Redemption Song: The Definitive Biography of Joe Strummer. Chris Salewicz
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up by accident, and was auditioned for the job of singer: as a perfect David Bowie lookalike he sang Radio One, Radio One, over Jonathan Richman’s ‘Roadrunner’ song, for ten minutes until he was requested to stop. Both Terry Chimes and Nicky ‘Topper’ Headon auditioned as drummers, Headon being offered the job although leaving after a week. ‘I remember the audition was in some tiny little basement studio,’ he told me. ‘I got the gig, but I’d already done an audition for a soul band, and that was fifty quid a week, so I went on the road with them. London SS was very loud rock’n’roll. It was a bad punk group, really. Although the fact that Generation X, the Clash and the Damned came out of it shows there was something there, it wasn’t really very good.’ Having given up the hunt for a singer, London SS started rehearsing with Mick Jones on vocals and a drummer called Roland Hot. Over Christmas of 1975 Brian James left and formed the Damned with other McLaren luminaries Rat Scabies, Dave Vanian and Captain Sensible, leaving the London SS back at square one for Mick Jones and Tony James – although the Sex Pistols had unsuccessfully attempted to contact Jones to offer him the role of second guitarist.
On 18 November 1975 Joe Strummer saw the first of two London shows at the Hammersmith Odeon by Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen, who had never played in London before, was promoting his Born to Run album, his third LP, a landmark record, which saw him touted as ‘the future of rock’n’roll’. ‘When Strummer went to see Springsteen his head was turned,’ said Clive Timperley. ‘The whole idea of Springsteen doing full-on three-hour concerts. Strummer thought, “That’s the way to do it!”’ The fact that Springsteen played a Telecaster was significant for Joe, who saw it as a sign. Joe even bought an excessively long guitar lead, allowing him to wander at will about the stage and even into the audience – just like Springsteen. Clive Timperley recalled that Joe Strummer’s performing histrionics became even more exaggerated; at one gig the guitarist noticed as he launched into a lengthy solo that Joe had disappeared offstage and was lying on an old mattress in the wings; as the moment came for his microphone cue, he sprang up and – as though shot from a cannon – hurtled across the stage, bursting into his vocal lines with perfect split-second timing. Springsteen-like, the 101’ers’ sets got longer: they would often play almost thirty songs, onstage for over ninety minutes, at a time when established high-energy acts like Steve Marriott’s Humble Pie were getting away with thirty-five minutes, including encore.
Joe Strummer’s invigorated stage performance was not all he took from that much-hyped Hammersmith Odeon Springsteen concert. Born to Run, a unique and hugely influential album, was a record that combined an epic rock’n’roll feel with songs that were stories of ‘street life’ in Springsteen’s highly mythologized home town of Asbury Park in New Jersey. The Clash’s similar mythologizing of Notting Hill could be seen as coming partially from here, as well as from the references to Kingston, Jamaica, and specifically Trenchtown, in reggae records, notably those by the newly elected king of the genre, Bob Marley. ‘I was actually turned onto playing reggae by Mole, who was the bass player for the 101’ers, who finally made me really listen to Big Youth and feel it and I sort of saw the light,’ Joe told me. ‘I found it quite hard to step from R’n’B into that deep reggae style. But once it was under your skin it became almost a passion.’ So stirred was Joe by these profound Jamaican rhythms that, on a trip to Warlingham to see his mother and father, he found he couldn’t get the ‘Chh-chh’ sound of the high-hat out of his mind. ‘I went back to London and said, “Give me that record and put it on again.” That’s when we first tried to play reggae, was very early in the 101’ers.’ Although at the Charlie Pigdog Club Mole would occasionally sing a version of ‘Israelites’, the Desmond Dekker classic, Joe recalled the group’s reggae efforts were largely restricted to rehearsals.
As well as the Springsteen dates, there had been another significant show in the London rock’n’roll calendar that November in 1975. On the sixth of the month the Sex Pistols had played their first ever gig at St Martin’s School of Art. Five songs into the set the plug was pulled; among the numbers was a cover of the Small Faces’ ‘Whatcha Gonna Do About It’ in which the singer Johnny Rotten swapped the word ‘hate’ for ‘love’ in the line ‘I want you to know that I love you’. The next day they played at Joe’s alma mater, Central School of Art and Design in Holborn. They got through a thirty-minute set.
The vice-social secretary at Central was Sebastian Conran, son of design guru Terence Conran, who had given him the lease of a substantial house in Albany Street, next to Regent’s Park. One of those he rented rooms to was the new girlfriend of Mickey Foote. ‘As Mickey Foote was a friend of Joe’s,’ Sebastian told me, ‘we had the 101’ers come and play at one of our parties. It was good – I was really into the 101’ers. That was when I first met Joe.’ When the 101’ers played a Christmas concert at Central on 17 December, booked by Sebastian Conran in his capacity as Vice-Social Secretary, he also designed a poster for the show.
Towards the end of 1975, however, Joe Strummer had begun to question the position of Mole within the 101’ers. Dan Kelleher, a guitarist friend of Clive Timperley, had guested with the group since the summer, until on 7 October, when the group played at the Nashville Rooms, he joined the 101’ers as a full member, another guitarist. ‘Once, late at night,’ said Jill Calvert, ‘Joe showed me a drawing he’d done of Mole. Then he said, “I’m gonna sack him.” He was asking, “Is it OK to sack Mole?” I wish I had said, “No, it isn’t. You shouldn’t.” There was a weakness in Joe – and I do regard it as a weakness – that he was pressured by the idea that “Dan can play every Beatles song.” Mole was actually much more musical than Dan, much more inventive: he was totally into reggae. The thing is, he was bald, and he was not pretty. So Joe was saying, “Well, Dan can stand on stage and look like Paul McCartney, and sound like Paul McCartney, and he can hold it all together. Mole stands there and looks odd.” Joe was obviously wanting it to look right onstage. Dan was a friend of Timperley’s and they were sort of “the straights”. But it was Joe and Richard who were really the driving power.’ On 11 January 1976 Mole played his last show with the 101’ers at the Red Cow in Hammersmith. He officially left the group four days later, when Dan Kelleher – renamed ‘Desperate Dan’ – switched from guitar to bass. When I asked Boogie who Joe most related to in the group, he insisted that it was Mole. Such dispensing with people would become a characteristic of the behaviour of Joe Strummer – largely in his career, though also in personal relations. Soon would come the turn of the entire 101’ers to be so especially selected.
Joe Strummer’s life wasn’t all one relentless slog keeping the 101’ers on course. He stayed in touch with his old close friend Paul Buck. ‘Once we had a wonderful Christmas,’ Paul told me. ‘He came down with Paloma over Christmas 1975. He wrote to me, “I’ve met this wonderful Spanish girl and her mum’s coming over for Christmas. Can you tell me of a decent B&B, somewhere around the farm, and we’ll come down there, because it’s nice countryside, and maybe we can meet up for a beer or something.” I said, “Don’t worry about the B&B: just come and stay here.” He turned up, there was him, Paloma, the drummer Richard Dudanski, his girlfriend Esperanza, their mother and some guy called Julio who didn’t speak any English. The whole bunch took over the house. Paloma and her mum were cooking Christmas dinner in the kitchen. My dad came back from the pub completely bemused. I’d forgotten to mention to him that they were coming.’
Joe took other holidays with Paul Buck; together they went to the Norfolk Broads for a few days. On another occasion they hitch-hiked down to Bexhill-on-Sea, where, for the purposes of this trip, the young man originally known as John Mellor was again calling himself ‘Rooney’. ‘It was so cold that we lit a fire on the concrete on the seafront. We were nice and warm and then the bloody thing exploded, because the trapped air got so hot that the fire exploded and threw us over a wall.’
Without Joe being aware of it, though, things were moving around him. ‘We used to go and see the 101’ers a lot,’ Mick Jones said. ‘He was out doing it, and we looked up to that. We never thought we could approach him. We’d looked around and we’d seen every band going, because we needed a singer. But there was a guy there who we knew we wanted more than anyone else. Bernie said, “Let’s ask him.” But we didn’t do it yet.’
While playing at the Elgin in November