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Endless Strummer
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For a cover story in 2001, this writer had the privilege of interviewing former Clash frontman Joe Strummer—and lemme tell ya, I was shitting bricks from the moment he said, “Hullo.” Former Robbie Williams drummer Smiley, who later backed Strummer in Los Mescaleros, had a similar first encounter. “I was like you, expecting a snarling, punk, anarchic, bitter, nasty man, and I couldn’t have been more wrong. He was the most gentle, beautiful man.” The word I’d use for Strummer would be “inquisitive,” and again, Smiley agrees. “He was more interested in anybody he met than they were in him. Whether it be an A-list celebrity or someone in the catering department, he was as interested in that person and would interrogate them till the early hours. He loved turning the tables on journalists, so they weren’t interviewing him, he was finding out all about what you did with your life—which I found hilarious, really. “He showed that you could be a punk rocker at heart and be intelligent. You didn’t have to be an angry idiot to have a punk attitude. He was the most intelligent man I’d ever met, and he was the godfather of punk—what does that tell you?” Smiley and his Mescaleros bandmate, percussionist Pablo Cook, have assembled Los Mondo Bongo, a star-powered celebration of the Strummer songbook (whence cometh the band name), and while Clash tunes get their due, material from Strummer’s promising second-wind period, cut tragically short by his passing in 2002, gets equal billing. “You gotta remember, Joe didn’t do any music for 10 years before Los Mescaleros. It wasn’t planned. It was 10 years of listening and finding a bit of peace in himself. He’d gone a long way away from the punk scene, and was very much into his ethnic music, his cumbia and folk. I think what you heard there is a guy who’d come out of the greatest punk band of all time, had a 10-year hiatus and then was stepping back in. He was marrying a lot of musical styles that had never been married. Let’s be honest, some worked, some didn’t. But the guy was bringing in a bit of everything. I don’t think he was even close to hitting his run.” Cook and Smiley’s cronies are elder statesmen of post-punk today, but once upon a time, they too gaped in youthful awe at Strummer’s intensity and impact. On board are Mike Peters of the Alarm on vocals, Gary Numan’s guitarist Steve Harris and Simple Minds bassist Derek Forbes, with Ray Gange, star of the Clash film Rude Boy, as bonus downtime DJ. “I didn’t want to do any Clash songs I didn’t do with him,” says Smiley of the set list. “I couldn’t see the point. I didn’t want to do any Mescaleros songs I didn’t have a part in. I’ve been on the phone with Mike Peters a lot this week, and he’s very much for moving these tunes around and exploring what we could do with them. We’re not going out as a Joe Strummer tribute band. We’re going out to celebrate what are fundamentally amazing pieces of music that changed people’s lives.” WITH MALCOLM BAULD AT LES SAINTS |
