Punk’s rebel with a cause dies at 50

Fiachra Gibbons, arts correspondent Tuesday December 24, 2002 The Guardian

Joe Strummer “Every cheap hood strikes a bargain with the world And ends up making payments on a sofa or a girl Love ‘n’ hate tattooed across the knuckles of his hands The hands that slap his kids around ’cause they don’t understand How death or glory becomes just another story” – From Death Or Glory by Joe Strummer and The Clash

Joe Strummer, the political conscience of punk, and one half of its greatest songwriting partnership, is no more. He is said to have died peacefully in a chair in his kitchen after suffering what appears to have been heart attack while walking his dogs near his remote farmhouse in Broomfield, Somerset, on Sunday afternoon. His wife Lucinda and stepdaughter Elize were with him.

His passing at the age of 50 leaves Shane MacGowan as the last man standing of the songwriting tyros who turned the music industry upside down in the late 1970s.

Tributes poured in yesterday for the rebel with a cause who wrote such rousing and intelligent songs as Death Or Glory, Should I Stay Or Should I Go?, White Riot and Spanish Bombs. London Calling, The Clash’s third and greatest album, was the US magazine Rolling Stone’s album of the 1980s and was regularly voted one of the best of all time.

But a poor early record deal, and The Clash’s commitment to leftwing causes, meant that neither Strummer nor the rest of the band fully reaped the rewards of their success.

Bono, who was about to work with Strummer on a tribute to Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and who never made a secret of how he modelled his own band on The Clash, said: “It’s such a shock. The Clash was the greatest rock band. They wrote the rule book for U2.”

Unlike the Sex Pistols, with whom they were often compared, Strummer and The Clash were not the result of clever media manipulation but the authentic voice of protest and rebellion. His leftwing credentials, forged in the Elgin Avenue squatters’ occupation in west London in the mid-70s, were heartfelt and real and never left him. The music he created with songwriting partner Mick Jones – the “Sound of the Westway”, as he dubbed it – was equally revolutionary, mixing dub, rockabilly and ska into a multicultural roar of anger against poverty and racial discrimination.

Notting Hill was then the home to ethnic tension, incendiary street-protest politics and reggae legend Bob Marley, a powerful social and political brew from which Strummer and The Clash drank deeply. The Clash followed up London Calling with Sandinista!, which attacked American attempts to undermine the Nicaraguan revolution and berated Mrs Thatcher the year after she walked into Downing Street.

Not that Strummer, born John Mellor in Ankara, Turkey, the son of a senior diplomat, was your textbook working-class punk hero. While Brixton boy Jones fitted the bill more, Strummer was in many ways an early prototype of a radical Notting Hill trustafarian. He first changed his name to Woody Mellor, in honour of Woody Guthrie, the American folk legend, before evolving into Joe Strummer after forming a pub band called the 101ers – named after their squat at 101 Walterton Road, Maida Vale – who ending up playing support to the Sex Pistols.

Protest singer Billy Bragg said last night that Strummer fired his youthful political imagination after seeing The Clash at the first Rock Against Racism concert in Victoria Park in London’s East End.

“I have a great admiration for the man. Joe was the political engine of the band, and without Joe there’s no political Clash and without The Clash the whole political edge of punk would have been severely dulled.

“His most recent records are as political and edgy as anything he did with The Clash. His take on multicultural Britain in the 21st century is far ahead of anybody else,” he added.

Unlike the Sex Pistols, The Clash never reformed after splitting up in 1986, three years after the band imploded when Strummer sacked Jones – a decision he later bitterly regretted. Until then they were the Lennon and McCartney of punk, sharing top billing and duties as lead singer. “I stabbed him in the back,” Strummer later admitted.

Bob Geldof, another squatter-turned-rock star, said yesterday that he admired their refusal to sell out. “I know for a fact they were offered huge amounts of money [to reform],” he told the BBC. “They just said ‘No, that isn’t really what we stood for’. That’s truly admirable. They were very important musically but as a person, he was a very nice man.”

Despite Strummer’s resistance to reforming, The Clash were believed to be considering a one-off reunion next year at their induction ceremony into the the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. They will be only the second punk band, after the Ramones, credited with founding the movement in New York, to be honoured there.

Strummer always resisted revisiting past glories and insisted that he would rather get on with his work with his new band The Mescaleros, where he continued to experiment with world music. “I never look back. There’s no point,” he said.

He also carved a colourful niche for himself outside his own bands, fronting The Pogues for a time after MacGowan left, as well as making several memorable acting cameos in Martin Scorsese’s film The King Of Comedy, Alex Cox’s Walker and Straight To Hell, and Jim Jarmusch’s 1989 Mystery Train, where he played an Elvis-quiffed armed robber.

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To drive the point even further, the WEF invited apologists from a wide array of dignitaries from wealthy society to proclaim that “we’re not doing enough” including Bono, Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, and Queen Rania of Jordan.

I don’t think it would be possible to assemble a panel of pundits who are further disconnected from the ills which befall downtrodden peoples from around the world. Of course, those folks probably couldn’t afford the airfare and the motorcade to get them to Manhattan.

What’s most disturbing is that not a breath of “helping other people” is mentioned outside of the context of the violence directed toward the Western world. All that these folks are reinforcing is that a slap in the face such as September 11th is a healthy spark for discourse on the subject of world equality.

Anyway, as Shakespeare said, it’s an event “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

-Ian.

——– http://biz.yahoo.com/apf/020204/world_forum_6.html

Monday February 4, 11:46 am Eastern Time

WEF Speakers Criticize America

Some World Economic Forum Speakers Assail America As Smug Superpower, Decry Policies By JIM KRANE Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — They came in solidarity with this terror-wounded city.

But since they arrived, speaker after speaker at the World Economic Forum has lambasted America as a smug superpower, too beholden to Israel at the expense of the Muslim world, and inattentive to the needs of poor countries or the advice of allies.

With the forum wrapping up its five-day session Monday, some of the criticism has been simple scolding by non-Western leaders. But a large measure has come in public soul-searching by U.S. politicians and business leaders.

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., cited a global poll that characterized Americans as selfish and bent on arranging the global economy for their own benefit.

“We’ve not done our fair share to take on some of the global challenges” like poverty, disease and women’s rights, Clinton said Sunday. “We need to convince the U.S. public that this is a role that we have to play.”

Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT – news) Chairman Bill Gates warned that the terms of international trade were too favorable to the rich world, a disparity that feeds resentment.

“People who feel the world is tilted against them will spawn the kind of hatred that is very dangerous for all of us,” Gates said. “I think it’s a healthy sign that there are demonstrators in the streets. They are raising the question of ‘is the rich world giving back enough?”’

At a press conference at the forum Monday, representatives of humanitarian groups had differing views on how much their messages were resonating with corporate and political leaders.

“Today I think there is broad recognition that no business concerned with its brand name can afford to be indifferent to human rights and social issues,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch Group.

Others said that the rich and powerful are listening to the needs of the poor, but that it’s unclear whether the forum will prompt any changes.

“We are swimming against the tide within a meeting like this…especially when you’re talking about the rights of homeless children, but at least we are swimming in the same river,” said Bruce Harris, executive director of Casa Alianza, a Costa Rica group that helps street children.

Held in the Swiss ski resort of Davos in its first 31 years, sponsors decided to move this year’s forum to New York to show support for the city after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

About 2,700 corporate and political leaders, clergy and celebrities came to discuss the world’s problems, and have spent much time dissecting U.S. foreign policy, its possible role in breeding terrorism and the potential harms of globalization.

Few protesters turned up Sunday near the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, site of the forum, on the fourth day of the conference. But mostly peaceful demonstrations miles from the hotel generated 159 arrests — the largest in a single day since the conference started — and one case of vandalism was reported.

The total arrested so far during the meeting grew to over 200, mostly for disorderly conduct. Two demonstrations were planned Monday afternoon by a group promoting a wide range of causes, from environmental protection to the cancellation of developing countries’ debts.

In a curious convergence, the titans of business and politics at the meeting have seized on many of the same socially liberal issues that they have been accused of ignoring at past gatherings.

The forum’s agenda may have taken some of the steam out of street protests, which were sparse except for Saturday’s turnout of about 7,000 demonstrators, and has even paralleled issues under discussion at the World Social Forum, an anti-globalization conference under way in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

In Brazil, speakers on Saturday condemned the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, with one comparing the practice to apartheid-era South Africa’s creation of “Bantustans,” which were economically poor areas designated as homelands for blacks.

In New York, guests heard a similar message Sunday.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. national security adviser, warned that Palestinian violence risked evolving into large-scale urban terror, while Israel’s response “will slide into a pattern of behavior that resembles the South Africans.”

Jordan’s King Abdullah II called for “international intervention to help steer the parties from the brink,” arguing that the “burning injustice of Palestine” had “fed extremism around the world.”

U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chided his colleagues in Congress for giving too much foreign aid to Israel, the largest recipient of American help, and said too little aid flows to the neediest.

“I’ve been critical of the aid we’ve given to Israel,” Leahy said in an interview. “But the same complaint could be made of a number of wealthy Muslim countries. They’re not giving aid to the poorest of their own people.”