Exploring ‘Hell W10’, the film that The Clash’s Joe Strummer directed in 1983
After the release of Combat Rock in 1982, The Clash began to fall apart. Despite their massive influence on the punk scene, within five years of their self-titled debut album’s release, the band were already on a rocky downwards slope.
Topper Headon was asked to leave the band because his drumming became too heavily affected by his heroin addiction. His departure only heightened the rising tensions between the other members, and Mick Jones and Joe Strummer began to feud.
Yet in 1983, Strummer had an idea to make a film, despite the evergrowing friction. The result was Hell W10, a 50-minute black and white silent film shot on 16mm. In 2005 Jones discussed the film, “We had no other agenda there than that. Everyone put in their time without thinking about it. That was what we did on our time off; we worked! It was totally Joe’s idea. He directed it, he shot it, he did it. And then it was gone. It didn’t even come out!’
In 1987, Strummer gave an interview where he claimed the film, which he described as “a disaster”, had been lost forever, “Luckily, the laboratory that held all the negative went bankrupt and destroyed all the stock, so the world can breathe again. I shot without a script. God knows what it was about. I’m the only other one that knew, and I’m not telling.'”
However, in 2002, the year that Strummer passed away, the film was rediscovered and edited by Don Letts, a long-time collaborator of The Clash. Hell W10 follows members of the band playing gangsters, clearly inspired by neorealist cinema, 1950s gangster movies, and the French New Wave. Paul Simonon plays Earl, whereas Jones plays a crime boss called Socrates, or ‘The Lord of Ladbroke Grove’. Strummer even features in a minor role as a corrupt, racist police officer.
Set amongst classic London locations such as Notting Hill, Paddington and Ladbroke Grove, the film is a visual time capsule of 1980s London. Derek Goddard, who had drummed with Strummer in his side project, The Soul Vendors, recalled, “I was told that the film was going to be played during a live performance – it sounded like an interesting idea, combining sound, visuals, and multi-media. There was no script or plotline, except what was in Joe’s head.”
He also explained how much fun the band had during filming, using real alcohol during takes which meant that everyone got progressively more drunk as the days went on. Once filming wrapped, Strummer, Goddard, and several others, including Gaby Salter (Strummer’s girlfriend), who also helped to film the movie, spent time in a small editing studio where they learnt techniques such as splicing and intercutting frames.
Barry ‘The Baker’ Auguste, the band’s drum technician, shared that “Mick and Paul played the main protagonists – with Mick’s role as the bad guy and Paul’s role as the hero correctly portraying the tensions of the period. At the time, Mick was seen as the villain in all things by most of those around, and certainly in Joe and Paul’s eyes.”
He also wrote, “Hell W10 was a personal project for Joe, which initially plays like a simple, unpretentious home movie. But hidden beneath the surface of its archetypal cops-and-robbers plotline, Joe was cleverly caricaturing the true-life roles of everyone in the band, making the film a prime example of ‘art imitating life.’ In truth, the ‘Last Gang in Town’ was unknowingly having its last soirée.”
Watch the full film below:
