Born August 21, 1952, in Ankara, Turkey, at an early age, Joe Strummer had connected to the music of Woody Guthrie, the Beach Boys, and the blues-rock movement of Bo Diddley, who would later open for The Clash in 1979.
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“My hero is Bo Diddley because he was playing on a street corner and knew that he needed something else,” said Strummer in 2002. “He wasn’t the fretsman in the world, so he went to a junkyard and got some ball cocks out of abandoned lavatory cisterns. Then he filled them with dried peas and gave them to his upstairs neighbor who became his maracas man.”
Earlier ’50s-era rock, Lee “Scratch” Perry‘s dub inflections, and reggae from the likes of Junior Murvin (“Police & Thieves”) helped formed The Clash in 1976 by the time punk had also coalesced in England.
Strummer, along with guitarist Mick Jones, was the mast of The Clash. Easily comparable to the songwriting duos of Lennon-McCartney and Jagger and Richards, Strummer, and Jones penned the band’s iconic “London Calling,” “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” ‘Train in Vain,” “White Riot,” and “Rock the Casbah” (also co-written with former Clash drummer Topper Headon), and dozens more spanning the band’s six albums together.
Following the demise of The Clash in 1986, Strummer focused on his solo career, including work on soundtracks. He penned the tracks “Love Kills” and “Dum Dum Club” for Alex Cox’s 1986 drama, Sid and Nancy, and later composed the score to Grosse Pointe Blank (1997). Post-Clash, Strummer also helped produced former bandmate Mick Jones’ band, Big Audio Dynamite, and worked with The Pogues, who he also ended up fronting for a brief period. Strummer also dipped into acting and radio and hosted the BBC series Strummer’s London Calling, between 1999 and 2002.
[RELATED: Joe Strummer Gets 71st Birthday Tribute at Punk Rock Museum]
Over the years, Strummer also revisited music from his pre-Clash-era band the 101ers, and formed The Mescaleros by the late’ 90s. The band completed three albums before Strummer’s death in 2002 at the age of 50, including their final, Streetcore, released posthumously in 2003—the same year The Clash was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
All along the way, Strummer penned thought-provoking epistles on equality, justice, and injustices, and calls for unity.
“It suddenly occurred to me that the songs aren’t just stuff that’s written on a bit of paper or put on a record,” said Strummer in an interview shortly before his death. “What if a song is like a person? Like a song might have some sort of … it might have a store of kinetic energy of a kind that we can’t, that we haven’t managed to quantify or identify.”
In honor of Strummer’s iconic catalog, here’s a look at three additional songs he wrote for other artists.
1. “The Shuttered Palace,” Ellen Foley (1981)
Written by Joe Strummer and Mick Jones
At the time singer and actress Ellen Foley was working on her second album, Spirit of St. Louis, she was also dating Clash guitarist Mick Jones, and their nepotism spilled into her recording. Her album was backed by The Clash along with the band’s engineers, who just worked on their 1980 album, Sandinista! and was produced by Jones. Spirit of St. Louis also features several songs co-written by Strummer and Jones, including the opening “The Shuttered Palace.”
To the sons of Europe:
Won’t you come inside my shuttered palace, and I am the bride
Now I’m a woman, I walk past your café
To the sons of Europe, I call out and say
Now as I stroll down your boulevard
You hear those Fiats, and taxis, blow their horns so hard
When I go out walking flocks of birds rise from the square
And all the Seigneurs and Monsieurs pull up to the curb
2. “V. Thirteen” Big Audio Dynamite (1986)
Written by Joe Strummer and Don Letts
By the time The Clash was splitting, guitarist and songwriter Mick Jones had already formed his band Big Audio Dynamite and released their debut, This Is Big Audio Dynamite, in 1985. The band’s follow-up, No. 10, Upping St., a year later was co-produced by Strummer, who also co-wrote five of the nine tracks, including the dystopian-bent “V. Thirteen.”
Good morning Sodom and Gomorrah, good morning sinners
No, that wasn’t your radio set on the bleep again
Sodom and Gomorrah, let the DJ play
‘Cos I’m only gone tomorrow and here today
Lotta rockheads on the block
Dougie died and Sue got frocked
If the stove is hot, then I ain’t lost
And Rosa says my star is crossed
Little Jamie writes V. Thirteen
Comes in by the door, goes out by screen
He don’t listen to me, he knows everything
Girls on the avenue ask me to sing
3. “Ghost Radio,” Brian Setzer Orchestra (1996)
Written by Joe Strummer and Brian Setzer
On The Brian Setzer Orchestra’s second album, Gun Slinger, Strummer co-wrote two tracks: the closing ‘Sammy Davis City” and “Ghost Radio.”
“I’ve got a lot of great memories with Joe,” said Setzer in 2015. “Joe and I would spend the summers together because we were good friends and we both had children. So we’d throw the kids in the pool and have a good time. Joe had a very good, dry sense of humor, you know, and some of the things he would say were just…”
Setzer continued, “Well, let’s say he was very good at making fun and making light of a situation. If you were wound up or you were aggravated about something, Joe would say a couple of words, and then you would laugh and realize how silly the whole thing was. He was a great guy and a genius of our time.
Now the levee wall was breaking, rocks were rolling from the ridge
The announcer broke in, saying, “There was a bus trapped on the bridge”
So I turned my rig around, I was axle-deep in mud
And I found those people stranded, the bridge was groaning in the flood
Still my radio was singing
I ain’t sittin’ in no shack
I got me a Ford right out the back
So come on and roll me over
If I ain’t there in nothing flat
With my honky-tonk attitude
I’ll be doing the straight line swing
C’mon and grab your horseshoe
And throw it in the ring
Photo by Steve Rapport/Getty Images
