Fifty Minutes Of Joe Strummer And The Mescaleros

Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros came together in the late 90s. Joe started working with Richard Norris and Pablo Cook and the Mescaleros formed around that trio. In his memoir Strange Things Are Happening Richard Norris recounts how Joe and a cavalcade of cars turned up at Real World Studio in Wiltshire. Richard was sitting on a grass bank as the convoy arrived and Joe leapt from a vehicle brandishing a drum machine and shouting, 'does anyone know how to make this thing work?'. Richard raised a hand and said he did. Joe, Richard and Pablo wrote Yalla Yalla, with Anthony Genn coming on board to mix. They went on to write Techno D- Day, Tony Adams and the beautiful From Willesden To Cricklewood. Richard Norris Joe wrote Sandpaper Blues, Diggin' The New and the late career rock/ reggae/ acid house classic Yalla Yalla. All those songs became part of the first Mescaleros album, Rock Art And The X Ray Style.

The Mescaleros grew from there with Scott Shields joining (bass and guitar), Martin Slattery (keys and guitar), Richard Flack (various instruments) and Steve 'Smiley' Bernard (drums). Genn hung around for a while but eventually left. In 1999 Joe and the Mescaleros recorded Rock Art And The X Ray Style having played a load of gigs including Glastonbury (where Joe smashed a BBC camera during the broadcast with a mic stand). In Strange Things Are Happening Richard tells the story of his departure from being Joe's creative partner whilst out in LA- the circles around Joe and the former members of The Clash come across like the worst aspects of Succession, in crowds and out crowds and hangers on all jostling for elbow room and access to the top table. At an audience with event I went to Richard was asked how it ended with Joe and he replied, 'badly'. A rueful silence and some regret. 

In 2000 Joe hooked up again with Tymon Dogg, a former 101er and Clash guest. Tymon joined the Mescaleros for Global A Go- Go and the band toured the UK, US and Europe, playing festivals and small gigs, combining Clash songs and Mescaleros songs in fine style, gigs awash with beer flying, and reggae, rock, dub and global sounds, joyous celebrations of Joe's music and life. I saw them twice at Manchester Academy in the 1999- 2002 period and on another occasion at Nynex Arena where they supported The Who in a largely empty arena. They were superb, a life affirming blast of energy and punk rock righteousness. Joe never gave less than everything, the band gave their all too to match him and there was no reason to think it shouldn't carry on for some time. Joe died suddenly at home on 22nd December 2002. 

There are three Mescaleros albums- 1999's Rock Art And The X Ray Style, 2001's Global A Go- Go and the posthumously completed Streetcore from 2003. Between them they show a reborn and revitalised Joe Strummer, writing and recording and having the time of his life, making music that stands as not just the best of his solo career but alongside his songs in The Clash too. In the last year of Joe's life he'd been writing with Mick Jones again, songs that Mick assumed were for an upcoming Mescaleros album. Joe apparently thought they were for a new Clash album. 

Fifty Minutes Of Joe Strummer And The Mescaleros

• Punk Rock Warlord
• Yalla Yalla (Norro's King Dub)
• Fantastic
• At The Border, Guy
• Burnin' Streets
• X- Ray Style
• Ocean Of Dreams
• Johnny Appleseed
• Sandpaper Blues
• Arms Aloft
• Coma Girl
• Without People You're Nothing

Yalla Yalla was released as a single in 1999 ahead of the Rock Art And The X- Ray Style album, Joe and Richard Norris summoning the spirits and the radio. Joe described the song as 'an ancient British folk song written in the year 1999'. Live at Manchester Academy they segued Yalla Yalla into Bankrobber, Joe disappearing offstage and returning with a child on his shoulders, arms in the air and red lights strafing the stage. Yalla Yalla is total Strummer- world with dubbed out references to Kool Moe Dee, The Treacherous Three,  Brownie McGee, Ladbroke Grove, Ragga FM, Tae Kwon Do and the kebab shop. The Norro King Dub was on the 12", a Richard Norris dub of the original. According to Richard no one had ever called him Norro before and from that point only Joe did. 

Fantastic came out in 2022, a posthumous release tied into a box set re- release of the three Mescaleros albums and fourth disc of outtakes and demos. It was recorded at Rockfield in Monmouth in December 2002, the month Joe died. Fantastic is an early version of Ramshackle Day Parade from Streetcore. Streetcore was completed after Joe died by various Mescaleros. Joe's vocals are guide vocals, not finished ones- this alone shows how much Joe put in to recording. The guide vocals for Fantastic, Arms Aloft and Coma Girl (among other Streetcore songs) are more impassioned than many singers manage ever. While we'll never know what Streetcore could have been and what other songs Joe might have written for it, the seven songs that the band finished for the album all stand up next to the rest of the Mescaleros back catalogue. 

There are three other songs on Streetcore- Redemption Song, Silver And Gold and  Long Shadow- that date from different sessions. Redemption Song and Long Shadow were done with Rick Rubin, intended for Johnny Cash to record, and were included on Streetcore at Lucinda's request (Joe's widow). The video for Fantastic is a lovely thing, footage of Joe from The Clash, solo and his family life spliced together.   

At The Border, Guy is from Global A Go- Go, a seven minute freewheeling dub tune with scratchy guitar, organ and Joe singing about town planners, the Dow Jones and Leek town hall. Wonderful stuff, the genre hopping spirit of Sandinista! continuing long into Joe's solo career. 

Burnin' Streets is from Streetcore and has a nice lyrically throwback to 1977 and London's Burning. Arms Aloft is a rocker from the same album. In the song Joe sees his (younger) bandmates on tour complaining about being tired and out of gas partway through a tour. Joe, ever the livewire and motivator, shouts at them, reminding them of their duty to rock 'n' roll, the audience and playing the gig, and how only a few nights before they were 'arms aloft in Aberdeen'. It's one of several songs on Streetcore that have a hint, a foreshadowing, of Joe's mortality. 'They say the stars can't see their rays/ Nor can they count the number of days', he sings near the end. At the start there's some cosmic Joe too with the line, 'Sometimes there's no stars shining/ Scouting the edge of the universe/ Sometimes you can't see a horizon/ Between the ocean and the earth'. 

X Ray Style is a beauty, the title track from 1999's Rock Art And The X Ray Style (the cover was painted by Damian Hirst, a version of Neolithic cave art. Joe spent every summer from the mid 80s onward in Granada, Spain and in the nearby Nerja area there is a cave complex discovered by five school boys in 1959 containing the world's oldest known cave art- maybe this was the inspiraiton for the sleeve). The song X Ray Style is an acoustic guitar tune with a bongo groove, Joe singing about the stars and the hopes of a soul, Be Bop guns, rockabilly trains and how 'there's some people living who ain't got no heart and they never had none'. He finishes with the line, 'I want to live and I want to dance a while'. His voice ever sounded better. 

Ocean Of Dreams came out on the 2022 box set, an unreleased Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros song dating from the Rock Art And the X Ray Style sessions with ex- Ex Pistol Steve Jones on guitar. It's got a lazy, laid back feel, Joe improvising and following his nose. In 1999 Anthony Genn had told him, 'You're Joe Strummer, you should be making an album!'. Other people had told him this at points in the decade between 1989 and 1999 but in 1999 the time was right. 

Johnny Appleseed is the lead song from 2001's Global A Go- Go, a solo peak and a song that demonstrates everything that was great about the man. Acoustic guitars, massed backing vocals, old friend Tymon on violin and Joe singing about Martin Luther King and Buick 49s, and how if you want to get the honey you don't go killing all the bees, a line that could be about the environment or it could be about capitalism. Whenever I need to hear some solo Joe, I often start with Johnny Appleseed. The video is very Joe too, Joe and the Mescaleros wandering the streets of London as the public come and go...

Sandpaper Blues is a Richard Norris co- write. Joe's love of what used to be called World Music is all over the Mescaleros songs. On Sandpaper Blues there's Caribbean vibes married to Country and Western and Mariachi. 

Coma Girl is the lead song from Streetcore, rousing Strummer three chord, Clash style, electrifying guitar rock. In the song Joe describes his walk through the outer areas at the Glastonbury festival, wandering round the stages as the rain comes in and the oil drums clang, while singing to his daughter Lola, the coma girl, who didn't want to get out of bed. Coma Girl is as good a final song as Joe could have wished for in many ways, a song that summons the vision of him on stage, his left leg twitching away as he bashed out the chords and sang at the microphone stand.