I know
that I’m a dying breed. I know that it’s all here to stay. I’m mean f*,
with a little machine as big as the recorder you’re using we can
program Buddy Rich into it …
“Maybe it’ll catch on in a big way until everyone gets sick of it, and
we’ll go back to one man and acoustic guitar. The opposite extreme to
electronic. I’m definitely out of step with the tech stuff. But I don’t
want to, I feel like those people, who … like … this guy in France said
this new invention is going to kill reading, no he said literature is
dead. He took out a serious article in the newspaper. What he was
talking about was that the bicycle had just been invented. He was
complaining that he and his parents went riding one Sunday afternoon
instead of reading novels. He took it so seriously – believed the
bicycle was here to corrupt humanity, right? I’d definitely prefer old
records, where the performance is recorded. Compared to something
building it up.”
And with Strummer’s sensibilities, he seemed to be very much aware of
social responsibility of performers. He described some pretty wild
things from the music industry.
“I can’t stand these heavy metal groups in England , you know, they
call their albums the number of the beast I mean , do they know? I
wonder if they know what they’re dealing with. I think they’re just
dabbling. … I can’t understand it though. … To deal with that black
magic … I mean there’s sort of a faction in England, worshipping
Alistair Crowley … it’s en vogue and the people don’t do any research
on the guy. They just kind of take it in, you know they probably read
about him for five minutes and go ‘yeah Crowley.’ Yes, Jimmy Page (Led
Zeppelin) bought Crowley’s home, by Loch Ness in Scotland. He bought it
and a whole lot of stuff happened. Ah … a little kid died in one of
these rooms … and all these rumors … probably all hogwash. But all
these rumors -- it was black magic and everything.
“There was a group called Eddie and the Hotrods right? And on their
album, for some reason they chose to put a picture of Alistair Crowley
wearing a Mickey Mouse hat. You know those hats … the black thing with
two big ears. Right. Well, this EP had this picture of Crowley with
this Mickey Mouse hat on. I couldn’t think of why. Jimmy Page saw this
right, and he rang the band up and said, “I’m putting a curse on you
all.” And ah, after that, their album went away, just like that.
I mean it could be coincidence, I mean they were kind of fairly new
outfit, but they weren’t worse than anybody else I’ve seen. They were
quite rocking. But after that … he said they were making fun of ‘the
great magician’ or whatever they call themselves.”
So, Joe, does this mean you lean toward the side of good, versus evil?
“Turns me off. I think organized religion is just a con. A straight
trade off, fear for money. ‘I’ll get rid of your fear, if you give me
your money.’ But, I like to think about Jesus and study it up. And the
meaning of whatever the hell all this is about. I think about Jesus,
but certainly ain’t going to start supporting ‘Bill’ Graham or anything
like that.
“Let’s say I definitely believed He existed -- Jesus. You know, I
definitely believe in good and evil. I mean, you know, I would not like
to do evil things. It does not make feel good to do evil things. I can
differentiate what I think is a good thing and what I think is an evil
thing. Like … I’ve done a lot of stealing in my life. But I only stole
when I was hungry, you know what I mean, and since we’ve been a success
and I’ve been able to afford food, I never stolen nothing. Because
there was never necessity to steal, you know what I mean? I felt I
stole a lot of food and never got because I was stealing it for the
right reasons.”
It was so refreshing and unexpected that Strummer was so candid and
treated me so well … at the time of the interview, I was a small-town,
Texas kid … who knew very little about the world and considerably less
about The Clash. I didn’t walk away with a *bleep*ney accent, and hope
I didn’t give Strummer my drawl.
“I don’t reckon anybody knows what the hell is going on. Not even …
take the sharpest, smoothest operator in New York. None of us … nobody
knows what the f* is going on. Certainly not in the real populated
cities. People are really lost …
“ You know, if you sit there twanging at me for a couple of hours, I’m
going to walk away and start twanging away at someone else. You know
what I mean? I pick it up. I find myself talking the American every
way. Like, have you got enough sugar in your coffee? ‘That’s fi-iiine.
I’m fi-iiine.’
“I saw a late night program on Nashville network, a group from
Nashville called the White Animals and they were doing a version of
Brand New Cadillac. See we got this song ‘Brand New Cadillac’ from
early English rocker right? … That was supposed to be the only British
rock ’n’ roll song that was ever written -- I mean in the early times
-- when it was Jean Vincent and Buddy Holly … Eddie Cochran, all that.
We had Vince Taylor and he had this song called ‘Brand New Cadillac’
and we covered it on some record. And I watched on TV these American
kids, they duplicated our version off our record. And this American
drummer who was singing the song was mimicking my speech defect. When I
sang it, I was trying to sing clearly -- not making the defect. But, he
copied it to a tee. He copied the way I was going like ‘brand n-y-ew’
without pronouncing it correctly. I was amazed cause I wish I had done
it proper, you know. Now I wish I spent more time on the vocal made it
a bit more quirky.”
“Well, it’s good because it’s a few people you know what I mean. I like
the feeling … like I can walk around anywhere. I really like that. I’d
hate to lose it. See, we never go on TV in England, so, our faces are
not known. Maybe a few -- like music, people who are into music would
know -- but general population, cab drivers and that, they wouldn’t
know us. So it’s kind of good.
Is it considered a negative thing in England – selling out – that you
are touring America?
“It didn’t mean that before, because no one had figured that out.
Everyone was real naïve in those days, but it is now. For example,
like
you know the people who ‘beat the Clash with a stick’ always use the
stick of ‘yeah, you live in America, you’re always in America, which I
don’t mind because I like to just get on with my life and getting on
with it. And if most people think that I live in New York all the time,
I’m quite pleased cause it means I can walk about and I can walk about
all the time, go anywhere and like it over there. I don’t think David
Bowie can walk anywhere -- maybe in disguise -- but …”
What about you, Joe Strummer, in the States?
Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean obviously, if I shaved the sides of my
head off, just that would attract attention just for having a loony
hair cut, you know what I mean? I’d like to stay where I could walk
around. Yeah. Imagine that you were so famous no matter where you stuck
your face, everyone would go ‘i-iiiyeeeeeh!’ I mean you’d have to stay
in your own room.
“Yeah. And what could you write about if you can’t observe the human
race, you know what I mean? I think writers have got to be great
observers. You got to sit and watch people and think about the people.
If you couldn’t see them, you couldn’t go around on a Saturday night,
what the f* would you write about? I think that’s why a lot of people
get destroyed, you know people that make it really big. They … it f*
them up. Like that’s why Elvis always stayed inside Graceland. No
wonder he took to taking mind trips.”
Strummer never mentioned whether he took any “trips without leaving the
farm.” But I doubt it, I doubt it. But he was forever with a smoke in
his hand and he was open about it being a nasty habit … That coming
from a guy who swam and played soccer on the road, to stay in shape …
in addition to marathons. He offered me a Carlton.
“They are supposed to be the lowest in tar and nicotine. But they don’t
say it on the pack. You notice that? What do you think of these other
brands, that are going like, you know, low tar you know, and Merit
lights or Vanguard lights or Ultra lights, you know, and yet they don’t
have a single word on the front of the packs that say anything about
it. I haven’t figured that out yet. Maybe they figure that it’s for
macho men who don’t want to look like they’re smoking lights. Like you
could look like Pall Mall …right?
“ I ran a marathon in London about three weeks ago and it about killed
me …
“Drugs? Yeah, that is soulless. I’ve watched friends go and dedicate
themselves to a life like that and if there’s anything left, they’re
just empty shells, you know what I mean? … people addicted to heroin.
They’re dead or … It’s sickening. That’s why I need something real,
that’s what I was thinking about, something real to touch.”
They say Strummer died peacefully in his sleep, in England. He was
born, the son of a British diplomat, in Ankara, Turkey. He described
his upbringing as similar to Tom Brown’s :School Days.” Strummer was 12
when England launched Beatlemania. He always knew he would end up in
London.
“I think you got to know where you’re coming from, and to me that’s
London. I got a really good education, not that I bothered to listen,
but some of it seeped in because I can spell. You know? That’s the only
way I can tell. I was into art and English. I stayed on two subjects,
you know, at the school that’s what you do.
“I don’t know. I was never into anything else much. I got into music …
by default, you know? … after trying everything else. That type of
thing. I didn’t grow up thinking I’m going to play music. I was just
hardly old enough to listen to it you know in the ’60s. I was a kid in
the ’60s and used to really get into listening to it. I’ve didn’t want
to seem to play it. And everyday after school, I could never find
something to turn my hand to. And after a couple years of that, I
started hanging out with friends and got my guitar off them. Then, when
I realized that I could play, I was quite happy. I started very late.
It wasn’t until I was 21, that I tried to learn how to play.”
Perhaps starting late attributed to Strummer being hard headed. It is
common knowledge that the band stayed at odds with CBS. The band
insisted on keeping their “Sandinista” recording a three-disc set for a
discounted price … and as Strummer put it, the label placed it in the
back of the record bins to “teach them a lesson.” Would The Clash be
better off starting their own label. Were they that big, say like The
Stones?
“Everyone knows what we’re talking about here is distribution. We rely
on the corporation and the structure and that to make it available all
around the world. That is some feat of logistics. You know, we release
a record in Britain and America at once. … Want to make sure there is
at least five copies in each record store so it’s there for anyone who
wants to buy it. Because it’s too competitive out there, no one has the
God-given right to assume that you’re going to be listened to. You
know, you can be drowned out and forgotten. Like Sandinista … we said
we wanted to sell at least three of these for the price of one and
eventually we negotiated the price to above one but below two, you
know. Like they sat on it, even though they were releasing it, they
just sat on it because they didn’t want to f* around with this kind of
performance, they just wanted to get one record, one bit of vinyl, and
charge you nine dollars or whatever it is for an album right? And so
they released Sandinista and just sat on it and it didn’t make any
sales hardly. I mean, it sold a little. But that kind of taught me a
lesson. I mean, if you really want to be heard, gotta be pretty damn
clear about it. No one has the time to listen to a shrill piece. I mean
Beethoven releases long pieces, but you know, he’s been dead two
hundred years.”
Hmmm …. What about classical Joe?
“I’d like to get it. I’d like to know something about classical. Every
time I try though, see I’d be thinking ‘now look, I’m a bit more mature
than I was last year, surely I’ll be able to dig it now,’ you know? So,
I get someone to play me some classical. I can not. I have to look
around. I can get into that “Writers Spring,” you know that one that
caused the riot . F*, I mean that’s almost like rock music. In fact
that is rock music, 1905 style.”
Although the Amarillo date was fairly tame, punk concerts … even Clash
dates … have been known to turn ugly, as mosh pits sometimes turn into
brawls.
“Yeah … most of the time it’s kind of people wanting to get their
energy, get their energy off or something like that, the music is going
up and down … they get into the physical movement to join in it but
sometimes when they really start slamming like in Los Angeles, there’s
this big hole in the middle of the audience will open up to give these
guys room. You can see that it’s … that it’s nowheresville and it does
get distorted, you know? I just try to make my singing more soulful to
tip the balance.”
So, Joe, let’s say the interview opened up … if we just let the tape
recorder run, what are some of the things pressing on your mind?
“Well I’d just like to say that if it takes 25 years for the old men to
die from now, because I think everyone everybody has been conned in
England and in America. We’re all being conned. Well I just think that
people in here eating themselves to death and the TVs killing them.
There’s too much *bleep* that comes out of the television. I can’t
stand it, you know. I really kind of changed. Cause when I first came
to America, I used to think it was great. A lot of channels, you know,
basketball and stuff like that. All the time, really good. But now I
know, it’s poisoning you, you know, your mind can only take so much
information and everyone here is overdosed, and in Britain too. People
watch TV just as much there.
“It should shut off at midnight … it forces a short cut in your viewing
time. Cause here it’s on much longer. I think everyone here has been
poisoned by what they’re eating and by what they’re watching. And I
don’t know what kind of young people are going to grow up in this
atmosphere. Because, you have to bear in mind, two hundred years ago,
all the most adventurous people in the world came here, didn’t they? I
mean you had to be pretty damn adventurous to sail for the new world
with Indians to fight and who knows, God knows what could be out there,
right, and went there with your wife, you kid and you and a couple of *
… and that’s kind of an adventure. And 200 years later, all I see in
America is these signs up right and these plastic buildings that, I
mean, see these buildings, they’re all over the place and I swear
they’re cast out of a mold of plastic and pretending to be a building.
I know that’s a way to be cheap but. I feel sick in my heart you know
that nothing is real anymore you know. That might well be a building
but sure would examine it and find out that it’s made of plastic, not
really a building. These signs, America just seems to be like, from
coast to coast, it’s totally depressing.
“From coast to coast big parking lots with these horrible cheap
buildings and signs and it’s all there is in America and the big car
moping around. Totally, just depressing. And it ain’t any better in
England either. We got a different kind of sickness. Kind of a
repressive, mental, emotional psychosis.
Hmmmm … There is a place on the “Sandinista” LP where the recording has
a Rastafarian deejay talking it up on the air … and a British guy calls
in to the radio station. The deejay suspects the caller wants to rant
and rave and express his opinion to the world on talk radio. In a thick
British, almost *bleep*ney accent, the caller says, “… Yes … I’d just
like to say, can we have some more music.”
In several hours, over a couple of days that I spent around The Clash,
there was always reggae music playing … backstage, on the bus, you name
it. As Paul Simenon told me, they like the heavy content, mixed with
the sweet tunes.
“Well, we had this one song, goes back five years, called Complete
Control. The song was really about us fighting with our record company.
Okay, now Mick wrote the song, the music and the words and I went up to
his flat and he said come here and I went into his bedroom and he
played me complete control. And I thought you can’t do that. You know,
I thought, the world doesn’t want to know about our petty little
arguments with our CBS. Ad then, uhm I was kind of humming it, it
attaches somehow and we recorded it and it’s one of the best on record
that came out of London, I mean the finished thing you know. Just shows
that, showed me that you can’t make a snap judgment about anything
really. It came out to be a really good track. We don’t play it in
America very much, it’s more of a British thing. Last night, when we
played, I asked my tour manager, haven’t seen him since October, you
know, he’s an American guy. I said well Chuck, what did you think after
the show right, he said hum, set needed some work. I said in what
direction Chuck and he said well that was too adventurous for the
audience. He thought, of I don’t know, the reggae stuff a bit sort of …
people wanted rock there.”
They said release 'Remote Control'
But we didn't want it on the label
They said, Fly to Amsterdam
The people laughed but the press went mad
Ooh ooh ooh someone's really smart
Ooh ooh ooh complete control, that's a laugh
On the last tour my mates couldn't get in
I'd open up the back door but they'd get run out again
At every hotel we was met by the Law
Come for the party - come to make sure!
Ooh ooh ooh have we done something wrong?
Ooh ooh ooh complete control, even over this song
They said we'd be artistically free
When we signed that bit of paper
They meant let's make a lotsa mon-ee
An' worry about it later
Ooh ooh ooh I'll never understand
Ooh ooh ooh complete control - lemme see your other hand!
All over the news spread fast
They're dirty, they're filthy
They ain't gonna last!
This is Joe Public speaking
I'm controlled in the body, controlled in the mind
Total
C-o-n control - that means you!
“Complete Control”
This tribute to Joe Strummer and The Clash will end with me telling how
I met The Clash. I heard they were playing in Amarillo, and immediately
I called their record label. “No way!.” I was told by a publicity rep.
at the record label. “No interviews!” So, I jumped in my car and drove
a couple of hours to Amarillo. I knew a guy who played in a new wave
band in Amarillo … The Amatones – very cool group … Surely he would
have a lead on the band. As fate would have it … my buddy knew someone
who worked at a hotel … in which The Clash just happened to be staying.
I drove to the hotel and out around the swimming pool, found these four
pale Brits, getting some Texas sun. They were friendly, open and
invited me to come backstage for their concert that night. And,
Strummer also invited me back the next day to spend the morning in an
interview, after his daily swim.
Seeing the mellow, thoughtful, almost gentle side of Strummer – which
seem to so-ooo conflict with his macho stage persona … now, 20 years
later, it seems so perfect that he is up for The Grammy for a reggae
rendition, with Johnny Cash.
“But we’re kind of tired of people think … ‘Oh just play reggae just
have to go (sings) … ya know? But we want to learn something from
reggae that can’t be put into words, something about the whole sound of
it, not just the ... Who wants to hear a song about pressurized water
reactors, you know? Sometimes I get into like bad moods and I think,
‘they just want to hear (sings Boy George song) ‘Do you really want to
…’ which, there is nothing wrong with that that and that was a great
record but then when I hear … when I turn to a reggae record, and I
hear a guy on the air, like Marley and some sort of rustic soul songs
that gives me bit of uhm, what do you say?, encouragement.”
For more, see what Bono, Geldof and others had to say about Joe
Strummer:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2601287.stm
And, finally, here is the obituary from The BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2600955.stm
D. Kent Pingel
a.k.a. -- The Wi-Fi Guy
Public Relations Director
C I Host
888-868-9931, ext. 7006
Rock The Casbah!