December 22nd, years ago this date held no significance to me and since 2002 it’s become a date on the calendar that sometimes I feel needs to be endured and when in better spirits a date to be celebrated. It was a mild (for December) day in the West Country of England and windy, a Sunday afternoon and the last weekend shopping day before Christmas that holiday season. As it turned out that was part of the reason why Joe Strummer died alone as his wife Lucinda had taken the girls out for some last minute Christmas shopping. According to what I’ve read she’d asked if he’d like to come but he refused saying he was a bit tired.

2002 had been a good year for Joe, fresh from a UK tour which saw the Mescaleros playing new material from the still unrecorded third album that would later become Streetcore with Lucinda Strummer overseeing his notes. Joe was impassioned about his new band and it was easy to see why, live they were a versatile band and Strummer was at ease playing Clash songs as well as cover versions while not making the new material marginal in any sense of the word. I’d seen Joe Strummer live the December before (if memory serves) and was thrilled at how great he looked, how at ease with his growing status as the elder statesman of punk. He still insisted on working hard, touring a lot and spending as much time with the fans as was possible. Funny that, the same things that perhaps caused The Clash too self destruct were what he lived for and I guess he always did. Lucinda lamented that she wished they had more time together but Joe always wanted to tour, to play the music, to meet the people who bought the records. In one of those moments that seems too unlikely even for a film Joe was even joined on stage by Mick Jones in Acton for the final songs of his set on November 15th, just 5 weeks before he died. Remarkably this was one of his last ever performances at the tour ended just a week later in Liverpool. Everything happens for a reason I’m always told, and so it may be.

The Mescaleros album was looking  set to be recorded that forthcoming Spring, Joe was also writing a song with Bono and Dave Stewart for the Mandela Day concert that was just six weeks away. The wasteland of the 1990′s now seemed to have been firmly behind Joe as the press (who always were tough on him post-Clash) were seemingly now seeing him as having matured into an elder, better (?) and more resourceful campaigner now that punk rock had been cleaned up and filed under ‘fad’. In some senses the fact that Joe was now on the BBC world service sharing his love for all types of music and being interviewed more frequently that at any point since the early 1980′s had put Strummer back on the map. Cynics say he was becoming part of the establishment, I beg to differ and suggest you watch the Dick Rude Joe Strummer documentary DVD “Let’s Rock Again” – Joe was never seeking to be part of the establishment, much less were doors ever being opened for him.

However I think what hurt the most for me when the news appeared on my computer screen was the feeling that “NO – HE’S STILL GOT TOO MUCH WORK TO DO, SO MUCH TO SAY”, I know that’s what I was feeling (along with the despair, anger, turmoil and grief) I’d been playing Global A-Go-Go almost daily since it was released in July of 2001. That album meant so much to me, when the events of September 2001 befell the United States it seemed at such odds with what Strummer was singing (and he so loved New York). Global A-Go-Go was about unity and reflection, it was about the world being far more interesting a proposition without walls and borders, without fear and hate. The stranger danger of The Clash lyric had now been replaced by an older seasoned Strummer who wrote on Bhindi Bhagee about strangers once more, this time though inclusion was his goal.

Welcome stranger to the humble neighborhoods
You can get inspiration along the highroad

That album marked such a fantastic accomplishment for Strummer in terms of music, blending sounds from around the world and styles from the delta right back to West London. Joe was back and knowing a new album was in the works was so exciting, I couldn’t wait to see him live again…perhaps this time I’d have the courage to try and get my 7″ single of ‘Tommy Gun’ signed. I was always too nervous to try and meet Joe previously, something about that seemed too lofty for me…funny how much I regret such a daft fear now.

So it was that later on that Sunday afternoon Joe Strummer took his dog/dogs (depends what you read) for his normal early evening walk on the fields near his home in Broomfield, Somerset. By best accounts he concluded his walk, took the dog off the lead and then sat in his favourite chair to read a copy of the newspaper. That would be the last event of Joe’s life, as he passed away in that chair due to an undiagnosed congential heart defect.

I can’t begin to fully explain how badly I reacted, I’m too guarded to share how fucking devastated I was, 2002 had been a difficult year, my marriage right at it’s very ending and I was learning how to be single again. Facing Christmas was the last thing I fancied that winter and then I turned on the computer to see a yahoo headline from the Associated Press that simply read:

Punk legend Joe Strummer dead aged 50

I clicked on the link hoping I’d misread the headline, or that somehow maybe this was some shit dream that would stop as soon as the alarm went off. I clicked and waited, the odyssey that began for this eleven year old kid hearing The Clash from his brother’s bedroom was now suddenly over. I was 35 and my hero was dead at 50, I suddenly felt really old and angry about everything. I remember thinking how can Strummer be dead when (various people I abhor) are still living? This is so wrong, crying like a kid I remember playing Nitcomb from Rock Art and The X-Ray Style, I played it maybe four or five times, dug out my Clash vinyl and had a brutally sad morning playing records, looking at pictures and getting ready for a world without Joe Strummer.

As you enter our house there are some shelves, and instead of the traditional photos of weddings and babies I have a framed black and white photo of Strummer. It’s positioned to be noticed only as I leave the house…that’s when I need him the most.

Tim