Due to the huge interest shown in our current Joe Strummer competition, I have remixed a column I wrote last year, added new aspects, and dredged the vaults of my memory for further reminiscences ...
It came as something of a surprise to me, that as I was playing Clash records on pirate radio in London, Joe Strummer and members of the Clash entourage were taping my shows and trying to get in touch with me about helping them set up Radio Clash. This was Joe’s dream of setting up a free flowing pirate radio station for London, playing obscure King Tubby and Lee Perry mixes.
Working as a booking agent in London, I had met Joe a few times, in the mid-seventies, in his incarnation as a not terribly skilled guitarist but great shouter, in the 101ers. He was called Woody Mellor then, and was not always a popular visitor to the dozen or so booking agencies around town, partially because the facilities for washing clothes were not terribly abundant in squats, and equally for his tendency (shared with many down at heel visitors) to nick anything that wasn’t nailed down.
At this time, there was a growing scene of small gigs, mainly based around big, old, pubs in North London which could accommodate a tiny stage in a corner (the ‘stage’ was often a few rickety builders’ palettes covered with some chipboard), and as many drinkers that could be squeezed in, without anyone actually being crushed to death. Every landlord that I ever spoke with (and this is not stereotyping, it’s just the way it was) was a huge, burly Irishman, who had little care for music beyond the showbands from his heritage, but was very interested in anything that would bring in more punters, and thus more drinkers. Many of these landlords had rather cunning ways of supplying booze beyond the remit of the breweries, and stood to make a Mercedes buying profit, by selling dodgy beer to unquestioning music fans.
The ‘cream’ of the pub rock bands were Brinsley Schwarz, Ducks Deluxe, Kokomo and Ace; somewhere lower down the pecking order were groups such as Grand Slam, Chilli Willi & the Red Hot Peppers, and GT Moore & the Reggae Guitars. When there were still slots to fill, we turned to the 101ers or Flip City.
With the smaller bands, who often had no, or at best chaotic, management, we insisted the venue sent a cheque directly to the agency, otherwise the 10% cut would never materialise. Incidentally the booker received 25% of the 10% so for booking a band into The Brecknock at £20.00, the humble booker would find himself (always blokes at this time) in possession of fifty pence.
Whilst the bands with some sort of management, or even better, a record company advance, could wait a week or two for their £18.00 cheque, those bands living (literally) a hand to mouth existence, would be at the door, the day after a gig, seeking an advance against their share.
On being handed a pound note, they would leg it to the café round the corner from Praed Mews, and enjoy what would almost certainly be their only meal of the day, barring the chocolate bars and crisps they could liberate from the unwary shopkeepers, café owners, and pub landlords of West and North London.
We will, no doubt, return another day, to mine from the rich coalface of pub rock memories, but it is the development of Woody Mellor, the pallid, always hungry, singer and guitar thrasher with the 101ers, into the pallid, leg shaky, reggae adoring, icon of punk, that concerns us here.
As I remember it, it was a combination of Neil Spencer’s energetic promotion of reggae in the NME, listening to Charlie Gillett on BBC Radio London (Joe had a fascination with Radio London, right through to his later years) and living amongst a growing West Indian community in various squats in Notting Hill, Harlesden, and Cricklewood, that fuelled what became Joe’s obsession with Bob Marley, Big Youth, The Gladiators, U-Roy and more.
Joe never lost a desire that burned deep in his soul to promote new (to him) sounds from around the world. He was a sponsor of ‘world music’ before the term had been coined.
So it turned out that it wasn’t my propensity for playing Complete Control each week, on my show on pirate radio, but my deep love for reggae and its half brother dub that ultimately brought Joe and I together again, after a complex series of messages delivered by Generation X roadies.
We arranged to meet at Asterix Creperie in the cheap end of the Kings Road, and we sat at a window table, while Gaby went off to the dry cleaners.
Joe was already involved in the ingestion of exotic substances, and this led to a rather odd conversation, where I tried (pretty unsuccessfully) to describe how pirate radio ‘worked’
and Joe kept banging on about his fixation with the Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) who regulated radio licences, and were responsible for closing down as many pirate stations as they possibly could. Joe really did see the pirate adventure as being equally as much about running from the law, as he did of it as a way of playing music he loved to a ‘cool’ audience.
Let’s fast forward a few days, and Joe’s interest had risen to a new peak. After a couple of drinks, Joe was convinced that he needed to see for himself, how a radio transmitter, placed high above London, could shower the metropolis with Augustus Pablo dub sounds. We jumped on a bus.
The sheer scale of Trellick Tower in Kensington seemed terrifying as we stood at the foot of this 31 storey monolith.
“Shhh! Shhh!” I recall myself saying about twenty times a minute as we reached the top, Joe shouting with glee as if he was on a carnival ride. After clambering up some deadly ladder that took us into a room holding some sort of mediaeval looking machinery, we were on the roof, and I have never been more frightened in my life.
Joe was inspired, and heavily drunk. He wanted to shout from the rooftops. I had to beg him not to. I knew I could never be a pirate radio foot soldier, crawling around on rooftops. Give me the safety of ground level, a few punk and reggae singles, and I would happily broadcast to anyone who cared to listen, but that feel of the tornado style wind whipping around as I scrambled around on a two hundred feet high roof? No thanks.
Somehow, at a time when Joe was about as ‘untogether’ as he ever was in his life, he worked with some middle men and bought a transmitter. He put together some rather incoherent tapes, and one evening, Radio Clash (with the aerial pointing the wrong way) did manage to broadcast, to a few square miles around Ladbroke Grove, at least a few hours of Joe’s vision of reggae and dub, mixed in with some old blues.
Not many people heard it, the sound quality was dire, and his personal nemesis, the DTI, came and took away all the equipment. As so often with Joe at this time, he tried something, it half worked and half didn’t, and then he left it in mid air.
Radio Clash was never heard again.
Terence Dackombe, August 2010
