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

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      Woody’s loving cartoon of Deborah Kartun. (Deborah van ber Beek, née Kartun)

      But from the bottom of his heart Joe also cared for and loved his male friends. ‘Drug cocktails’ were such a specialty of the house that Dick the Shit began to develop what Woody Mellor considered to be a dependency on amphetamines. ‘He solved that problem for me by sitting me down in a room and repeatedly playing Canned Heat’s “Speed Kills”. He was being a real friend, and sorted that out for me.’

      The assembled collective made ends meet by haphazardly labouring on the farm. ‘We made a life-size replica of Stonehenge out of straw bales. We all got severe bollockings for that.’

      But the last straw was when Helen Cherry went down to answer the door to the postman with no clothes on. ‘He runs back to the village and announces, “There’s sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll up there.” We all got kicked out. Joe went back to town.’

      For her part Deborah Kartun went off to Cardiff Art School, to begin a three-year degree course in ceramics. ‘That was when I dumped Woody. I had to split up with him: he was dropping out quite seriously, and doing a lot of speed and acid. He was becoming quite wild, and was difficult to live with – you’d make an arrangement and he’d turn up four days late.

      ‘But I don’t know if he realised I adored him. But we were both acting parts very much, part of that art-school thing. You know how he always acted. I remember he went to an early Gilbert and George show, and was bowled over by it. We went to a fancy-dress party where I dressed up as a vampire tough woman, gorgeous fifties’ dress, but with plastic vampire teeth. He got very upset.

      ‘But the acting thread ran through everything all of us did: it was play-acting, like children, all a continuation of dressing up as kids. Even his cowboys and Indians thing was part of this conceptual approach to life.’

      But Woody Mellor had friends at the art school in Newport, a few miles from where Deborah was studying in Cardiff.

      In November 1972 he wrote to Annie Day from Upper Warlingham at what in hindsight we may see as a pivotal point in his life; although he writes on a greetings card, which bears the image of a blue elephant – shooting flowers out of its trunk – under the light of a full moon in a floral jungle, he packs both sides with his neat italic script; the envelope is postmarked ‘Croydon Surrey, 10.45am 15 Nov 1972’, and he has appended the phrase ‘Tutti Fruti Mail Service’ by the stamp.

      Dear Anne I’m doin’ a cartoon strip at the moment called ‘GONAD SLEEPS IN LATRINES’. I have to because in a flash moment I said I’d do it for the college I used to go to’s magazine. This girl was supposed to do it but she couldn’t be arsed and I saw a chance to get my famous character in print but now in the early hours of the morning I begin to weary and the cigarette smoke drifts into my eyes but with a few tons of SELF CONTROL I should finish in about 3 hours. I’m down at my parents home for the weekend and tomorrow I’m going back to London, then on Wednesday I’m going down the M4 to Newport in Wales. I’ve decided to settle down there HA-HA for a while at least. The stinking press of humanity drives me from London. I wonder how yer college education is getting on. What are you learning anyway? Will you accept belated thanks for that last letter of yours? Cut your hair? I’ve just had mine done. I wanted it Futuristic so at the moment its like the Queen’s. Last week I had a great rocknroll quiff but it takes a lot of sweat to keep it like that. Maybe I gotta use Brylcreem again. I’m playing the guitar a lot now and I’m goin down Newport to practice and get shit hot. May take a year or too [sic]. Well now, you got any young men chasing you? It might make life more interesting but NEVER believe a word they say. What do you think of the picture on the front? I got it because it looks just like a bad copy of ROUSSEAU which I suppose it is. Some of that guy’s paintings are really OK. Do you know that one with a tiger asleep in a desert with a full moon? Its my favourite, makes you want to cry if you’re drunk. And I think he was a bank clerk during the day and doing these really weird pictures at night. I got a real NIGHT scene set up here at the moment with Radio Lux just turned up dead faint so you can hardly hear the guy say “DATELINE – friendship, love and EVEN marriage”! I’m sittin at my drum kit with a drawing board on the snare drum and a spotlight on the side Tom Tom because it’s the only “table” available but I have to be careful not to tap the bass drum pedals when some rock n roll comes on because it will wake the P. and M. In one of your letters you say you were listening to the Doors, well funny you should say that because I’ve been living with a guy whose nuts on the Doors and he puts on ‘Riders of the Storm’ and I’ve been thinking it’s real good because before I didn’t reckon on them. ‘LA Woman’ that’s good too. It’s a pity Jim Morrison died he was OK. Have you heard ‘Runnin Blue’? That’s neat. Ah Kid Jensen [the Radio Luxembourg disc jockey] puts on the crummy records! I’m staying with a friend when I get to Newport but when I get a place I’ll send you the address straight off OK? I was goin to draw you a souvenir picture of Gonad but I can’t now. All my lovin John. PS. You heard Buddy Holly? Keep well XXX’

      Of course, the most interesting information in this revealing missive is John Mellor’s announcement of his ability with the guitar: ‘I’m playing the guitar a lot now, and I’m goin … get shit hot. May take a year or too.’ Clearly he had decided to follow a musical course with complete dedication.

      ‘I ended up in Wales, after I had served my apprenticeship with Tymon Dogg, and there didn’t seem to be any way of making a living in London or surviving … and I followed a girl to Cardiff Art School, who I’d known in London, and she told me that she wasn’t interested, and I started to hitch back to London, and the first town you come to is Newport in South Wales … And then I got a job in the graveyard, got a room, crashed my way into art school, although I wasn’t at the art school, into the art school rock band, and that was really great, to learn your chops with some really kind people who let me sleep on the floor at first, and yeah that gave me a whole heap of help.’

      The ‘really kind people’ were Jill Calvert, Gail Goodall’s cousin, and her boyfriend Mickey Foote. Mickey Foote had got into Newport art school ‘by accident’, said Jill. ‘He drove someone else down for an interview and got in. He was very talented.’ There was also a practical reality about this move, as Joe later told his friend Keith Allen: ‘I went there because there wasn’t any room in London. That’s why I went there. I was sleeping on someone’s floor, for a few months, in their kitchen, in a two-room flat, and you outstay your welcome. And I had a girlfriend at Cardiff Art College. So I thought I’d hitch down there and rekindle the romance. And I hitched down to Cardiff and she told me to shove off. And so I started to hitch back and the first stop off was Newport, and I had some friends there at Newport, ‘cause these were all people I’d met at the foundation year in London at Central. And I hadn’t made it into any other course so I was kind of on the lam.’

      ‘Suddenly,’ said Jill Calvert, ‘Joe turned up in the corridor of Newport College of Art, a massive public building, with his guitar on his back, and that was that. He was standing there, and I was very surprised. He wasn’t into Divine Light any more. Helen Cherry says he walked around at Central with a white sheet on. But when he came down to Newport he wasn’t into religion. He left all that behind him. He came with that guitar on his back and Divine Light wasn’t going to do it for him.’

      Woody Mellor at first stayed with a friend from Central School of Art called Forbes Leishman, now a student at Newport, who’d taken him to the Students’ Union building on Stow Hill. At first Woody moved in with him; we get a glimpse of his life in Newport from a letter that he sent to Paul Buck:

       So I’m living in Newport Mon[mouthshire]. I’m sending you a letter and want to buy you a guitar. £10 – yeah. You are getting a bass before you get a car. I don’t have my room here, but my address is Wood c/o Sir Forbes Freshman, СКАЧАТЬ