by Neil Shea

On the night Joe Strummer died I walked over to the last punk-rock bar in Providence. It's dirty and dark there, bare-wood walls caked with stickers, chiseled full of names, stained with smoke. Years ago someone headbutted their way through the ceiling at the front of the place, and a picture of Sid Vicious is plastered to a wall in the back. None of the Strummer fans I know could join me for the memorial trek and sad pint; too much work, they said, or too little sleep. So I headed out alone, figuring someone would be sitting at the bar, ready to get sappy over a dead punk.

But the bar was closed.

So I walked to another, a dim basement tavern with a large pirate ship hanging over the door. It was open mic night and a bald man in a Hawaiian shirt was playing guitar and shouting "When I find her I'm gonna kill her! When I find her I'm gonna kill her!" to a crowd of three. Behind the bar two old men grinned and nodded like vultures, pecking at the rhythm of staged rage. Not exactly what I was looking for, but it was better than nothing.

So with a can of PBR, I sat and considered: Joe Strummer dead at 50. One of the more brilliant voices in post-Beatles music, Strummer and his work ploughed over pretty notes and meaningless lyrics. All but a handful of his songs missed the mainstream, churning angrily—and sometimes uselessly—at the edges of popular music. But his poetry and unflinching energy for social and political reform infused his work with the kind of power many artists spend a lifetime envying.

Strummer was best known for fronting The Clash through the late 70s into the mid 80s. Together with Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Topper Headon, Strummer shoved heavily political songs like short spears into mainstream's belly. After The Clash Strummer rolled into many other musical projects, working with The Pogues, Mick Jones' Big Audio Dynamite and finally settling in with his last band, The Mescaleros. He also acted in a few smalltime films and hosted a world music radio program for the BBC, an institution he once scorned. Strummer's best work was with The Clash. He and Jones fused politics with sound and created the most challenging and vibrant punk music of the day. Motivated by The Clash's angry mix of rock, jazz, reggae, and rockabilly, dozens of other bands emerged and started taking chances with music and words.

Since Strummer's death, the people who loved his work and words have begun voicing their memories and writing memorials on Weblogs, in newspaper chat rooms and through e-mail chatter. Some radio stations have dedicated blocks of play time to The Clash, and dipped timidly into a short list of songs that buzzed on radio staions back in the 80s. A few famous people also sounded off at news of Strummer's passing. Bono, of U2, quickly told reporters that The Clash "wrote the rule book" for U2, a rule book the superband apparently lost several albums ago. Then there were the obituaries: many journalists wrote starch-stiff accounts of one of the only men who didn't deserve such treatment. No one has apparently seen any need to speak with some of the few artists who share lyrical themes with Strummer, artists like Chuck D, Zack de la Rocha or Ani DiFranco.

Good music triggers memories of some past experience, good or bad or ambiguous. The best songs do more: they remind you of something you still haven't done. Britney Spears fans will look back and say, "Why did I like that stuff?" Most contemporary songs jog memories of stupid TV sitcoms or movies that swiped a popular song; smart marketeers know good profits come from sales of DVDs and soundtracks.

:: From left: Topper Headon, Mick Jones, Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon ::

Many of the people who loved The Clash will encounter a big, fat memory-kiss thinking of Strummer. They'll be reminded of younger days, learning to skateboard with a headful of Clash lyrics, playing in tiny bands while wearing Clash t-shirts, discovering that the Sex Pistols weren't the only, or the best, punk band. But his death will also flood their minds with questions that The Clash forced them to ask years ago: What am I doing? Is it what I thought I'd be doing? Is it changing anything? Am I wasting time playing The Game? Do I know what the fuck is going on?

I became a journalist with a fistful of Clash lyrics pushing me forward. The words pressed against the back of my brain and shook like glass in my skull, daring me to ask questions and bludgeon easy answers. I'm not old enough to remember when The Clash arrived. I'm not old enough even to really remember when they broke up. But the band's words and music shoved me into a career where I thought I might change the world. The music still reminds me that I've got work to do.

Few deaths mean much to many people. Relatives, lovers, pets—these are the passings that count. Famous dead people lose their appeal after a few weeks. Strummer's has been the first death of a semi-famous person that has affected me at all. While with The Clash, Strummer's work was charged with power and anger. It was commercially dangerous, musically compelling and lyrically brilliant. His life and music were an ongoing argument, perhaps the first to really mean anything for the deviants of my generation, kids who didn't know much but had a feeling something wasn't right. Strummer made people reach for action and break things into new shapes and sizes. Those who heard the words have noticed how The Clash's political lyrics are coming back around again, speaking to the to the same problems in the U.S., the U.K., Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Afghanistan, South America.

Strummer's death has made me reconsider the journalism I do now as a reporter for a large metropolitan daily. It's not what I thought it would be. The hypocrisy is maddening and the voice is clipped; making news is a sham. The papers all decay a little each day and most stories don't sing, don't motivate,don't encourage action or anger the way Strummer's words did. This isn't so much depressing as encouraging—a sign that, as Strummer would've said, it's time to take a look around. What's happening? What's worth doing?

Unless you're a Fan—lacking significant helpings of self-esteem and wholly lost in the labyrinth of modern fame—you'll only truly love a handful of bands. Enraptured in that love, you won't madly stalk the object of your affection, scream nonstop at their concerts without listening or even, as so many of Kurt Cobain's dopey fans did, lock yourself in a room and whimper after your favorite singer dies. The outpouring of affection following Strummer's death proved that he was one of those rare artists who deserved and preserved admiration without asking for it or feeding it. Strummer's songs summoned an an outpouring of affection that also shows people want more than American Pop. They burn for something that's rarely available anymore: good music with a real message. Who does that now? Few bands are stepping up to the challenge, and as U2 proves, many musicians who claim to be influenced by The Clash have lost their way.

Back at the better-than-nothing bar, the man in the Hawaiian shirt stopped threatening the woman who'd somehow fucked him over. He left his spot at the mic and a kid stepped in, nervous, chatty, alone in front of a powerful tool. At the bar, a drunk middle-aged man slurped up to a solo middle-aged woman. They began talking about how his mother didn't love him. After a few minutes of tuning, the kid at the mic was ready: "Here's a little song," he said. " I hope you all like it ..." and he launched into a whiny Third Eye Blind cover. Mercifully, one of the kid's strings snapped and he didn't finish his set. But at least he was there, pushing himself into a strange, new mess. Somewhere in his head, a song rattled and throbbed, reminding him of something he had to do.

More on Strummer:

The Mescaleros Web site: http://www.strummersite.com

More than a fan site: http://members.tripod.com/joe_strummer/

Rolling Stone Magazine's Clash page: http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/default.asp?oid=329

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Author N.Shea is an editor at Inversion and a reporter at the Providence Journal.

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This article first appeared in the Winter 2003 issue of Inversion.