Global A Joe Joe

Joe Strummer can do a mean Stuart Clark impression. Better still, the former Clash frontman, one-time Pogue and modern-day Mescalero can do a mean Stuart Clark-after-ten-vodkas-and-cokes impression. Retelling the now-classic tale of how my esteemed hotpress colleague journeyed to Belfast to interview the Mescaleros in 1999 and, following an impromptu all-night drinking session with the band, woke up to find himself stranded in Stranraer, Strummer stands up and staggers sloshed-Stuart-style around the Soho Room of London’s salubrious Groucho Club, before collapsing back into his chair in fits of laughter.

“That was a great night,” he chuckles, speaking in an enunciated Mescaleran drawl that reminds me more than slightly of Withnail’s Danny the drug dealer. “Everybody was off their trolleys. He didn’t lose his job or anything over that, did he? Because we were all so cosily drunk inside the bus, I don’t think anybody realised we were actually driving down ramps and into the car park inside the hold of the boat. So then to end up in Stranraer was a huge surprise to me, let alone Stuart! Did he tell you he actually fell out of the bus? It was hilarious!”

Although we’re here to discuss the Mescaleros second long player Global A Go Go, it quickly transpires that the album isn’t quite as complete as Strummer would like. The music’s a fairly diverse seventy-five minute fusion of rock ‘n’ roll, reggae, electronica, Irish trad and ethnic beats, unfortunately, the sleeve-notes have suffered a little from his indecisiveness.

“I kept changing things so eventually I just had to be told to shut up,” he smiles. “It’s very difficult getting everything right for the credits. You wanna thank people that’ve helped you and you keep remembering new names in the middle of the night. If you forget someone, it’s pretty awful. I think I’ve left a geezer out who was very good at driving us around – a guy called Roger Webb.”

The fact that Strummer makes me promise to give a consolatory namecheck to the aforementioned Mr. Webb in this piece says a lot about the kind of guy he is. He may have first come to prominence as the original guitar smashing/riot sparking “hair gel messiah” of punk rock, but nowadays the 49-year-old father of three comes across as a decidedly calm, laid back and monumentally decent bloke, too relaxed even to give me the hard sell on his new record, preferring instead to chat about the radio show he presents irregularly on the BBC World Service. DJ Joe plays an eclectic range of stuff; anything he considers to be “great”, regardless of genre.

“I find that it takes me almost a year to amass the stuff I want to play,” he explains. “I’ve only got eight slots in a half hour show, so you don’t wanna play a duff one. I call it ‘spotting’, where you have to spot the track. That sends me to some strange bins in the darkest corners of the record shop. Because it’s hard to find good music. So most of the year I’m scanning for the right records.”

When I tell him that I’m somewhat surprised that the young spitfire who penned such anarchic anthems as ‘I Fought The Law’, ‘Bankrobber’ and ‘London Calling’, and once deputised for Shane MacGowan in the Pogues for an unhealthy amount of time, would wind up presenting a show on a station as respectably middle-brow as the World Service, he laughs heartily, admitting that middle-age has mellowed him out somewhat.

“You’ve got a tremendous power when you’re riding the crest of a youth wave, like we were with The Clash,” he says. “All the hype, that helps a lot that stuff. But then, when your younger years are behind you, you’ve just gotta dig your heels in and find a way through somehow.”

Despite being one of the most influential groups of the punk era and spawning countless imitators, The Clash never actually sold all that many records. Bona-fide living legend or not, by his own admission, Strummer is fairly broke at the moment (though one suspects that that’s ‘rock star broke’, rather than the truly nasty kind). He has a house in Somerset but when visiting London tends to crash on friends’ floors or couches, rather than stay at the Ritz. Looking at the commercial successes of some of his paler imitators now, does he feel at all bitter that he missed out on the really big bucks?

“Nah, because the experience was great,” he says, shaking his head. “I mean, as long as I don’t have to drive a cab, which you consider in the darkest moments… but even then you can keep going. So long as you have the spirit. And I’ve gotta say, fair play to Hellcat Records for bringing this album out. Our last one sold fuck all and we really should have been dropped but they stuck by us. There was no huge advance or anything but I’m just delighted that we were able to make a record and get someone to pay for it.”

That’s a refreshingly honest approach coming from someone attempting a second musical coming...

“Ah, it’s easier to deal with everything now because you know you get to fight again another day,” he smiles, waving his hand away. “You’re less phased by it all. We did a lot of work on our last record Rock, Art & The X-Ray Style and we couldn’t get on the radio or anything like that. It’s quite hard to get through these days but you’ve gotta keep the spirit up.”

At what point were your spirits at their lowest?

“Well, I had an eleven year break from doing my own thing so I’d say it was somewhere in the middle of that,” he laughs, hand-rolling a cigarette. “I did consider packing it all in for a while. But then you think that somehow they’ve won – whoever ‘they’ are – and you can’t have that. That’s never gonna happen! But these days you’ve got the Internet, so even if I fall out with all the labels in the world, I’m just gonna keep going on the Internet. So that kind of thing makes me feel that I’ll never quit. There’s always a way through somehow - even if you wind up selling your records by mail order out of your garage. You can still get through.”

While Global A Go Go certainly has its moments, it’s probably too much of a mixed bag to ever really be a mainstream hit. There are great songs here, rather than great singles. But putting crass commercialism aside for a moment, it’s worth noting that, while perhaps a tad overlong, the album certainly does what it says on the tin.

On tracks like ‘Bhindee Baghee’, ‘Mondo Bongo’ and ‘Shaktar Donetsk’ styles collide, interesting melodies and ethnic rhythms abound, and musical boundaries are all but abolished as Strummer lyrically free-associates his way through a world filled with conflict and abuse, populated by revolutionaries, border guards, broadcasters and CIA agents.

However, while the lyrics are as vivid and imaginative as the vocals are passionate and incisive, he’s still not exactly wearing his heart on his sleeve here.

“Well, I don’t really want to ask someone to come into my weird twisted world and listen to me moan about my feelings, I’m not interested in that,” he says. “I wanna make a record that makes people go, ‘yeah, I’m glad I got that record!’ I think a great kudos to any kind of record is that it can be great background music. You know, you’ve gotta accept the fact that it ain’t 1969 anymore where people just sat around with a bit of dope and listened to albums – there was no TV or anything like that and people went to each others houses to listen to albums. That doesn’t happen as much anymore.

“But, however well it sells, I’m more than proud of this record. It’s great to make a record that’s not a waste of space. You know that people have bought it and enjoyed it, then you know that you’ve added something. I’d hate to make a record that you didn’t feel good about.”

He ascribes the album’s eclectic musical feel to the democratic ethos of the Mescaleros (named after a South Arizona tribe of Apache in an old Hollywood western, incidentally). Fellow bandmates Pablo Cook, Martin Slattery, Scott Shields, Tymon Dogg and associate member/engineer Richard Flack all had an equal input in the studio, resulting in the mish-mash of musical styles.

“This is a group effort – everybody’s contributed to everything. I like it like that. I’ve really being studying how a team works, or the best way to get a team working, and it seems the best thing to do is bring the expert of whatever particular section you’re trying to do to rule this section. I think we’ve got a good result from using that kind of ‘right man for the job’ method.”

As team leader, Strummer’s own area of expertise is primarily in the lyrical department. “My main strength is lyric writing, and writing lyrics is a peculiar set of circumstances,” he explains. “It’s not like a guitarist who can practice his scales all day and get better. In a way, you’ve just gotta think. Thinking is the playing scales of lyric writing. You’ve just gotta think your way to something interesting, that seems to be the job. And I can do that anywhere really. It’s a good ability to have – to be able to work anywhere. But it is weird, when there’s nothing to show for it. It’s not like building a house out of matchsticks where you can see some progress every day. Doing this lark, it’s all in the abstract.”

Talk turns for a while to the subject of Shane MacGowan, an old friend Strummer hasn’t seen for a while, but whom this writer interviewed some months ago (“How was he?” Pissed! “Yeah, I know that, but how was he?”). Given that MacGowan has recently published a best-selling autobiography, I ask if Strummer has ever considered putting pen to paper and writing a memoir of his years with The Clash.

“I don’t know,” he avers. “I sometimes think that I’m almost like a jingle writer. I can only think in three minute bursts at the most. So I guess you’re good at what you’re good at, and I heavily doubt that I could write a book. I think you’re born with a knack for a certain thing maybe – and mine is writing three minute songs.”

Not that there are too many of those on Global A Go Go. Album closer ‘Minstrel Boy’ is over fifteen minutes long!

“Yeah, but that’s an Irish tune!” he protests, grinning. “That’s allowed to go on for a bit! But mainly it’s like being a jingle writer – you pare everything down.”

Do you think that rock & roll is still a vital force?

“I think it’s a good medium to transfer thoughts or impressions,” he muses, after a pause. “People still seemed to be tuned into it. As long as people are tuned into it. There is a real danger – looking at the boybands and Mariah Careys of this world – that the recording industry will bore everyone away and that music will revert to wallpaper. If that happens, then maybe people just won’t bother. But there’s always gonna be loonies and rebels as well.”

And how would you classify yourself?

“A loony and a rebel!” he laughs. “Rock stars have no relevance really. But that won’t stop us!”