Requiem for an icon

THE SUDDEN DEATH of Joe Strummer came out of nowhere. "Nowhere" because that's where Strummer seemed to have been hiding for years.

It might have seemed that way only because he wasn't much of a celebrity in America – people might have known about the Clash, but Strummer didn't try to get public attention with seedy courtroom battles or bloated reunion tours. He'd started a new band, the Mescaleros, and gone about his own thing, but I had paid him little mind since junior high.

Back then my music tastes were even more questionable, but I loved his grimy film Straight to Hell and even his 1989 solo album, Earthquake Weather, both of which made me feel more grown-up. I didn't get too deep with the Clash, who were old enough to be classic rock in my book, and by high school I cared more about new music. I was the spawn of Strummer solo, Big Audio Dynamite (II), and Havana 3AM. The cover story in Punk Planet two years ago brought Strummer back to my attention, but as an oddity camouflaged in plain sight.

Strummer's death was even more unexpected because he seemed to be in shape, unlike his old Clash bandmate Mick Jones, who had some publicized health problems and looked it. Fifty years on this earth, which is nothing, a blip, but the obituary consensus is that he achieved his greatest work 20 years ago.

A so-called death

A few years ago a fake death announcement for Lou Reed swept through the media unchecked. Reed was very much alive; he even told America so by appearing on Saturday Night Live. It almost seemed like a stunt to draw attention to whatever new project he was working on. Even if it had been a stunt, its punch line backfired by pointing out that his career peaked before he reached 30. What, the demanding consumer might ask, did he have left to give us?

Can you imagine hearing your own obituary? Your place in your field assessed with a dry reverence, a life summed up succinctly by "the enemy" no less, a journalist. Rock musicians that reach a certain age can no longer shock, only gain royal titles and secular sainthood. They may once have altered your consciousness, with or without pharmaceutical help, but that, in the end, is all. It's an asymmetrical intimacy. Still, I had something of a spiritual experience watching old Warhol footage of Reed, the unblinking lizard eyes staring across time, wondering if he'd ever realize he would become an old man who didn't even get what made him great in the first place. It sounds more cynical than it felt; it was a realization about how we end up judging ourselves the most harshly. Not that that was Strummer – not that anyone who wasn't close to him could rightly say who he was.

The necessary but offensive nature of the "celebrity obituary" is that it's inevitably about a generation losing an icon and dealing with its own mortality. Having to fill a greater symbolic purpose, having the expectations of a public eye intruding even into death, can negate what is meant as a tribute. There is factual accuracy, and then there is the essence of a person. Strummer is an odd choice for an icon, but that was what he had become by default.

Leaving home

This story on the Spockmorgue message board from Steve Gigante, a former Bay Area resident who played in Tiny Bird Mouths and Old Time Relijun, about meeting Strummer tells more about the man than most things I've read in the past week.

When I moved to S.F. and had the unexpected pleasure of meeting Joe Strummer, I remembered two friends who I was still in contact with and asked Joe if he would give me his autograph so I could give it to them. He complied and we had an interesting conversation that went something like this:

JS: "So, your friends, what do they do?"

Me: "One of 'em's trying to be a professional boxer and the other one doesn't really do much of anything. I'm trying to get him to move out here, but he doesn't wanna leave his hometown [spoken with obvious disgust]."

JS: "Maybe he likes it there."

Me: "There's no way. That place sucks!"

JS: "Ya know, it's not a crime to feel at home where you grew up."

Me: "Yeah, but – "

JS: "Some of the greatest people I've ever met stayed right where they were born. They didn't have to go anywhere to find happiness – they knew it was within them. Sometimes I wish I woulda stayed where I was."

There was a long silence as we both just kinda stared at each other. It was clear he was being completely honest with me and he looked kinda sad, like he envied my friend.

JS: "So the next time you talk to your friend maybe you wanna go a little easier on him."

Then he asked if I was going to the show that night (he was fronting the Pogues at the time) and when I said I couldn't afford it he told me to come a little early and he'd get me in, which he did with a backstage pass and all.

Fame is irrelevant, especially when it comes down to something as personal as your demise. Steve's story is one of many that paint Strummer as a true and kind person, but if it turned out that he was an asshole, it wouldn't diminish the reasons why you care. I could say that Strummer kept his idealism to the end, but only he knew what that meant, and now it seems like such a small, small point.

George Chen