Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

Joe Strummer is dead. Does it matter?

20:38 / 07.01.03

Inspired by some of the comments and reactions to the recent death of Joe Strummer, it got me thinking as to why some are so upset at the man's death. Obviously, 50 is a young age to die, so of course it matters to his friends and family - to them it's a real tragedy.

But what about the rest of the world? Strummer as an artist made his mark with The Clash, who gave punk rock a political slant. He did his bit a long time ago, so does it really matter that he is no longer with us?

I appreciate that this is a very clinical view. I'm too young to have known the impact The Clash made when they were first around, I don't particularly like their records, so I have no emotional investment. I do realise the band were important, and I respect them for it, but that was a very long time ago.

Saying that, I know there's a couple of writers at least who I will mourn when they die. One of them I've met once but don't know, and I don't think that much of his newer work, but I'll still be bawling my eyes out when he's gone, even if he lives to be 100.

Perhaps the question should really be: will we always have heroes? I'm referring to Strummer's death because he was part of a 'movement' that rejected heroes. So maybe to be gutted by his death is not what he would have wanted.

21:21 / 07.01.03

Joe Strummer dying didn't really affect me at all.

I wasn't even that upset when William Burroughs died, the only writer I can think of dying recently who I really respected. I don't know, maybe I'm callous.

Matthew Fluxington

21:30 / 07.01.03

I think it does matter - Joe Strummer may not have been as vital a part of culture as he was when he was in The Clash when he died, but he was still a very intelligent, talented man who was still quite young and still performing regularly. It's shocking and sad that he died so young, from something that probably could have been detected and treated. It's sad and unfair, and it does matter. Whenever a good person dies, it matters.

21:55 / 07.01.03

Well, intelligent and talented people die prematurely all the time. It's just that we know of Joe Strummer.

Today I read about a guy who was shot when he was 21 in a robbery, paralysed, spent six years in nursing homes trying to make the best of things, and then had a seizure and died. That affected me much more than Joe Strummer dying.

Matthew Fluxington

22:15 / 07.01.03

Yeah, and your point is?

I think it's really a big mistake to try to work out what "matters" - that sort of relevence is such a personal thing, and I don't think either of you should feel the need to mourn the loss of someone who didn't mean anything to you. Joe Strummer, like lots of great artists and entertainers, touched the lives of a lot of people; and Strummer in particular was the kind of person who had a hand in changing popular music and politicizing a lot of young people, so he does have a special place in a lot of people's hearts. Just because a lot of people didn't personally know the guy doesn't mean that he wasn't a part of their lives, someone they respected, someone who inspired them. This doesn't mean that his death matters more than anyone else's, it just means it effects a lot of people in a different way than the death of a person who is relatively anonymous.

Now, I don't think Joe Strummer is the kind of person who would want to be revered as an idol, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't have wanted people to notice and mourn his passing.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:17 / 07.01.03

I was gutted when Burroughs died- part of that was selfish, though- I'd always wanted to meet him and now knew I never would.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:19 / 07.01.03

What's more of a puzzle is why the whole UK went fucking mental when Princess Di copped it. London was a seriously bizarre place to live then, I'm telling you.

22:21 / 07.01.03

Joe Strummer is still on my wall, along with the rest of the Clash, right above the mirror.

I don't have many heroes, and I don't even think Joe was one of them, but he was an inspiration, if anything. He was a guy who was talented, wrote some music that would be in my Own Personal Soundtrack if my life were a movie, and he's only a couple of years younger than my mom, which is why it freaked me a little when he died.

I don't know if I'll matter to anyone when I die. I'd like to think I would. Everybody does. There's millions of cemeteries dotting the landscape, people's skulls in piles in Cambodia, people in Davy Jones' locker, grandmas and grandpas, mothers and daughters, fathers and sons. Some of them were famous, most were not.

The Clash were good. I will miss Joe. I'm not articulate today, sorry.

::a::

22:22 / 07.01.03

My point is, people are not sorry that Joe Strummer died because he was an intelligent and talented man etc and objectively, it is bad when intelligent and talented people die. It's more personal than that. There's no need to provide a rationale.

00:14 / 08.01.03

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated .... Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Tryphena Absent

01:08 / 08.01.03

When people die who you had a little respect for, whose music you enjoyed, you mourn them just a little. The emotional response is not particularly overwhelming, just a bit sad, we'd be cold if we didn't react a bit. Personally we toasted Joe Strummer at the Christmas Dinner table, a man who influenced music, a band we liked and we gave him back what he was worth to us. That's all you can do when someone dies, some recognition of a tragic event.

Princess Di - London went mad, really mad, after her family refused to send a flag up in respect for her death. Psych's often talk about our personal grief channeling through her death but I always suspect it was the sheer anger that someone so well known was not paid her small dues in death. None of us likes to imagine that we will be forgotten and for some people that is exactly what it represented.

The Return Of Rothkoid

02:32 / 08.01.03

Anna: I heard tell that there was more Spencer bastardry than Windsor wankery about the sort of burial that Di was given, actually - apparently it was "that Spencer shit" (I'm quoting my mother, will find out which one later - the Lord? Whatever.) that expressly forbade the flag to be sent. Something along the lines of "She's a Spencer, again, now" was said, IIRC.

Tryphena Absent

02:47 / 08.01.03

Oh but I'm really referring to the public perception of what happened and not the reality. I just recall my mother getting pissed because Buckingham Palace wouldn't raise the flag to half-mast.

Actually- completely unrelated to this thread- the flowers and candles at Kensington Palace and the smell at night time in the grounds... if you didn't see it you really missed something amazing. It was honestly one of the most beautiful things I will ever see.

05:20 / 08.01.03

Guess there weren't sufficient garment-rending Strummer fans to indulge in en masse 'I've lost my best friend'/'the British people are united in tragedy' bereavement-bonding Grief Lite.

Unfortunately, the 'Diana Effect' wasn't confined to London.

05:47 / 08.01.03

No public grief? Camberwell Post office is now decorated with 'Joe Strummer R.I.Punk' in three-foot letters. Anyone care for a pilgrimage?

09:49 / 08.01.03

God bless Camberwell! Bright red paint on the front of the Post Office but "three feet tall" is a bit of an exaggeration. One foot perhaps. A fine tribute though.

18:33 / 08.02.03

Been contemplating this one for a while.

There are reasons that it does and does not matter. If you're talking about The Cause, and the big picture in general, then Strummer certainly was most useful in the late 1970s. So, in that respect, he had served his purpose.

But if I'd been a big Clash fan, if that band had had a huge influence on my life in the way, say, Crass had, then I would say that it did matter, to me personally. If only because I would never had got the chance to thank him for what he did for me, and I would be cursing myself for not having appreciated him enough - as we all do when we lose people we love.

Brigade du jour

22:03 / 10.02.03

Besides the reasons outlined at the very start of the thread, Joe Strummer's death matters only because Phil Collins is still alive, and still getting on people's tits.