Reviews
Artist:Joe Strummer
DVD:Joe Strummer:The Future Is Unwritter
Label:Channel 4
Cert:15
Rating: ****
I never knew Joe Strummer, I met him to talk to on two occasions, both on the same day at Cambridge Folk Festival. The evening encounter was a planned catch up for a brief interview, a transcript of which can be found at the end of this article. As it turned out it was to be one of the last interviews Joe recorded, Saturday 3rd of August 2002.
The first encounter was earlier the same day, at the side of the Radio Two Stage. I was there to photograph the winners of the Radio Two Young Tradition Award for that year, Give Way. Having photographed the band, I was packing up my camera I saw this bloke in a blue cagoule and a cap watching the band was genuine fascination, whilst eating a bowl of pasta.
“Great aren’t they?” I said to the guy, who look up and said “They’re terrific”. It was as he looked up to speak that I realised it was Joe Strummer. I took a couple of quick picks and dropped around to the side of stage viewing area. Joe didn’t have a festival programme with him and he asked me a few questions about Give Way, but mostly we watch in silence.
It wasn’t until after they finished that we really started talking. Joe was going to go around and talk to them, but decided against it on the grounds that he thought, they’d probably never heard of him and he didn’t want to intrude on their moment.
During those ten or so minutes after the Give Way set, Joe managed to convince me of his real passion for music and a real passion to get involved in everything he did from head to toe.
Which sort of brings me on to the Julien Temple film, “Joe Strummer:The Future Is Unwritten”. Andy Kershaw once said, “The Clash were the greatest ever folk band” even if they weren’t his time with the Pogues and the Mescaleros would be more than justification enough to include them here.
Temple’s film is a rockumentary that covers Joes life, basically from birth to death. It blends live footage with gatherings of his friends, celebrity fans and people that he’d worked with along the way.
The sessions where friends etc. are spoken to are around campfires in various parts of the world. Joe apparently loved a good campfire as a place to drink and chat with friends. Strummerville always had it’s campfire.
Whilst it’s interesting to hear how the likes of Bono were inspired by the Clash, it was more interesting to hear how some of the actors he worked with during his film career related to him.
Most fascinating of all is to hear how his family, friends, ex-partners, ex-managers, band members etc. related to him.
There were definitely times in his life when you probably wouldn’t have wanted to know him. Whilst he was viewed as a visionary, passionate about the causes he believed in. A real lover of music from all around the world, mainly because, as a child he’s been exposed to so many global influences, he only got there by going through phases of insecurity.
There were times he bottled decisions, gave way to manipulations, went to some very dark places in his mind. Sometimes he brought himself back, sometimes circumstance brought along new opportunity. He was after all human and it seemed from “The Future Is Unwritten” approachable.
This is not a warts and all documentary. Joe deserves better than that and gets it. His darker side is not glossed over, but kept in perspective.
For me “Joe Strummer:The Future Is Unwritten” is one of the best films of this type that I’ve seen. Julien Temple and Channel 4 have done a grand job. The campfire interactions ground the documentary, they provide contrast and enhancement to the video and cine clips that capture family moments as well as clips from stage and screen performance, including the fireman’s benefit that saw him and Mick Jones reunited on stage for the first time since the break up of the Clash.
My only real criticism of the film is that it weakens towards the end. One is that I don’t think there’s as much focus on how important the Mescaleros how become in Joe’s life, whilst they might not have had the public appeal of the Clash, they definitely did for Joe.
The second isn’t really the fault of Temple and to be honest it’s difficult to see how it could have been covered differently and that’s the subject of Joe’s death.
Joe Strummer died unexpectedly of a heart condition that could have killed him at any point, there was no illness, Joe just died. It makes it difficult to build the film to finale.
Joe had plans, he’d been talking about buying an old BBC Outside Broadcast unit and going out and recording young and/or exotic bands, it’s a shame some of Joes lost plans couldn’t have been included to show that Joes loss was not just because of what he was, it was also who he was still to be.
I whole heartedly recommend this DVD to you. It brings you closer to the man and his music. Joe Strummer.
The interview I did with Joe Strummer can be found here. It was recorded a while after his only stage appearance at Cambridge, but he had attended on several occasions. It was recorded around a couple of pints of mulled cider, amongst knackered crew and performers on the tour bus. Click Here