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

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      ‘It was Paul Simonon who really gave the look to the Clash, and kind of led us into … Well, we had to make our own clothes – that was one difference I have to say between the Clash and the Sex Pistols. The Sex Pistols had McLaren’s boutique, and he was able to feed his clothes to the group. But with Bernie in charge of us, who’d split apart from Malcolm, we were in the situation where we had to make our own clothes. Paul Simonon was really instrumental in this, because he was an artist at the time, as he is now. It was Simmo who got into flicking the clothes with paint [inspired by the drip-painting method of the American artist Jackson Pollock], and then we started to paint words on them. I think it was Bernie who suggested putting words [on them], because he was into that situationist theory stuff, and it has to be stressed none of us were intellectuals, or are … But a large part of it for me was the look as well as the sound. A new world was taking over, and I mean we wouldn’t stop. It was a twenty-four-hour experience, day or night, either writing songs, or making clothes, getting into records. It was a full-on thing.’

      ‘Joe looked funny when we first met him,’ said Mick. ‘He didn’t look quite right. We already looked the part, committed to this new thing. We gave him some trousers and a jacket and did it up a bit for him. He started to look right straight away. He had quite short hair at that time, dyed blond. Standing at the bus stop, opposite Davis Road, I was thinking, He’s starting to look all right. But he had all this stuff that we didn’t have, the stuff that we looked up to – just the fact that he was doing it and making an impression, playing to people in public. All our projects had hardly involved any public excursions. Up to that point.’

      For now Bernie Rhodes wanted an assurance that he had made the right decision in selecting this singer for the group. He checked out his choice with Glen Matlock. ‘When he got Joe Strummer into the Clash, he asked me what I thought of him. “He’s all right,” I said, “but he’s a bit old.” “Don’t you worry about that,” said Bernie, “I’ll have ten years off him.” And he did. Next time I saw Joe he looked maybe not ten years younger but certainly a totally different man and ready to rock.’

      ‘My take on Joe Strummer is this,’ Bernie Rhodes told me. ‘Before we met, Joe and I, he had a dilemma: he was dissatisfied with himself and his life. He took on the role of Woody, but then he met me and I shook his life into the future. Joe didn’t want to be Woody, he wanted to be me. And that’s how he became an international success.’

      When Joe Strummer returned home from that first visit to Davis Road, Iain Gillies was waiting for him: ‘He came back in the evening and was in a state of high excitement, running on adrenalin, pacing non-stop around the ground-floor rooms. The others at Orsett Terrace had to follow him from room to room. Joe and the 101’ers were supposed to be having a meeting about the state of the band. But there was no band. It was a fait accompli – Joe was leaving.’

      The 101’ers had one last gig to play, a show south of London on 5 June 1976 at the Clare Halls, Haywards Heath in Sussex. Although Martin Stone was again deputizing on guitar, Clive Timperley turned up to add his instrument on this valedictory performance. Then it was all over.

      By now Mickey Foote had moved out of Orsett Terrace and was living with his girlfriend in Sebastian Conran’s palatial house by Regent’s Park. Paul Simonon and Sid Vicious replaced him in the Orsett Terrace squat. ‘By then Joe’s new group had obviously formed,’ said Jules Yewdall. ‘The 101’ers were no more and the squat was starting to come to an end as well. Everyone was trying to figure out what they were going to do next. By then Joe had already moved. Everyone was losing touch with each other.’ 42 Orsett Terrace continued as a squat until November 1976, with Joe and Paul spasmodically living there. However, with the end of the 101’ers the spirit of the squat had significantly declined.

      Joe’s breaking up the 101’ers caused ructions among his squatter mates. Jill Calvert remembered him being called to ideological order one night by Tymon Dogg and Dave Goodall in the kitchen of 23 Chippenham Road, as rainwater ceaselessly dripped into a plastic bucket from the leaking roof: ‘Tymon and Dave were outraged with him: “You can’t do this. How can you do this?” Joe almost asking permission, “Can I go with a clear conscience?” It was painful. There was something very parental about it.

      ‘Joe only drank in those days if it was around: if dope was about he’d have it, if drink was about he’d have it. He was much more of a drinker once he got into the Clash. I think there was a lot of pressure once he was in the Clash. [Mick Jones disagreed: ‘He drank loads. The 101’ers was pub rock, after all.’] I think there was an awful lot of keeping up he had to do, with Mick and Paul, to prove he wasn’t a hippie. So he had to become a bloke. But there was a life-support system that had been taken away from him. When he came to London, Dave and Gail were there and he met Paloma, he was anchored. I think that gave him a sense of family.’

      Joe had attempted to bring one member of the 101’ers into his as yet unnamed new group – Richard Dudanski was offered the drum-stool: ‘I was in bed one night, and Joe came up with some of the guys in this new group. I went down to Davis Road, and the first guy I met was Bernie Rhodes. Bernie was not the easiest person. I just didn’t want to work with him. So I said, “We can change the name of the 101’ers, but let’s keep doing what we are basically doing, and we’ll be fine.” But Joe was sold on Bernie’s ideas of management. So I went off to Italy – that was that. Joe had to totally deny the 101’ers and anything to do with them. After about a year I found him sleeping out in the garden one morning, where the rubbish was. He had come down to see us, but, being Joe, didn’t want to wake us up at 2 in the morning. For me the Clash’s political approach was very ironic, because the 101’ers were living political stuff – that was our existence as squatters, literally the politics of the street. We were laughing at society from which we managed to be rather separate, living another way.’

      Pat Nother simply said, ‘I don’t understand why my brother didn’t join the bloody Clash.’

      Bernie Rhodes had rented premises from British Rail in Camden Town which he named Rehearsal Rehearsals – abbreviated by its users to simply ‘Rehearsals’. ‘Rehearsals’ consisted of one large downstairs room, and two upstairs rooms, one filled with second-hand pinball and fruit machines (a further sideline of Bernie Rhodes, as was selling second-hand Renaults), and another a band office and recreation area, with a jukebox.

      This new group may have had space to rehearse but they still didn’t have a drummer. Joe Strummer called up Paul Buck. Paul had seen the 101’ers once, at a show in Hammersmith, but he was unaware that Woody now had another name. ‘I called him “Wood” and he snarled at me: “I’ve changed my name.”’ Although he appears in the earliest photographs of the still unnamed group, Paul lasted for only a couple of rehearsals. ‘The group came down to our farm in a big truck which they’d borrowed,’ Paul told me. ‘ To see them all in the Sussex countryside was very funny. They were all there, including Keith Levene and other hangers-on, and Bernie.

      ‘Unbeknownst to everybody I recorded the whole afternoon. I had a foot switch I used to flick when I was playing with another guitarist so we could ascertain our progress. I recorded the whole afternoon so I could learn the songs, if it all worked out. Unfortunately Bernie realized I’d made a copy and asked to borrow it. That’s the last I ever saw of it.’

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