Strummer Joe - Let fury have the hour: Joe Strummer, punk, and the movement that shook the word

LET FURY HAVE THE HOUR

ALSO BY ANTONINO DAMBROSIO

Books

A Heartbeat and a Guitar:
Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears

Mayday: The Art of Shepard Fairey

(with Shepard Fairey and Jeffrey Deitch)

Screenplays

Let Fury Have the Hour

No Free Lunch

La Terra Promessa: In Sun & Shadow (Part I)
and Diamanti nel di Massima (Part II)

Films (Directed and Produced)

Let Fury Have the Hour

No Free Lunch

La Terra Promessa: In Sun & Shadow (Part I)
and Diamanti nel di Massima (Part II)

Contributor

Democracy in Print: The Best of the
Progressive Magazine, 19092009

Copyright 2012 by Antonino DAmbrosio

Published by Nation Books,

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Nation Books, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016-8810.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Let fury have the hour: Joe Strummer, punk, and the movement that shook the word / [edited by] Antonino DAmbrosio.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-56858-720-2 (e-book) 1. Strummer, JoeCriticism and interpretation. 2. Clash (Musical group) 3. Punk rock musicPolitical aspects. 4. Punk rock musicHistory and criticism. I. DAmbrosio, Antonino.
ML420.S918L48 2012
782.42166092dc23
[B]

2012001087

For Yrthya and Amara
Everything, Always

To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.

FLANNERY OCONNOR

My grandfather made bricks

My father made bricks

I make bricks, too,

but wheres my house?

OLD BRICK MAKER,
FEDERICO FELLINIS Amarcord

Even if its a bad idea, its still an idea, that brings us to another idea, which may be less bad or even better. Who knows?

JACQUES RIVETTES
Around a Small Mountain

Introduction to the First Edition:
The Future Is Unwritten

By Antonino DAmbrosio

By Wayne Kramer with Margaret Saadi Kramer

By Antonino DAmbrosio

By Antonino DAmbrosio

By Antonino DAmbrosio

By Steve Walsh

By Peter Silverton

The Clash: Anger on the Left As
Punk Leaders Set Sights on America

By Mikal Gilmore

By Sylvie Simmons

By Greil Marcus

The Rebel Way: Alex Cox, Jim Jarmusch, and
Dick Rude on the Filmwork of Joe Strummer

By Antonino DAmbrosio

By Ann Scanlon

By Dennis Broe

By Amy Phillips

By Charlie Bertsch

By Antonino DAmbrosio

You Cant Have a Revolution Without Songs:
The Legacy of Vctor Jara and the Political Folk Music
of Caetano Veloso, Silvio Rodrguez, and Joe Strummer

By Antonino DAmbrosio

By Joel Schalit

By Kristine McKenna

By Carter Van Pelt

By Antonino DAmbrosio

The Clash Legacy: Speech to Induct the Clash
into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 2003

By Tom Morello

The World Is Worth Fighting For: Two Creative Activists, Michael
Franti and Tim Robbins, Continue Joe Strummers Legacy

By Antonino DAmbrosio

By Not4Prophet

By Chuck D

By Billy Bragg

By Antonino DAmbrosio

All essays by Antonino DAmbrosio

The Only Band that Mattered... Still Does:
The Story of the Clash as Told by the Clash

By Antonino DAmbrosio

I think people ought to know that were antifascist, were antiviolence, were antiracist and were procreative. Were against ignorance.

JOE STRUMMER, 1976

Were all going to have to learn to live together and develop a greater tolerance and get rid of whatever our fathers gave us in the way of hatred between nations.

JOE STRUMMER, 2000

O n the day Joe Strummer died, December 22, 2002, US forces began dropping leaflets and making radio broadcasts over Iraq urging Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein. The Bush administration stated that the war to overthrow Saddams regime would start with US bombing followed by a popular Iraqi insurgent uprising that would gain control of the streets. President George W. Bush declared that this was going to be a battle between good and evil. It was a strange, jarring day. As the United States seemed poised to embark on the latest war on terror, the Clash antiwar song The Call-Up came to mind: Its up to you not to heed the call-up/I dont wanna die!/Its up to you not to hear the call-up/I dont wanna kill! As Strummer remarked when the song was first recorded, The song is a statement against the buildup to war and the potential it creates for bringing catastrophe. Nearly ten years after Strummers death, with the liberation of Iraq supposedly now completed, and more than two decades after Strummer wrote this song, these words certainly seem prophetic.

Antonino DAmbrosios press pass from his meeting with Joe Strummer during the musicians series of performances at St. Anns Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York, April 5,2001. (Photo by Antonino DAmbrosio.)

Let Fury Have the Hour has been more than twenty-five years in the making. It began for me in 1983 when, for the first time, I heard the Clash blaring at me from those huge 1970s-style speakers in my cousins house on Lawndale Street in northeast Philadelphia. Of course, I had heard the Clash before then. It was impossible not to. They were the biggest band in the world at the time. They had a huge worldwide hit with Rock the Casbah and a video in heavy rotation on the fledgling video network MTV. But we did not have MTV and even though I secretly loved Rock the Casbah, it seemed to be a radio-friendly pop song. When I heard, really heard, the Clashs music for the first time, it came by way of the song Clampdown. I related to it because it seemed written for me. It became more than a songClampdown was my own personal anthem. The Clash promised rebellion. And I was certain that they could deliver it and liberate me from a sense of hopelessness and a life of wearing blue and brown.