Exploring Joe Strummer and The Clash’s love for hip-hop
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The reason why Joe Strummer returned to music
When Joe Strummer made a comeback in 1999 with his new outfit, The Mescaleros, nobody could quite believe it. The former Clash frontman had returned from his extended period in the “wilderness”, backed by a set of top-flight musicians and with a host of new tunes to boot. What made this second coming even more surprising was the fact that the songs Strummer had written with The Mescaleros were genuinely brilliant. He was one of the greatest songwriters of our time, so the astonishment was somewhat unfounded.
During a September 1999 interview with CD Now, Strummer revealed how he formed The Mescaleros and why he’d chosen to return to music after such a long time away. Utilising his trademark fusion of comedy and poetry, the former Clash man explained: “Partly chance, partly financial and partly circumstantial. Mainly because I met someone to collaborate with. I’m half a walnut- that’s the way I see it. Pretty good but still half a walnut. I needed a tunesmith, to be more specific- like Rodgers and Hart, Leiber and Stoller. I’m a lyrical man.”
He then disclosed how he met his Mescaleros partner in crime, Anthony Genn, and revealed how this chance encounter was to change the course of his life and career, and before too long, the band were formed.
Strummer said: “I was wandering around, trying to figure out what to do for eleven years. I found Anthony Genn, he’s a young cat. I knew him already from seeing him work at other sessions. He said, ‘You’re Joe Strummer. You should be making a record.’ I was looking at these young idiots making music at some joint in London. I looked at him and said, ‘You’re right.’ So when we were watching these idiots, he was saying, ‘You wanna do it, I’m there.’ So in one week, we’re in a studio, and we haven’t come out since. We did Rock Art and the X-Ray Style and then we went on the road. Our feet haven’t touched the ground yet. Just meeting a collaborator… It’s no good being half a walnut in a Waldorf salad.”
The interviewer then asked Strummer if he hadn’t written songs in a while at that point, to which he responded: “Yeah. ‘Cause I find that they know they’re not going to come out. Supposing that I contractually had an eight-year tangle with paperwork that prevented anything from happening or issuing anything. The songs don’t seem to come you if they know they’re not going to come out, I reckon. Either that or I’m a lazy sod. It’s probably a bit of both.”
This meeting with Genn rekindled the creative fire that once burned so bright within Strummer. He said: “Soon as it all started up, I ran out of bits of paper. In the hotel room, it looks like El-Alamin with words written on everything, cig packets, tissues. It’s like mad scribbling over everything. I really think that ’cause they know they can come out now. I got a contract with Hellcat (Records)- that was another reason. ‘Cause I had been signed to a corporation for twenty years. Believe me, being at Hellcat is different. I’m really having a good time. I can’t believe it.”
Strummer then turned his attention to the major label that he was contracted to before forming The Mescaleros. At this point, he was over the music business in general, but switching to Hellcat Records, the legendary Los Angeles-based subsidiary of Epitaph, also helped to stoke his creative fire and shed light on just how neglected he was by his former label.
He stated: “You know what it’s like to be buried in a filing cabinet? It’s not even like they care about letting you out. They just can’t be bothered to go and find your paperwork. Really! I wouldn’t mind if they said, ‘You’re contracted! Shut up!’ But it’s like, ‘We’ll try and get it to it next week.’ Then three months, it’s like, ‘Where’s that paperwork?!’, ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’ll get on to it.’ Six months go by, and I have to ring them up. ‘Look, do you want me to come to the lobby of your fancy headquarters in London? I’m gonna throw down in your lobby like you ain’t never gonna forget'”.
Concluding his cutting take on the music industry, Strummer said: “I was talking to a top lawyer in the corporation and that didn’t make any effect. A week went by and I said, ‘I’m not a violent man, but I’m gonna get on a train and come up to London and come to your office. How do you like that ’cause I’m leaving now!’, ‘NO, NO, NO!!!’ And I got the bloody paperwork out, but I had to go through that ridiculous level. Beats me, man. This is grown-ups we’re dealing with here. Overpaid. It’s unbelievable.”
The Mescaleros would go on to represent Joe Strummer’s triumphant middle finger up to his former record label, and they would make three lauded albums between 1999 and his tragic death in 2002. They put the former Clash member back on the map and reminded everyone of the fact that genius is always there, even if it takes a break for 11 years.
