No ordinary Joe

October 22, 2006

Sunday Times review :REDEMPTION SONG The Authorised Biography of Joe Strummer by Chris Salewicz HarperCollins £20 pp651 This book is actually the story of two people. The less well known of the two, John Mellor, was a thoroughly middle-class Brit. The son of a career diplomat, he grew up in the outer suburbs of south London and was sent to the City of London Freemen’s School as a boarder. Although he claimed not to have enjoyed the experience, he later packed his own two daughters off to Bedales. In his early career “Johnny” Mellor was supported by high- society pals such as Sebastian Conran, whose house he shared, and Churchill’s granddaughter Arabella, who lent him money, and

he had a long-term relationship with Gabrielle (Gaby) Salter, a bohemian Chelsea girl. In his forties, Mellor settled in rural Somerset with Lucinda Henderson, the daughter of an army officer, whom he married in 1993. Until his sudden death at home of a heart attack in 2002, Mellor grew to love country pursuits, long walks with his three dogs and late-night chats around the campfire being his favourites. He was an avid reader of biographies of British second-world-war generals, and a big fan of Field Marshal Montgomery. Mellor’s professional alter ego, Joe Strummer, was a very different character. A déclassé leader of the punk movement and the author, with his band the Clash, of insurrectionary anthems such as White Riot, London’s Burning and White Man in Hammersmith Palais, Strummer was the John Lennon of punk, revered by generations of rock types for his impeccably rebellious attitude. By the time he died at 50, the Clash had long since overtaken the Sex Pistols

as the iconic British band of their era, adored and imitated by Pete Doherty among many others. According to this big, well- researched biography, if there was a single event that jolted Mellor into Strummer it was the suicide of his elder brother, who took an overdose of pills on an island in Regent’s Park in 1969. A member of the National Front and an uptight loner with severe communication difficulties, David Mellor seems to have supplied the 16-year-old John with an inspirational example of how not to lead your life. A squat-dwelling rocker, compulsively gregarious and strongly anti-authoritarian, was what the younger Mellor boy duly became in his early twenties after dropping out of art school. To emphasise the change, he adopted a new name, Joe Strummer, while playing in his first pub rock band, the 101ers, in 1975. He informed everybody of his intention to be a rock star, and although he possessed what one associate memorably described as “no musical

ability of any kind”, the advent of punk — and its radical discounting of conventional accomplishments — provided Strummer with the perfect opportunity. As he bashed out cleverly pointed lyrics at breakneck speed on a typewriter while his songwriting partner Mick Jones devised the music, the Clash ascended to the top of the new scene within a year of forming in early 1976. After Margaret Thatcher arrived at No 10 and the Pistols split up, Strummer and co were perfectly positioned to become the spokesmen of disaffected UK youth. So successful was Joe in this that he even received a death threat from a Protestant paramilitary group, the UDA, for wearing an H Block T-shirt. Respectful as Redemption Song is of its subject’s considerable talent, energy and charm, it cannot disguise the fact that Strummer could be a complete monster. “The person I was friends with was John Mellor,” said Jem Finer, the leader of the Pogues, who offered him temporary work fronting the band

in the 1990s. “But when we played live he would become Joe Strummer . . . and that wasn’t as attractive.” This was the Strummer who attacked a BBC cameraman on stage at Glastonbury and who tyrannised the Clash into extinction. By firing first the drummer Topper Headon and then in 1984 dumping Jones, Strummer effectively stymied his own career: the Clash disbanded in 1986, never to reform. Although he carried on making music until the end, Strummer never came close to equalling what he achieved in his punk heyday. Mellor/Strummer wasn’t just a Jekyll and Hyde personality. He was a genuine eccentric. While living rent-free in Conran’s Regency mansion he took to urinating in bottles and hiding them around the house. He was bizarrely fond of trying it on, in public, with the wives and partners of his friends. He had a thing about not hurting flies, and a boy scout’s love of campfires. It was his quirky nature that endeared him to so many outside the rock world,

like his drinking and drugging buddy and neighbour, Damien Hirst. The author of this book was one of the army of people whose lives he touched. Chris Salewicz — or “Sandwich” as Strummer called him — may be a scrappy writer at times, but he knew and loved his subject well, and that shows on every page. Peter H

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