Outspoken and uncompromising, Joe Strummer was the epitome of punk. A gung-ho but big-hearted rebel, with his band the Clash he made sharp-edged, angry music which struck blows against what he saw as the complacency of both the political and musical establishments.
His only rival as the main spokesman for the punk revolution which transformed British youth culture in the late 1970s was Johnny Rotten. Yet unlike the Sex Pistols's singer, Strummer maintained his punk radicalism. When he was interviewed in this paper last year about his most recent album, Global A Go-Go, the writer observed that he was "the only the only rock star of his generation . . . who hasn't mellowed with age". Only last month, he was to be found playing a benefit gig for the striking Fire Brigades Union, with his new band, the Mescaleros.
The son of a British diplomat, he was born John Graham Mellor in Ankara and spent his early years living variously in Turkey, Mexico, Germany and Egypt. Educated at a Surrey boarding school and art college, he had a spell busking on the London underground, after which he formed his first band, the 101ers, playing amiable R&B on the mid-1970s London pub-rock circuit.
But he was frustrated by what he saw as the stagnation of the music scene of the time. In April 1976, the 101ers were supported at a London date by an emerging group called the Sex Pistols. Their volatile and nihilistic garage rock sounded crude and unrehearsed. Yet Strummer became convinced that the energy of the emerging punk movement could be harnessed to revolutionise British music. Within two months he had teamed up with guitarist Mick Jones, bass player Paul Simonon and drummer Nicky "Topper" Headon to form the Clash.
Managed by Bernie Rhodes, an associate of the Sex Pistols's manager Malcolm MacLaren, they swiftly built a following at punk venues such as London's 100 Club. Then, late in 1976, they joined the Sex Pistols on their "Anarchy in the UK" tour. With punk already making front-page headlines for its alleged violence and moral threat to the nation's youth, all but three of the 19 planned dates were cancelled by anxious promoters.
Such notoriety only enhanced punk's appeal. Major record labels were soon jumping on the bandwagon and after making some demos for Polydor, in January 1977 the Clash signed to CBS Records. Their first single was the provocatively titled White Riot, a raw, aggressive, streetwise song with Strummer's angry lyrics snarled at breakneck speed.
It reached only number 38 but the band's debut album, The Clash, made number 12 on its release in the spring of 1977. Taking unemployment, alienation and rebellion as its subject matter and recorded in a matter of days, it remains, along with the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks, punk's definitive statement.
In many ways, Strummer's songs were responding to the same events and sense of political drift that led to Margaret Thatcher's radical Conservatism. But Strummer moved in the opposite direction and was spotted at gigs wearing a T-shirt supporting the Italian Red Brigade held responsible for the murder of the former Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro. He also expressed his support for Germany's Red Army Faction, better known as the Baader-Meinhoff gang.
Given the group's provocative attitude, trouble inevitably followed them. During their 1977 White Riot tour, Strummer and Headon were arrested and fined for spray-painting "Clash" on a wall. The same pair spent a night in jail in Newcastle, ludicrously charged with stealing a pillowcase from a local Holiday Inn. They responded by calling their next tour "Out on Parole". The group even managed the not inconsiderable feat of inciting a riot when they performed in genteel Bournemouth.
They put their money behind their political convictions, and in April 1978 they headlined a free Anti-Nazi League festival in London, organised by the pressure group Rock Against Racism. But their politics and growing commercial success were always in potential conflict, as Strummer recognised in the single White Man in Hammersmith Palais, in which he struggled with the dilemma of punk rockers "turning rebellion into money".
The group's second album, Give 'Em Enough Rope, appeared in November 1978 and went straight into the charts at number two, kept from the top spot by the soundtrack to the film Grease. The recruitment of the top American rock producer Sandy Pearlman smoothed over some of the group's rougher edges but did nothing to lessen their political anger in songs such as Guns on the Roof and Tommy Gun, which gave them their first British top 20 single. "Protest songs, that's what you'd call them. Folk songs with an electric guitar," Strummer said at the time.
A four-track EP which included a suitably venomous version of Bobby Fuller's I Fought the Law was released in summer 1979 as a holding operation while they broke America and began planning their third album, London Calling. Produced by the veteran Guy Stevens, the double album is widely regarded as the group's finest, as reggae and rockabilly tunes take their place alongside raw punk aggression on songs such as The Guns of Brixton and Revolution Rock. London Calling only reached number nine in the British charts, but it remains one of the most influential rock albums of all time. Among those to fall under its influence was Bob Dylan's son Jacob, who now leads his own band, the Wallflowers, and recently cited London Calling above his father's work as the record that "changed his life".
