Classic Album Revisited: The Clash - The People’s Hall (1982/2022)

Craig Stephen on the bonus album released when Combat Rock gained its obligatory 40^th anniversary deluxe spurs in 2022:

Here at everythingsgonegreen we really need no excuse to review a Clash album … even when we’ve done it before. So, yes, I have reviewed Combat Rock, the last great Clash album, and you can read that here.

But the album’s re-release comes with an additional collection, The People’s Hall, recorded around the same time, but has been kept under wraps until now.

People’s Hall has been dubbed a cash-in and a luxury item for collectors. I’d say otherwise. Having played this several times I’d say it is a collection that stands on its own. Yes, it is a mixed bag and the snapshots of chitter chatter from the crowd outside a gig (‘Outside Bonds’) could really have been ditched, but that’s the exception to the rule. This is well worth buying even if you have Combat Rock already. 

Here's the condensed backstory: in December 1980 The Clash released the beguiling and beautiful triple album Sandinista! and in May and June of the following year played what would become a 17-show residency at New York’s Bond’s Casino to promote it. Those shows have gone down in musical history.

Before a tour of Asia, the band rehearsed and recorded at The People’s Hall in London, from where 11 of the tracks were recorded (the exception being ‘Outside Bonds’, obviously). It’s the bridging period between Sandinista! and Combat Rock, and you can discern the development going on. Some of the tracks were re-recorded for Combat Rock or ended up on B-sides; some were taken no further.

‘This Is Radio Clash’ was released as a single at the end of 1981. This version, which effectively opens People’s Hall, contains slightly different lyrics. Apart from that it doesn’t differ greatly from the single version. But the original version of ‘Know Your Rights’ veers greatly from the Combat Rock take. While all the crucial elements are there Strummer sings the lyrics straight, but on the finished version he sounds more mocking, and the guitars are edgier. I’d say they tidied it up pretty neatly for the version that the world knows now and gave it a new interpretation.

 Among the highlights is an extended and looser version of ‘Sean Flynn’ (Errol Flynn’s son who disappeared in south-east Asia while working as a photojournalist). As I listen to this particular track I feel I am being transported to the rail tracks and fields in rural Thailand where the photo session for the Combat Rock cover was taken. It’s magnificent, it feels as if The Doors are in Saigon having a jam session and letting it all out. 

‘Futura 2000’ draws from sessions with New York’s graffiti artist of the same name, revealing some raw and ready proto hip hop and contains one straight bassline played endlessly to great effect. ‘Radio One’ allows reggae great Mikey Dread to do his own, inimitable thing, ‘Midnight To Stevens’ is a tribute to bonkers producer Guy Stevens, and there’s tracks like ‘Long Time Jerk’ and ‘First Night Back In London’ that were relegated to B-sides when they deserved much better. Add in the instrumental ‘He Who Dares or Is Tired’ and you have something of a party punch. That was never served up to revellers.

At the same time The Clash worked with The Beat’s resident toaster Ranking Roger for versions of ‘Rock the Casbah’ and ‘Red Angel Dragnet’, both of which were omitted from People’s Hall and issued as a stand-alone single to fleece more money out of Clash fans.

People’s Hall was a working project for a new album but Combat Rock was the second life of a rolling project, with Mick Jones’ intention to have the band’s fifth album stretch to over an hour and be called Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg. The Clash were always drawn to different sounds and their love of reggae is renowned but this album would have been expanded to soak in Jones’ love for New York funk and hip-hop, and dub. 

The band and its mercurial/autocratic manager Bernie Rhodes instantly dismissed it. Jones was gutted and barely attended the remix sessions, which is understandable as he would be witnessing another producer, Glyn Johns, slash and burn his cherished work to create what we have now as Combat Rock. Rat Patrol has since been bootlegged to hell and back but it still needs to be given a full and official release. Why it hasn’t is a mystery given so much unreleased Clash material has already been resurrected.

Nevertheless, while you wait, indulge in this intriguing bonus album which, despite what some critics might say, offers another side of The Clash and takes the listener to another time and world, to the emerging hip-hop scene, to post-war Vietnam, and to … well, wherever you want to be.

(This is not a) Classic Album Review: The Clash - Cut The Crap (1985)

Craig Stephen continues his extensive overview of The Clash and its wider musical legacy (see multiple posts about “solo” Joe Strummer and The Clash elsewhere on the blog):

And this is not a typical album review. You kind of can’t with something so universally despised by critics, dismissed by Clash fans, and even rejected by its creator. Cut the Crap truly was a disaster of epic proportions, a stinker extraordinaire that as a Clash fan myself I’ve only ever given one or two spins as the headaches proved too much.

Instead, this is the story behind the making of the worst punk record. The personality clashes, the sackings, the accelerated decline of the world’s best rock band of the time and the incredible mistakes propelled by egos and insecurity.

The decline of the Clash began, perhaps, in late 1982 when drummer Topper Headon, by then a caricature of a human being due to his Colombian-scale consumption of heroin, was sacked. A year later the band’s main songwriter Mick Jones was gone too. The two musicians in the band had left. And manager Bernie Rhodes, who could be credited with the band’s early success but also with sowing division, was now back at the helm. Joe Strummer turned to Rhodes’ ruthless situationist streak to cut out all the superfluous, superficial, middle class BS.

Pete Howard was first in, replacing Headon’s replacement Terry Chimes, while Jones was still in the band. Howard would soon take a call from a wired Strummer telling him he’d “sacked the stoned cunt” and demanding to know if he was on Jones’ or Strummer’s side. Howard, clearly knowing where the power lay, affirmed he was pro-Joe. Nick Sheppard, once the guitarist with pseudo punk band The Cortinas, was roped in first, followed by Gregory White whose name wasn’t rock’n’roll enough for the band so became Vince – after Vince Taylor. They were both replacements for Mick Jones.

The trigger for the album which was initially called Out of Control was the 1984 tour that featured several new tracks. These gigs signalled a return to punk rock, or Rebel Rock as it would be dubbed by the band. There would be no dub tracks, no soul-fun workouts, no kids singing … it would be all about the music, and they’d only play with Les Pauls.

The Clash were now a band but not a unit. Strummer and Paul Simonon the only other surviving member, were the new Clash; Howard, Sheppard and White were self-professed guns for hire, taking a weekly wage. And in time even Strummer and Simonon would become secondary to Rhodes’ inflated sense of worth.

A mini tour of California in January 1984 played to smaller venues than the stadiums that they had the year before, and was generally regarded as successful. While the classic Clash songbook prevailed, there was space for new songs like ‘Sex Mad War’, ‘Three Card Trick’ and ‘This is England’. A particularly impressive track, ‘In The Pouring Rain’ (it’s on the Future is Unwritten soundtrack), was aired at some gigs during 1984 but wasn’t included on the eventual album, presumably because it just didn’t fit.

With the return of a punk sound came the unwanted return of gobbing. Which at a Brixton Academy gig in March 1984 so incensed Strummer he threatened to kill someone. And wasn’t joking about it.

Strummer was sporting a Mohican – not quite à la The Exploited - and there was a militaristic ambience about this new act, including calling the new members recruits who were part of a platoon, rather than a band. There were dictums left, right, and centre and Howard equated it to being in a religious cult like the Moonies.

On a 10-day tour of Italy in the autumn of 1984 in aid of the Italian Communist Party, Strummer was absent from rehearsals and there was a single soundcheck, in which they hashed through ‘Be Bop A Lula’ before heading to the pub. Strummer was reportedly drinking two or three bottles of brandy a day.

It was a difficult time for Strummer after hearing that his mother and been diagnosed with terminal cancer, on top of his father dying at the beginning of the year. This led to the postponement of the recording of the appropriately titled Out of Control. With Strummer looking after his ailing mother, Rhodes took “complete control” and that was where it all began to go wrong. The recording of the album involved session musicians with actual members sidelined. Rhodes tinkered with it to his delight … to inevitable results.

Meantime, the band did a busking tour of the north of England in May 1985, stalking Welsh rockers The Alarm from gig to gig just to wind them up. The end came at a festival in Athens, Greece, sharing a bill with The Cure, The Stranglers, Depeche Mode and Culture Club, in July 1985.

 There was still a single and album to release, and due to a legal agreement the record label couldn’t avoid its duties even though they probably would have been keen to just ditch it and hope it went away. Which is what Strummer felt as he had left for Spain before ‘This Is England’ had been released as a single in September 1985. In Granada, Strummer produced an album for punk band 091 and worked with Spanish popstars Radio Futura. He even bought a Dodge car to drive around and eventually dump, and film-maker Nick Hall was so intrigued as to what happened with it he made an entire documentary around it, called I Need A Dodge. The film was of course a bit more about a mere car owned by a rock star: it told the tale of why Strummer went to Spain and what he did there.

Cut the Crap was released in November 1985 and as predicted by everyone was without exception derided. It was a messy, punk’n’hip hop ramble with incoherent, childlike lyrics and inane chants like We Are The Clash. None of it was coherent, none of it was pleasant listening, and the electronic drums were unbearable… And it really wasn’t punk rock. Only ‘This is England’, which was a brutal take-down of Thatcherism, greed and war, and ‘North and South’ escaped some of the savaging.

Strummer told his bandmates he was going to pen a hand-written admission of guilt in 1930s Soviet-style lettering saying he made the wrong decision. It was intended to go in all the still influential music weeklies such as NME, Sounds and Melody Maker, as well as The Guardian and wherever else. It never did appear.

It is easy to consider that this was a disastrous period for Strummer, Simonon and The Clash legacy, which was certainly tarnished by the misadventure but initially the band seemed to be doing something right. They were playing some good gigs and festivals, and the new songs didn’t sound like the lumpy, degenerate, half-baked monstrosities that they would become in Rhodes’ hands. The return to basics project after stadium tours and hob-nobbing with Michael Jackson’s manager and film stars was the right decision to make at the time. It was the execution that failed. It was tainted by Rhodes’ control freakery, the impact of family issues and bad decisions. Dealt with professionally, Cut the Crap or Out of Control as it more likely would have been called if Rhodes hadn’t had so much power, could well have been a decent album, made by people that actually wanted to make it work. One day someone will release the original demos.

'This Is England' ... 

The Strummer Files: Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros - Live at Acton Town Hall (2002/2012) & Assembly (2021)

Craig Stephen digs deep to come up with yet another addition to The Strummer Files, the blog’s extensive overview of Joe Strummer’s post-Clash musical legacy …

Live At Acton Town Hall (2012) would turn out to be the last-ever gig for Joe Strummer and his band. And suitably it was recorded for posterity.

Strummer and the Mescaleros played the inconspicuous Acton Town Hall in west London on 15 November 2002. But, on 22 December, Strummer was cruelly taken from this world following a massive heart attack at his Somerset home, aged just 50.

This release captures that gig beautifully and it was one that is significant in ways beyond the fact it was the former Clash frontman’s final ever gig.

Firstly, in fitting with Strummer’s solidarity with the working man, even when Clash riches took him into a different financial sphere from those he was defending, it was a benefit for firefighters who were striking for an improvement on their dismal wages (firefighters save lives FFS). The Fire Brigades Union-led industrial action was the first nationwide strike in the UK since the 1970s and didn’t officially end until June 2003 with a pay rise that was below the FBU’s demands, which would have seen firefighters paid fairly for their heroics.

On the stage too, there was a momentous moment when Strummer was joined by former Clash man Mick Jones for the encore, the first time the pair had performed live together since the last classic line-up Clash gig in 1983.

Thankfully, someone at the mixing desk had the foresight to press the record button, and initially the set was released in a limited vinyl run in 2012, and five years later it was released again on vinyl, for Record Store Day. Those responsible didn’t bother with any artwork, sticking a flyer into the transparent plastic sleeve. Regardless, what a treasure this is.

Strummer splits the material roughly half and half between Mescaleros tracks (much underrated) and Clash classics.

This allows recent Mescaleros material such as ‘Shaktar Donetsk’, ‘Tony Adams’, ‘Cool ‘N’ Out’, ‘Bhindee Bhagee’ (about a New Zealander who’s just got off the plane in west London and wants to know where he can buy mushy peas) and ‘Mega Bottle Ride’ to be performed. ‘Johnny Appleseed’ is an absolute standout and there are even a couple of works in progress played for one of the first times – ‘Get Down Moses’ and ‘Coma Girl’, both of which would appear on the posthumous Streetcore.

I got on the Mescaleros bandwagon quite early when I received and reviewed the debut album Rock Art and the X-Ray Style (1999) for a Scottish newspaper. I never felt in any way disappointed in any of the trio of Mescaleros albums. They weren’t meant to sound like The Clash. They traversed the globe for sounds and ideas; the band were worldly-wise and clearly enjoyed themselves making these records.

But in reality it is The Clash tracks that people mainly want to hear and there’s plenty of those, foremost those with a reggae tinge, such as ‘Rudie Can’t Fail’, ‘Police and Thieves’ and ‘(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais’. The band rachet up a gear for ‘Police On My Back’ (which appeared on Sandinista!) and ‘I Fought the Law’.

Then Jones appears for the encore to join in on ‘Bankrobber’, ‘White Riot’ and of course (given it’s in aid of firefighters) ‘London’s Burning’. I imagine the place was buzzing by the end, you can sense that on the record.

Thoughts thereafter naturally turned to a Clash reunion and rumours are that it was being considered with Strummer seemingly contacting Paul Simonon just before he died about reforming. Simonon, apparently, was dead against it.

Assembly (2021)

Coming three years after Joe Strummer 001, a double album of Strummer solo tracks from studio albums and obscure sources, Assembly is a compilation of, well, much of the same. The focus though is more on the three solo albums with tracks such as the Wailers’ ‘Redemption Song’, ‘Yalla Yalla’ and ‘At the Border, Guy’. Most fans will have these albums anyway.

What it does offer pre-Mescaleros is ‘Love Kills’ from the Sid and Nancy soundtrack and ‘Sleepwalk’ from 1989’s somewhat underwhelming Earthquake Weather. It would’ve been better to have included ‘Gangsterville’ from the same album or one of the tracks from the Walker soundtrack which was entirely-Strummer contributed.

There are unreleased gems in live versions of ‘I Fought the Law’ and ‘Rudie Can’t Fail’ performed at Brixton Academy the year before the Acton Town Hall gig, and a home recording of ‘Junco Partner’.

It’s a sturdy compilation of the critical tracks in the Mescaleros cannon, which was shorter than it should have been. But that’s life.

What we really need now is a compilation of Strummer’s post-Clash tracks that includes film material and stuff on low-selling and now hard-to-find singles.

The Strummer Files continued: Joe Strummer - Earthquake Weather (Epic, 1989)

A belated fourth addition to the three-part Strummer Files, as Craig Stephen’s lockdown listening defaults to the tried and trusted …

It’s 1989, and, four years after the remnants of The Clash fizzled out like a dud sparkler, Joe Strummer was back in the driver’s seat for his first full solo album.

Six years previous, Strummer had lost his McCartney when Mick Jones was unceremoniously booted out of The Clash just as the movement towards a bona fide stadium band was taking place. In a year they could’ve been on a par with The Who. But, largely on his own, Strummer bundled together the hopelessly inept Cut the Crap. He really needed Jones’ spark to get it back together but Jones was firmly ensconced in Big Audio Dynamite, which reached for the sky and caught it with both hands.

Strummer’s life had been upturned after The Clash: both parents had died, and he had become a devoted father and family man. Acting, soundtracks and the what-have-you were part a way of exercising the ghost of The Clash and a way to forge a new path.

Earthquake Weather lacks a few basic things, not least a strong wingman. The line-up for the album was guitarist Zander Schloss, bassist Lonnie Marshall, and two drummers Jack Irons and Willie McNeill – this being the uncredited Latino Rockabilly War.  Other than Schloss, who Strummer knew from his soundtracks and acting, the others were located in jazz clubs and small-time clubs of LA.

There’s a lot to take in. The War immersed itself in everything it could find and Earthquake Weather straddles funk, rock, reggae and folk. The best three tracks are all at the start, leaving the album as a whole as a lopsided venture.

‘Gangsterville’, the first single, and ‘King of the Bayou’ are both rock stompers, with the former visiting a place few want to stay: “Down in Gangsterville/ Where any sane people already crawled under the house/ Yeah Gangsterville, the television is always thinking about/ Real people, especially when it's hungry.”

‘Gangsterville’ was re-released on 12” for 2016 Record Store Day with three variable B-sides; but the album itself has only ever been given a poorly designed and promoted re-release about a decade ago.

‘Slant Six’ is another three-minute rock’n’roll-fuelled fast mover, on the ways and methods of the record industry – perhaps a parable of The Clash itself. “Youth, money, success and power/ Expressing your soul to critical acclaim/ Now you're insatiable -- there's no stopping you/ If something lasts for a minute -- it's scored a hit with you/ What are you gonna do for an encore?/ C'mon baby after an act like that/ People are gonna scream for more.”

Elsewhere, it is a mixed bag. ‘Boogie With Your Children’ is reminiscent of what Prince was doing at the time, going as far as to have a backing singer with a Princely falsetto. The emotional ditty ‘Leopardskin Limousines’ is recorded at about the slowest pace that Strummer could go; ‘Highway One Zero Street’ sounds rush-recorded; ‘Ride Your Donkey’ is the obligatory reggae-infused contribution to a Strummer album, and certainly one of the highlights of an album that contains more standouts than it does lemons.

While I have come to appreciate it far more on these lockdown listens, Earthquake Weather wasn’t received well at the time. I can see how that was, it was neither commercial and has too much filler. It was followed by a fallow decade; but you can also see how it lead to a reappraisal of his career, which of course, would eventually lead to the Mescaleros.

Strummer’s other post-Clash, pre-Mescaleros LPs:

Sid and Nancy soundtrack (1986)

Strummer only contributed two tracks – the brilliant ‘Love Kills’, which was issued as a single, and ‘Dum Dum Club’, but it is said that he composed much of the other music.

Straight to Hell soundtrack (1987)

As well as starring in this spoof spaghetti western, Strummer contributed two new tracks, ‘Evil Darling’ and ‘Ambush at Mystery Rock’. The other contributors were familiar from the Sid and Nancy adventure: the Pogues and Pray for Rain while Zander Schloss, later to join Strummer’s band, provided ‘Salsa Y Ketchup’.

Walker (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Alex Cox’s 1987 historical/satirical film starring Ed Harris in the eponymous role was based on the life of William Walker, the American filibuster who invaded and pronounced himself president of Nicaragua in the mid-19^th century with all the chaos and violence that is imaginable with such a scenario. Strummer, who had a cameo role in the film, composed the entire soundtrack – with 11 of the 14 tracks being instrumentals. It has a very Latin sound, as you’d expect, and is surprisingly engrossing.

Permanent Record (1987)

Joe Strummer and the Latino Rockabilly War contributed most of the soundtrack – namely ‘Trash City’ which was good enough to be a standalone single, ‘Baby the Trans’, ‘Nefertiti Rock’, ‘Nothin’ Bout Nothin’’ and (credited to Strummer alone) ‘Theme From Permanent Record’. This grim movie starred Keanu Reeves and it isn’t regarded as his finest hour and a half. The other half of the record included Lou Reed, The Stranglers, the Bodeans, The Godfathers, and J.D. Souther.

The Strummer Files: Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros - Streetcore (Hellcat Records, 2003)

The third and final instalment of Craig Stephen’s look back at Joe Strummer’s post-Clash legacy:

Posthumous albums are tricky items to evaluate: the quality all depends on how far the artist went in recording the material, and how the people tasked with completing it “interpreted” the work in progress.

Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros’ third and final studio album was released about a year after the former Clash man’s untimely death.

Whatever twiddling was done in the studio in that preceding 12 months, both opening tracks sound about as ripe and ready as could be. ‘Coma Girl’ is a rousing, go-get ‘em boy, out of control carousel of a song that screams “gig opener”. Coming across like a spontaneous world music festival meeting of Jimmy Cliff and the Wolfe Tones, it’s a rock’n’roller revved up to 11.

‘Arms Aloft’ is memorable for both being as energetic and as rousing as ‘Coma Girl’ and including my “home” city (as in being 45 minutes away). “May I remind you of that scene/ We were arms aloft in Aberdeen/ May I remind you of that scene/ Let a million mirror balls beam/ May I remind you of that scene.” That’s Aberdeen, north-east Scotland, and not one of the eight versions of it around the United States or those in places such as Canada and Hong Kong. 

‘All In A Day’ meanwhile travels through Montrose, but I may be stretching it a little bit to assume that’s the same Montrose that’s less than an hour away from Aberdeen. As often is the case with Strummer’s solo material, there’s some obscure references:

“The armor ten, and the I-95/ Tupuolo Joe honey and his rhumba jive/ The look came out, and life broke out/ 'It must be a hex'/ I swear the vinyl loaded right on the desk/ Hey, let's go do this.”

Most of the remainder of the album is set at a far more sedate pace: ‘Burnin' Streets’ could be a futuristic follow-up to a famous Clash song: “London is burnin'; don't tell the Queen/ Somebody tried to speak garage and they burnt down Bethnal Green/ Piccadilly's yearning, like a reggae beat/ Soon you're gonna be runnin' down”, with Strummer bemoaning that there are “Too many guns in the damn town”. 

And we’re taken back to 1979 once more on ‘Midnight Jam’ which begins with Strummer as DJ/ announcer: “All transmitters to full/ All receivers to boost/ This is London calling/ This is London calling”, before taking us on a worldwide journey that takes in the sounds of U-Roy and The Indestructible Beat of Soweto as well as a jail in Germany. 

There’s some bum notes: on ‘Long Shadow’, Strummer appears to be trying to sound like Johnny Cash. Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’ apparently was added on by a family member, and it really does not fit in with the modus operandi of Streetcore. There is also a version of ‘Redemption Song’ with Strummer and Johnny Cash and you’d be advised to check that one out. 

As posthumous albums go this, I’m certain Strummer would have given Streetcore the green light for go.

The Strummer Files: Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros - Global a Go-Go (Hellcat records, 2001)

Craig Stephen returns with another offering on Joe Strummer’s post-Clash legacy … 

The magnus opus of the trio of Mescaleros records was this immense and intense collection that, as its title alone suggests, took a worldwide overview, stretching from Ukraine to New Zealand. Get ready for a trip around the world in 80 minutes (or far less).

In ‘Bhindi Bhagee’, Strummer meets a New Zealander on the high road of a diverse London community, and is asked where he can get some mushy peas. A bemused Strummer replies that they haven’t got any of that particular dish, “but we do got … Balti, bhindi, strictly hindi, dal halal/ We got rocksoul, okra, Bombay duck ra/ Shrimp beansprout, comes with it or without, with it or without.” 

And he hasn’t stopped there as there’s also: “Bagels soft or simply harder/ Exotic avocado or toxic empanada/ We got akee, lassi, Somali waccy baccy” … 

Strummer is making clear to this colonial with a 1970s view of Britain that the city he’s just arrived in has diverse culinary tastes reflecting the varied cultures of modern Britain. Just as he’s finished his culinary spiel, the protagonist explains that he’s in a band and reels off the different forms of music it plays, in the same manner as above: “We got Brit pop, hip-hop, rockabilly, lindy hop/ Gaelic heavy metal fans, fighting in the road.” 

Meanwhile, on the title track Strummer hails the universality of music: “Buddy Rich in Burundi/ Quadrophenia in Armenia/ Big Youth booming in Djkarta/ Nina Simone over Sierra Leone.”

‘Cool ‘N’ Out’ is a road trip across the States with Strummer’s typically obtuse lyrics: “Fix that gauge or you run out of gas/ A cool operator can make it last/ Say, from here to Indiana and across Illinois/ We're rockin’ the girls and a-boppin' on the boys/ And I spot a little bitty on a little bam-bam/ That pill poppers hopping on a city bound tram.”

‘Shaktar Donetsk’ reflects on eastern European migration to the west; a man from Macedonia pays a shady character handsomely to truck him into the UK on a potentially perilous journey in search of a new life: “If you really wanna go - alive or dead my friend” … a line that seems prophetic given recent deaths in cold, airless trucks. 

Like ‘Tony Adams’ on 1999’s Rock Art and the X-Ray Style, the football connection isn’t central to the tale but it does provide some background: the protagonist wears the woolly scarf of Shahktar Donetsk (the official club name), inherited from his father, one of the Ukraine-based exiles of the former Yugoslavia. 

‘At The Border, Guy’ is a wonderful, seven-minute epic, that builds and builds with its reggae fusion. There’s the sound of a harmonica in the distance as percussion and bass are used to effect for a track that gains strength to the very end.

Apart from a rather pointless 18-minute ‘Minstrel Boy’ that rounds off the album this is a magnificent effort from someone still sorely missed.

But while Strummer’s name is prominent, credit needs to be given to the Mescaleros, who were far from a session band. This was a tight unit, and Global A Go-Go is much more of a cohesive group effort than the more song-based Rock Art. 

Numerous instruments were used but their usage didn’t come across as forced or to be clever. These include bongos, wurlitzers, French horns, Spanish guitars, witchdoctor bells, whistles and “live echo plating and sounds destruction”. Strummer's lyrics are of the metaphorical, socially aware style that he used in the Clash. 

It’s by far the finest effort of three by the Mescaleros and the best album Strummer was involved with for about 15 years.

The Strummer Files: Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros - Rock Art and the X-Ray Style (Hellcat Records, 1999)

Craig Stephen looks back at the three records Joe Strummer did with the Mescaleros, starting with one that pretty much came out of nowhere. 

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)

Joe Strummer vs the Rich: when anarchy met The Clash hero

Craig Stephen presents an overview of 1988’s Rock Against The Rich tour …

*** 

Apparently, it happened like this. A drunken, mouthy anarchist approached Joe Strummer in a London pub, chewed his ear for a bit and within a few pints had the former Clash man down for a full-on national tour. It would be called Rock Against the Rich. 

As the planning took place the organisers craftily added a Welsh language band to the tour schedule, without asking for their permission, and pulled it off. 

So began the route to a tour that inspired Strummer and, while not giving the world’s rich-listers a boot in the bollocks, at least raised the issue of how wealth inequality creates an unstable society.

The drunken, mouthy anarchist was Ian Bone, who had form in the shape of Bash The Rich marches, disrupting the boat race for toffs, Henley Regatta, and organising campaigns against yuppies, in his own inimitable manner. He was the public face of Class War. 

According to one of the protagonists, Darren Ryan, the conversation in March 1988 at Notting Hill boozer the Warwick Castle, initially centred on a one-off benefit gig for Class War, the anarchist group that loathed the upper classes and loved violence – its newspaper contained a regular section called ‘Hospitalised Coppers’. 

As the pints flowed, it somehow became a full-blown tour.

“We presented the idea to Strummer that it was going to make his return to his Clash roots – back to Garageland, back to the streets. I think that he thought he would get some kind of political street cred from associating with us,” says Ryan. 

“Throughout this table-banging tirade from me and Ian, Strummer became totally animated. He was like a cadaver that got electrocuted back to life and wanted to live it all now – all at once. He fuckin’ loved it.” 

As everyone knows, grand ideas fuelled by plentiful supplies of drink tend to be met with a ‘did I really say that?’ in the hangover hours, but Strummer was committed even as he pissed out the pints. 

With the former Clash man promising to help fund it, the details were thrashed out. 

The tour started badly, with the free concert on the Isle of Dogs, in London’s East End, falling through late on. The Mudchute Farm Committee, on whose land it was to be held, got cold feet. The gig was transferred to the Brixton Fridge; a warm-up act was another mouthy anarchist, Class War’s candidate for the Kensington by-election, John Duignan (he got 60 votes, 0.25%). 

However, there is a doubt over whether this was actually part of the tour. Ryan insists it was but it also has been claimed that this was a benefit gig in support of the Nicaraguan rebel group turned government the FSLN. 

Ryan again: “Strummer came out looking like a punk Johnny Cash, and he fucking rocked the Fridge with what everyone wanted to hear – a combination of old and new material. We were happy with the result – we sold loads of Class War papers and T-shirts, and our name was up in the lights again.” 

The Latino Rockabilly War was a curious combination comprised of musicians with diverse backgrounds in punk, jazz and traditional Colombian music: Zander Schloss (Circle Jerks) on guitar, Roberto Pla on percussion, Jim Donica on bass, and Willie McNeil (ex-Untouchables) on drums.

The Latino Rockabilly War

From London, Strummer and Class War went onwards on a “fucking huge tour bus” paid for by Strummer. There was booze, booze and more booze. 

The singer wasn’t short of money thanks to The Clash and there was a certain irony perhaps in him rocking against the rich. But not his commitment, as he told music journalist Sheila Rogers on the eve of the tour: “Every gig goes to some needy local fund. For example, in one town some people were caught stealing coal off trains during the winter. The proceeds from this would go to their defence fund.” 

The tour visited Leeds, Liverpool, Doncaster, Sheffield, Bristol, Merthyr Tydfil, Exeter, Poole, Southampton, Brighton, Swansea, Northampton, Birmingham, Nottingham, Manchester, Bradford, Glasgow (Barrowlands), Hull, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and finally, Hultsfred in Sweden. 

The gig in Derby was cancelled due to poor ticket sales while a second gig in Brighton was pulled due to police concerns about two gigs over two nights in one small venue (the Concord) so the gigs were united as one at the Dome. 

As well as the gigs Class War arranged for the band to meet activists on housing estates, such as Jimmi Walker, in Liverpool, who was battling smack dealers. 

Clash fan Joe Swinford was at the Bristol gig and wasn’t convinced by the new band. 

“Joe’s backing band, The Latino Rockabilly War, were lacking in the image stakes, and for someone who was an integral part of a high profile, image conscious band like The Clash, it was thought Joe would have hired musicians who not only played well, but also fitted the bill in the threads department. I’m sure Joe had his reasons, but on this occasion, ability was preferred over image. In certain circumstances this isn’t a bad thing, however, in this instance, The Latino Rockabilly War looked inappropriate, alongside Strummer’s unmistakable cool. Stepping into Mick Jones’ shoes must be a daunting task, but bespectacled Latino’s guitarist Zander Schloss was on a hiding to nothing from the off. He wasn’t a bad guitarist, but endless over-played guitar fills drew obvious comparisons to Mick’s work. Sadly, Zander’s playing was messy and overworked. Drummer Willie McNeil was OK, but rudimentary compared to Topper. Naming the band the Latino Rockabilly War was appropriate, as it was indeed a collision of musical styles. But it must have been difficult for Joe to assemble a credible outfit equalling The Clash’s legacy.”

One of the support bands, Welsh language punk band Anhrefn, were snared through a somewhat unusual tactic. As Rhys Mwyn explains they found out about their backing through a musical newspaper while on tour. 

“We’d check out NME for any reviews or whatever and on this particular day a tour by Joe Strummer had just been announced under the banner of Rock Against The Rich. Being huge Strummer fans we immediately checked this article out to find that we were listed as one of the support bands on the tour. First we’d heard. The tour was being organised by Class War and at the end of the piece they gave a London number for more details. On the other end of the line was a bloke called Matt Runacre who said ‘I was hoping you’d phone’. So it was true, they did want us to support and he’d used the NME as a way of getting us to contact him.” 

Soundcheck issues meant Anhrefn couldn’t play in Newcastle, but got the opener in Edinburgh, playing just three songs to the early birds. They also played Bristol, before One Style, a reggae band from London. 

Anhrefn’s Sion: “We were quite surprised with Joe Strummer, he could have been a bloody pop star if he'd wanted to, but he wasn't, he was totally OK, totally down to Earth, no shit at all. The tour was good, there was good audiences, but I don't know how many of the actual audience knew what the whole thing was about. There was one guy (Ray Jones) who introduced the bands, who would sometimes try to explain what it was all about, but the crowd would just be going ‘Strummer, Strummer, Strummer’. So I think a lot of the crowd were just there to see Joe Strummer because he used to be in the Clash, and didn't really know what was going on, even though they gave out leaflets, most of the leaflets would be on the floor by the end of the night.” 

Setlists will undoubtedly abound around the net, but the one at Nottingham Rock City on 3 August is likely to have been replicated elsewhere. 

Shouting Street/ Keys to Your Heart/ Somebody Got Murdered/ Oye Coma Va!/ Spanish Bombs/ Armagideon Time/ Sightsee MC/ This is England/ Junco Partner/ Police and Thieves/ V Thirteen/ Nothin About Nothin/ Straight to Hell/ If I Should Fall from Grace/ I Fought the Law/ Ubangi Stomp/ Brand New Cadillac/ Police on My Back/ Tropic of No Return/ Trash City/ Ride Your Donkey/ Love of the Common People/ Love Kills. 

It’s quite a mix of stuff, Clash classics, solo material, notable covers, a couple of Big Audio Dynamite songs (surprising given Mick and Joe weren’t apparently on good terms by then) and The Pogues’ 'If I Should Fall From Grace With God'. 

Was it worth it? This is what Darren Ryan made of the tour: 

“It may not have been how we originally intended it, but it was moderately successful in some ways. And it was a lot of fun. But I look back in anger at it, as we had such great ideas for it, and it still gets my blood boiling the way it was turned from potentially dangerous to pleasantly adventurous by people who used it as their ticket into the music industry.”

Album Review: Joe Strummer - 001 (2018)

This is the first of two posts from our resident Clash aficionado, Craig Stephen, taking a look back at the post-Clash legacy of Joe Strummer. This one focuses on the career-spanning compilation album, 001, which was released in late 2018. 

The second Strummer-related post will feature on the blog in the next couple of days.

***

Despite having taking a dip from the public spotlight for virtually the entirety of the 1990s, it’s largely forgotten how prolific Joe Strummer was following the breakup of The Clash in 1984, and how excellent and varied the recordings were.

001 has finally tied up much of the array of tracks on a double album CD/triple vinyl album that includes Strummer’s contributions to groups and collaborations that even the most hardcore of Clash fans may have missed. Soundtracks, singles, B-sides, and demos make up these 32 tracks, a dozen of which have never been released before; plenty, therefore, for the collector or casual fan to indulge in, albeit with varying degrees of satisfaction as we will discover.

But to get to the post-Clash era, we have to go back to 1975, when Strummer began his musical adventure with pub rockers The 101ers. Neither ‘Letsgetabitrockin’’ (two versions of which are included) nor the sole single ‘Keys To Your Heart’ offer any hint of what was to come. And it’s fair to say that these tracks show that there was only one option for Strummer when the opportunity arose to form a band with Mick Jones and Paul Simonon.

The band’s ascent was rapid, the decline slow and heartbreaking, and after the much-derided Cut The Crap album that featured only a remnant of the band, Strummer was forced to think anew. 001 does cover this “final days” era, with the inclusion of a version of ‘This is England’ and ‘Pouring Rain’ by Strummer, Simonon and Pete Howard, recorded in 1983-84. The latter track (and another version that’s also included) sound almost different songs to The Clash’s powering live version that was included on The Future Is Unwritten soundtrack.

But where this album comes alive is on the solo material from two separate periods. From 1986 to 1990 Strummer recorded one solo album, a soundtrack, contributed to two further soundtracks and released a handful of singles. Aside from a team-up with Black Grape on a World Cup football single and gigs with The Pogues, there’s a fallow period until 1999 when Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros united for two studio albums, while one more was released posthumously.

From this first period, ‘Tennessee Rain’, off the Soundtrack to Walker, is a Latin-tinged underrated standout. ‘Love Kills’ is a brilliantly riveting accompaniment to the almost-good Sid & Nancy biopic and there were five tracks contributed to the Permanent Record soundtrack, as Joe Strummer and the Latino Rockabilly War, notably ‘Trash City’, which is included here.

Unfortunately, even Clash fans bypassed his solo exercise Earthquake Weather and Strummer went underground for virtually a decade. The return was heralded by ‘It’s A Rockin’ World’ for the South Park movie and then came the Mescaleros years, which are represented by six tracks, including ‘Yalla Yalla’ and ‘Johnny Appleseed’. Which means no room for the brilliant ‘Bhindi Bhagee’, the tale of a wide-eyed New Zealander who had just landed in London and was looking for mushy peas only to be directed by Strummer to the city’s cosmopolitan platter.   

There’s collaborations with Johnny Cash (on Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’) and Jimmy Cliff that I never knew existed; and the second disk includes those dozen unreleased tracks, mostly demos. There needs to be some honesty here: few of it was worth dredging up. Strummer sounds sometimes as if he wanted to be a blues singer, but his voice isn’t gravelly enough. A couple of outtakes, one credited to Pearl Harbour, the other to the Soothsayers, which missed the Sid & Nancy boat are among them, and it concludes with ‘U.S. North’ which is credited to Mick and Joe. It’s 10 minutes of unrelenting repeated beats and a slew of words that would have been fine if reduced to four minutes.

And to imitate that annoying voice that promises “ … and there’s more” in every TV advertorial, the vinyl version contains an additional three tracks, but you’ll need a loan from the bank to be able to afford that.

While many of the obscure and forgotten singles and B-sides have been torpedoed to the surface, the numbering suggests there could be the possibility of a second turn, though that presumably would be mainly through album tracks not included here, such as some of those from Walker. Given the continuing interest in Strummer it is feasible that the retro machine will keep on churning out material.