Joe Strummer Quotes (39 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Joe Strummer: 39 quotes 7 likes

Famous Joe Strummer Quotes

“Everyone has got to realise you can't hold onto the past if you want any future. Each second should lead to the next one.”

Joe Strummer

Interview for Sounds Magazine on 17 July 1982. [Armed Combat, Sounds Magazine, 17 July 1982]

“We got all the influences for it [Global a Go-Go] from Willesden High Road. When you go out for milk and cigarettes you go through three countries because all the shops and cafes are playing their own music, like going through hell.”

Joe Strummer

About Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros' album Global a Go-Go (2001) and about the song writing process.
Strummer talks war and music (13 November 2001)

“You have the right not to be killed, unless it was done by a policeman or an aristocrat.”

Joe Strummer

The Clash, "Know Your Rights", Combat Rock (1982).
Lyrics

“In fact, punk rock means exemplary manners to your fellow human being. Fuck being an asshole, what you pussies thought it was twenty years ago.”

Joe Strummer

from CD Now (September 1999) with Jason Gross

“I just want to go back to rockin', but I'm uncertain as to what to actually do … The truth is, I never stopped thinking about rock 'n' roll for a second that I'm on holiday.”

Joe Strummer

Strummer on Man, God, Law and the Clash (31 January 1988)

“What's holding me up is I'm confused about the nature of the music. Because the modern music doesn't reach me. I mean to say the sound of the modern electric production. A lot of sequencers… synths. That's what people are buying. Because that doesn't reach me, it throws me back to like 1948, but I don't want to be there. Back there, I'm talking about blues records…. The roots of rock 'n' roll is rhythm and blues and that's like really where I'm at, where I was always at.”

Joe Strummer

Strummer on Man, God, Law and the Clash (31 January 1988)

Joe Strummer Quotes about thinking

“I'd like to say that people people can change anything they want to; and that means everything in the world. Show me any country and there'll be people in it. And it's the people that make the country. People have got to stop pretending they're not on the world. People are running about following their little tracks. I am one of them. But we've all gotta stop just stop following our own little mouse trail. People can do anything; this is something that I'm beginning to learn. People are out there doing bad things to each other; it's because they've been dehumanized. It's time to take that humanity back into the centre of the ring and follow that for a time. Greed… it ain't going anywhere! They should have that on a big billboard across Times Square. Think on that. Without people you're nothing.”

Joe Strummer

Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten (2007).

“I think you have to grow up and realise that we're facing religious fanatics who would kill everyone in the world who doesn't do what they say. The more time you give them the more bombs they'll get. Bin Laden is going to try and kill more people. It helps the fanatics.”

Joe Strummer

Strummer talks war and music (13 November 2001)

“I'd define it as self-awareness: an ability to trust your own judgment. An ability to see through veils of bullshit or spins on stories or propaganda. Maybe an ability to think for yourself.”

Joe Strummer

About punk.
Joe Strummer: Putting a Scare into he Hearts of All Things Corporate (2002)

“I think that the corporation is running it and will always make it appeal to the lowest common denominator. I think we're going to have to forget about the radio and just go back to word of mouth.”

Joe Strummer

About mainstream radio.
Joe Strummer: Putting a Scare into he Hearts of All Things Corporate (2002)

“If you're allowed to make your mistakes, I think you should. But people don't really like hearing you admit them. Although I'd never wanted to dump on the musicians that were involved in that…. Because it was not their fault.”

Joe Strummer

Strummer on Man, God, Law and the Clash (31 January 1988)

“I would say it was about time that you believe in something. And sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll ain't it…. A lot of people used to think they were.”

Joe Strummer

Strummer on Man, God, Law and the Clash (31 January 1988)

Joe Strummer Quotes

“I'll tell you something. When you see you become part of the cycle of generations, you lose your ego in the process, because you ain't nothin' special. You're just another cipher in the generations. When you devote all your interest into another person, you lose your self-obsession, and that's when you understand what it is. You don't know (anything) without that moment. You don't want anything to harm this helpless being. That's a fantastic change. And that's when you understand what's happening. I never understood anything until my first baby looked at me. I didn't understand (anything). Now I understand.”

Joe Strummer

Strummer on Man, God, Law and the Clash (31 January 1988)

Understanding , Change , Parting , Baby

“The way you get a better world is, you don’t put up with substandard anything.”

Joe Strummer

My Dinner with Strummer (March 1999)
Variant: The way you get a better world is, you don’t put up with substandard anything.

World , Way

“All the power's in the hands of people rich enough to buy it.”

Joe Strummer

Joe Strummer / Mick Jones, "White Riot", The Clash (1977).
Lyrics

People

“I'd just like to say to everybody that it's best to check out the independent life: the independent stores and the independent everybodies. We should try not to give our money to any corporations, if we can help it.”

Joe Strummer

Joe Strummer: Putting a Scare into he Hearts of All Things Corporate (2002)

Life , Money , Help

“It's good to be sent back to the underground. There's always a good side to bad things and the good side to this is that at least everyone has to go back down.”

Joe Strummer

Joe Strummer: Putting a Scare into he Hearts of All Things Corporate (2002)

“I kept trying to stress that — "Hang on, we're be-bop guys, we're down in the alley on 57th Street. We're not in there with John Reed and "Ten Days That Shook the World." We'd be in the alley with (Charlie) Parker shooting up junk. That's where we were at really.”

Joe Strummer

Strummer on Man, God, Law and the Clash (31 January 1988)

World , Guy

“[T]he toughest thing is facing yourself. Being honest with yourself, that's much tougher than beating someone up. That's what I call tough.”

Joe Strummer

As quoted in [Coon, Caroline, w:en:Caroline Coon, 1988: The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion, http://homepage.mac.com/blackmarketclash/Bands/Clash/Clash%20gigography/1976%20DATES.html, 2011-09-21, 1977, Hawthorn, London, 0801561299., 79262599, http://web.archive.org/20071026052834/homepage.mac.com/blackmarketclash/Bands/Clash/Clash%20gigography/1976%20DATES.html, 2007-10-26]

“Singing into a cold wind is the worst nightmare for any singer. You could hear it in the voice.”

Joe Strummer

Strummer talks war and music (13 November 2001)

Singing

“What I like about playing America is you can be pretty sure you're not going to get hit with a full can of beer when you're singing and I really enjoy that!”

Joe Strummer

Interview with Howard Petruziello for the New York Hangover on March 2000 Petruziello, Howard, Drinking with Joe Strummer, New York Hangover, 2000, March http://www.nyhangover.com/issues/0300/text/Strummer300.htm,

Beer , Singing

“I try and keep an ear out and keep an open mind and enjoy something where I don't know what the hell is going on inside of it. That's what I really get out of it. Because to me it's new. That's what I get out of it. That joyful feeling of you don't know what's going to happen next.”

Joe Strummer

7 Questions with Joe Strummer (15 August 2001)

Feeling , Hell

“The men at the factory are old and cunning
You don't owe nothing, so boy get running
It's the best years of your life they want to steal.”

Joe Strummer

“Clampdown” (1979)

Life , Men , Boy

“I'm a human being. I'm not dumping on what I've done. I mean I know we were doing social (stuff), all right? I just don't like boastin' about it, OK? I know what we were doin'. I know damn well what we did. But I ain't gonna start crying about it now, all right?”

Joe Strummer

Strummer on Man, God, Law and the Clash (31 January 1988)

Cry

“I hate it when I go out and I see parents going, 'don't do that', or 'stop doing that' when some kid's just hanging off a staircase or something. There's too much of this, 'don't do that.”

Joe Strummer

The whole thing baffles me.
My Dinner with Strummer (March 1999)

Hate , Parent

“London Calling - Yes, I was there, too,
And you know what they said? Well some of it was true.
London Calling at the top of the dial…
And after all this, won't you give me a smile?”

Joe Strummer

Joe Strummer / Mick Jones, "London Calling", London Calling (1979).
Lyrics

Smile

“Too many songs have been written about love already, you know? Subject's covered.”

Joe Strummer

About why The Clash focuses on political songs.
Interview on Tomorrow with Tom Snyder on 5 June 1981.

Love

“Anybody who makes speeches written by someone else is just a robot.”

Joe Strummer

“I have a big legacy of The Clash to live up to and I don't intend to uriny on a legend. I intend to build forward into the next century. The music has to be by the musicians, and there's too much changing things by the record company. I got a message for everyone in a record company: We don't care if you lose your job! You ruin music and I'll get all the smoothers out off the way, the people who smooth the sound off. Let the musicians have the music the way they want it, and not the way you think the grandmothers and 3-year olds will gonna buy it. Cause this is not about 3-year olds or grandmothers… This is Rock and Roll!”

Joe Strummer

Bizarre Festival (21 August 1999)

People , Music , Way , Thinking

“I like to just feel how I feel and not worry about it really.”

Joe Strummer

7 Questions with Joe Strummer (15 August 2001)

Feeling

“No man's land. There ain't no asylum here.
King Solomon he never lived 'round here.”

Joe Strummer

The Clash, "Straight to Hell", Combat Rock (1982).
Lyrics

“When freedom rises from the killing floor,
No lock of iron or rivet can restrain the door.
And no kind of army can hope to win a war
Like trying to stop the rain or still the lion`s roar,
Like trying to stop the whirlwind scattering seeds and spores
Like trying to stop the tin cans rapping out jailhouse semaphore.”

Joe Strummer

Joe Strummer and Bono, "46664", written for Nelson Mandela's HIV/AIDS festival in 2003.
Lyrics

War , Hope , Freedom

“For me the music is a vehicle for my lyrics. It's a chance to get some really good words across.”

Joe Strummer

Music , Chance

“My motto is, 'What's the hurry?' I'm trying to get it across to the modern world that we need to sit around and think a little bit more.”

Joe Strummer

Interview with Corey Levitan for Rolling Stone Online on 2 December 1999.

World , Thinking

“I was trying to prove that I was the Clash and it wasn't Mick (Jones). I learned that that was kind of dumb. I learned that it wasn't anybody, except maybe a great chemistry between us four, and I really learned it was over the day we sacked Topper, and not the day we sacked Mick. There was quite some time between them. We played a whole tour between those times. But it was the day we sacked Tops.”

Joe Strummer

Strummer on Man, God, Law and the Clash (31 January 1988)

Learning , Time

“When you blame yourself, you learn from it. If you blame someone else, you don't learn nothing, cause hey, it's not your fault, it's his fault, over there.”

Joe Strummer

Interview with Judy McGuire for Punk Magazine in 2001. McGuire, Judy, Joe Strummer Interview, 2001, Punk Magazine http://www.punkmagazine.com/stuff/morestuff/joe_strummer.html,

Learning

“I'm a human being. I'm not dumping on what I've done. I mean I know we were doing social (stuff), all right? I just don't like boastin' about it, OK? I know what we were doin.'”

Joe Strummer

I know damn well what we did. But I ain't gonna start crying about it now, all right?
Strummer on Man, God, Law and the Clash (31 January 1988)

“My motto is, 'What's the hurry?'”

Joe Strummer

I'm trying to get it across to the modern world that we need to sit around and think a little bit more.

Interview with Corey Levitan for Rolling Stone Online on 2 December 1999. Levitan, Corey, Joe Strummer Considers Clashing In, Rolling Stone Online, News, 2 December 1999 http://www.wholenote.com/default.asp?iTarget=http%3A//www.wholenote.com/news/item.asp%3Fi%3D108,