The history of The Clash is likely to be second nature to readers of everythingsgonegreen, but perhaps the story of Strummer and his stop-start solo career may need a brief reminder.
Strummer hadn’t so much gone under the radar in the 1990s, he was lost at sea, a non-recording artist only seen in brief doses. While Mick Jones had found a niche market with hit-makers Big Audio Dynamite just two years out from his departure from The Clash, Strummer had struggled to make his mark, despite some laudable efforts on soundtracks and a solitary solo album, Earthquake Weather.
So, by the late 1990s there were modest expectations from a man whose recording output in the ten years after Earthquake Weather were mere one-offs such as an England World Cup anthem with Black Grape. But he’d gotten a band together, called them the Mescaleros (the name of an Apache tribe which Strummer heard in a cowboy film) and hit the studio and the road.
The original line up consisted of Strummer on vocals and guitar, Antony Genn on guitar, Scott Shields on bass, Martin Slattery on keyboards and guitar, Pablo Cook on percussion, and Steve Barnard (aka "Smiley") on drums.
I caught them at T in the Park in central Scotland in the summer of 1999 and was blown away by a startling set that was dominated with several Clash tunes such as ‘Tommy Gun’, ‘Rock the Casbah’, and ‘London Calling’. The new material, like ‘X-Ray Style’ and ‘Tony Adams’ sounded fresh, and imaginative, but with more Clash than Mescaleros tracks in the set I wondered what he had to offer in the final year of the millennium.
What appeared in the shops a few months after T in the Park, in the form of Rock Art and the X-Ray Style, was a dazzling array of styles, moods and ideas that was typically Strummer. He had again found a way to offer something exciting. This was Year Zero part 2 for the Londoner. Fellow Mescalero Genn produced the album and co-wrote several songs with Richard Flack “at the controls.”
Rock Art opens with ‘Tony Adams’, which was named after the England and Arsenal defender, but actually had nothing to do with Adams nor for that matter football. It also namechecked Tony Bennett but Strummer clearly felt calling it after the crooner was less acceptable. It is a mish-mash of influences, with a reggae backdrop and sax riffs, and an outpouring of somewhat obscure lyrics, which Strummer spits out almost at random. But it has an underlying theme of a natural disaster or man-made devastation that’s hit New York and Strummer is surveying the endless damage: “The whole city is a debris of broken heels and party hats/ I'm standing on the corner that's on a fold on the map/ I lost my friends at the deportee station/ I'll take immigration into any nation.”
‘Sandpaper Blues’ contains African chants and Strummer continues his long-time love affair with the Latin world: “It's gonna boom Mariachi/ This really fine piece of madera/ And this will be the counter/ Of the Pueblo Tabacalera.” I’m afraid I can’t tell you what that last reference is about.
‘Techno D-Day’ relates Strummer’s real experience with po-faced police at a summer festival as he spun his beloved tunes: “Well it was a techno D-day out on Omaha beach/ I was a reserve DJ playing Columbian mountain beats/ Andres Landeros, ay mi sombrero/ Hold onto your hats, we gotta go.” Landeros is an obscurity to Western ears but not to the former Clash man and he would feature on the soundtrack to the Strummer film, The Future is Unwritten. The band make it clear who is right in this stand-off: “And this is all about free speech.” It’s by far the rockiest track on Rock Art, reflecting perhaps the anger Strummer felt at meddling cops.
‘Forbidden City’ is a standard rock track, akin to ‘Techno D-Day’, while ‘The Road to Rock’n’roll’ and ‘Nitcomb’ bring the pace down a little, as does the beautiful closer ‘Willesden to Cricklewood’, where Strummer takes us on a wander between two largely non-descript London suburbs to meet his dope dealer.
There’s a feeling by (penultimate track) ‘Yalla Yalla’ that the album has done its dash and the treats have all been dished out, but that’s immediately disbarred by the opening lines backed by a creative rhythm: “Well so long liberty, just let's forget/ You never showed, not in my time/ But in our sons' and daughters' time/ When you get the feeling, call and you got a room.” It has multiple layers and there’s elements of ‘Straight To Hell’ (from Combat Rock) in there too if you listen closely, and a rousing chant of “Yalla yalla, yalla yalla/ Yalla yalla, ya-li-oo, whoa/ Yalla yalla, yalla yalla/ Only to shine, shine in gold, shine” to fade.
One also has to mention the cover art which is reminiscent of the rock art style (hence the title) of Indigenous Australians, with a kangaroo among the figures on the front cover.
(Note: the cover art is a Damien Hirst creation – Ed)
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