Let Fury Have the Hour Read online

  LET FURY HAVE THE HOUR

  ALSO BY ANTONINO D’AMBROSIO

  Books

  A Heartbeat and a Guitar:

  Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears

  Mayday: The Art of Shepard Fairey

  (with Shepard Fairey and Jeffrey Deitch)

  Screenplays

  Let Fury Have the Hour

  No Free Lunch

  La Terra Promessa: In Sun & Shadow (Part I)

  and Diamanti nel di Massima (Part II)

  Films (Directed and Produced)

  Let Fury Have the Hour

  No Free Lunch

  La Terra Promessa: In Sun & Shadow (Part I)

  and Diamanti nel di Massima (Part II)

  Contributor

  Democracy in Print: The Best of the

  Progressive Magazine, 1909–2009

  LET FURY

  HAVE the HOUR

  Joe Strummer, Punk,

  and the

  Movement That

  Shook the World

  ESSAYS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND EDITED BY

  Antonino D’Ambrosio

  Copyright © 2012 by Antonino D’Ambrosio

  Published by Nation Books,

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Nation Books, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016-8810.

  Books published by Nation Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810–4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Let fury have the hour: Joe Strummer, punk, and the movement that shook the word / [edited by] Antonino D’Ambrosio.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-56858-720-2 (e-book) 1. Strummer, Joe—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Clash (Musical group) 3. Punk rock music—Political aspects. 4. Punk rock music—History and criticism. I. D’Ambrosio, Antonino.

  ML420.S918L48 2012

  782.42166092—dc23

  [B]

  2012001087

  For Yrthya and Amara

  Everything, Always

  To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.

  —FLANNERY O’CONNOR

  My grandfather made bricks

  My father made bricks

  I make bricks, too,

  but where’s my house?

  —OLD BRICK MAKER,

  FEDERICO FELLINI’S Amarcord

  Even if it’s a bad idea, it’s still an idea, that brings us to another idea, which may be less bad or even better. Who knows?

  —JACQUES RIVETTE’S

  Around a Small Mountain

  CONTENTS

  Introduction to the First Edition:

  The Future Is Unwritten

  By Antonino D’Ambrosio

  Opening 1: Artists As First Responders,

  By Wayne Kramer with Margaret Saadi Kramer

  Opening 2: For, Not Against,

  By Antonino D’Ambrosio

  Act I

  MOVING OUT LOUD

  Let Fury Have the Hour: The Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer

  By Antonino D’Ambrosio

  Introduction to “The Very Angry Clash”

  By Antonino D’Ambrosio

  The Very Angry Clash

  By Steve Walsh

  Greatness from Garageland

  By Peter Silverton

  The Clash: Anger on the Left As

  Punk Leaders Set Sights on America

  By Mikal Gilmore

  The Clash in America

  By Sylvie Simmons

  The Last Broadcast

  By Greil Marcus

  Act II

  FIGHTING THROUGH THE NIGHT

  The Rebel Way: Alex Cox, Jim Jarmusch, and

  Dick Rude on the Filmwork of Joe Strummer

  By Antonino D’Ambrosio

  Be Bop a Lula Here’s Joe Strummer

  By Ann Scanlon

  Clash and Burn: The Politics of Punk’s Permanent Revolution

  By Dennis Broe

  A Brother in Revolution: Women in Punk Discuss Joe Strummer’s Influence

  By Amy Phillips

  Always Paying Attention: Joe Strummer’s Life and Legacy

  By Charlie Bertsch

  White Riot or Right Riot: A Look Back at Punk Rock and Antiracism

  By Antonino D’Ambrosio

  Act III

  WALKING THROUGH THE CROWD

  You Can’t Have a Revolution Without Songs:

  The Legacy of Víctor Jara and the Political Folk Music

  of Caetano Veloso, Silvio Rodríguez, and Joe Strummer

  By Antonino D’Ambrosio

  Clash of the Titan

  By Joel Schalit

  A Man That Mattered

  By Kristine McKenna

  When the Two Sevens Clashed

  By Carter Van Pelt

  Whatever It Takes

  By Antonino D’Ambrosio

  The Clash Legacy: Speech to Induct the Clash

  into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 2003

  By Tom Morello

  Act IV

  BETTER GET YOUR WEAPON READY

  The World Is Worth Fighting For: Two Creative Activists, Michael

  Franti and Tim Robbins, Continue Joe Strummer’s Legacy

  By Antonino D’Ambrosio

  Culture Clash: From Brixton to El Barrio NYC

  By Not4Prophet

  Strange Bedfellows: How the Clash Inspired Public Enemy

  By Chuck D

  The Joe I Knew

  By Billy Bragg

  Gettin’ Back to the Bad Seeds: The Legend of the “Long Shadow”

  By Antonino D’Ambrosio

  Act V

  TRANSCONTINENTAL HUSTLE

  All essays by Antonino D’Ambrosio

  Global Citizens, Dangerous Creators: Eugene Hütz

  Joe Strummer, Terrorist?

  Global Citizens, Dangerous Creators: Edwidge Danticat

  “The Only Band that Mattered” . . . Still Does:

  The Story of the Clash as Told by the Clash

  Evolutionary Street Poetry

  Bend the Notes: A Creative Response Initiation

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Future Listening, Watching, Reading, and Seeing

  The Author

  The Contributors

  Permissions

  Index

  INTRODUCTION TO

  THE FIRST EDITION:

  THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN

  By Antonino D’Ambrosio

  “I think people ought to know that we’re antifascist, we’re antiviolence, we’re antiracist and we’re procreative. We’re against ignorance.”

  —JOE STRUMMER, 1976

  “We’re all going to have to learn to live together and develop a greater tolerance and get rid of whatever our fathers gave us in the way of hatred between nations.”

  —JOE STRUMMER, 2000

  On the day Joe Strummer died, December 22, 2002, US forces began dropping leaflets and making radio broadcasts over Iraq urging Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein. The Bush administration stated that the war to overthrow Saddam’s regime would start with US bombing followed by a popular Iraqi insurgent uprising that would gain c
ontrol of the streets. President George W. Bush declared that this was going to be a battle between good and evil. It was a strange, jarring day. As the United States seemed poised to embark on the latest “war on terror,” the Clash antiwar song “The Call-Up” came to mind: “It’s up to you not to heed the call-up/I don’t wanna die!/It’s up to you not to hear the call-up/I don’t wanna kill!” As Strummer remarked when the song was first recorded, “The song is a statement against the buildup to war and the potential it creates for bringing catastrophe.” Nearly ten years after Strummer’s death, with the “liberation of Iraq” supposedly now completed, and more than two decades after Strummer wrote this song, these words certainly seem prophetic.

  Antonino D’Ambrosio’s press pass from his meeting with Joe Strummer during the musician’s series of performances at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York, April 5,2001. (Photo by Antonino D’Ambrosio.)

  Let Fury Have the Hour has been more than twenty-five years in the making. It began for me in 1983 when, for the first time, I heard the Clash blaring at me from those huge 1970s-style speakers in my cousin’s house on Lawndale Street in northeast Philadelphia. Of course, I had heard the Clash before then. It was impossible not to. They were the biggest band in the world at the time. They had a huge worldwide hit with “Rock the Casbah” and a video in heavy rotation on the fledgling video network MTV. But we did not have MTV and even though I secretly loved “Rock the Casbah,” it seemed to be a radio-friendly pop song. When I heard, really heard, the Clash’s music for the first time, it came by way of the song “Clampdown.” I related to it because it seemed written for me. It became more than a song—“Clampdown” was my own personal anthem. The Clash promised rebellion. And I was certain that they could deliver it and liberate me from a sense of hopelessness and a life of “wearing blue and brown.”

  When punk first became a social and cultural phenomenon in 1976–77, I was five years old and too young to be part of the scene or understand the music that would become an important part of my life only a few years later. Even so, music was already a central part of my life. My parents, immigrants from Italy, possessed a deep love of music. My mother was drawn to rock ’n’ roll—the Beatles and Elvis. She liked John not Paul; he was the one who always had something important to say. Lennon was her working-class hero and I would find mine in Joe Strummer. My father loved country music, especially Willie Nelson. Also not a bad choice as music rebels go. All the same, they always returned to the traditional music of their homeland, spending hours listening to La Banda di Duronia and the beautifully melodic tarantellas of Molise.

  Watching my mother dance and sing along to the music she loved taught me that melodies possess something more powerful than film or painting, or any other art form I had encountered up to that point. It grabs hold of you in a place you never knew existed, shakes you to your core, and shatters everything you hold as true. It is transcendent. Illuminating. Empowering. Emancipating. I’m not talking about bubblegum pop and sticky sweet love songs that are a safe standard of mainstream radio. What we all need to help us cope with a world that is anything but comfortable is the kind of music that intoxicates with crushing hooks that open the mind wide with lyrics that make you think. “Clampdown” did that for me. The Clash did that. Joe Strummer did that.

  Joe Strummer performing with the Mescaleros at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York, April 5, 2001. (Photo by Antonino D’Ambrosio.)

  Strummer forged a pact with his audience, guaranteed for a lifetime. You could be a part of something positive. Change could happen if you were willing to change yourself. I was fortunate to discover this music when I did. I looked at the Clash not as a band or as music of the moment but as a harbinger of the future. I rejected the affected nihilism of the Sex Pistols, considered the definitive punk band. They were about negating; the Clash was about producing positive action. Other groups were fun to listen to and some, like the compelling Crass, even had important things to say, but only the Clash made me believe.1 Each song became an edict delivering me from anguish, teaching me not to waste a moment of my life. The world was not ending. It was just beginning. This is a truth I learn every time I listen to Strummer launch into “London’s Burning” and begin that thrilling ride all over again.

  Strummer gave me the strength to have faith that the people’s movements that had scored some big democratic victories in the 1960s could happen again. The Lettrists. The Situationists. May ’68. Grosvenor Square. Allende’s Chile. The hot summer of Italy. It was happening again, you could hear it in his voice and in the music. Forget about waiting on the side of the road for someone to come along and pick you up. It was all about DIY. Do it yourself—not for yourself but for each other. Bonded together in what matters, forsaking intolerance, embracing justice. And this is one of the unique gifts Strummer possessed: he made everyone feel like a member of the team, not a consumer of anything trivial. One way to do this is through music.

  Politics and art do mix and if done right can change your life. Reggae. Skanking. Dub. Rap. R&B. Soul. Honky-tonk. Samba. Cumbia. It doesn’t matter what the music is or where it came from—only that it brings you to your feet, makes you listen with your heart, and opens your mind. I applied this to my life and discovered the music of Steel Pulse, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Junior Murvin, Mikey Dread, the Skatalites, the Equals, Public Enemy, and countless more. Strummer opened my ears so I would be able to hear when the music called, promising me salvation and a better day.

  Seeming fit and vibrant just a few weeks before he died, Strummer had performed a blistering set at a benefit show for the Acton Fire Brigade at Acton Town Hall where Mick Jones briefly joined him on stage.2 His death at the age of fifty, on December 22, 2002, of a rare heart condition, was sudden and shocking. He left behind an extraordinary career that will affect generations. Still, this does not lessen the sting of his loss because an important voice was silenced, one that used music as a platform to cut a path for something better, at least for a moment. He now sits in the pantheon of artists like Bob Marley, Kirsty MacColl, Robert Johnson, Buddy Holly, and Victor Jara, who left this world in their prime and before their time.

  Yet, unlike these musicians, some believed that Strummer was past his prime, his best years already behind him. Characteristic of Strummer’s “rebel way” he fooled all who dismissed him. While everyone was waiting for the Clash to get back together, Strummer quietly attained a level of creativity and originality with his albums Rock Art and the X-Ray Style, Global A Go-Go, and Streetcore. The newness of his music was a revelation. The growth and breadth of his worldview was inspirational and timely. The potential of the work to come, we are left to imagine, was boundless. As Strummer himself said, “The best moments of any career are those that are unexpected.”

  Strummer’s moment, for many, had come and gone in the late 1970s after the release of London Calling3 and a few years later the departure of Mick Jones from the band. Things would never be the same. Strummer, Jones, Simonon, and Headon had raised the bar and then were expected to go higher. Instead, they wanted to go deeper. As a member of the Clash, Strummer cut a cool, brash pop cultural figure with his improvised guttural Cockney-accented voice, electric guitar leg, and upturned upper lip. The group, with Strummer out in front, personified rebellion rock and took the Bobby Fuller Four’s “I Fought the Law” and made it into an enduring protest anthem all their own.4 Strummer embodied the soul of punk rock and the potential it possessed as both a social movement and political vehicle. It went beyond a pop cultural moment or reactionary pose and became a principle that guided his life until the end.

  In the final decade of his life, Strummer dedicated himself to important political causes by opposing globalization, advocating climate control with his work for Future Forests, and spreading a message of unity by embracing multiculturalism.5 Before there was even a category for world music in record stores, Strummer was infusing his music with global sounds. In the 1990s, he had hosted a radio show on the B
BC World Service titled “Joe Strummer’s London Calling” and had filmed the pilot for a television show called Global Boom Box that focused on world music.6

  For Strummer, music and politics went hand-in-hand. The present volume is a reflection of his ongoing influence upon them. The essay that opens the book, “Let Fury Have the Hour,” was written for an audience that never heard of the Clash or punk rock. For this reason, I placed it as an introductory piece to frame the book. The essays that follow in the first section capture the exciting moments of a major musician at the start of his career.

  In the second section, “The Rebel Way” explores the period in which Strummer described himself as going from “hero to zero” after his departure from the Clash. During this period he acted in films from Alex Cox’s Straight to Hell to Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train, and composed soundtracks, most notably for Cox’s Walker. As Charlie Bertsch writes, “Even at his most combative, he was more interested in building up a community of rebels than in tearing down those who failed to make the grade.”

  In the third section, in “You Can’t Have a Revolution Without Songs,” I place Strummer in the canon of great political folk musicians and discuss his recent work in relation to the astounding music of Caetano Veloso, Silvio Rodríguez, Víctor Jara, and Mercedes Sosa. Strummer always referred to himself as a folk musician at heart. He mentioned that he loved Woody Guthrie’s “Buffalo Skinners,” a song where the working man gets the better of his corrupt employer. Strummer had more than a bit of the “Buffalo Skinner” in him, and after years of battling Epic Records, he was free to make the music he wanted, in the way he wanted.

  As Michael Franti of Spearhead tells us in the first essay in the fourth section, “The World Is Worth Fighting For,” “The underlying message that you get from Strummer’s music is the world can be a terrible, scary place but it is worth fighting for.” Strummer continued the fight even when his music was no longer played on the radio. This section gives Strummer’s contemporaries—Tim Robbins, Chuck D, Billy Bragg, Michael Franti—an opportunity to discuss the indelible mark he left on their lives as artists, activists, and human beings.