We Are the Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered by Mark Andersen & Ralph Heibutzki

Author:Mark Andersen & Ralph Heibutzki [Andersen, Mark & Heibutzki, Ralph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: book, History, Politics, Music, ebook
ISBN: 9781617756504
Google: UTg7DwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 36436604
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2018-07-02T16:00:00+00:00

chapter six

got to get a witness

Joe Strummer in Granada, October 1984, wearing an Out of Control hat. (Photo by Juan Jesús Garcia.)

I’ve often lost myself,

in order to find the burn that keeps everything awake.

—Federico García Lorca

Women began organizing communal kitchens for the striking coal miners and their families driven by desperation and a realization that clubbing together makes food go further and sharing poverty makes it easier to bear. They devised ways to raise money to fund the soup kitchens and soon many became more politically active, joining the picket lines beside their male relations and friends.

—Alex Callincos and Mike Simons, The Great Strike, 1985

The man looked a bit rumpled, nursing a drink at a corner table in a bar in Granada, Spain. At first Jesús Arias didn’t recognize him: “The guy was dressed like a lumberjack in a checkered coat and dockworker’s hat. He was unshaven, unwashed . . . He looked like a hippie, really.”

It was early October 1984, and Arias had come to investigate an unlikely tale. The Spanish punk recalls, “My brother Antonio called me and said, ‘Hey, Jesús, yesterday we met Joe Strummer at Silbar. He is dirty and smelly but he will be there tonight again. Please come, we need someone who speaks English!’”

Startled, Arias pressed for more information. If anything, the details seemed even more incredible. “I came in and the bartender said, ‘This foreigner wants to show you his lyrics,’” Antonio told him. Puzzled, the younger Arias had gone over: “It was dark in the bar, I didn’t recognize him, he had a five-day-old beard and is showing me this small notebook with handwriting in English. I told him it was great but I’m really thinking, ‘How can I get away?’” Eventually, Antonio realized it was Strummer.

The elder Arias wasn’t convinced. Why would the lead singer of The Clash—a certified rock star—be skulking in a bar in Granada all by himself? Jesús explains, “There were rumors that Strummer had been around in the past, that he had a girlfriend from Granada, but no one I knew had ever seen him, and I was always skeptical.” Nevertheless, he went to see for himself.

Silbar was a hub for the small Granada punk community. Any vaguely avant-garde art had long been repressed in Spain under the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, former ally of Hitler and Mussolini. Rock and other progressive scenes had sprouted in the space that developed after Franco’s death in 1975.

“All our friends, our bands—TNT, KGB, 091—went [to Silbar],” Jesús Arias says. “But Strummer? It didn’t make sense.” The Spaniard steeled himself, walked over to the table, and asked: “Are you Joe Strummer?” The man looked up from his glass and replied simply: “Yeah . . . What do you want to drink?”

When Arias answered, “Coca-Cola,” Strummer called out to the bartender in his ragged Spanish, “Hey, let me buy a Coca-Cola for this guy!” He turned back to Arias and asked, “Do you speak English?” “I told him, ‘Yes, I do, very badly,’” Arias laughs.

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