Redemption Song: The Definitive Biography of Joe Strummer. Chris Salewicz

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      Sixteen-year-old Johnny Mellor, at the wedding of his cousin Stephen Macfarland – Anna Mellor, his mother, is on the left. (Gerry King)

      At the wedding reception John Mellor learnt that his cousin had been to school with the Who’s Pete Townshend, and that an early version of the Who had even played in the basement of the house in which the wedding reception was held; Jonathan showed his cousin an acoustic guitar he owned, on which he said Townshend had occasionally played. Johnny Mellor took the guitar back to school and tried out rudimentary chords, notably those of Cream’s version of blues master Willie Dixon’s ‘Spoonful’; although Paul Buck made a bass guitar in woodwork, and would attempt to play with Johnny in their joint study, the Mellor boy was defeated by the need for assiduous practice. But he acquired another ‘instrument’, a feature of his corner of the CLFS study, a portable typewriter, an unusual possession for an English schoolboy: in later life a portable typewriter would often accompany him. Its acquisition at this stage could be an indication that he saw some form of writing as his future.

      John Mellor spent the summer of 1969 suitably fuelled on pints of bitter and quid-deals of Lebanese hash, with Paul Buck and two of his friends, Steve White and Pete Silverton, cruising the pubs and lanes of Sussex and Kent in Steve White’s Vauxhall Viva van, close to Pete Silverton’s home town of Tunbridge Wells, looking for parties and girls. ‘It was always good fun,’ remembered White, ‘going to these parties where you’d end up staying for three or four days, lying around in gardens and fields, especially after The Man had come up from Hastings with the gear.’ (Another friend, Andy Secombe, recalls, ‘I remember fetching up in a field in Betchworth in Surrey – I’ve no idea why – at about 2 a.m., and he was jumping up and down with a Party 7 beer can and being very “lit up”.’) ‘I’ve no visual memory of what Joe looked like when I first met him,’ said Silverton, ‘except his hair was long. We all had long hair. This was the late 1960s. But I can remember him writing and doodling in this curled way, with his left hand. He and Paul Buck would incessantly play Gloria by Them, as though it was the only record in the world.’

      Like his new crew of compadres, Johnny Mellor was attired in the uniform of the day: flared jeans and jeans jackets, worn with coloured, often check shirts and reasonably tight crew-neck sweaters; an army surplus greatcoat was considered highly desirable, as was a second-hand fur coat, preferably moth-eaten: Johnny Mellor went out of his way to acquire one of these.

      Significantly, both Steve White and Pete Silverton remembered being introduced to Johnny Mellor as ‘Woody’. ‘Paul Buck was known as Pablo then,’ added Silverton. ‘He didn’t suddenly become Pablo Labritain in the days of punk – that was something that was going on since he was sixteen.’ Later, Paul Buck – Pablo, as he still prefers to be known – gave me an explanation, suggesting Steve and Pete might be slightly inaccurate. ‘All Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band changed their names. So we did. My name was Pablo, and he was Woolly Census. Next time I saw him after he’d left school, he said “No, no: I’m Woody now.” It was just kids’ stuff.’

      In the mythology of Joe Strummer, his ‘Woody’ nickname has always been said to be a tribute to the great American left-wing folk-singer Woody Guthrie, which Joe was happy to go along with – but there seems to have been a much simpler, rather less romantic explanation. It’s easy to see how ‘Woolly’ could mutate to the more direct ‘Woody’ – to Pablo, Johnny Mellor wrote letters signed ‘Wood’. Such nicknaming is an everyday feature of public school life, almost part of a rite of passage in which pupils are given a new identity – as Johnny became ‘Mee-lor’, for example.

      Years later, in 1999, Pete Silverton bumped into Joe Strummer in a pub in Primrose Hill. ‘He started telling stories about when I first knew him, which he remembered in great detail, but I don’t. Many of these involved drug-taking in teenage years and police raiding parties – that sort of normal thing. Specifically, he remembered a party at which I convinced the police that nothing untoward was taking place while being totally off my head. Joe remembered that I explained very logically and convincingly to the police there was nothing going on out of the ordinary despite the fact that Pablo was in the bath with his girlfriend. Perhaps that was why the police prolonged the interview, on the grounds that there was a naked woman in the place.’

      With Woody, Pablo and Steve White, Pete Silverton gatecrashed parties throughout the summer of 1969. It was, he said, ‘the kind of area where you count the staircases: most of the parties we went to were in two-staircase houses. None of us were rich, but we went to rich girls’ homes on the edge of the country. We were always welcome gatecrashers, but also always over in the corner with the drugs. There was lots of hash around, lots of acid.’ The consumption of drugs, in fact, seemed to take precedence over sex. ‘There was not a high level of sexual activity,’ according to Pete Silverton. ‘A bit, but not a lot. It was more people having sex with their girlfriends, and even then not everybody.’

      I mentioned to Silverton that in the opinion of Adrian Greaves Johnny Mellor had by this time become sardonic and sneering, an attitude in which he shared companionship with Paul Buck. ‘That explains how they fitted in with our circle. In our circle they were warm, generous people. There was a sense of superiority amongst all of us of being the coolest people around.’

      In a class below Johnny at CLFS was Anne, or Annie, Day, from an army family based in Germany. By the time Annie got to know John in the school choir, he was in the Sixth Form, known as either ‘Woody’ or – another nickname – ‘Johnny Red’. Annie Day became a ‘sort of girlfriend’ of Johnny Mellor: ‘We snogged a bit, but we weren’t full on.’ Perhaps the state of his teeth held him back: ‘When he kissed you he didn’t quite open his mouth. He was always really embarrassed about his teeth.’ There was a considerable age gap between Annie Day and Johnny Mellor; as he matured into the character of Joe Strummer, this became a pattern.

      ‘We clicked. We just got on well. I think what really cemented our friendship was that every Wednesday afternoon at school, every single class did games. I was excused from games pretty much the whole of the summer. Instead of Joe doing games, he was given free range to use the art department whenever he liked: he was in the Upper Sixth, doing his art A-level, so he used to spend all his time in the art room. At the time he was doing a 27-foot-long painting, and I became his artist’s assistant. I thought he was a really talented artist. I had a conversation with him where I said: “You are going to be really famous and I think you will be famous for your art.”’

      For the Christmas celebrations in his final year at CLFS, Johnny Mellor did a series of pop-art-style, comic-strip-like paintings which were put up on display in the school dining-hall. In the manner of Roy Lichtenstein, whose examples of the genre were widely popular, he adorned them with speech bubbles bearing such Marvel-type utterances as ‘BIFF!’ and ‘POW!’ These did not meet with the approval of Mr Michael Kemp, the headmaster. The paintings were only passed for public consumption after each one of them had been altered to the more seasonal ‘Happy Christmas!’

      In the Lent edition of The Ashteadian (‘The Journal of City of London Freemen’s School’), in his last year at the school, ‘J.G. Mellor’ is listed as one of the nine boys and eight girls who are school prefects. On page 10, beneath the heading of ‘Dramatic Society’, there is a brief appeal: ‘Again I would like to make a strong plea for material, in the form of songs, sketches or jokes which should be handed into the prefects’ room,’ signed, ‘JOHN MELLOR (Chairman)’. Elsewhere, John Mellor is listed as ‘School cross-country running champion’; surprisingly, as he was hardly the tallest of competitors, on Sports’ Day he also won the high jump. But his approach to school games was flexible; he picked the volleyball teams on the basis of whoever he felt like hanging out and talking with, perfunctorily playing the game whenever teachers turned up.

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