Joe Strummer (1952 – 2002)
Best remembered by his stage name Joe Strummer, was the co-founder, lyricist, rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist of the critically acclaimed British punk rock band The Clash.
Everyone has got to realise you can't hold onto the past if you want any future. Each second should lead to the next one.
Everything's fucked! It's down to individual people to make life enjoyable. I don't have anything more to say than that. I think people should avoid the world fucking them up. People are becoming too uptight, treating their children bad, being negative.
It's taken Joe's death to make me realise just how big The Clash were. We were a political band and Joe was the one who wrote the lyrics. Joe was one of the truest guys you could ever meet. If he said 'I am behind you', then you knew he meant it 100 per cent.
It's good to be sent back to the underground. There's always a good side to bad things and the good side to this is that at least everyone has to go back down.
[T]he toughest thing is facing yourself. Being honest with yourself, that's much tougher than beating someone up. That's what I call tough.
We got all the influences for it [Global a Go-Go] from Willesden High Road. When you go out for milk and cigarettes you go through three countries because all the shops and cafes are playing their own music, like going through hell.
When freedom rises from the killing floor,
No lock of iron or rivet can restrain the door.
And no kind of army can hope to win a war
Like trying to stop the rain or still the lion`s roar,
Like trying to stop the whirlwind scattering seeds and spores
Like trying to stop the tin cans rapping out jailhouse semaphore.
What I like about playing America is you can be pretty sure you're not going to get hit with a full can of beer when you're singing and I really enjoy that!
I just want to go back to rockin', but I'm uncertain as to what to actually do ... The truth is, I never stopped thinking about rock 'n' roll for a second that I'm on holiday.
What's holding me up is I'm confused about the nature of the music. Because the modern music doesn't reach me. I mean to say the sound of the modern electric production. A lot of sequencers... synths. That's what people are buying. Because that doesn't reach me, it throws me back to like 1948, but I don't want to be there. Back there, I'm talking about blues records.... The roots of rock 'n' roll is rhythm and blues and that's like really where I'm at, where I was always at.
I'd just like to say to everybody that it's best to check out the independent life: the independent stores and the independent everybodies. We should try not to give our money to any corporations, if we can help it.
I try and keep an ear out and keep an open mind and enjoy something where I don't know what the hell is going on inside of it. That's what I really get out of it. Because to me it's new. That's what I get out of it. That joyful feeling of you don't know what's going to happen next.
Like thousands of teenagers growing up in the '70s, punk and The Clash changed my life in a fundamental way. Their mixture of politics and music shaped my beliefs and tastes and made me the person I am today. Christmas is ruined.
The way you get a better world is, you don't put up with substandard anything.
I'll tell you something. When you see you become part of the cycle of generations, you lose your ego in the process, because you ain't nothin' special. You're just another cipher in the generations. When you devote all your interest into another person, you lose your self-obsession, and that's when you understand what it is. You don't know (anything) without that moment. You don't want anything to harm this helpless being. That's a fantastic change. And that's when you understand what's happening. I never understood anything until my first baby looked at me. I didn't understand (anything). Now I understand.
Joe would go into everything at a million miles an hour and then change his mind.
London Calling - Yes, I was there, too,
And you know what they said? Well some of it was true.
London Calling at the top of the dial…
And after all this, won't you give me a smile?
Singing into a cold wind is the worst nightmare for any singer. You could hear it in the voice.
I hate it when I go out and I see parents going, 'don't do that', or 'stop doing that' when some kid's just hanging off a staircase or something. There's too much of this, 'don't do that'. The whole thing baffles me.
I'd define it as self-awareness: an ability to trust your own judgment. An ability to see through veils of bullshit or spins on stories or propaganda. Maybe an ability to think for yourself.