Joe Strummer - Spotlight Online

HISTORY | 10 Years Ago
Joe Strummer
Portrait of a rebel:
Joe Strummer
in London in 1988
Musical rebel
Vor genau 10 Jahren verstarb
der Leadsänger der legendären
britischen Punkrockband
The Clash. MIKE PILEWSKI
erinnert an ihn.
T
en years ago this month, on 22 December 2002, music lost one of
its biggest rebels. Joe Strummer
was the creative force behind e Clash,
a band that helped to define the British
punk movement of the late 1970s. At a
time when youth was looking for answers, Strummer and e Clash showed
that it was possible for music to have meaning.
Strummer’s real name was John Graham Mellor. He
was born on 21 August 1952 in Ankara, Turkey. His father
was a diplomat, his mother a nurse. Young John lived in
Egypt, Mexico and Germany before attending boarding
school in London.
He studied art, first in London, then in Newport,
Wales. But it was a year spent with other students in a
Newport band, as a singer and rhythm guitarist, that gave
his life direction.
In 1974, he moved back to London, where he lived in
an abandoned house and worked as a street musician.
With his housemates, he formed a blues band called e
101’ers — after the address where they lived — and gave
himself the name Joe Strummer. “Joe” was a common
term for an Everyman, and “strummer” was a reference to
his rhythm guitar playing.
Within two years, Strummer’s life was to change permanently. During this time, artist Malcolm McLaren discovered the punk movement while exploring the
underground music scene in New York City. Young musicians were doing whatever they could to be unconventional and rebellious: forming their hair into spikes,
wearing torn clothes, even giving Nazi salutes and calling
for the downfall of society. McLaren brought these ideas
to London and used them in managing a group called the
Sex Pistols. ey were still little known when they performed as the opening act for e 101’ers in April 1976.
According to some sources, this gave Strummer the
idea of moving away from playing established blues and
R & B songs and forming his own punk band. Other
sources say that sometime after the performance, Mick
Jones from the band London SS approached Strummer
and invited him to be his group’s lead singer. At the suggestion of bassist Paul Simonon, the band was to be called
e Clash — a word that refers to disharmony, to things
that don’t go together, to a sound that is unmelodic.
Rocking the casbah: Joe Strummer sings with
The Clash at London’s Brixton Academy in 1984
abandoned [E(bÄndEnd]
boarding school [(bO:dIN )sku:l]
call for [(kO:l fE]
Egypt [(i:dZIpt]
housemate [(haUsmeIt]
Nazi salute [)nA:tsi sE(lu:t]
opening act [(EUpEnIN Äkt]
spike [spaIk]
strummer [(strVmE]
torn [tO:n]
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Fotos: Getty Images
Within months, they had a recording contract with CBS Records. e
group’s first single, “White Riot”, was
inspired by a fight Strummer and Simonon had seen between Caribbean
youth and the police at the 1976 Notting Hill Carnival. Strummer wrote the
song to suggest that white youth, too,
should have something to protest
against. e lyrics asked, “Are you taking over / Or are you taking orders? /
Are you going backwards / Or
are you going
forwards?”
e punk
movement, and
e Clash in
particular, criticized the economic stagnation
in the late 1970s,
the lack of jobs and
career perspectives
for young people,
the rise of far-right
groups, and control of
society by bureaucrats,
big business and the police. e Clash’s second
album, Give ’Em Enough Rope, was a commentary on current events, including the hijacking of an airliner and the
shutdown of the largest LSD production ring in the world
by undercover police.
e group’s third album, London Calling (1979/80),
added reggae basslines and other influences from pop and
world music to create a more varied sound. e 19 songs
criticize consumerism, express the disillusionment of
youth and articulate a feeling of not being in control.
“London is drowning / And I live by the river,” Strummer
sings in the title song. e album, which reached number
two in the UK charts, represented e Clash at the height
of its popularity. In 1989, Rolling Stone magazine rated it
the best work by any band in the 1980s.
A fourth album, Sandinista!, broadened the group’s
musical styles further, while its fifth album, Combat Rock
(1982), represented a crossover into mainstream pop
music — and the American market — with such songs as
“Should I Stay or Should I Go?” and “Rock the Casbah”.
By this time, tension between Joe Strummer and Mick
Jones had reached breaking point. Strummer was unhappy
with the music Jones was writing to go with his lyrics, so
he fired Jones and hired two guitarists. e Clash’s sixth
album, Cut the Crap (1985), was an attempt to take the
band’s music back to where it had been before it was influenced by reggae.
Left: Strummer in
2000; below: guitarsmashing made for a
great album cover
When the album
failed to sell well, the
group disbanded.
As a solo artist,
Strummer composed
the soundtrack to
several films, including Sid and Nancy
(1986) — a film
about the Sex Pistols’
bassist Sid Vicious — and Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery
Train (1989). Strummer also collaborated and
toured with e Pogues on a number of occasions
over the years. During the 1990s, Strummer was
a DJ for the BBC World Service.
In 1999, he began performing again, but
made only three albums before his death. “It’s a
good thing to release no records rather than
10 terrible records,” he told the BBC in
2001. During work on a fourth album,
Strummer’s career was cut short when he
died of a heart attack.
Strummer had been married twice. In 1975, South
African Pamela Moolman had paid him £120 in order to
marry him and become a British citizen. Strummer used
the money to buy the electric guitar — a 1966 Fender
Telecaster — that he used in most of his performances.
From 1978 to 1993, Strummer was in a relationship with
Gaby Salter, with whom he had two daughters. In 1995,
he married Lucinda Tait.
During his later years, Strummer was known as a great
supporter of environmentalism. He aimed to be the
world’s first “carbon-neutral” musician; he had his own
forest planted in order to offset the carbon-dioxide emissions from his tours and the manufacture of his CDs.
carbon [(kA:bEn]
combat [(kQmbÄt]
crossover [(krQs)EUvE]
cut the crap
[)kVt DE (krÄp] vulg. ifml.
disband [dIs(bÄnd]
give ’em enough rope (and
they’ll hang themselves)
[)gIv Em E)nVf (rEUp]
hijacking [(haIdZÄkIN]
lyrics [(lIrIks]
offset [)Qf(set]
rate [reIt]
riot [(raIEt]
take orders [)teIk (O:dEz]
take over [)teIk (EUvE]
tension [(tenS&n]
Kohlenstoff; hier: CO2
Gefecht
Übergang
hör auf mit dem Scheiß
sich auflösen
jmdm. freie Hand lassen, damit
dieser auf die Nase fällt
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