11/28/06: RightWingTrashMan: Joe Strummer

All the usual grinches are grousing about the commercialization of Black Friday and the general Christmas season. For some reason—mostly likely today's cheerful looting of the local Tower Records—this puts us in mind of one of our favorite perpetrators of the rock ’n roll swindle. The Clash is certainly available in many repackagings for the holiday season, and the late Joe Strummer would be proud. The diplomat’s-son-turned-pub-rocker-turned-even-quicker-into-punk-rocker would have wanted it that way.

As a whole, The Clash were loathsome as supposed Important Political Punks leading an existence much like that of, say, Jefferson Starship. So why do we single out Joe for the greatest honor that can be afforded a human being? Because he was so weasely about the whole thing. Mick Jones probably didn’t mind being fired from The Clash after the success of 1982’s Combat Rock. His coke habit and blatant consumerism had already gotten him briefly canned back in the ’70s. Jones was likely thrilled to finally pursue proper rock stardom with Big Audio Dynamite.

Strummer was more discreet during those early years—perhaps because his rhythm section was regularly begging for money from the band’s manager. The frontman’s disdain for the hired help would ultimately lead to the disaster of trying to maintain The Clash as a punk Menudo with 1985’s Cut The Crap. Strummer’s true creative peak remains how he neatly redefined his revolutionary ways once the band started to get rich. Suddenly, Strummer wasn’t motivated to finance any kind of street movement. He explained that he was really “more of a Merry Prankster type.”

This seemingly meant Strummer wanted to own real estate in San Francisco.

By the early ’90s, The Clash was inherently funny enough to be played in the offices of National Review. Strummer must’ve still died happy when he went relatively young at the age of 50. He got to see The Clash’s music used as commercial jingles for Levi's Jeans and Jaguar Motors. And, of course, “Rock The Casbah” remains a perpetual favorite of our American fighting forces. Hey, we just got an idea—let’s make this a novelty record theme week!  

Make him your own: Even the fans tend to concede that The Clash became wildly uneven after 1980. At least the title of Sandinista! seems less dated now that Daniel Ortega is back in power. It’ll serve us best to skip the overrated albums and instead recommend any of the many sympathetic biographies of the band—especially if you’re some hippie punk who thinks we’re creating revisionist history.

 

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