Redemption Song by Chris Salewicz

Author:Chris Salewicz [Chris Salewicz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007369027
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Joe and Gaby after running the Paris Marathon – Gaby came last. (Richard Schroeder)

‘I had a friend who lived in Paris,’ said Gaby. ‘She had a little flat in Montmartre. As she lived with her boyfriend she gave us her place. On the third day we were at a restaurant and someone was talking to me and Joe gave me a furious look, to stop me talking about why we were there. I was pickpocketed, all our money was stolen and Joe got cross and told me I should go home – I didn’t. I didn’t have a passport or money. I had to go to the British embassy and they gave me travel documents. We just immersed ourselves in being Parisiens for a few weeks. We went on a little tour of Paris. I had a beret and we travelled on the Métro with copies of the newspaper articles about Joe being missing. After a while he grew a beard and had an army jacket, a disguise: the Clash were well known in France, Paris particularly. Joe took me to every museum and all the places every famous writer had ever mentioned. Rimbaud was his real hero. We ran the French marathon. Both of us. I came last in the race. We had a lovely time.’

It was a classic romantic act. Would a pile of Joe’s clothes be found on a beach somewhere? (There was a brief rumour that his body had been found in the River Clyde in Scotland.) In the real world, was Joe simply in hiding from all the pressure, worried and angry about Topper and fearful of the reception that Combat Rock would receive? In Britain the last Clash album had been savaged; now, having seized the reins on Combat Rock, the creative judgement of the increasingly mysterious Joe Strummer was about to be held up to public and critical scrutiny.

On 14 May, while he was still in Paris, Combat Rock hit the shops. To a fantastic reception. It was loved by the music press, especially by the NME, whose earlier love for the group had seemingly turned to hate. Combat Rock raced up the British album charts to number 2. In the United States it was similarly adored.

A twenty-three-date US tour was planned to start on 29 May at Asbury Park in New Jersey. The consequence of cancelling it, with the financial penalties that would be incurred, would be to plunge the Clash into bankruptcy. Bernie Rhodes’s piece of pop manager Svengali-ism was about to blow up in his face. But the Clash were also scheduled to play a one-off date on 20 May, at the Lochem Festival, outside Amsterdam in Holland. As news of Joe’s disappearance was by now common currency, tickets for the event were not selling well. Through a stroke of serendipity a Dutch journalist mentioned to the Lochem promoter that he had seen Joe Strummer in a bar in Paris. The producer immediately called Kosmo Vinyl, who phoned Gaby’s brother Mark Salter.

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