Moe sent me this:
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Joe Strummer  is Dead;
 Long Live the Clash!
by GAVIN MARTIN
The Christmas card from Joe Strummer and family  arrived by email on Sunday
night, a seasonal greeting accompanied by Joe's colourful illustration of a
fantasy festive scene.  I was touched Strummer was always such a generous
host, keen to entertain and be entertained, full of the Christmas spirit  all
year round. Like me he was no doubt relishing the chance  to celebrate the
festive period with friends and family.
Then, just as I was preparing to send  a return salutation, I checked the e
mail on Monday and the genuinely  shocking news from his record company came
through the ether.  The Christmas message had been sent on Thursday 19th.
When I had received it Joe Strummer was already dead.
Even now it seems hard to believe. The  Strummer I came to know over the past
20 odd years was always  an infectious and inspiring presence, alive with
energy and ideas.  Not the sort of bloke who would simply lie down and pass
away peacefully in his sleep.
I first interviewed him shortly after  The Clash had split up. He was a rock
legend, who'd lead The  Clash out of punk onto to become one of the biggest
bands in  the world. Drug problems and ballooning egos had caused the band  
to split. It was undoubtably a cause for regret and he'd tried  to effect a
reunion with Jones several times. But Joe's belief  in the power of music to
effect change remained strong, a passion that continued as long as he drew
breath. During our conversation  we discovered that we'd both recently
buried. Our fathers and  Joe's mother had just been diagnosed with terminal
cancer, tears  were shed as we downed our drinks. A proud punk rebel with a  
big soft heart Strummer was also a loving son and an attentive  father. As a
musician and as a human being it was his ability  to express his deepest
feelings - anger or grief, sadness or  fear - that made him special.
His father had been a Foreign office  employee, and he was born John Graham
Mellor in Ankara Turkey  1952. As an infant he lived in Mexico, Germany and
Cairo before  he and his elder brother David were sent to boarding school in
Epsom Surrey. He recalled being beaten at school by the day pupils  "they
used wooden coat hangers, golf clubs, hockey sticks  and leather slippers
anything you could beat a person with"  he told me. Music provided an escape
hatch, something to believe  in, the place where he could assert himself.
" The Stones, The Beatles, The Who  and Hendrix there was no time for
anything else really. After  I heard The Rolling Stones Not Fade Away I never
paid attention  to anything in school. Music was everything," he told me.
But, while Joe was obsessed with the  idea that rock culture could change the
world his brother David  became withdrawn and solitary. The brothers argued
when David  got involved with the racist National Front and the occult. But  
the flirtation was short lived on July 19th 1970 David committed  suicide in
London's Regent Park.
The loss affected Joe deeply but made  him more determined to pursue his
musical goals. He was expelled  from London Central School of Art for taking
LSD. He played in  a succession of bands in Wales, with his friend Tymon Dogg
he busked around Europe and London in the style of folk legend Woody  
Guthrie. Back in London he found a home squatting at 101 Walterton  Terrace
and found minor league fame with the pub rock band The  101ers.
But, when The 101ers had released their  one and only single Keys To Your
Heart (written and sung by Joe)  their frontman had seen The Sex Pistols in
April 1976. It was  a sign that pub rock was dead and the rock n roll
revolution  Strummer had longed for had finally arrived.
"It was like an atom bomb going  off in your mind, I was driven by The
Pistols and everything  they were doing," he told me.
Bernie Rhodes a friend of Pistols manager  Malcolm McLaren introduced him to
aspiring punk musicians Mick  Jones and Paul Simonon and The Clash was born.
With Mick Jones knack for arrangements and melody and Strummer's ability to
deal  put weighty subjects - unemployment, social decay and race riots  -
into incisive headline grabbing lyrics, one of the great songwriting  
partnerships in Britrock history was born.
Though cheapened by imitations over the  years the group's self titled debut
album remains a punk rock  landmark. AS a teenager growing up in Ireland the
effect was  immediate and transformative this was music that I'd never dared
imagine stuttering invention, righteous politics, proud and defiant  of the
old order. When The Clash debut appearance in Belfast  was cancelled hours
before the group were due onstage a riot  broke. Riots were not unusual in
Belfast back then but this protest  was unique because the participants were
united not divided by  creed or religion. A homegrown Belfast punk scene that
crossed  sectarian line was the direct result.
The punk dictates were something Joe  soon rebelled against but he refused to
be drawn into a slanging  match with lead Pistol Johnny Rotten. Rotten always
delighted  in ridiculing The Clash. I asked him why he'd never responded.  
"He's one of the best poets we have, a real poet. Poets  deserve respect," he
told me.
The fact was that Strummer's band would  have a more lasting effect than the
group that inspired them.  Joe's sense of community, his determination to
reach out to all  those who'd ever felt victimized or isolated grew out of
his childhood experiences. When The Clash went on tour, Strummer's  hotel
room became an open house for followers seeking a floor  to sleep on. With
his brother's suicide he'd seen what happened  when loneliness and isolation
were allowed to fester and onstage  it was as if he were trying to reach out
to every lost or confused  soul in the audience.
Over the course of five albums The Clash  rewrote the punk rulebook with a
musical game plan that embraced  reggae, r&b, funk, folk, calypso, jazz and
rap. Classic singles  - Complete Control, White Man in the Hammersmith Palais
and Bankrobber  - were accompanied by albums that showed a hotbed of
creativity.  London Calling with its Cold War inspired title track was  their
masterpiece but the ambitious Sandinista, named after the  revolutionary
Nicaraguan group was their most ambitious and diverse.  Joe had found out
about the Sandinista rebellion from Moe Armstrong  a onetime member of Daddy
Longlegs.
"They'd made a big noise when they  came to London in 1969 and Moe had become
very left wing, he  gave us info that was quite hard to find out. A bunch of
teenage  Marxists oust your favourite dictator? The establishment don't  want
to know."
The Clash began to fall apart when drummer  Topper Headon was dismissed over
a burgeoning heroin problem,  soon after Rhodes and Strummer sacked Jones for
"straying  from the original idea of The Clash". Typically Joe would  later
take the blame for the split figuring that he "deserved  to eat humble pie".
Despite many lucrative offers the group  never reformed but they patched up
their differences and he,  Jones, Headon and Simonon remained firm friends.
Indeed before Christmas he appeared onstage with Jones at a benefit for
striking  firemen, and the entire band was poised to play together in New  
York next year when they were inaugurated into the rock n roll  Hall of Fame.
There was one last Clash classic after  Mick Jones departed, the definitive
statement of Thatcher era  despair This Is England. But Joe was hardly
inactive for the  last 15 years of his life. He replaced Shane MacGowan for a
while  in The Pogues, worked as a producer, played for Amnesty International,  
had a fitful career as an actor. In the summer he was a regular  at
Glastonbury Festival his ever-present soundbox pumping out  world music
classic by the campfire. And he enjoyed going off  to his bolthole in Spain
for the holidays with his family and  his guitar.
Three years ago he decided it was time  to "get back to rocking" and formed
The Mescaleros.  The three nights I spent with him first in Finland near the
land  of the midnight sun and at a London recording studio where the  group
recorded their first album. Joe was thrilled at the prospect  of recording in
the studio in an area of North West London rich in ethnic diversity but also
because it was where Free had recorded  Alright Now. His passion for music
was sometimes as surprising  as it was infectious. One night in an Indian
restaurant he and  the owner enthused over Keith West's cheesy 1967 hit
"Excerpt  From A Teenage Opera". A few days after Christmas a friend  
received an excited answer phone ordering him to celebrate Bo  Diddley's
birthday, he always cherished the memory of playing  with Bo, his musical
lodestar, on the first Clash tour of America.
The time I spent with him was always  some of the most rewarding and
inspiring of my professional career.  Which was just as it should be, if it
weren't for Strummer I  doubt I'd ever have thought it was possible to make a
living  writing about music. He always thought rock n roll could change
lives, the most fitting testimony I can think to give to my old friend is to
say Hey Joe; you were right. Adios amigo.
 Gavin Martin  lives in London, where he writes about music. He can be
reached  at: gavin.martin@virgin.net