06.06.2007
Politics and lure of fame
George Binette finds Julian Temple's film about The Clash frontman Joe Strummer engrossing, but occasionally cringe-inducing
The 'rockumentary' as a significant cultural form turns 40 this year with the anniversary of the release of Don't look back, DA Pennebaker's innovative treatment of a 1966 British tour by a brash Bob Dylan, who had completed his metamorphosis from modest Greenwich Village folkie into international rock star.
The latest contribution to this notoriously uneven genre comes from Julian Temple, with an often inspired and occasionally poignant chronicle of the life of Joe Strummer - born John Graham Mellor - the public school-educated son of a Scottish nurse and middle-ranking foreign office civil servant who, so the story goes, became punk rock's most articulate and, arguably, most progressive spokesperson.
Whatever its shortcomings (and there are a few), the film is certainly a must-view for most dedicated fans of Strummer himself, not to mention The Clash, the band he fronted in various incarnations between 1976 and 1985. Strummer's sudden passing at the age of 50 in late 2002 of a previously undiagnosed congenital heart defect prompted a widespread outpouring of genuine sadness among people of a certain age. In part, this response may have marked still another intimation of our own mortality, a lament for a more dynamic, hopeful youth or in its most extreme form a sense that 'our generation's voice' had been irrevocably silenced.
While the film is relatively long at just over two hours, most people with more than a passing interest in the 'punk movement' and Anglophone popular culture in the last three decades will find the documentary engrossing, if occasionally cringe-inducing.
The future is unwritten takes its title from a Strummer-penned phrase that made its way into artwork for The Clash's 1982 album, Combat rock. Inevitably, there is a great deal about "the only band that mattered", but it is emphatically not another Clash chronicle. It features 8mm home-movie footage of a young John Graham Mellor, assorted photos from childhood and teenage years, and the occasional clip of The Clash which I at least had not seen before.
Amid the fast-paced editing there are some witty animations of Strummer's doodles over a three-decade period - part of Temple's visually busy style that sometimes works to marvellous effect, as with decolourised clips from Lindsay Anderson's If, a film depicting an armed rebellion by the repressed pupils of an authoritarian public school. On the other hand, the use of extremely stereotypical images of various countries, which the young Strummer visited in his globetrotting childhood, may seem amusing at first, but swiftly grates and does not really subvert the colonialist mindset that lay behind the originals (if that was, in fact, Temple's intention).
Two devices provide the film with a basic underpinning - the repeated use of the tar and nicotine-stained sonorities of Strummer's own voice introducing tracks from his exceptionally eclectic BBC World Service London calling programmes, and campfires at locations scattered across England, Spain and the US, where dozens gathered for sometimes unguarded interviews over the course of 2005. In later years, after an epiphany of sorts at the Glastonbury festival in the mid-90s, Strummer came to believe that campfires had a certain primal force that broke down social barriers and opened channels of communication.
As with most rockumentaries, Temple relies quite heavily on talking heads, with interviewees ranging from Scottish family members, ex-partners, Clash bandmates Mick Jones, Topper Headon and Terry Chimes (bassist Paul Simonon is conspicuous by his absence). But there is a worryingly large number of 'celebrities', some of whom had rather tenuous connections to Strummer or The Clash. For those not repulsed at the mere sight of Bono, the U2 singer is comparatively restrained, though it does seem that the self-anointed champion of the world's most impoverished warranted a seaside bonfire all to himself.
Of course, the inclusion of Bono, along with the likes of Johnny Depp (complete with Captain Jack Sparrow facial hair and very little to say) and John Cusack (who at least comes across as a bona fide fan) may reflect the need for such stars in order to ensure a cinema release, as opposed to immediate relegation to DVD or a graveyard slot on BBC4 or Channel 4 - the common fate of this cultural product.
Curiously, not a single caption appears to indicate who is speaking and, while some faces or voices would be instantly recognisable, many are not. Perhaps this was an egalitarian gesture on Temple's part that did not quite come off, but the viewer is often uncertain who is to blame for banality or to be credited with insight. We are also left to wonder what may have happened in the lives of people who had been friends or colleagues 30 or more years ago.
Some of the interviews are undeniably amusing, revealing or both. Jones displays a wonderfully self-knowing dry wit without giving much away, while Headon offers both an angry and coherent account of his dismissal from The Clash in 1982 and its subsequent impact on his heroin addiction. Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie explains the attraction of The Clash's lyrics, mentioning anti-fascism and anti-militarism and then adds: ""¦ and anti-work, especially the anti-work". He goes on to explain that he was in a mind-numbing factory job in Glasgow at the time The Clash first impacted on his life. (Gillespie has, of course, spent a fair bit of time and money mind-numbing since, but he can certainly still string together a pithy sentence or two).
Clash collaborator and documentary filmmaker Don Letts, whose Westway to the world remains the definitive celluloid chronicle of the band, is another well-known talking head with something to say. Occasional clips point to Strummer and the band's connections to contemporary politics. Mo Armstrong, a former Vietnam Veteran Against the War and long-time San Francisco-based activist, relates how he enlisted Strummer's support for the Sandinistas' Nicaraguan revolution and distributed FSLN bandanas to the Clash for on-stage wear. Spanish musician Jesus Arias recalls how Strummer cried bitter tears on learning that US airmen had inscribed the title of the 1982 hit, 'Rock the Casbah', on a bomb unleashed over Iraq during the 1991 Gulf war.
At a more intimate level, one of Strummer's cousins reflects sombrely on carrying the coffin of his relative and friend, while also remembering John Graham Mellor's older brother, David, a reclusive misfit who flirted with the occult and the National Front before committing suicide in 1970. Ex-partners and friends from the west London squatting scene recall, sometimes ruefully, the man's transformation from Woody Mellor, the squatter, who fronted pub rockers, The 101ers, into Joe Strummer, a somewhat remote and ruthless figure in their view, determined to ride the crest of the punk rock wave.
One interviewee who witnessed this transition suggests that Strummer really was not interested in the money that went with music industry stardom, but was extremely keen on fame. In one Clash-era interview Strummer himself readily expresses a desire for international commercial success, though linking this seemingly as an afterthought to a concern with getting the band's message across. But in another interview there is painful self-awareness voiced by Strummer as he acknowledges that by 1982-83 and the height of their US triumphs the band had become all too much like the very beast they had begun their career mocking in 1976-77.
In short, Temple is not interested in promoting the image of Strummer as secular saint that seemed to predominate in many a media profile in the months following his death. Like Chris Salewicz in the recently published Strummer biography, Redemption song, Temple eschews hagiography, though the film does not display the same level of unflinching honesty as the book. Whereas the Temple film hints at periods of deep unhappiness, the biography lays bare a more profound depression that dogged Strummer and appears to have contributed to extended periods of both self-doubt and self-destructiveness.
But the print biography also includes some of Strummer's most daring political gestures such as public calls for the withdrawal of British troops from the north of Ireland and a speech in carefully rehearsed Spanish during a 1981 Clash concert in Madrid in solidarity with the Irish republican hero, Bobby Sands, who lay dying from the effects of his hunger strike. Similarly, Salewicz provides a detailed account of Strummer's obsessive quest to find the final resting place of the Spanish poet/playwright, Garcia Lorca, a victim of Franco's Falangists.
The film features none of this and also ignores the curious Strummer detour of the 1988 'Rock Against the Rich' tour, done in association with the anarchists of Class War. Obviously, a filmmaker faces constraints of time and budget, and I am not accusing Temple of wilfully presenting a politically sanitised version of Strummer, but such omissions obscure the extent to which Strummer risked alienating sections of his band's audience, never mind the media.
What Temple's film does graphically capture in its closing stages is Strummer's reversion into a latter-day hippiedom around the outdoor rave and festival scenes, almost as if an older, more affluent self was trying to rediscover something he had lost when he decisively cut his ties with the west London squatting scene. At times, the older Strummer against the background of Glastonbury seems to alternate between stoned shaman and mildly endearing English eccentric. Mercifully, in my view, there is very little of some apparently key elements in the man's latter-day social circle, which included the likes of Damien Hirst, Keith Allen and Bez of the Happy Mondays and I'm a celebrity notoriety.
Personally, I had hoped to see more footage of Strummer's final musical outfit, The Mescaleros, who were an often impressive live proposition. The formation of this band marked a creative renaissance for Strummer and more about its genesis would probably have added to the story as a whole. Happily, on the other hand, the film does include footage of the very last concert in London by Strummer and The Mescaleros - a benefit for the Fire Brigades Union in November 2002. Temple swiftly contextualises the concert and includes an interview with union members from a fire station located near the Westway. With hindsight this was an evening heavy with coincidences, as Strummer was reunited on a public stage with Mick Jones for the first time in nearly 20 years little more than a stone's throw from the starting point of their wild odyssey in the mid-1970s.
At the end of 124 minutes I felt that I knew Joe Strummer/John Graham Mellor only slightly better and had not gained any crucial insight into the man and his motives. But I also left Temple's film as willing as ever to delve into the enduring legacy of music and lyrics, which has already transcended the limits of pop ephemera and is something more than a mainstay of rock monthlies such as Mojo and Uncut. Whatever one might think of Strummer the man, he cannot be entirely divorced from his work with The Clash and indeed with The Mescaleros, which will continue to figure among the high points of socially conscious and engaged popular culture for many years to come.