From Julien Temple the chronicler of The Sex Pistols in The great rock and roll swindle and The filth and the fury, comes a documentary about Clash lead man Joe Strummer who died 5 years ago. As an earlier band of strummer’s, called the 101ers played on the same bill as the pistols, it seems a natural progression for the director, not least because the clash are the next great punk band after Rotten and Sid Vicious’ mob.
The film opens with radio reportage of Joe Strummer’s death and works backwards and forwards through a life in rock and rock and roll, mixing classics interviews conducted with the singer alongside plaudits by musicians who collaborated and or respected him such as Bono, Courtney Love & Bez. However Temple (as a film-maker who’s made a career of filming musicals such as Absolute Beginners and Earth Girls are easy and music biopics) is also interested in how Strummer had an effect on his industry as well, so there are interviews with Jim Jarmusch and the brothers Weinstein, not to mention actors like Matt Dillon and John Cusack.
Personally I knew I’d heard a few songs by The Clash over the years but could only name a couple, so out of curiosity had a look on the imdb to see the extent of their use in film and it’s an astonishing list.
From the obvious – the use of London Calling in Die another day (correct me if I’m wrong but this was first use of a popular song in a Bond film that wasn’t written specifically for the soundtrack) to a list of some of the best American and British indie films of the last decade - The History Boys, Stranger Than Fiction, The School of Rock, Code 46, American Splendor and The Royal Tenenbaums. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the inclusion of a song by the clash is a guarantee of a quality film as that Bond film for a start was the nail in Pierce Brosnan’s metaphorical coffin not to mention other examples of embarrassing British metafiction such as The life and death of Peter Sellers, Complicity and Rogue trader, but there is a certain kudos attached to their songs that possibly exceeds their popularity at least with younger generations.
Film, particularly in Julien Temple’s hands is a non-linear format (witness the appearance of 19th century poets on the London eye at the end of the director’s underrated film pandaemonium) and so the expression of a life lived like a cubist painting in a worldwind of drugs and fame is shown in contrasting fragments. Black and white footage of Strummer recording in a studio is intercut with colour 8 mm footage of his childhood antics. During the 1990s Strummer presented a show on the world service so elsewhere this provides a welcome soundtrack to footage of the disposed on the streets of London and elsewhere whom the singer was a champion of.
Temple’s style has always been somewhat ‘in your face’ so people might find his choice of footage from George Orwell film adaptations Animal Farm and 1984 intercut with Strummer’s schooldays somewhat heavy-handed.
You might also think the numerous interviews with his contemporaries sitting around a burning barrel by the banks of the Thames at night a touch contrived, but as ever the exuberance of the music, editing and imagery should win over most audiences brought up on a diet of MTV and British schooling. This leads to newsreel footage of Vietnam juxtaposed with the massacre from the end of Lindsay Anderson’s If... – heady stuff.
The story of Stummer and his mates living in squats in a carnival London after the summer of love is the mixture of clichés and charm you might expect but none the less enjoyable for that, and the director uses animation of Strummer’s art school notebooks to add to the nostalgic atmosphere. Having transferred to college in Wales and lost his job as a gravedigger, he joined a rock band and the rest is history! (continued...)
















As well as a biopic of a talented musician this is therefore also the tale of a Britain that has almost turned into mythology being followed as it was by a decade of Thatcher and a further decade of indifference…
After the fun documentary of the Ramones that came out a couple of years ago, it’s time to return to the British side of the story. If you’re not a fan of Punk, there’s still a great deal to enjoy in the film – lovely animation, atmospheric footage of a London increasingly lost to redevelopment (witness the fates of various classic venues over the last year) and the tale of an agitator who fought against the establishment and extremists alike, which is a prescient today as it was 30 years ago. As Bono says in the film: “It was a time when integrity was more important than driving a Rolls Royce into a swimming pool”!
As the film moves to the Clash touring America in the 80s and footage of global fame starting to drive the band apart, in the present we come across Johnny Depp and John Cusack also sitting by campfires and taking part in jam sessions next to the river in New York and we even hear Martin Scorsese (who gave Strummer a cameo in the king of comedy) enthuse about the band. It’s brilliant to hear Johnny Depp dressed as a pirate (in yet another movie) worrying that success and money tainted the band’s purity and ability to be honest and they say irony is lost on the Americans!
As it stands the film makes the point that ‘Should I stay or should I go’ stood as an epitaph for Joe breaking up the band… Tales of the singer’s later life are more pensive, from footage of his moving to Spain and becoming what his friends deem a preacher in his wilderness years. While the movie does outstay its welcome at just under 2 hours, the relevance of the film as the document of a man who made his protest against the problems with the world in song are summed up by a line of Strummer’s quoted in the movie: “say you were in a big band like I was and then you meet a 17 year old guy – he’s never heard of the clash and that’s the moment my feet touch the ground again”. Like Coleridge and Wordsworth in the director’s earlier film pandaemonium, here we have a poet who needs to be introduced to the current generation for the words he wrote and the continuing relevance of their sentiments today.