Why Joe Strummer compared himself to Greta Garbo: “Extra bitter”
“Everybody wants to be famous,” Joe Strummer told the Chicago Tribune in 1989, “But fame itself isn’t all that interesting; the way we deal with it is.”
Strummer was only 37 years old at the time, but he’d already done the whole cycle of scrape, claw, succeed, over-succeed, stumble, collapse, and scrape and claw again, thanks to his ten-year journey with The Clash.
In 1985, the once monolithic and critically adored punk pioneers released a shockingly terrible album called Cut the Crap, losing the last of their defenders in the press and essentially draining Strummer of his remaining reserves of patience following years of power struggles with bandmates and band manager Bernie Rhodes. The frontman who could once silence a room in anticipation of what he might say next was now resigned to saying absolutely nothing for a while.
Strummer spent most of the late 1980s not exactly in exile, but certainly in the shadows. He worked on some film scores, became a supporting member of The Pogues‘ touring band, and basically settled into middle age – no easy adjustment for a punk.
His return to the spotlight came in 1988, when he put together a new band called the Latino Rockabilly War, a super-ish group featuring guitarist Zander Schloss of the Circle Jerks, bassist Lonnie Marshall of Marshall Law, and percussionists Jack Irons from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Willie McNeil of Tupelo Chain Sex. Strummer led the new outfit on a 40-date tour of the UK, promoted by an anarchist organisation called Class War. He was back in his element.
“That got the fright away,” Strummer said of the tour. “We were wishfully thinking that we could just get up and play, without glittery white outfits and big production – and that’s what happened.” Strummer was clearly feeling a bit out of step with the mainstream of rock in the late ‘80s, which was now dominated by the likes of Guns N’ Roses, Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, and other not-particularly politically-minded hair bands. Nonetheless, he decided to carry forward and record his first post-Clash album, working with his new friends from Latino Rockabilly War at a studio in LA.
That album, released in 1989, was called Earthquake Weather, so named because the studio was literally on a fault line, with four minor quakes disturbing the sessions just in the time Strummer was there. That would be enough to unnerve anybody, but Strummer’s songwriting on Earthquake Weather also seemed preoccupied with taking stock of his own discomfort – with ageing, with the break-up of The Clash, with the pitfalls of fame. One such song, ‘Slant Six’, explores these topics by slightly shifting the lens toward some of the other stars of the surrounding Hollywood landscape, the silver screen sirens of the past.
“That’s what you were to the crowd,” Strummer sings. “The imprint is indelible / Who the hell cares what you are now? / The soundtrack is too loud / And everything’s sweet except for / Avoiding books and magazines / What a fate to be imprisoned / At the height of your dreams.”
Strummer explained to the Chicago Tribune that ‘Slant Six’ was intended to be about “an ageing beauty withdrawing from the world, a [Marlene] Dietrich or a [Greta] Garbo whose youth and beauty are preserved on the screen.”
“That must be an extra bitter thing,” Strummer concluded, “To have to face your age and yet always see your former glory. It’s a bit like that for me, too.” Earthquake Weather was not a great commercial success, and Strummer wouldn’t release a second solo album for another decade.
