He ditches his rockabilly band the instant he realizes that punk is the new cool thing. He completely cuts off his old hippie squatter friends. He sleeps with his drummer's girlfriend. He wants to be famous. He changes his name multiple times. He creates pretenses and artificial personalities.
None of this sounds very punk to me.
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Wow talk about cherry picking. You can cherry pick a number of different groups of 6 points as you did, culled from hundreds to make a whole host of different opinions. I dont think youve captured the overall vibe of the film or Joe with your choices at all.
My gut feeling is that Joe was a good guy but like so many in film/TV/music trying a bit too hard to be something he wasnt. His accent for one thing, no-one else anywhere sounds like that and Im sure he didnt speak that way when he was younger.
I think the films origins lie in Bridgewater, Somerset. Julien Temple had a place down there and one day Joe bought the farm down the road. And guess what? Julien's wife turned out to have been at the same school as Joe's missus. How wonderfully jolly! Because one suspects that Mrs Temple & Mrs Mellor didnt go to Scumbag (Special Measures) Comprehensive. Julien Temple, was a nice middle-class boy like Strummer, though he didnt go to a public school like Joe. Note to American readers; remember a British public school is a private school, what you call a public school we call a state school)
And just why were both men living in Somerset? Its hardly the hotbed of the multicultural society that Joe especially championed. The old do-as-I-say not do-as-I-do routine I suppose.
Still love the guy though.
A life that Strummer and others in the world or rock, and make no mistake, punk, especially early punk was still rock, is filled with contradictions from day one. It's part of the business. A person has to be creative, edgy, uncompromising, down with their fans, productive, etc and yet, especially during the time that The Clash was popular, there was also excessive commercial demands from record companies to sell as many units as possible and that's when the angling for ones soul comes about.
Once Strummer set out on a path to be musician/rock star, he was bound to come face-to-face with those contradictions in himself.
He was obviously ambitious and he saw the young punks as being his meal ticket.
I wonder what I would have done if I was in his position?
Leaving The 101ers wasn't his greatest sin.
How he treated them once he left them however, might qualify as one.
If he had checked himself and stayed on as "Musical King Of The Squatters" I doubt that any of us would be typing on about the moral ambiguities of Strummer.
He was the son of a diplomat, raised in a middle class family and all of the comforts that went along with it. We rarely depart from our familial experiences in life and Strummer eventually gravitated towards the same comfortable confines.
He was also restless, a free-spirit, loved people and used them if it suited him.
I'm sure that Paul Weller, Bono, and John Lydon are all guilty of similar crimes to one degree or another.
Failing to live up to the idealism or gritty realism of punk was only a matter of time for anyone that experienced large scale success.
Strummer was deeply flawed, immensely talented and left us with some pretty decent tunes.
I hope he has found solace and peace, wherever his soul has traveled and rests.
This op taught me that you don't know anything about what you're claiming indicated by these two views of the world that you seem to only have: black and white. You're there dispensing judgment, nobody knows who you are and what kind of life you lead , whether you're a hypocrite in a certain situation or a secret craven coward in another, nobody knows but you, yet you can judge another, and then it's off on film or books or other such media.
'None of this sounds very punk to me.'
Punk, revolution, any other terms you want to create it all means to see things in a different way and not be accept subjugation. You give me the impression you'd fall in line to an ideology or credo and not even question it, especially if it is a part of your early stage upbringing.
What you see is not necessarily what you get,
Not trying is dying, keep trying unto death....
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Sounds like Joe was a young kid lacking perspective to me. What I got from the film is that he did some dodgy things in his early days and then - he grew up.
Who among us who is pushing 40 or even 50 hasn't? If you've yet to make the whole journey, should you criticize the first turn?
As far as being punk goes - was there an official punk ethos etched in stone to be subscribed to in 1975-76?
Sleeping with your drummer/friends girlfriend sounds very much like the punk scene as I remember it.
Seriously, I think I love Joe even more that I know he was just a regular guy, warts and all (bad teeth?) and yet he was still capable of rising above the *beep* *most* of the time. The success of the band really showed how badly he handled the fame and hypocrisy of it all.
As some other poster wrote, they're all hypocrites- John Lennon included. It's how they handle the hypocrisy that makes all the difference. Giving people beer money and bus fare after gigs was who the real man was, not some ass spouting off about how his band was all that mattered. That's just part of the machine that ends up eating us all up in the end. Very few get away with their dignity in tact.
My life is better for having Joe Strummer in it. I can't say that about many people.
I think pcal43 has a point. I forgive Joe's mistakes, but it is clear he was never a true punk. Like David Lee Roth said, some people need to stop taking themselves so serious.
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