Joe Strummer: Likeness

“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)

Music , Hell , Country

“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)

People , Music , Nature

“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).

People , World , Thinking , Learning

“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)

People , Thinking

“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

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

Joe Strummer

7 Questions with Joe Strummer (15 August 2001)

Feeling

“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