Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten

Dir: Julien Temple

2007

****

Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten is a lovingly put together tribute to The Clash legend following his premature death in 2002. If you’re a musician and want your story to be told with respect, passion and truth, then you couldn’t hope for anyone over Julien Temple. I would never confess to knowing everything about Strummer and The Clash but I was surprised about how much I didn’t know while watching the documentary. I was at first confused for instance by the separate scenes that had various different groups of people in different parts of the world talking about Strummer around huge bonfires. I learned that in his last few years Strummer organised bonfire parties and invited many guests to join him for a drink and good conversation and maybe a little music. His family, close friends and celebrity pals all sit around the fire talking about how much he meant to them and tell of all the things about him that many people didn’t know. There are people such as Bono, Martin Scorsese, Johnny Depp, Flea, John Cussack, Steve Buscemi, John Cooper Clarke, Jim Jarmusch, Courtney Love, Don Letts, Damien Hirst, Bobby Gillespie and Michael Stipe, among many, all people of substance who certainly don't need to be in the film to make themselves seem cool, but genuinely loved the singer and want to share the joy, creativity and thoughts he brought. The interviews are heartfelt and informative and the archive footage is pretty comprehensive, and there were so many aspects of his life that I had no idea about, some of which really shocked me. I had no idea he married a South African woman, so she could obtain British citizenship (foreign wives of male Britons could obtain British nationality via marriage, until the British Nationality Act 1981 came into force). Then there was the incident in 1980, when he was arrested for hitting a violent member of the audience with his guitar during a performance in Hamburg was fascinating. This incident shocked Strummer, and had a lasting personal impact on him. He said in a later interview that, "It was a watershed - violence had really controlled me for once". He determined never again to fight violence with violence and became even more vocal against hate. His work with the Anti-Nazi League and the Rock Against Racism campaigns are touched on, as is the famous 1980 Rock Against Racism concert at Victoria Park, as featured in Jack Hazan and David Mingay’s part fiction, part rockumentary film Rude Boy. The film explains that Strummer was born John Graham Mellor in Ankara, Turkey. His Scottish mother, Anna Mackenzie, was a nurse and a crofter's daughter born and raised in Bonar Bridge in the Scottish Highlands, while his British father, Ronald Ralph Mellor M.B.E., was a clerical officer- later attaining the rank of second secretary - in the foreign service. The family spent much time moving from place to place, and Strummer spent parts of his early childhood in Cairo, Mexico City and Bonn. At the age of 9, Strummer and his older brother David, 10, began boarding at the City of London Freemen's School in Surrey. Strummer rarely saw his parents during the next seven years. He reflected “At the age of nine I had to say good-bye to them because they went abroad to Africa or something. I went to boarding school and only saw them once a year after that – the Government paid for me to see my parents once a year. I was left on my own, and went to this school where thick rich people sent their thick rich kids. Another perk of my father's job”. He took it hard but the move had a far greater effect on his brother. “David was a year older than me. Funnily enough, you know, he was a Nazi. He was a member of the National Front. He was into the occult and he used to have these deaths-heads and cross-bones all over everything. He didn't like to talk to anybody, and I think suicide was the only way out for him. What else could he have done?” It’s amazing how different the two brothers turned out, this is respectfully touched upon. Strummer did so much in his life, it was always going to be impossible to cover everything, although it’s still quite comprehensive. Strummer appeared in a couple of my favorite films, and while Jim Jarmusch speaks about filming 1989’s Mystery Train, it would have been cool if Aki Kaurismäki could have spoken about his 1990 film I Hired a Contract Killer which stared Strummer as a guitarist in a pub, performing two songs ("Burning Lights" and "Afro-Cuban Bebop"). Still, lots to enjoy and inform - I also had no idea that he fronted The Pouges in the early 90s when singer Shane MacGowan temporarily left the band. The highlight of the film for me was when, on 15 November 2002, Strummer and the Mescaleros played a benefit show for striking fire fighters in London, at the Acton Town Hall. Mick Jones was in the audience, and joined the band on stage during the Clash's "Bankrobber". An encore followed with Jones playing guitar and singing on "White Riot" and "London's Burning". This performance marked the first time since 1983 that Strummer and Jones had performed together on stage. Jones remarked  in the film that it was totally unplanned and that he felt compelled to join Strummer on stage. It’s heartbreaking to know that the pair were writing new Clash songs and were preparing to get back together just before his untimely death. Awesome musician, lovely man, loving tribute. I really wish I had a chance to have seen him play live.

Absolute Beginners

Dir: Julien Temple

1986

****

Julien Temple's outlandish rock musical is an overlooked and underappreciated classic and a brilliant adaptation of Colin MacInnes's overlooked and underappreciated novel. MacInnes's 1959 novel deals largely with London life in the late 50s, areas of vibrancy but abject poverty where immigrants, homosexuals and drug addicts live together in the margins of society. The film follows the novels story and changes little apart from the fact it's a larger than life musical but it works extremely well. It still has an authenticity about it though, with people like Edward Tudor-Pole playing A Teddy Boy with far-right tenancies and Lionel Blair playing 'Harry Charms', based on the infamous Larry Parnes, there is something quite effective about it. Julien Temple was criticized upon the film's release however by many who held the novel in high regard, as well as those who didn't like it in the first place. The British film industry was in turmoil at the time - even though some great little films were being made - and the press didn't like to shy away from laying on the doom, even when it wasn't justified. However, it was once described as being a flawed attempt to harness the contemporary musical in the services of politics and social equality and that it fell very short of capturing the tormented romanticism that made English adolescents in the 1970s swear by the by the novel the same way American kids had earlier sworn by The Catcher in the Rye. You do have to wonder how MacInnes would have reacted to it but this was a 1986 reaction to the story, how could Temple have made anything other? Personally, I thought Temple highlighted many of the same events that were happening in the 80s that mirrored the events of the 50s and showed them for being the ridiculous events that they were. He showed what a broken record this country is through exuberant exaggeration, a truly 80s response to such a thing. It may not have made sense at the time but in retrospect it's just as fascinating as the original novel. The rise of the far right was back with vengeance, immigrants were once again the focus of attack, capitalism was at its peak and even Teddy Boy fashion was making a comeback. The film ends with the Notting Hill Race Riots of 68, a very sad day in recent history. The film was made in 1986, a couple of years between two of the worse riots this country has ever seen. For every bastardization of the original novel that there is, there is an interesting historical comparison that only now can we see, understand and learn from. There is so much more to the film than is ever given credit for, I believe it should be seen as more than just a cult hit and the film that finished Goldcrest. The truth is the studio just didn't know how to handle time and money, they never made a single bad film in their history.