Joe Strummer Interviewed

By Chris Salewicz -- from Trouser Press, April 1981

"We really get up people's noses.''

As it was for many people, 1980 was a confusing year for the Clash. At the very beginning of the spring,the group suddenly broke through commercially in America, with Top 20 hits for both the London Calling album and "Train in Vain" single.

Meanwhile, however, the four members of the group were embroiled in England in what seemed the most pointless yet of a legendary series of squabbles with CBS, their record company. Having sworn to release a continual stream of 45s during the coming year, the Clash's very first attempts at upholding this vow were stymied when English CBS refused to release "The Bankrobbing Song." Although other CBS territories thought it had commercial possibilities, the UK division of the company apparently believed that this single's obvious hit melody didn't stand a chart chance.

The single was eventually issued in late summer. It rose to number 11, a position that could have been far bettered had it not been for vast quantities of import copies already purchased in England.

"They refused to put it out," guitarist/vocalist (and to many the Clash's driving force) Joe Strummer says, "so we refused to record anything else. We left it at that for a while. We had a load of rough mixes from stuff we'd done in New York, but we held off from finishing them off or doing any studio work until they put it out."

The rough mixes were for what eventually became Sandinista!, a triple album issued in England just before Christmas at a single LP price. To permit this, the Clash themselves have deals with CBS under which they stand to make little or no profit. In England, Sandinista! will have to sell more than 20O,OOO copies before the group makes a single penny -- yet London Calling (a two-record set) only totted up the tally sheet at 180,000. "We'll just have to do a bit better," says the eternally optimistic Strummer. Similar agreements have been reached in other parts of the world. (American consumers will have to shell out a bit more than their English counterparts; here the album lists for $14.98.) Sandinista! was recorded in three different studios: Channel One in Kingston, Jamaica; Wessex in London; and -- mostly -- in Electric Ladyland in New York, during and after the band's early 1980 tour of the US.

Strummer himself claims to have had little experience of more esoteric contemporary rock music. "I've never heard anything by Joy Division; I must be the only person left in the world who hasn't heard them. I feel really out of touch. I've never heard a single one of all these records that get reviewed in the papers. The ones I do hear really turn me off."

He is deeply suspicious of many of the independent labels, particularly after he heard that Rough Trade had turned down the Modettes on grounds of being "ideologically unsound"; "That's close to fascism, isn't it?"

I run into Joe Strummer in London's Notting Hill area on New Year's eve. In a synagogue converted into a community center, Strummer, along with members of his former band, the 101ers, plus Mo-dette Ramona, get 1981 off to a spirited start by performing a '60s-style revue as the Soul Vendors. Strummer himself maintains a lowkey presence, alternating lead and rhythm guitar, and keeping away from the microphone.

At the bar, he orders the predictable can of Red Stripe Jamaican lager. I tell him that at first the sheer length of time required to listen to Sandinista! -- the package runs over two hours -- had made me resent the Clash. Later, though, I'd found that by choosing individual songs or sides at random, the group's fourth album seemed to be solidly in the iconoclastic, witty tradition of greatness set by its predecessors.

"It's a bit over the top, isn't it?" Strummer chuckles at my plight. "It's supposed to last you a year, though. There's loads of bits and pieces all over it that you can just suddenly come across and get into. Mind you, we got really slated for it in a load of reviews, just for its length alone. But that Public Image Ltd. album, Metal Box, that was three records and used up just as much vinyl, even if it did play at a different speed and cost more.

"We seem to really get up people's noses, though. I think it's really good. We always bring out some reaction in people."

Exactly a week later I'm just down the road in Ladbroke Grove, sitting opposite Strummer -- who is much slighter in stature than his gruff bark makes him sound -- at a table in the small, overpriced flat he shares with Gabbie, his woman friend. Staring down on us in the dimly lit room is a giant-sized poster of Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock. Sipping a glass of beer, and playing compulsively with a switchblade knife that belies a gentle, unassuming nature, the romantic realist that is Joe Strummer further considers Sandinista!

"Some of it is very American-sounding," he admits, "but if you go somewhere then obviously it's going to leave its mark on you; we did that American tour and stayed there for quite a while. If we went to Spain and spent six months there, we'd be talking pidgin Spanish by the time we came back -- well, I would be anyway. I tend to absorb more -- absorb what's going on where I am.

"Most of the album was actually written in Electric Ladyland in New York. We might have had an idea for a number but with virtually every one we waited until we were actually in the studio before working it up into a song or into a backing track. We would make up it up just before we recorded it. Before, we'd usually practiced all the songs really thoroughly until we could play them all, and then march into the studio and record them straight off.

"That's what we did for London Calling and all our other records. This is not so much like a record, it's more like an experiment. These songs are more like demos, I suppose."

It has been suggested that one reason for the multiplicity of styles on Sandinista! is that the Clash were unclear in their own heads as to what they were doing. After all, it was common knowledge that there had been occasional on-the-road rows between Strummer and lead guitarist Mick Jones.

Strummer, though, dismisses any suggestion that the arguments might have revealed long-simmering disagreements: "It's just that Mick doesn't like being on the road at all. He really hates it, y'know. He has to get a bit pissed to go onstage.

"So there was a conflict there in that the rest of us still really enjoy touring, and Mick thinks it's a trial and tribulation. So something or somebody has to suffer. The rest of us just think of it as a good laugh.

"Mind you, there are lots of things that aren't right about touring: the way they're set up at the moment, you're just supposed to go out and sell records and the record company gets much more out of it than you do. Yet they are only willing to come up with, say, $10,000 to support a tour when, in fact, you are going to lose something like $30,000 to $40,000.

"But, anyway, even tour support's a con as far as I'm concerned, everything they give you upfront is. When they give you money for studio time or for tour support, every penny they pay seems to be one that we owe to them. For a band at our level, the debts just seem to go on and on, and get worse instead of better. Royalties take a really long time to come through, and if you do a few tours that wipes them out anyway.

"So it's a question of us having decided that we have to stop all this. You can't go on digging yourself deeper and deeper into debt. It's just ridiculous! I reckon it should go back to the local scene -- you know, really low key. All the really big groups make money on tour in America when they play these huge stadiums. Their ticket income is multiplied by 20 every night, yet the costs for crew and equipment are about the same as ours."

Not to mention the personal expense -- the wear and tear on human beings in rock seems to be most uneconomical.

"But that's the cost you don't count until the band splits up."

Except that's often touring's end result. It seems inevitable that people get worn out and fight with each other -- that Strummer and Jones should have been rowing...

"We're not rowing at all," Strummer interrupts. "It happens that we have rows sometimes, but then you have rows with your girlfriend too. You forget about it the next day; it's not the end of the world. It's not just one row that causes groups to split up."

Sandinista!'s title ensures the Clash of more accusations of naive political sloganeering. "Washington Bullets," however -- the song that is partially concerned with the Nicaraguan people's overthrow of the dictator Somoza -- is a simple, sad anthem to freedom, pointing out crimes committed not just by the US but by Russia and others with imperialist attitudes.

Strummer isn't too concerned about being tagged radical chic. "Bob Dylan said if you can't bring good news then don't bring any. I feel what we're bringing is good news; Nicaraguan people taking their country over for a change, instead of the US-supported dictator running it. Maybe everyone is just secretly guilty because all over the Western world they've been electing right-wing leaders. In France they've had one for years; we've got Thatcher and now there's Reagan.

"But I think a lot of people just want to listen to real fun musicians and forget about it. They just don't want to know. Everything is not real for some reason; that struggle went on and all those people died and everyone in the West is really cushioned from it. People just want to hear about clothes or fashion or sex and gossip. They don't want to talk about the main thing that's real. 'We Saw," he continues, "the same sort of thing going on in Jamaica when we were down there. It was before the election and people were getting shot every day. We were traveling down to Channel One studio and a youth of 14 was shot dead on Hope Road just 10 minutes after we'd gone past it.

"I'd seen Kingston two years before and I could really tell the difference. Even the street corner guy selling the herb was heavy about it. It wasn't a question of do you want it or you don't; you want it! I went into this supermarket there; there was nothing in it whatsoever except for 140 tins of syrup! Rows and rows of empty shelves -- a great big long supermarket up in New Kingston near where we were staying. Somebody -- like the Western gang -- was starving Manley out. They did that because they thought he was a Marxist, although he wasn't really that .He was just friends with Cuba, which seems pretty logical if it's your nearest neighbor and you're a Third World country too.

"Not that we didn't have our own problems in Jamaica. We could only do one song ['Junco Partner'] when we went down to Channel One; then we had to leave town in a hurry. It was because all the people down there that hang about outside the studios -- the session musicians and songwriters -- believe that if you're a white group you must have loads of money, therefore, 'Where's our share?' But we were stuck there on [bassist] Paul Simonon's lgirlfriend's credit card, desperately trying to wire some money through from CBS for the whole week we were down there.

"When we went down to Channel One they were starting to threaten Mikey Dread and the Natty Kongoes, who were working with us. They said they were going to beat them up and do their house over. Then they said they were going to wait until after dark and do everybody as they left the session in the midnight hour. Mikey Dread was convinced we should just pack our guitars and move out there and then. So we left the studio, quick-style.''

The final track on side three of Sandinista! is "The Sound of the Sinners," an elaborate gospel pastiche that, besides references to Biblical mythology, contains the line, "After all this time/To believe in Jesus." These words seem to be causing certain people a measure of discomfort, though why this should be when they know of Strummer's affinity with devotional-based reggae is anyone's guess. Strummer insists that his beliefs -- which he never defines absolutely -- are not of a "born again" nature. He also sidesteps subtly when asked about the autobiographical content of the song's following two lines: "After all those drugs/I thought I was him."

"You know, people tripping freak out and think they are Jesus. It's the most common reaction apart from jumping out of windows thinking you can fly. I wanted to see words like 'drugs' in a gospel song. I like all the imagery in gospel, like 'going down to the riverside' and all that stuff. You can have 'hurricanes' and 'winds of fury' and all that.

"In the Bible," he adds dramatically, "they blew the horns and the walls crumbled. Well, punk rock was like that.''

"The Sound of the Sinners" obviously pertains to the religious feelings Strummer has mentioned he is discovering within himself. In light of such transcendent views, aren't the hard-line left and right wings equally bigoted?

"Well," Strummer nods, "in Western society I see that the way it's set out is every man for himself. If you haven't got a job you can't have any money. So how are people going to feel socialistic, if that's what they have to deal with? It's just dog eat dog, isn't it? People feel optimistic about that? It's considered smart to get one over fellow mate. If you can do that, peqple are supposed to look up to you. Though," he shrugs his shoulders in mock weariness, "I read somewhere that people hate reading the words of do-gooders..."

Tymon Dogg, whose fiery "Lose This Skin," opens Sandinistal's fifth side, is an old songwriter pal of Strummer's who once (briefly) had a deal with Apple. They reunited in New York, and Dogg immediately hit it off with Mick Jones. Dogg will shortly release as a 45 his own version of "Lose This Skin."

"He's the guy I met before I was in the 101ers," Strummer explains, "when I was busking in London -- mainly down in the tubes. He sort of taught me how to play. We did a European trip as well -- Holland and France and all that sort of thing. He tried to make a few records in the '60s, but nothing really came to fruition."

Besides "Lose This Skin," Dogg plans to put out an LP as well -- his second. "He did one a few years ago. It's really hard to find, because he only put out about 2000. Time Out magazine reviewed it in London; they said, 'One-man music for a one-man audience.' That was the beginning and end of the review. By Giovanni Dadomo, I think..."

The same Dadomo [Ah, we knew him when...--Ed.] has criticized Sandinista! for the presumed inappropriateness of Blockheads/Clash keyboardsman Mickey Gallagher's child's vocals on a flippant, brief rehash of Paul Simonon's "Guns of Brixton."

"They feel threatened by kids singing now," Strummer grunts scornfully, "but the truth is that any kid can sing. It's only when you get older and become fucked up and selfconscious that you can't do it right. I didn't think I could sing and that my voice was blown apart, but I still do it anyway."

Strummer isn't alone in his self-doubts. Ian Dury has said that the only reason he started singing so (relatively) late in life was because of that same fear.

"Even Jimi Hendrix! There was a story we heard whilst we were at Electric Ladyland. Really late on, Jimi Hendrix went into the studio and afterwards came out to hear what he'd done: 'I can sing, I can really sing!'

"I would be very careful about who I actually called a singer. I wouldn't call myself a singer. I certainly wouldn't call Ian Dury a singer. Gregory Isaacs and Alton Ellis are singers. Sam Cooke's a singer. Otis Redding's a singer -- or the Four Tops."

Strummer walks into his small kitchen to fetch another beer from the sink; he is running cold water over the bottles in an effort to lower their temperature.

"It's true," he reflects upon returning, "the Clash do get up people's noses. But it's better than getting arse-licked all the time -- like the Jam do: Every review I read is, 'Wonderful, fresh, energetic young trio.' I finally got the information I was looking for in, of all things, the Daily Express [a rightwing, exclusively mindless British paper]; they said they thought the Jam was becoming really lackluster.

"If you're a musician, you listen to the Jam and all you hear is lock, stock and barrel lifts. I'm not saying that nobody lifts stuff, but at least most people have the decency to try to think of some original way of letting the steal be of some use. A musician judges a record from the creative processes that produced it rather than the record itself as direct competition. I wouldn't be able to tell you whether the Jam makes good records or not. I only listen to them from that creative viewpoint."

While we're talking, Strummer has been writing titles on a cassette box, which he announces is the entire recorded output of Clash dub, taken largely from Sandinista! and the American Black Market Clash NuDisc. At my request he sticks it on his cassette machine.

"Everyone's always saying there isn't much good reggae happening anymore," he says as it begins, "but I don't think that's true. There's loads, but you've got to really look for it.

"When I was in Jamaica, which was in July, I heard 10 all-time stunning classic records. I just heard them on JBC, on the radio. I remember there was one fantastic one called 'Rainy Night in Portland.' I kept waiting for them to turn up here, and they don't.

"I heard some incredible rhythms, too -- stunningly inventive. No white group would ever play the drums like some of the ones I heard being played. Almost shuffling it -- pure invention. I heard numbers that would've cleared the floor for days, weeks, months, years.

"A couple of years ago I started to think that reggae had had it, but I've since found I was a bit hasty; that music is growing all the time. I like listening to dub a lot; not a lot of people do. I'd like to hear it on the radio all night long, instead of the soothing dribble of the big band sounds."

Strummer's attention is grabbed suddenly by a "Newsflash" card that appears on a silent TV screen. He jumps up and turns on the sound: a letter bomb has been found addressed to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The bulletin ends, and Strummer turns the volume down again. "Letter bomb, eh?" he smirks in great amusement. "That's a bit amateur, isn't it? I can't see that doing the job. We've all got to try a bit harder than that."