Part I
John/Woody/Joe
Chapter 1
âDonât Call Me Woodyâ: The Punk Compassion and Folk Rebellion of Joe Strummer and Woody Guthrie
Edward A. Shannon
Popular opinion holds that Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen are the only legitimate heirs to Woody Guthrieâs legacy, a mantle both singer/songwriters courted, when it suited them. Early association with Guthrie bought Dylan credibility with folk singers like Pete Seeger and Joan Baez. Later, Dylan needed to shuck that association, so he could establish himself as an authentic rock star, like Roy Orbison or Elvis Presley. With 1965âs Highway Sixty-one Revisited, Dylan retired as âvoice of a generationâ, setting aside political agitation for a lyrical voice that was personal, mystical, religious, literary â almost never topical, political, and radical.
Conversely, Springsteen sought association with Guthrie only after establishing himself as a mostly apolitical rocker. Relatively late in his career, Springsteen built folk cred through forays into acoustic recordings like Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad, and a 1986 live recording of âThis Land is Your Landâ (sans its radical verses). While Springsteen had performed at the 1979 No Nukes concerts, fans could ascribe to his music virtually any political leaning they chose. Was âBorn in the U. S. A.â jingoistic or rebellious? Right wing or left wing? That the song was praised by both Amiri Baraka and George Will (Cowie and Boehm 358â9) testifies to its ambiguity. Springsteen finally put his political capital on the line, endorsing John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign, but supporting a major party candidate and career politician was hardly radical, or dangerous. By that time, âThe Bossâ was a huge rock star with a âBeverly Hills home [which] reportedly cost $14 millionâ. His music âexplored issues of social justice, but he did not seriously question the social system that by his own admission allowed him to lead âan extravagant lifestyleââ (Garman 246).
Dylan and Springsteen are unquestionably rock and roll figures of towering significance. Dylan essentially created the rock and roll singer/songwriter and made space in rock music for political agitation. But both had interests other than radicalism. Their songs pursued artistic and aesthetic paths at once personal and profound, unique and influential. They were also careful architects of their careers. When it suited them, they were political; when it did not, they werenât. They have produced remarkable songs of social conscience, but both have cultivated careers that made use of the Guthrie legacy rather than embraced it in its radical wholeness. No, among the rock and roll generations, Guthrieâs truest heir may be Clash vocalist and songwriter Joe Strummer. Ironically, while Strummer briefly adopted the name âWoodyâ in his earliest days as a performer, he never cultivated identification between himself and Guthrie, and he dropped the name years before becoming even remotely well known, much less famous. During his peak years of fame, few Clash fans knew that Joe Strummer had once been âWoody Mellorâ.
Neither was a true Marxist or Communist, of course; Guthrie famously tossed off the line, âleft wing, right wing, chicken wing â itâs all the same to meâ (Cray 138). They were artists first and political theorists second, but both could be called truthfully âfellow travelersâ. Dylan and Springsteen, like many another singer/songwriter, were more comfortable adopting the guise of âWoody Guthrie as romantic idealistâ (Shumway 137) than political radical. David Shumway wrote, âif we are to understand Woody Guthrieâs place in our cultural history, we can only do so by recognizing the indigenous radicalism of his songsâ (137), and no rock and roll songwriter of prominence managed to present such a consistently anti-capitalist position through so many phases of his or her career as Joe Strummer. With and without the Clash, he offered through his songs a âMarxist-inflected social critiqueâ (Matula 523) that explicitly took on capitalism. For radicalism, Clash songs like âWashington Bulletsâ, âStraight to Hellâ, and âKnow Your Rightsâ and Strummer solo songs like âShaktar Donetskâ, âGenerationsâ, and âGet Down Mosesâ sit comfortably beside even Dylanâs great early songs âThe Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrollâ and âOnly a Pawn in Their Gameâ, to say nothing of âThunder Roadâ.
In 1998, when Joe Strummer launched his BBC âCross-Cultural Transglobal [radio] showâ (Salewicz 560),1 one of the first songs he played was Trini Lopezâs mariachi cover of âThis Land is Your Landâ, Woody Guthrieâs alternative national anthem. For those only passingly familiar with Strummer from the Clash or fans blinded by labels like âpunkâ and âhippieâ, it might have seemed an odd selection, but it was an apt choice. Strummer began his career âsinging [âŚ] in Londonâs subways for spare changeâ (Gilmore 53) with Tymon Dogg as âWoody Mellorâ; later, he performed with the Vultures and pub rockers the 101âers under the same name. Not until 1975 did he adopt âJoe Strummerâ, the stage name he kept until his 2002 death. From that point on, âyou couldnât call him Woody â heâd be angryâ (Salewicz 127).
Adopting a new identity and obliterating the past was a pattern Strummer often repeated. He left behind his middle-class life to become a hobo-beatnik with the 101âers, then became a punk rocker and left them to join the Clash. Later, he fired songwriting partner Mick Jones and reformed the most potent rock band in the world as if the personnel were interchangeable, and he really could rewrite the past and the future. Jones called it âStalinist Revisionism ⌠once youâre out youâre outâ (Jones Interview). On his sticky relationship with history, Strummer remarked, âThe past is a roomful of treacle. You think you can just walk in and walk out again but you canâtâ (âSound of Strummerâ np).
Consider another metaphor. âWoody Mellorâ is a fossil excavated from rock and roll history, containing various strata of Joe Strummerâs identity. His given name, âJohn Graham Mellorâ, still visible through the erosion. Also intact is his love of 1960sâ hippie culture and American folk music, not yet sandblasted away by Bernie Rhodes or the passing moment of fashion that was punk rock. The name âexposes his unexplored fantasies of being a folksinger, poet, [âŚ] painter, or [âŚ] just an interesting beatnik bumâ (Gilbert 16).2 In the 2007 documentary The Future is Unwritten, Clash drummer Topper Headon recalls angering Strummer by calling him âWoodyâ as a lark; Headon had no idea that Strummer began his career modeling himself after Woody Guthrie. Why should he have? Strummer had already âcreated a mist around his pastâ (Gilbert 16).
A decade after Strummerâs death, the artistic, familial, personal, and professional parallels he shared with Woody Guthrie are eerie. Family tragedies and radical politics blended for Strummer and Guthrie: both rebelled against their fathersâ middle class politics and social standing. Strummerâs brother committed suicide after joining a neo-fascist group, while Guthrie stood by his sisterâs bed and watched her die of self-inflicted burns, inspiring his identification with the powerless. Both enjoyed success as performers of âpopularâ music (although they would bristle at the term), reinventing themselves as hardscrabble working class heroes, obscuring their middle-class pasts. Tragedy hounded them, and they died of congenital illnesses in their 50s: Strummer at 50 of a heart defect, Guthrie at 55 of Huntingtonâs Disease.
Both feared and fled from success, rare among show-business figures. When artist Damien Hirst asked, âWhatâs the biggest thing youâve ever killed?â Strummer replied, âMy careerâ (Salewicz 467). Guthrie could have offered the same answer. Of course, poor management, a fickle public, and myriad other problems can short-circuit a music career, but neither Strummer nor Guthrie ever had the discipline and determination that distinguish Dylan and Springsteenâs decades-long reigns as rock royalty. Financial rewards were at odds with their proletarian values to a degree that neither Dylan nor Springsteen felt.
Guthrie and Strummer were driven by class (personal ideologies of class, identification with the working class, and even fansâ and detractorsâ attitudes toward class), so it is worth considering the parallel tracks they followed from middle class beginnings to their performing careers. Woody Guthrieâs father, Charley Guthrie, was a staunch member of the Democratic Party in early 20th century Oklahoma, when to be a Southern Democrat was to support white rule. The elder Guthrie was an âenthusiastic memberâ of the Ku Klux Klan, although according to Joe Klein, the Oklahoma branch of the Klan âfunctioned more as the martial arm of the Chamber of Commerceâ (23) than a white supremacist brigade. Still, literacy tests blocked Blacks from voting and ensured the Democratic dominance that paved the way for Charley Guthrieâs election as Okemah court clerk (Cray 8). In Oklahoma, âJim Crow ruledâ (8).
Charley, though, was less concerned with race than with âthe rise of the Socialist Party in Oklahomaâ (9). He named his son for Woodrow Wilson, who ran for president against Socialist Eugene Debs in 1912. Had Charley heard Woody declare Debs âa pure cross between Jesus Christ and Abe Lincolnâ (324), it is likely he would have disapproved. A cursory look at Woodyâs life and work demonstrates how thoroughly the son rejected the politics of father. In âAll You Fascistsâ, Woody explicitly links Southern racism, fascism, money, and power: âYour poll tax and Jim Crow/And greed has got to goâ. For Woody the Socialist, the end was clear: âfascists [are] bound to loseâ (Lyrics). Later, he supplied a song for the quixotic 1952 Florida gubernatorial campaign of muckraking journalist Stetson Kennedy, who had investigated the Klan in the 1940s (Klein 405â406).
Joe Strummer/Woody Mellor/John Graham Mellor had a similarly ambivalent relationship with his father, Ronald Mellor. âJohn Mellor was born the son of a diplomat and worked as a prefect in an upper-class schoolâ (Matula 524), whereas rock star Joe Strummer got âendless stick about his fatherâs job [âŚ] in the Foreign Office [âŚ] one of the most elite and snobbish departments of the Civil Serviceâ. Foreign Office employees were âexpected to embody the stiffly conservative values of old Empireâ (Gilbert 6). In punk rock, a privileged background was a hanging offense. Ray Davies, the great rock spokesman for the British working class, crystallized the sentiment in the 1976 Kinks song âPrince of the Punksâ: âHe acts working class but itâs all bologna,/Heâs really middle class and heâs just a phonyâ (Davies âPrinceâ).
Some went so far as to take Strummer to task for writing the great Guthrie-influenced outlaw song, âBankrobberâ. Critic Tony Fletcher saw in the lines, âMy daddy was a bankrobber/but he never hurt nobodyâ a clumsy attempt by Strummer to pad his resume. Utterly blinded by the specter of class, Fletcher calls the song âpreposterousâ (46), as if he cannot conceive that one might write from a point of view other than his own, as if all lyrics must be autobiographical. Truly, Strummerâs middle-class background had ârepercussions [âŚ] throughout his lifeâ (Gilbert 6). Ronald Mellor, however, was no Charley Guthrie; his politics were not that far from his sonâs, yet Strummer would spend âyears feeling estrangedâ from his father (6) and mother, largely because âhe felt abandoned when heâd been sent off to [boarding] schoolâ (Salewicz 112). Like Guthrie, Strummer spent his teen years separated from parents and family, a separation that left its mark. Sadly, Guthrie and Strummer both lost siblings to gruesome deaths. These youthful traumas forced terrible repercussions on both, although only Guthrie was able to write directly about it.
Clara Guthrieâs death haunted her younger brother. Nora Guthrie, Woodyâs mother, by this time was feeling the effects of Huntingtonâs Disease, which would later claim Woody. Her illness likely spurred the events that led to Claraâs death: âNora ordered Clara to stay home from school [âŚ]. Clara insisted she had to take a final exam that day [âŚ]. Finally, the strong-willed Clara spilled kerosene on her dress, struck a match and set it on fireâ (Cray 18). As it turns out, dealing with tragic fires became a survival skill for Woody. Ten years before Claraâs death, âsparks from [a neighborâs] kitchen ignited the Guthrie houseâ (8). In 1946, Woodyâs three-year old daughter Cathy Ann died in a fire in their Coney Island apartment. Guthrieâs father was badly burned in 1927, as Woody himself was in 1952. Fire stalked him, just a few steps ahead of Huntingtonâs Disease. In his autobiographical novel, Bound for Glory, Guthrie recounts Claraâs death in terms of his devotion to his sister and her own indomitable hope. Dying, she exhibited the kind of optimism Guthrie would later express in so much of his music. From her deathbed, she admonished, âdonât you cry. Promise me that you wonât ever cryâ (134). Bryan Garman sees Claraâs ghost haunting Guthrieâs songs. As a child absorbing the folk songs his mother sang in an ever âlosterâ voice, politics, music, and family trauma mingled for Woody. Listening to his motherâs âhurt songsâ, Woodyâs imagination fused âClaraâs death, the familyâs dire financial situation, and Noraâs deteriorating healthâ (91) into a vision for his own work.
Guthrieâs art expressed compassion for the suffering as not just a human virtue, but also a political one. His union song â1913 Massacreâ, for instance, makes its argument empathetically, recounting an actual event âin which company police incite[d] a riot [âŚ] at a union Christmas partyâ (Garman 182). The facts are grim:
[on] Christmas Eve, over five hundred children and some of their mothers and fathers crowded the hall [âŚ]. A short time after 4p.m., someone yelled âFireâ, and a panic resulted [âŚ]. A mass of children and some parents scrambled down the stairwell [âŚ], got trapped there, and smothered in the press of their own bodies. After the stair was cleared [a witness] âsaw the marks of the childrenâs nails in the plaster, where they had desperately scratched to get free, as they suffocatedâ. (Jackson 114)
The enormity of the crime is almost enough to choke any response into a shocked silence. However, Guthrie approaches the story from a very human level, focusing on smaller details and individual figures among the 73 victims and their killers. He imagines âa little girl [who] sits down by the Christmas tree lights,/To play the piano so you gotta keep quietâ, even as âthe copper bossâ thug men are milling outsideâ. After the tragedy, âThe gun thugs they laughed at their murderous joke,/While the children were smothered on the stairs by the doorâ. Guthrie must have seen his sister in the image of the little girl who died in a fire. He ends the song not with a call to organize, but with a plaintive lament of regret and despair: âSee what your greed for money has doneâ (Lyrics).
If obfuscation, stonewalling, and silence were the modes Joe Strummer took to address his brotherâs suicide, it is no less true that the tragedy shaped his songwriting. In a rare comment on David Mellorâs death, Strummer said, âI donât know how it affects peopleâ (Salewicz 19). His confusion was genuine, as he also remarked, âI think for him committing suicide was a really brave thing to do [âŚ]. Even if it was a total cop outâ (69). In 1970, David, 18 months the senior of John, was âfound dead on a bench [âŚ] in Regentâs park [âŚ]. The cause of death was [âŚ] aspirin poisoning, following the ingestion of one hundred tablets. The verdict was suicideâ (68). John âidentif[ied] the body of his brother, which had lain undiscovered in the park for three daysâ (68). Before his suicide, David had been transformed by radical politics, as his brother later would be. Unfortunately, where Joe Strummer found leftist politics, non-conformity, and compassion, David Mellor discovered fascism and self-loathing. At 18, David suddenly redecorated his room with âNazi pictures [âŚ], swastikas and images of Hitlerâ. Teenage rebellion is the stuff of rock and roll, and David may have been simply looking for attention; âPerhaps as a rebellion against [âŚ] Ron Mellorâs socialism, David [âŚ] had joined the National Front, the radical right-wing British political partyâ (67).
There is no direct line from Davidâs suicide to Joe Strummerâs art, but at least two major themes in Strummerâs songwriting seem influenced by his brotherâs death. Of course, Strummer regularly returns to anti-fascist political reform, not to say revolution, often in attacks on racism and bigotry. Another link to Davidâs suicide is Strummerâs repeated admonitions to deny death and optimistically, joyfully seize life in the moment. Like Guthrie, Strummer explores politics on a human scale. âGhetto Defendantâ addresses urban despair and the loss of humanity and hope by the masses through the example of a lone defendant. Strummer reminds us that: âIt is heroin pity/Not tear gas nor baton charge/That stops you taking the cityâ (Combat Rock). The nameless protagonist of âGhetto Defendantâ is, as David Mellor had been, overwhelmed by forces too massive and monolithic to challenge or even comprehend. Like David, she disappears into whatever tonic can soothe her pain. For David, it was fascism. For the Ghetto Defendant, who is âForced to watch at the feast/Then sweep up the nightâ, itâs heroin. Strummer had long railed against poisoning youthful minds with lies, drugs and hate. âGhetto Defendantâ asserts that drug abuse, far from being subversive, is a powerful tool for stifling youthful rebellion, that it is, in a word, hateful. Twenty-odd years later, on his final recording, Strummer echoes this sentiment asking, âWhoâs sponsoring the crack ghetto?â (âMosesâ).
Perhaps nowhere in his later output is the fearful power of capitalism captured more poignantly than in âGenerationsâ, his contribution to a human rights benefit album. Strummer imagines the listener as a father âout buying pajamas/For [his] four year old girlâ. Finding the clothes âCheap on the rackâ, the father collapses into self-loathing: âOh, donât you feel like dirt?/âCos you can see into the shack/Where they sewed the shirtsâ. He captures the despair not just of the nameless worker who âsewed the shirtsâ but of a father dehumanized by the consumer society in which he lives, forced to be party to abuse and oppression he can only imagine. In essence, Strummer says, âSee what your greed for money has doneâ (Guthrie Lyrics).
Guthrie and Strummerâs compassion focused on identification with the Other. In âWhite Riot or Right Riot: A Look Back at Punk and Antiracismâ, Antonio DâAmbrosio nicely dissects the successes and failures of punkâs â specifically, the Clashâs â treatment of racism. He concludes that âpunkâs approach to antiracism [âŚ] was far from effectiveâ (184) and that even when successful, punk focused on issues of Blacks and Whites (especially in terms of musical influence) while âracism against Asians, Hispanics, and Jews was essentially ignoredâ (188). True, punk was hardly a civil rights movement and punk rockers frequently addressed racism naĂŻvely. âWhite Riotâ, for example, likely struck many listeners as a call for white unity against black people rather than with them. But racism is an intricate and intractable problem; addressing it at all leaves one open to all manner of questions. Indeed, when DâAmbrosio writes about âracism against [âŚ] Jewsâ (188), he himself is being naĂŻve; are âJewsâ a âracial ...