Redemption Song: The Definitive Biography of Joe Strummer. Chris Salewicz
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even claimed to Helen Cherry that he had ‘figured out Spanish: you just put “o” on the end of every word’.
The two Romero sisters could not legally remain in Britain. What could be done? They would have to get married to British citizens. When it became clear during the summer of 1975 that the girls were liable to be deported, Richard Nother married Esperanza; they remain married to this day. But between Woody Mellor and Paloma there was a complication. For Woody was already married. On 16 May 1975 there had been a wedding at St Pancras Registry Office between himself and one Pamela Jill Moolman, a South African girl who wanted to stay in Britain; Pamela was a friend of a girl who had been living at 101 Walterton Road. For helping her out, she paid Woody £120, with which he promptly bought a Fender Telecaster, precisely the instrument wielded by Wilko Johnson with Dr Feelgood. Although her boyfriend had the guitar of his dreams, this was no help to Paloma: accordingly, Richard’s brother Pat Nother stepped into the breach and married her – with no fee involved. ‘People did that all the time then,’ said Jill Calvert. Paloma’s relationship with Joe allowed him to open up, perhaps for the first time. ‘He told me about David – he said that his brother had chosen death and he had chosen life: he had decided to go for it entirely. For his parents, he said, “What a horrible thing – that shatters a family.”’
Now came a rush of creative energy. Woody Mellor began to write his first songs for the group. Was he inspired by being in love? This was evident from the words of the first song he wrote for the 101’ers, ‘Keys to Your Heart’.
‘All of us in the 101’ers were very intense rhythm’n’blues freaks – you know, really intense,’ Joe said about that first song that he wrote for the 101’ers. ‘We had a great knowledge of blues and rhythm’n’blues, and we just pulled our music out of that. And then, like in any group’s life, I realized we had to start writing our own material. So I wrote Keys to Your Heart, and I was just overjoyed that it came out good, and we could put it over in the set at the Chippenham. And people would still keep leaping around the room and dancing to it.’
Jules Yewdall has a set of the words of ten of the 101’ers’ songs, typed out by Joe on his own typewriter, accompanying a cassette recorded as the songs on the lyric-sheets were played live in the damp, mattress-soundproofed basement of 101 Walterton Road. The ten songs on the tape are staples of the 101’ers’ live set, and show the speed at which new songs had developed in less than six months: tunes such as ‘Motor Boys Motor’, ‘Keys to Your Heart’, ‘Mr Sweety of the St Moritz’ and ‘Standing by a Silent Telephone’.
These ten demo songs were specifically recorded by Joe Strummer to be placed in a bank vault by Jules Yewdall, to secure his legal status to their copyright. In that oh-so-familiar, adenoidal voice, whose tone manages both a grin and just the suspicion of a smirk, he ensures that each song is specifically identified. ‘That was “Motor Boys Motor”, and this is “The Keys to Your ’Eart”,’ the ‘H’ dropped so hard you can hear it fall.
The simplicity and directness of the songs is very apparent, and much of the material has the loose jamming feel of later Clash material. It is also perfectly clear that, despite an occasionally wonky delivery, Joe Strummer has found his voice in the often hilarious narrative structure of the lyrics. It is evident that right back in 1975, so many of those creative aspects we might have believed only developed in the Clash were already present: that melodic moodiness of style, that drive of energy arrowing straight from the heart. These early songs show you that almost everything Joe would do in the Clash he was already attempting with the 101’ers: that odd discordant gruffness in his voice, the chopping rhythm guitar, the ironic asides. ‘Mr Sweety of the St Moritz’ is fantastic in its lyrical, almost certainly autobiographical complexity, the sort of words he might well have written with the Clash; the song was written as a kind of note of criticism to the owner of the St Moritz nightclub in Wardour Street in London’s Soho, where the 101’ers played a total of three times, starting on 18 June 1975.
hey mr. sweety of the saint moritz we re cashing in all our chips life wont be so funny without your money but we re sick of playing all these hits
More personal is ‘Standing by a Silent Telephone’. The song is disguised as Joe’s lament to ‘Suzie’, ‘I was living just for loving just from you.’ But she’s not around, and doesn’t call: Standing by a silent telephone, me and bakelite all alone. ‘Me and bakelite all alone’ – a small stroke of Joe Strummer genius.
The ability to make people smile in their hearts and on their faces was always one of the talents of Joe Strummer. And many of these lyrics are frankly hilarious, evidence of a highly intelligent wit. On the Bo Didelys’ [sic] ‘Six Gun Blues’, the words are built around a perfect narrative structure: But kettles don’t boil if you watch em / And suns don’t rise on demand.
Significantly, on the card inlay in the tape’s box, the man formerly known as Woody has scratched out the name ‘John Mellor’ and replaced it with a new one: ‘JOE STRUMMER’. Somewhere around May of 1975 Woody Mellor decided to become Joe Strummer, unwilling to answer to any other name. Although ‘Joe’ would insist that his contemporaries at 101 Walterton Road address him by his new name, it was more complex for those he had known longer: ‘Dave Goodall was allowed to still call him Woody,’ said Jill Sinclair. ‘In terms of the male hierarchy, the pecking order, Tymon and Dave were above Joe. Joe was a bit of a kid. He did want us to call him Joe, but he wouldn’t make an issue of it with us.’ ‘Somewhere through the 101’ers,’ remembered Helen Cherry, ‘he was like, “I’m Joe,” and you couldn’t call him Woody – he’d be angry.’
Things were falling into place for the 101’ers. In April 1975 Allan Jones, Joe’s old friend from Newport art college, had given the group a minute mention in Melody Maker’s Hot Licks gossip column. Jones contrasted New York act Television with ‘a really exciting band like the 101ers, with a stack of AC30s playing gigs like the Charlie Pigdog club for a packet of peanuts and half a bitter’. Tiny as this piece of publicity was, it served its purpose, as Joe later told Mal Peachey: ‘Dr Feelgood came along, and there was a group called the Michigan Flyers, and there was us. And those three groups were fantastic. We fell into that scene, and we began to rock at the Elgin. ’Cos in Newport one of the students there was Allan Jones, who later began to edit Melody Maker, and he wrote a paragraph in Melody Maker when he was a cub reporter, about how the 101’ers could really rock, ’cos one day he came down to the Charlie Pig Dog club, and I took this cutting – and after I cut it out it was like three lines long and I should have left it on the page – but anyway I cut it out and it looked kinda like a postage stamp. And I took this, and some of the group, and we went around pubs in West London, and eventually at the Elgin [in Ladbroke Grove] I put this cutting on the bar, and the gingerheaded landlord picked it up and he went, “All right: a fiver, Monday.” And that was when we first broke out of our own scene, and soon that became like a hotspot, us playing the Elgin in the back room.
‘We used to push our gear there in a pram, and one night the pram got nicked while we were playing. I remember standing outside the pub going, “This is a hard world. They’ve stolen the pram that we used to pile the amps up on.” And we’d push it back over the hill into Maida Vale. And then because he was doing such good business he switched us to a Thursday.’
10
‘THIS MAN IS A STAR!’
1975–1976
One by one the houses in Walterton Road were being demolished by the council – it was as though a wartime ghetto was being relentlessly razed. Finally, the only house remaining – everything else around it a state of almost unidentifiable rubble – was 101 Walterton Road, tucked away down at the bottom of the street. Much as there had been problems with the property – the outside toilet, the lack of hot water, the fleas – the house and its inbuilt difficulties had become a defiant energy power-point. Not only had it bonded together a group of musicians and given them somewhere to live and rehearse, it had supplied the name of their group. But the relatively settled existence at 101 Walterton Road was about to end. It too was scheduled for demolition.