Joe Strummer

Twenty years ago today since Joe Strummer died. We were friends since the mid 1970s.

In 1975, I was booking bands on the pub rock circuit in London. It wasn’t too hard — once I had established a degree of reliability with the landlord at the Dublin Castle or The Torrington, they pretty much allowed this teenage booking agent something of a free rein to fill their week with Ducks Deluxe or Kilburn And The High Roads.

Certainly, there was no great fortune to be made. The bands received about twenty pounds; they gave up ten per cent to the agency as a booking fee, and I was given twenty-five percent of that ten per cent. In other words, I would be handed fifty pence for every gig I booked.

Some of the bands had managers; generally they were either a friend of the bass player and employed because they owned a van, or they were rather sinister characters, generally found wearing long black coats, long black sideburns and not averse to carrying long black firearms if ‘things turned tasty’.

The 101ers never seemed to have any form of management behind them — so our relationship with them consisted of Joe Strummer (then calling himself Woody Mellor) and Richard Dudanski wandering in to press us to get them more gigs. These occasions are memorable to me as we used to have to put the office into lockdown when Joe visited. Staplers, pens, coins, anything not locked away in drawers would be fair game for him to ‘liberate’ in the hope of gathering enough to generate a few pence to take back to their squat in Walterton Road, a mile or so to the west.

Whenever we did find a gig for the 101ers, Joe would inevitably turn up asking for a ‘quid in advance’ which we always gave him, but it didn’t stop him getting irate when that pound was later deducted from their appearance fee.

In the space of about three months in the summer of 1975, Joe and his ever changing group of friends were barred from just about every small shop in the Maida Vale and Paddington area.

He had developed a technique of what today would probably be called ‘distraction robbery’ — although in Joe’s case, it was the rather minor theft of chocolate bars (Kit Kats were his favourite) from sweet shops usually owned by rather elderly ladies. The small gang would choose the most cherubic looking member to chat and distract the shopkeeper, whilst the other one or two would stuff their pockets with as many Mars Bars and Dairy Milk bars they could liberate.

As I recall, they were generally hopeless at this whole charade and the incident would usually end with the handful of scruffy youths legging it down Elgin Road, pursued by a far fitter elderly lady — I remember Joe telling me that once cornered they would be shame-faced, and usually walked back to the shop and handed the goods back, but always attempting to hold at least one chocolate bar back “for teatime.”

Quite often, I don’t recognise the Joe Strummer that is described in biographies or in punk rock nostalgia articles or books. That’s not to say that they are wrong. I suppose many people have variations of their persona for different friends and situations.

Just as it is dreamlike to look back to 1975, it’s equally hard to come to terms with the realisation that it is twenty years since Joe Strummer died at his home in Somerset.

In his last years, he became a much softer figure, an almost sentimental man who cared about his daughters more than anything else in the world. In one of those bizarre twists in which life specialises, he looked healthier and fitter than he ever did.

I don’t know what would have happened if that heart defect hadn’t killed him.

He might have written a book; The Clash might have reformed; he may have developed his career as a radio presenter.

All I can tell you is based on recollections of those fleeting, abstract, moments when we were all so very young. Forty-seven years ago in 1975.