“It was so raw”: Elton John hailed Joe Strummer as the Johnny Cash of punk
For someone like Elton John, the barriers around certain genres of music become irrelevant after a while. The whole purpose behind all good music is to make something that people want to hear, and that extends from glam rock to rap metal to freeform jazz as long as there’s a good melody over the top. And while John has shown himself to be at home as a session player for countless artists, he knew when he was looking at someone who had the makings of a legend in their presentation.
Because if there’s one thing that John knows better than most, it’s how to present himself to the masses. He didn’t want to be someone who came out onstage and played on his piano bench for the rest of his life, so it was only natural for him to wear some of the most outlandish outfits possible and be a bit more provocative than usual, as if combining the stage personas of Mick Jagger and Marc Bolan into one from behind his upright.
But glam rock was far from the only thing John listened to in his spare time. He had a far more eclectic record collection than the standard pop hits of the day, and while he had been classically trained and had pieces of Bach and Beethoven scattered throughout his discography, the common thread that he had with Bernie Taupin when they first met was their undying love of country music.
Although John’s music doesn’t necessarily have strains of Dolly Parton in it or anything, tracks like ‘Country Comfort’ showed that both he and Taupin had gone back and studied those old records from George Jones and Tammy Wynette and found out what made them so beautiful back in the day. And whereas country was slowly becoming its own animal when John was topping the charts, he also had to worry about the new school coming in.
Glam rock was meant to be provocative, but nothing manages to reduce rock down to its essentials more than punk rock. It had started with the glam tradition with acts like New York Dolls, but the minute that The Clash arrived, fans knew that there was something more to the genre than the fashion, and John could tell that he was listening to a frontman who would live on forever.
Even though John had a fair bit of experience rubbing shoulders with legends like John Lennon and David Bowie, he knew Strummer was something different, saying, “Joe had that rare quality that singers [like] Johnny Cash had: Whatever he sang affected you because it was just so raw. His voice reeked of hurt and anger. Take his version of ‘Redemption Song’ on Streetcore-just him alone, with an acoustic guitar. He just makes it his song.”
And while most people would be enraged thinking that punk rock had anything to do with country music, they aren’t necessarily that far apart. Both of them are singing about the common man and the struggles that everyone has whenever they get up in the morning and go to work, and when listening to Cash sing a song like ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ or Strummer sing ‘I Fought the Law’, the desperation in their voice makes you believe every single word they were singing.
Did Cash really shoot a man in Reno to watch him die, and did Strummer ever find himself robbing people with a six-gun? Probably not, but that was hardly the point. They were both the mouthpieces for their respective genres, and while it was hard for them to get a foothold amongst standard pop listeners, that was only because they were interested in something bigger than the top 40 audience.
