Abstract
Those who have written on The Clash (including the author of this review) have often found it hard not to succumb to romantic mythologization of the band’s lead singer. To write about ‘the only band that matters’ has frequently also meant to eulogize ‘a man that mattered’ – a ‘spectacular human being’ (McKenna 2012: 167) regarded as an activist, an anti-establishment rebel, a man of the people and one of the ‘great political folk musicians’ (D’Ambrosio 2012: xvii). As the chief lyricist, spokesperson and wildly energetic frontman of ‘the most overtly political of all punk groups’ (Du Noyer 1998: 1), it was inevitable that Strummer would come to be seen as The Clash’s firebrand soul. And yet, despite his influence on artists as diverse as Billy Bragg, Tom Morello, Chuck D and The Manic Street Preachers, and despite fans’ repeated claims after his death that Strummer changed their lives (Gall 2022: 2–3), the romantic aura that has developed around the Strummer persona is at least in part due to nostalgia for the times in which he shone brightest, the music emerging from those times, and sadness about his premature departure. Indeed, some reactions to his death sought to elevate him to sainthood or religious icon. And yet to indulge in such romance is to gloss over Strummer’s tendency to self-mythologizing, his troubling contradictions and the frequent gaps between his rhetoric and his behaviour.
The Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer by Gregor Gall (2022), despite agreeing that Strummer was ‘one of a kind’ (p. 4), takes a determinedly non-romantic approach and is all the more compelling for it. If, as Gall (2022) acknowledges, so many people were moved to declare that Strummer changed their lives, then how are we to assess his precise role in ‘influencing and advancing left-wing politics within people’s world views’ (p. 3)? To analyse the lyrics, as many scholars have done, is insufficient, Gall (2022) argues, in part because Strummer’s lyrics were complex and ambiguous and open to multiple interpretations, and in part because their specific effects on listeners have been neglected. Therefore, while keen ‘to allow Strummer to speak in his own words as much as possible’ (p. 28), Gall eschews lyrical analysis and instead draws on a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, such as accounts from people close to Strummer (including press manager Kosmo Vinyl and guitarist Nick Sheppard), radio and television interviews, articles from the music press, and personal testimonies from correspondents contacted by the author as part of his research.
Using a ‘socialist realist’ framework, Gall (2022) investigates Strummer’s role in ‘advancing the cause of socialism’ (p. 15) through not only highlighting the sociopolitical conditions of the downtrodden in his lyrics and public pronouncements, but also through encouraging meaningful action from fans and followers. Although the book’s structure is broadly chronological, focusing in different chapters on periods of Strummer’s career – for example, the ‘Rebel Rock’ period (1983–1986) in Chapter 4, and the shifting of Strummer’s political viewpoints in the 1990s and early 2000s away from socialism towards ‘an ethical form of decentralised, small-scale capitalism imbued with humanism’ (Gall 2022: 231) in Chapter 7 – it is better understood as a meticulous deconstruction of the labels that have been attributed to the artist throughout his career and after his death – ‘socialist’, ‘Marxist’, ‘rebel’, ‘humanist’ and ‘activist’, among many others.
Gall’s rigour in attempting to establish the veracity of these labels is impressive: he consistently cross-references the artist’s own (frequently contradictory) statements with quotations from a multitude of other sources to ensure as objective a reading of Strummer’s political positions as possible. His findings are surprising and in some cases disturbing. For example, the perception of The Clash as ‘anti-sexist’ is belied by the neglect of gender issues in all but a few of their songs, as well as Strummer’s use of sexist language during gigs and in interviews (Gall 2022: 136, 141), and his repeated infidelities (p. 137). Equally problematic is the abundant evidence of violent and threatening behaviour towards band members, crew, journalists and fans, despite Strummer’s proclaimed anti-violence stance for The Clash. We learn from numerous band and crew members that his leadership style was autocratic. We also learn, dispiritingly, that disillusionment with New Labour’s betrayal of left-wing principles led Strummer to vote for UKIP in the 1999 European Union elections, and that he was an avid reader of The Daily Telegraph (2022: 208). The overall picture that emerges is of a complex, mercurial figure: a politically engaged musician who nonetheless fell far short of the activism often attributed to him; an intensely private man prone to periods of withdrawal from friends and family but bound to the vociferous public persona of ‘Joe Strummer’; and someone who oscillated between actively embracing and rejecting his role as ‘voice of a generation’.
To state that Strummer was complex is not in itself novel, of course. Even the most dedicated romantics will admit it. What makes Gregor Gall’s contribution original and important is, first, the rigorous research to which I have already alluded. Second, the author has succeeded in writing a book which is about much more, ultimately, than Joe Strummer. Indeed, Gall’s conclusions about Strummer’s individual influence are, inevitably, nebulous: he admits that ‘primary and secondary data could not establish either the absolute or relative quantitative dimensions of this influence’ (p. 270). Such a statement would be disappointing if the author did not then go on to explain the particular historical conditions that account for Strummer’s influence, no matter how unquantifiable it is. Strummer, who was, as Gall makes clear, as much a hippy communalist as a socialist, drew on ‘the heritage of 1968 and hippiedom during the crisis of the post-war social democratic settlement and the beginnings of neoliberalism’ and it was this especially ‘potent context’ that made his work so powerful (p. 272). This is not to deny his agency or his sheer charisma, but rather to locate it within a formative sociohistorical environment that goes a long way to explaining his enduring resonance.
Whether Strummer’s influence will endure into the long, unwritten future is unclear.
The romantics who attend events such as Strummer of Love and International Clash Day will surely hope so. Gall, pragmatic and objective to the last, ends the book with thoughts on the conditions necessary to sustain Strummer’s relevance, and on the importance of further exploring music as a ‘terrain of struggle’ in the ‘culture wars’ (p. 278). Readers seeking another Strummer hagiography will be disappointed; those seeking an insightful, thought-provoking and inspiring analysis of popular music’s intersections with politics, and a critical dissection of the musician’s role in promoting political ideals, will be delighted.