Drinking with_Joe Strummer

By Howard Petruziello

The nineties have been a strange time for Joe Strummer. As one of the founding fathers of British punk and mouthpiece for it’s most vital band eased into middle age he led a decidedly low-key life, sporadically appearing in films and working on soundtracks while spending quality time with his family. Finally, a decade after his solo debut, the former Clash frontman’s anticipated second proper solo album shows that he’s far from having to coast along on his legendary status. Rock Art And The X-Ray Style  [Hellcat] effortlessly mixes rock with world rhythms and tasteful electronics, showcasing a mature, strong set of songs that will sit proudly on the shelf with his past triumphs. Concurrently, a landmark body of work has been placed back on center stage with two new releases. The long overdue live set, From Here To Eternity, is too concise to tell the whole truth, but still collects enough evidence to convict the band as one of the most ferocious live acts in history while the British documentary Westway To The World is the band member’s first-hand account of their lives and times as the only band that mattered. I caught up with Strummer on the road to talk about now, then and everything else in between...

Howard- When did you decide to start playing with a new band and recording again?

Joe- It was 1989 (following his solo debut Earthquake Weather) that I decided to make another record and it took 10 years to come to fruition.  I had to wait out a contract and also I felt I had had my say, in a way.

H- What was going on with the contract with Sony?

J- Well, I had to wait them out you see, because I had the same contract as George Michael.  I was watching that case and thinking, damn, they found against him, didn’t they?  He lost the case and it cost him 5 million pounds in lawyers’ fees.

H- Which I guess you didn’t have laying around!

J- No, far from it!  I realized there was only one thing to do and that was wait it out.  But during that time I attempted to get a group together with a guy called Richard Norris from the Grid, a techno group in Britain.  Some of the songs on the album are a vestige of that.

H- How old are these songs?

J- 5 are new and 5 are old, or older than this year.  “Sandpaper Blues,” “Diggin’ The New” and “Yalla Yalla” are from that acid punk group that me and Richard Norris tried to start.  But that crashed and burned because we were coming from ends of the spectrum,  you know.  Punk was built around songs and acid house was built around tracks and the groove and we bridged it pretty good and got 3 things done.  The effort was too much for us and we sort of fell apart and got into a fight, but now we’re friends again.  That was about 4 years back and I wondered if my luck was out and if I’d ever get anything going again.  Then I met Antony Genn, my collaborator and guitarist.  I’d seen him around London on sessions and I knew that he had the best musical head in town.  I just ran into him one day at a comedy group session, this group called in London called Fat Les who I sometimes play guitar for.  They had a number one hit!  It was a football song, it’ll baffle you but to us it’s incredibly funny, it’s a football song called “Vindaloo” and it was poking fun at the British for liking curry!

It was a scream, because it was a joke football song, yet it went to number one, know what I mean?!  Anyway, I bumped into him at one of these sessions and he said to me, which I had been waiting for, “you’re Joe Strummer, you should be making a record!”  I said, “I know, you wanna get on it?”  Within a week we were in a studio knocking out Rock Art And The X-Ray Style.  I think it has to do with who you run into, a bit of luck, a bit of this and that_

H- Were you necessarily looking for a co-conspirator?

J- Oh yeah, I didn’t really know what to do.  After the acid punk group crashed, we were gonna be called Machine, but no one ever heard the name since it crashed before we got anywhere_See I’m really a lyric man.  I mean, I can write songs, like I wrote “London Calling” or “X-Ray Style,” but I think it’s really good when you get two heads on it, like Rogers and Hammerstein, Lieber and Stoller, Strummer and Jones.  It’s quite difficult if your semi legendary to collaborate with anyone and I wanted an equal collaboration, you know?  You have to have it equal, Antony can say to me, “that sucks” and it goes or if I say something sucks it goes.

H- I was curious about that.  He felt you were on equal ground?

J- Yeah, because I put that out straight away because I had 10 years to think about it.

H- Did Antony fill in the rest of the gaps in the band or were those guys that you found?

J- Well, Pablo Cook (drums) was part of Machine and he also knew Antony from playing sessions with Pulp, Elastica and that scene in London.  We both knew Martin Slattery (organ, guitar, melodica) from watching and hanging with him in Black Grape.  When Grape split up he was loose and we grabbed him and he brought along Scott Shields (guitar, bass) and we only had to find a drummer, which you do at the last minute, really.  We found a guy called Smiley.

H- I just got the album last week and there were so many things that just blew me away.  In “The Road to Rock and Roll” there’s the line about Parchman Farm, which if you’re into early American music_

J- Right, right.  You’re one of the few people that’s mentioned this to me.  We’ve been on the road a lot and I sing out in halls across the world and when I give that line out I think somebody here must feel it.  I try to wave my hand to make it clear somehow.  I’m really kickin’ that you’re on it!  People don’t know nothin’ these days.

H- You’ve always seemed to have a fascination with America, and here you are singing lines about the delta and Parchman_

J- That song has an interesting history.  3 year or 4 years back the word went out amongst the songwriters of the world that Johnny Cash had put the word out for a songfest, you know, send your song in, if you’ve got one for Johnny, send it in now.  Immediately I got excited and I sat down and I wrote “The Road To Rock & Roll” for Johnny Cash and sent it to him.  They didn’t use it on the album (American Recordings] but a bit later I saw Johnny play on Hollywood Blvd and Rick Rubin introduced me to him and Rick whispered in his ear, “That’s the guy who wrote that “Road To Rock & Roll” song.  Johnny Cash turned around and looked at me and leaned right over, you know he’s a really big guy and said (Joe affects his best southern drawl], “You know you really confused me with that song, boy!”  I just went, uhhhhhhhhhhh! (laughs)  I would have loved to have sat down and talked to him about it.  Then I realized that this is a great tune.  I used it on a personal note, to woo my wife!  My first marriage had split up and I met another girl and to prove I wasn’t a complete idiot I played her that tune.  So it’s kind of our song, if you know what I mean.  And she also had some input on the mix of it.  It was quite a hard song to record because it’s a mid-tempo thing, a bit moody.

H- Great guitar line, kind of Spanish.

J-Yeah, that’s one of mine there!  I’m a simple picker.  My wife was the one who said, “that mix sucks, do another.”  She kept it real.

H- Not bad when a song can get you to meet Johnny Cash and get you a wife as well!

J- It’s true, that’s not bad!  And we play it every night and really enjoy it because it’s a quiet song, it’s not like banging it out.  It’s a nice beer break in the set.

H- This is total ignorance but, who’s Tony Adams [the first song’s namesake on Rock Art & The X-Ray Style]?

J- OK, sorry I’ve confused half the people in the music world here.  Tony Adams is an English football player who was the captain of the national team but then they gave it to a guy up front named Striker.  But it’s so obvious that this is a disaster and it led me on to thinking how in Britain we can’t even get that right.  This guy [Adams] is tall, he stands in the back, he doesn’t say nothin’, he’s noble, he’s got an interesting history, he’s dated Caprice, he’s fought drink addiction, he’s written an autobiography, he plays the piano and I wanted to celebrate him because he’s one of the unsung heroes, not the flashy Striker who gets the goals, but more like an oak tree.  That just led me into writing the lyric about being lost, it’s really a song about being lost.  What started me was that nobody in England could even see that Tony Adams should be captain!  I know this is a bit crazy, but it led me on to thinking how we waste our resources in Britain and everything’s fucked up_it’s just about being lost.

H- In the past a lot of your songs were politically or socially direct, but on this one it seems a lot more metaphorical and personal.

J- I’m trying to grow up here Howard!  I’m trying to utilize the wisdom of my years, know what I mean, and learn about my craft.

H- “Nitcomb” is one of the best examples of that.

J- That was a real_..well, Antony had that beautiful tune and the chords, it was a real delicate piece and sometimes you hesitate to go in and bomb on a piece, you know?  You can ruin things.

H- How autobiographical is the line “I’m standing at the sale of the shoes of bankrupt men. I just had to buy a pair to show that life can live again?”

J- Completely and utterly (laughs)!  Completely_ Sometimes you write and you don’t realize what you’re writing about.  I know that sounds a bit pretentious but that was an example of that where I just wrote it and sang it straight away on the record.  I began to think about it later and how it was really about me.  In Hollywood I took my boots off and waved them at the crowd during that song, well I took one boot off and waved it above my head.  Everyone thought I was nuts but I was digging it.  The shoes of bankrupt men_it’s sad!

H- “Forbidden City” was one of the songs you had written back a while ago.

J- It was after Tiannamen Square and I’m glowing on that one.  We played it last night in Denver and it was the best we ever played it and sang it the best I ever sang it.  This is an interesting group because things are changing on the road.  We’re really getting into free styling both in lyrics and in music.  When you get to the end of a tune and keep it rocking, go through spasmodic changes.  We’re getting almost telepathic here.

H- So how’s the tour going? 

J- We’re pretty road hardened.  We hit the road on June 10^th and we haven’t really stopped, we had a month off in the fall, so we’re pretty hardened.  The road is about the band and the crew.  We’ve got a real team thing going_these last few nights down the west coast and across Las Vegas and Denver it’s really been kicking, I think.

H- Have the American audiences been responding well?

J- Ah, what a beautiful crowd of hipsters we had last night in Denver, it was terrific.  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 know that’s getting soft but over in Europe, they’re fucking on it.

H-So it’s a lot more insane over there?

J- Not insane, stupid.  There’s a lot more stupidity going on over there.

H- Switching gears, there’s was a thing you did a couple of years ago called the Electric Doghouse, was that a one off?

J- That was a dream to be had.  Me and Rat Scabies and Segs_

H- Segs from the Ruts?

J- Yeah he was bass in the Ruts and he’s a lovely guy.  Scabies you know and John X is a Los Angeles programmer, engineer technical guy.  We called it Electric Doghouse because we were always in the doghouse_I know it’s kind of a limp joke, but_Then I bought a book for one of my kids and it was all about a dog going out at night and going to this club for dogs.  Say you go to sleep and you think you’re pet’s asleep in its basket and this owner decides to follow his dog and the dog goes out wearing shades, drinks all night and has a party.  In the book the club was called the Electric Doghouse!  That song was just a one off charity for the human rights album.

H- One more song from the new album then we’ll move on.  I think “Willesden to Cricklewood” is one of those perfect_when you look at an album as whole, this is a perfect ender.  I can just picture 10 guys in a pub, glasses in the air, arms around each other.  Very sentimental_

J- That’s a good call, you’re right.  We had a beautiful evening the night we cut that and had a great time cutting it.  I knew it was finished then.  It was one of these quite unusual times when me and Antony got the idea for the tune and wrote it right there on the spot and recorded it and mixed it and finished it all in one session.  And I knew it was finished, at 5 in the morning I said, “that’s a wrap.”  Of course over the next few weeks, Richard Slack, the engineer and Antony wanted to get in there and get some real violinists on it and I went, “no, no.”  They were free do try it but my call was that’s a wrap, as soon as I heard it.

H- The feel of the whole album is very low key, unobtrusive and natural.

J- It just sounded so great that I couldn’t think of messing with it any more.  It’s an unusual thing to happen, usually it’s much more of a struggle to get decent track up.

H- How did you hook up with Hellcat records?  Were you friends with the Rancid dudes or did they search you out?

J- Well it just shows that maybe the law of karma exists perhaps.  I did the track for Jack Healey for the Generations album and this LA hipster Jason Rothberg, he was in charge of doing that album.  He came to me and badgered me to do it and I said “Yeah, sure” and we did it.  I was hanging out with Jason and I started to think, “Hey, I finally managed to get my solo contract off of Sony and there must be some label that would be hip to what I want to do.”  I figured I would have to talk to him and him and him and so on, but then he introduced me to Tim Armstrong (Rancid guitarist/singer and Hellcat Records owner).  I sat down with Tim, man when I was his age I was doing nothing, I mean we might have been rocking around the world, but he’s got a label running and he’s doing great with his group.  He’s got his head screwed on; he’s a really bright spot.  I said that I don’t care about these other people on this list, let’s just go for it and we just shook hands.  Suddenly I had a fucking American record deal!  Just to show you how weird the world is, we went back to Britain to start working on the record and had a demo of it, pretty much as it is, but more demo tapes of the tunes but you could damn right hear it.  We took it to Britain to get a deal in Europe and everybody there just said, “get out of the office.”

So we ended up having to form our own label to put it out until we went out on the road and blew Paris apart and blew Hamburg apart live.  As soon as word got out Mercury records picked it up.  We had to go out there on our own and show them what we could do.  See Britain’s just, well like I said before, they waste their resources!

H- It’s all about the hits, baby!

J- You’re right.

H- I hear you’re mixing the set up for these shows, I really hope you’re doing most of the new album, at least three-quarters.

J-  More, we’re doing more.  We’ve only passed on doing “Sandpaper Blues” and “Willesden To Cricklewood” because of the strangeness of the tunes.

H- And you’re playing some of the Earthquake tunes and_

J- Yeah, lot of Clash too, I’m playing everywhere I’ve been.  I’ve even got some records out that nobody knows what the fuck they are they’re so old!

H- You seem like the kind of guy who doesn’t think about your past a whole lot but obviously over the last year you’ve had to do that.  I don’t know many details, but I know that Don Letts (formerly of Big Audio Dynamite and director of The Punk Rock Movie) just did a film project with you guys, Westway To The World.

J- Absolutely, it’s all big time again.  It hasn’t shown here yet, but it’s shown on BBC 2.

They stuck all four of us in front of a camera individually and then grilled us and then Don spent god knows how long putting it together.

H- You’ve known Don for over 25 years_He was a DJ, right?

J- He was a DJ at the Roxy.  I came out of the squats and we already had reggae all around us, we knew everything about it.  But the kids coming in from the estates into the Roxy would not have had that exposure.  Don did it.  When I ask him about it he says, “Well, there were no punk records to play, were there.”  Maybe one or two!

H- Was easier digging through your past with someone like that behind the camera?

J- Much better, yeah.  It’s like family, isn’t it.

H- Was it weird to think that this was the official word from you guys?  Were you aware of that as you were making it?  You had the chance to have the last word.

J- Yeah but that was uneasy.  I felt like I wanted to do it again immediately after.  Also it was a bit weird because there was about 10 people in the room, you know technicians, lighting guys, camera loaders.

H- And just you in the middle of a room with all the lights and cameras on you.

J- Like in a quiz show or something.

H- Was it strange seeing the younger you up there pouring it out?  I don’t know if you ever go back and watch or listen to that stuff_

J- I couldn’t stand it, really and that’s why I had to ask Mick and Paul to do the live album_

H- Couldn’t stand it in that it made you mad or just that in taking you back_

J- I’m trying to, let me decide_First fact is I couldn’t stand to listen to it.  Second fact is already there 110% with a riot in front of me and there’s nothing we can do about it now.  I was already there, why would we_it’s almost like, why would you want to watch a video of yourself holding a rock above your head with one hand, a huge boulder, with sweat pouring down your face?  Why would you want to listen to yourself groaning as you held the rock up in the air?  A lot of effort went into the gigs, probably too much.  I can’t stand it_I had to ask Mick and Paul to cover for me. 

H- So for the new live album, From Here To Eternity, you bailed early?

J- Given on one hand that me and Antony were already rocking into sessions on Rock Art and The X-Ray Style, it was already kicking off.  The live album started kicking off at the same time, just coincidentally, in the early part of the year.  I can’t concentrate on two things at once, it can’t be done.  Maybe Puff Daddy can do it.  So I came clean with the guys and said,  “Look, will you run it?”  It was also probably a shorter thing because it was 2 guys arguing instead of 3.  I cut myself out of the loop, along with Topper and let Mick and Paul do it.

H- Are you pleased with the outcome? Have you even heard it?

J- Are you kidding?  Are you out of your mind?  Do you think I’ve listened to it?!  No really, I admit I haven’t listened to it.  But only because we haven’t stopped moving since June 10th and I’d like to have a couple of days at home and when the quiet descends, stick it on.  I need some time to stop and think and then stick it on.  I can’t judge it or play it now on a bus or on a plane, in a lobby or at a gig, in the dressing room, wherever we are.  It ain’t right to hear it.  I want to really hear it.  You can imagine, it’s personal to me.  It may be insane, but that’s just the way I am.

H- I understand next year they’re going to be re-releasing the Clash archives.

J- Yeah, I think.  It shows you how corporations work.  Somebody gave me a box sign in Wolverhampton in the North of England last week and it was a fine square box with all of our cds in it.  It was the first I’d seen of it, they don’t send you copies of it.  We did a lot for the black box (Clash On Broadway), we ran all that through.  They didn’t come to us, I think, because it’s just all the exact cds, just in a cardboard box, as far as I can see.  I didn’t have time to see it because we were in a mayhem dressing room with about a hundred people yelling.

H- So while we’re going back, is anyone ever going to release the 101ers stuff again?

J- I am!  Honestly, you wouldn’t believe.  Seattle, Portland, Anaheim, I talk to a lot of people and they ask, “what about that track?  What about that album?”  Sometimes guys come up to get it signed.  Last night in Denver, coincidentally, the promoter of the show said there was a bit of a 101ers groundswell going on!  There’s guys in that town bootlegging Elgin Avenue Breakdown themselves because you can’t get it.

H- You were involved with releasing that?  I’ve always thought it was a bootleg.

J- Yeah, me and Snake Hips put it together and it came out on our own label, Analucia Records.  That’s a picture of the Tin Man on the cover, he used to sit on the street, just sat on the corner and we’d pass him every day.  I want to try to get it out again.  I’d like to have it only on vinyl but hey, it’s the modern world.  I’m an analog person_

H- If you had to pick a couple of favorite songs from the Clash, yours and Mick’s, what would they be?

J- Alright, “If Music Could Talk” from Sandinista.

H- Every day that goes by, that record’s brilliance shines even more.

J- Isn’t that funny?  It just started to happen last year in Britain, GQ Magazine just out of the blue ran an article, hey what about this for a piece of good stuff, dig this for a thing, you know a triple lunatic thing!  I started to get more and more proud because at first I was a bit worried because self-indulgence is the worst crime.  Musicians can commit two crimes:  they can bore people or they can be self-indulgent and it usually goes hand in hand.  For a few years I use to worry that we should have made it a single with “Street Parade” and whatever.  Then after a few years I thought to hell with it and now I’m beginning to feel really proud that it’s so mad, it’s mad as hell!

H- What about your favorite Mick song?

J- I want you to make the point out that we got no royalties on that album (Sandinista) and that’s why I don’t have five million pounds to fight the corporation with.

H- You kept it cheap for the fans.  It was great that with Sandinista and London Calling, it was only eight bucks when it came out.

J- I want everyone to look at me and say, “That geezer took ten years out of his life,” at the peak of my powers really, because that’s how I paid for that.  We took a (financial) break on both (London Calling and Sandinista), but I don’t care.  I’m still here and the wonder of it all to me is I kept chilled throughout_.the wilderness years.  Once I had to see a program on TV called Churchill: The Wilderness Years.  When Churchill was out of fashion and they kicked him out of the government for 10 years or so.

H- When?

J- Before the war.  This is such a great story because right up to the declaration of war, 10 years from that moment, 1939 back, he was considered a dangerous lunatic and isolated from the centers of power.  He began to preach from the sidelines, “hey, I’m telling you, the Germans are re-arming at an alarming rate_

H- Meanwhile (then Prime Minister Neville) Chamberlain was giving away half of Europe!

J- Yeah!  Then when the shit hit the fan everyone turned around and went, “You’re the man, here’s the job, now get on with it!”  Anyway, that’s the phrase I used to chuckle at and say, “Joe Strummer: The Wilderness Years”!  You can hear it on some cheap TV show in the middle of the night on cable! 

H- So you still haven’t answered the question- what’s your favorite Mick Jones song?

J- Oh, right, “Stay Free” hands down, brilliant.  He was just brilliant at arranging and everything.  He’s a music man, just brilliant.

H- You said as much earlier, you’re more of a lyric guy_

J- But it does cross over because everyone gets an idea about everything.  We worked several ways together, separately and if we worked separately the other one would clean up the lyrics or the tune, dip in and move it around, “put that there, now you’ve got it.” 

H- What do you think the Clash’s impact on rock and roll was, you know, when that final book is written, where do you think you stand?

J- We could probably ask for a chapter in such a book, maybe.  We’re kind of interesting because we managed to make it in America which was quite rare for bands from our time.  I mean the Police did, but groups like the Jam, the Buzzcocks really didn’t as much.  We deserve a chapter ‘cause we went global.  But honestly, I don’t know, you’re the critic here, that’s your job, I don’t fuckin’ know! 

H- I haven’t yet, but have you seen or read the book The Last Gang In Town?

J- I’ve seen it but I refuse to read it.

H- Were you talked to about the book?

J- No.  The guy's in a huff because he said he tried to contact all of us and we fucked him off.  But if you really try to contact someone, you can.  You really can, it ain’t that hard.  I can’t remember fucking him off, that’s the other thing.  I’m a bit afraid he went into the book thinking, “Right, I’ll cut the lousy bastards down to size!”  I don’t know, I just don’t want to read it.  A far better read, I don’t know if you’ve read this one but I have, is the one from a roadie of ours called Johnny Green.  He’s written a book called A Riot Of My Own.   That is funny, dude!

It’s really cool ‘cause he was standing there next to me all the time and he just writes it from his point of view.  He doesn’t say what’s going on when he sees me and Bernie (Rhodes, former manager) arguing.  He just says this happened and that happened.  Although it is too thin it is kind of amusing.  You get to ride along in those days of madness.  I think it’s the number one hit pick of the Clash book list, if there is list.

H- I’m a little cautious with most rock books; the Elvis biographies by Peter Guralnick are the best I’ve read.

J- Yeah it’s cool.  A friend of mine, Charles Shaw Murray, he’s actually the journalist that gave me the idea for the song “Garageland” when he said, “The Clash are the sort of band that should be speedily returned to the garage and left, preferably, with the motor running!”  That was our first review.

H- And you kept going!

J- Yeah, as soon as I read that I went, “You bastard!  I’m going to write a song called ‘Garageland’ to let everybody know that we’re a lousy garage band stuck somewhere out in garageland!”  Anyway, since then we’ve become mates and he’s just written this fantastic book that’s been eight years in the making.  It’s called Boogieman and it’s about John Lee Hooker.  It’s a hardback and it’s got to be four inches fat.  You’ve got a treat in store, pick it up, steal it if you have to.

H- Guralnick’s also written about a lot of the blues guys, the Memphis dudes_

J- He did Last Train To Memphis, isn’t that brilliant! 

H- He really brings it to life.  So many music books are flat but he makes you wish you were there.

J- Absolutely!  I wanted to read it again as soon as I finished!  And that beautiful picture of Elvis on the cover at the piano, that just says it all.

H- Have you been to Memphis?

J- Yeah, I’ve done my time in Memphis.  They were shooting nights for Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train with Screaming Jay Hawkins_

H- I didn’t realize that was actually filmed in Memphis.

J- Heck yes.  That was right on the spot.  The kick was that it was August, I don’t know who arranged that, and it was all night shoots so breakfast was about 9pm and work through the night til about 6am.  Goddamn, Memphis in August at night is like a  pot boiler.  They were shooting the film in sequence and my nonsense is only in the last third so they’d been there for two months before I arrived so when I got there they were all zombies.  They were struggling to finish the movie.  So I was able to get all around Memphis and saw, touched, did everything.  Sun Studios, the whole works.

H- What a beautiful feeling when you walk into that room.  It’s ground zero.

J- Yeah, love it.  That cruddy cheap paintboard.  It’s amazing, that’s where he did “That’s Alright,” that’s where rock and roll was born, it’s beyond belief.

H- “That’s a pop song there, nearly ‘bout” so said Mr. Sam Phillips.

J- Did he say that?

H- Yeah, they’ve released several outtakes from those sessions and Phillips said that right after the take just before the final version of that song.  You hear the baby crying at that moment.

J-What’s that on?

H- I’m pretty sure it’s on that new Sun Sessions CD that came out this year.

J- I’ve got to pick that up.  That’s a great quote you just made, you should put that in your article, when you said, “you can hear the baby crying.”  You said it baby, that was really good rocking!

H- You alluded earlier to your wife and kids, do have two kids?

J- No, I’ve got two kids and a step daughter and all three are girls.

H- Sounds like the makings of a sitcom.

J- Yeah, it’d be called Dad, You’re Such A Sad Old Git!

H- Do your daughters realize what you’ve done and what you’re about or are you just their dad, that guy who stays out too late?  What are they into?

J- They’re into real hard punk rock, you see.  Blink 182, Sick Of It All.  I’m not really sure what Blink 182 sound like to be honest.

H- Pretty poppy, more like Green Day, which is like the Buzzcocks...

J-I love Green Day.  Great songs, great vocals, vocal tone.  I was just digging it last night at a bar in Denver after the show and it sounded really great.

H- Do your kids even listen to what you’ve done, or do they even have time for you?

J- Obviously they don’t tell me, “Hey Dad, that’s good,” because they’re much harder than that.  They kind of half shrug which means they kind of like it, you have to interpret teenagers.  One of them’s 15, the other’s 13 so they’re really_they want their heads pierced!

H- How much have you gotten into computers and the internet?  Do you use them much yourself?

J- Here’s the truth- I’ve finally netted up myself and my wife, Luce.  I’m such an old dog that even to get email I have to go to her, “Hey, honey, how did you do that again?”  I’m still at the stage right now where I have to write everything down on a bit of paper, start to finish- turn it on, press this button, select this.  A friend of mine called Josh Cheuse, he’s put up a Strummerville website [http://www.Strummerville.com].  Two weeks ago it got up and we’ve had like 40,000 hits and that’s cool.  This is all new to me.  We’re trying to put interesting things up.  Every night I should send something in. 

H- It’s such a cool tool.  Only a few years ago, bands were on such a pedestal, so intangible.  Now you can post your reflections on last night’s show and everyone can see it.

J- It’s so cool.  It took me an entire year to get my mind around to it and I’m still not even half way there.  There’s a guy down in Frisco, I went and checked out his operation.  He’s got this thing called the Download Deli and it’s fantastic.  He’s got MP3s so you can go in there and download stuff to a CD and burn it.  It’s an amazing thing.

H- I think for an artist like you, you’ve been through the corporate grind before, this will be a way for you to have direct contact with and feedback from your fans.  40,000 hits, that’s a lot, even if some people are going to it 2 or 3 times.

J- Last night we were in a hotel that had all that hooked up in my room with the TV and a keypad.  I’ve got other things on my mind, I think about the set all the time.  One thing I’ve done really weird which I want to boast about- since we landed in Seattle, I haven’t turned the television on once yet.

H- You haven’t missed much.  The more channels they give you_

J- The less there is on it, as Bruce Springsteen pointed out.  I feel nice and calm because of that.  It’s kind of debilitating, you know the voice is eating away at you, especially the adverts.  Someone is really pitching at you, “you should do this” and you can’t help but get engaged in it and it wears your mind out.

H- I pretty much only watch The Simpsons.

J- Me too!  The Simpsons are the best thing ever!  I’ll tell you, when we made Rock Art And The X-Ray Style in the studio in north London, the only thing we ever would down tools to watch, full stop, was the Simpsons.  There’s the double episodes between 6 and 7pm and we’d just down tools to watch that.  With The Simpsons  you can go back to work with a keen heart. Every frame is brilliant.  Matt Groening and his team, they should be given Oscars, just incredible.

H-Who’s you’re favorite character?

J- For me, well I’m kind of Homer, you know (laughs)!

H- You have a little more hair.  You don’t have the gut yet either, do you?

J- I don’t think so, but this road it half makes you skinny.  The intensity of travelling and playing gigs, it makes you skinny.  And food is always interrupted.   We  mostly live on sandwiches at truck stops since this is a bus tour, although we flew today and that was a bit of a treat. 

H- So, what have you been listening to while you’re on this bus?

J-  This is how it runs on the bus:  in the front lounge there’s a CD, then there’s a long corridor to the rear lounge.  At the beginning of the corridor, there’s a toilet.  We’ve rigged it so there are 3 music centers.  I put my ghetto blaster in the toilet with the door open and play mostly vintage reggae, stuff like that.  Also my favorite music is something called Cumbia which is a beat from Columbia.  So I’m blasting this out through this midsection.  In the back there will be Antony, Martin and Scott with the new groove and in the front will be the crew playing Lynyrd Skynyrd.

H- Bus drivers for bands are always from the south!

J- Well, ours is from Tennessee and he’s a right rocker.

H- Have you seen anything on Blood and Fire (a Jamaican reissue label]?

J- That’s brilliant!  Who’s the guy that does that?

H-Steve Barrow.

J- He’s brilliant.  He deserves a slap on the back, it’s fantastic.  That to me is the golden age.  I’ve just been digging, on the same tip, how good King Tubby really is.  It’s amazing, he never puts a fucking foot wrong.

H- It’s the subtleties.  The more you listen to dub the more you pick up on the nuances of someone like Scientist, Lee Perry or King Tubby.  You can recognize them by the sound of the rim shot or whatever!

J- And remember, those tapes are the recording of a performance.  You’ve got one tape of the performance, then, the quarter inch tape is running for the dub and Tubby never fucks up.

H- Have you heard the Will Smith song yet?

J- “The Willenium”!  I gotta say, I like the video, you’ve got to see it.  It’s fantastic entertainment, the video.  It brings the song alive, because I only heard it once on the radio and couldn’t really pick it out, because we were on the bus with people shouting.  But I saw it on MTV and it was great!  It’s great that Will Smith is rocking the house with it!  It is one of my favorites of all time because it was fun, it wasn’t down, it wasn’t preachy.  It was groovy and funky, it was everything we were trying to be.  It was the top of our career, really.

H- One of the things you always did with the Clash, you always injected so many diverse things into the music.  You could tell that you guys were big fans of so many types of music, Jamaican, funk, hip-hop.  While you’re not as extreme on the new album you still incorporate a lot of that world flavor on it.

J- Absolutely and I’m trying to get into more.  “Sandpaper Blues” is an attempt at a Cumbia beat, it’s way off beat, but it’s another cayenne pepper in the pot.

H- Where’d you get the name for Rock Art And The X-Ray Style?

J- This is so funny!  I was down in the doldrums about four years ago, about the time the acid punk group crashed.  I knew we had great tracks and I thought we were on our way, but_I live next to this crazy guy, I live out in the middle of nowhere in England, 300 miles west of London.  Anyway, I had this crazy neighbor and I went to him one day when I was in a down mood and he took me in to the house where his books were.  I pulled one out and there was a chapter in it called Rock Art And The X-Ray Style.  This was like an old book from the 30’s.  I went, “That’s it!” and from that moment it was on.  Can you imagine if you have a bunch of songs floating around, but then you get a title for the work you feel more focused, you have something to aim at.  It holds it all together.  What was actually going on with the book, say 25,000 years ago they painted animals, you know on the caves and in time they began to paint the bones as if you could see through the animals.  The professors call it, the X-Ray Style to differentiate that from the other period.  And Damian Hirst, have you heard of him?

H- Nope.

J- I can’t believe it, he’s so famous in Europe.  He’s the guy who cuts cows in half_

H- Yeah, yeah_

J- Now you’ve got it.  I always have to mention that to everybody.  He designed the cover and every figure on the cover was actually done 60,000 years ago. Every animal and picture is from beyond history.  Cool, isn’t it?

H- Well Joe, I appreciate you taking the time to talk.  You’ve made a big impact on me with your music and I’m glad I had an hour to talk with you.

J- Ah, brilliant Howard, it was my pleasure too.  Good on you, see you in Boston, babe!