‘The Road to Rock N’ Roll’: The song Joe Strummer wrote with Johnny Cash in mind
In 1999, Joe Strummer suddenly returned to music like a punk caveman thawed out of the ice, only to find himself in a post-grunge, nu metal wasteland without any clear vision of where he fit into it. His debut album with new band The Mescaleros, called Rock Art and the X-Ray Style, was the first record Strummer had released since 1989’s solo effort Earthquake Weather. In the interim, which basically covered the entirety of the 1990s, the former Clash frontman worked on some film scoring and acting, but mostly stayed quiet, waiting for some lingering Clash-related legal tie-ups to run their course. It was time he later decided was well spent.
“Ten years went by and I thought, that’s it, I’m gonna be washed away with the detergent and out through the sluice gates and out to sea,” Strummer told the LA Times in a 1999 interview. “But in fact, more and more people started turning around and looking at me, going, ‘Hmm, nice’.”
He continued: “You know, after thousands of crap records came out and youth cults came and went, I found people were going, ‘Yeah, that’s quite dignified, that. You haven’t flooded the market with loads of crap records. You haven’t led us up garden paths and new directions that don’t go anywhere. You just chilled out and you’re good company and you don’t moan, you’re not snivelling in self-pity.‘”
With many fans not having properly heard Strummer since the demise of the Clash back in 1985, the news of his debut as “Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros” was met with a mix of excitement and some trepidation. Fortunately, that first record found him in good form; an older, wiser version of the same singular voice that had once defined the “only band that mattered.”
A particular standout track on Rock Art and the X-Ray Style is a jaunty, shuffling acoustic number called ‘The Road to Rock n’ Roll’, a sort of primer on the hazards of the rock lifestyle and ghosts of its past.
“On the road to rock ‘n’ roll,” Strummer sings, “There’s a lot of wreckage in the ravine / Some you recognise / Used to hang out on the scene.”
Considering how well ‘The Road to Rock N’ Roll’ is suited to a former punk in his late 40s, it’s somewhat surprising that Strummer actually wrote the song with a different vocalist in mind, eventually pitching it to his friend and idol Johnny Cash, according to that same LA Times story. Cash, who was in the midst of his American Recordings era, kindly declined the offer. It all worked out for the better, though, as Strummer’s own world-weariness and grizzle fit the part just as well as the Man in Black.
“I’m trying to get some wisdom,” Strummer said of the song. “There’s a line in [‘The Road to Rock n’ Roll’] where it goes, ‘There’s a mirror in your soul and you should turn it to the sky.’ That’s what I learned on the road to rock n’ roll. In other words, be a force for good and not for evil.”
