Soundtrack Saturday

Alex Cox's 1986 film Sid And Nancy tells the story of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, the doomed punk rock couple who destroyed themselves and each other. The two leads, Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb, do their best as the couple and manage to portray a relatively touching love story in the middle of all the noise and chaos of the Sex Pistols. John Lydon was hugely critical of the film and of Cox, its portrayal of the junkie lifestyle and of Johnny Rotten. Others agreed, saying it was wildly inaccurate and filled with artistic licence regarding the death of Nancy. 

It's a film which split opinion on release and ever since- some see it as a welcome corrective to punk nostalgia, 'abrasive, bratty and antisocial'. It's definitely compelling, not to mention wretched, squalid and off- putting. In 2016 Alex Cox said he was proud of aspects of it but the ending was too 'touchy- feely' and that he was more sympathetic to Lydon's point of view than he ever had been before. 

Alex Cox became aware of the contradictions of the film. He said the happy ending was 'sentimental and dishonest', and that they were trying to make a film that condemned Sid and Nancy for their decadence, that punk was a positive movement, it was forward looking and 'you can't be those things if you're 'a junkie rock star in a hotel room'. Asked if he was going to remake it how he would change it, Cox said he'd end with Sid 'dying in a pool of his own vomit'. So there you go. 

Let's leave the film and its problems aside and go to the soundtrack. Cox got Joe Strummer on board (something else Lydon was critical of, his dislike of Strummer and The Clash something Lydon can never leave alone). Joe wrote two songs for the film (and more unofficially and uncredited due to his then contract with Epic). Dan Wool of Pray For Rain was heavily involved as were The Pogues. There are no Pistols or Vicious songs on the soundtrack. Joe's film soundtrack work- Walker, Straight To Hell, When Pigs Fly, Permanent Record- began with Sid And Nancy and Love Kills was his first post- Clash release, a single in July 1986 to promote the film with uncredited guitar courtesy of Mick Jones (Joe and Mick had buried the hatchet by this point and made up). Love Kills is a song about junkie lovers, prison and murder.

Love Kills

Also on the soundtrack and the B-side of the 12" single was this Strummer song...

Dum Dum Club

The Pogues contributed Haunted, sung by Cait O'Riordan, a very lovely mid- 80s indie/ punk love song. 

Haunted

Soundtrack Saturday

Alex Cox's 1984 film Repo Man is one of those classic counter- culture 80s films, a combination of road movie, music, Los Angeles, science fiction, UFOs, crime, cars and black comedy and a satire on Reagan's America, 80s consumerism, the nuclear bomb and anything else Alex Cox, in his directorial debut, could throw at the camera. It stars Harry Dean Stanton and Emelio Estevez as repo men- 'the life of a repo man is always intense', says Bud (Harry Dean Stanton). 

The musical backdrop to the film, the scene around which Estevez's character Otto comes from, is 80s L.A. punk. The soundtrack is in part a snapshot of early/ mid 80s L.A. punk rock with the title track coming from Iggy Pop who wrote it specifically for the film after his manager saw a screening of it. 1984 isn't necessarily the best period in Iggy's musical back catalogue. In 1982 he'd released Zombie Birdhouse and the year before Party. Party is poor. Zombie Birdhouse isn't much better. For Repo Man he enlisted ex- Sex Pistol Steve Jones and Blondie's Clem Burke and Nigel Harrison and they make a decent fist of it, the song a heavy piledriver with Iggy in good voice. 

Repo Man

The rest of the songs, ten of them, take in The Plugz (last seen at Bagging Area backing Bob Dylan on David Letterman), Circle Jerks, Suicidal Tendencies, Fear, Burning Sensations (cvering Jonathan Richman's Pablo Picasso) and Juicy Bananas. As a document of Californian punk rock in Reagan's USA its pretty good. The soundtrack is completed by possibly the most archetypal L.A. punk band of them all, Black Flag, and their 1982 song TV Party. 'We've got nothing better to do/ Than watch TV and have a couple of brews', bawls Henry Rollins. 

TV Party

Saturday Soundtrack

Back in 1987 Joe Strummer was somewhat adrift. The Clash had broken up, his former songwriting partner Mick Jones had moved on and was enjoying his time with his new band Big Audio Dynamite who had captured the new thing- sampling, dance music, a rock/ rap/ reggae/ pop fusion that The Clash had pioneered at the start of the 80s before Joe and Paul attempted to reverse back to three chord punk rock. Joe was given the opportunity to find some direction when he met Alex Cox, a filmmaker whose guerrilla approach to making movies matched Strummer's approach to life. Cox signed Strummer up for his Spaghetti Western film Straight To Hell, a film with a soundtrack that featured The Pogues, Zander Schloss (who would become guitarist in Joe's Latino Rockabilly War and who worked with Joe on his next soundtrack), San Francisco band Pray For Rain and a couple of Strummer originals. These songs broke Joe's writer's block. He acted in the film too, immersing himself into the character (a bank robber called Simms). 

Cox asked Joe to stay on board for his next film, a clumsy satire about US imperialism in South America and American exceptionalism with Ed Harris in the title role as Walker. The film is bizarre, a bit of a mess. Even Strummer wasn't sure about the finished version. But the soundtrack is a minor Strummer gem, a fourteen track album with eleven Latin instrumentals, from salsa to Afro- Cuban bebop, all recorded acoustically on Strummer's insistence- 'I thought let's be 1850, nothing plugged in', he said. On three of the songs, Joe sings, a trio of lost Strummer solo songs (recently re- found via the 2018 solo compilation 001), songs that bridge his work in The Clash and his late 90s re- emergence and renaissance with his Mescaleros. 

Tennessee Rain is a ballad, Joe with acoustic guitar and banjo, a sad- eyed song with an upbeat tempo, Joe singing, 'well I wish I was drunk in Havana, I wish I was at the Mardi Gras'. Tropic Of No Return is a lilting choral song, backed by tropical birdsong and some lightly picked and strummed acoustic guitars, gradually gathering a little steam. The third song is The Unknown Immortal, a song sung from the point of view of a soldier in Walker's gringo army, a man away from home and his love for seven years, a man who 'was once an immortal'. It's difficult though not to hear it as at least partly autobiographical, Joe's post- Clash malaise compounded by the death of his mother a few weeks before Walker started filming, him ruefully accepting that his previous life as frontman for the greatest band in the world, the punk rock war lord, now trying to carve out a new role as singer/ songwriter/ soundtrack musician with some of the musical styles that informed Sandinista! and Combat Rock. 

The Unknown Immortal

Repo Man

I've had three different Iggy Pop encounters in the last week- the recent Teatime Dub Encounters ep with Underworld was the first, followed by watching a documentary I'd taped before going on holiday, the film American Valhalla, which records the making of the Post Pop Depression album with Josh Homme and subsequent tour. Then somebody, somewhere, posted a clip from the 1984 film Repo Man.

I'd already been writing an Iggy Pop solo Imaginary Compilation Album for JC at The Vinyl Villain (it's only being written in my head at the moment but may make it to type at some point along with the almost finished Primal Scream ICA, a 2nd Factory Records one to go with the one JC wrote and a Spacemen 3 one which is still very sketchy). An Iggy Pop solo ICA is confusing. In many ways you'd just decide to cherry pick five songs from The Idiot and five from Lust For Life and be done with it but it seems remiss to not include songs from his wider back catalogue, not least one from Post Pop Depression. I'm working on it.

Repo Man is great little film, an Alex Cox punk rock/science fiction adventure starring Harry Dean Stanton and Emilio Estevez. The soundtrack is wall to wall US 80s punk- The Circle Jerks, Suicidal Tendencies, Black Flag et al and the title track from Iggy. Iggy was in a bad way in 1984 (and looking back he had a pretty poor 80s musically). Alex Cox asked Iggy to do the title track and Iggy put together a punk band at short notice, comprising ex-Sex Pistol Steve Jones and Blondie's rhythm section. The engineer claims that Iggy and the band threw the song together in the studio 20 minutes before recording it, did two takes and then Iggy said 'Well, I think that's good enough unless someone has a problem with it'. Repo Man is two minutes of hard riffing with a decent Iggy vocal and some stream-of-consciousness stuff about living in Los Angeles, better by far than much of what he put out in the 80s. Functional 1980s L.A. punk rock maybe but good enough unless anyone has a problem with it.

Repo Man

Strummerville

This is a public service announcement...  my top ten Joe Strummer post Clash songs. After some consideration I've tried to get a spread from the end of The Clash through to Joe's last Mescaleros record. Joe's back catalogue is pretty badly served, with a lot of his solo songs, especially those from a variety of film soundtracks, out of print. A career spanning boxed set or double disc is required. Hellcat put out a three disc compilation of his final three Mescaleros albums plus some B-sides but it was download only. I don't think Earthquake Weather is currently available either. Someone should sort it all out and put it all together in one place. Some of the rankings here a pretty arbitrary here, I could easily move them around if I did it again.

Ten
Island Hopping (from Earthquake Weather)
A gentle-ish acoustic guitar song with a story of the council chopping down the trees on Mango Street, together with some Latin instruments and percussion. the 12" version Mango Street is worth seeking out too.

Nine
X Ray Style (off Art, Rock And The X Ray Style)
I think this may be my favourite Joe solo album, proof he was back and his fire hadn't gone out. X Ray Style has some lovely ruminations on life, people and the universe and some very Joe references to things like rockabilly trains and be-bop guns.

Eight
The Unknown Immortal (off the soundtrack to Walker)
Joe spent much of the late 80s in and around films, with Alex Cox, various Pogues, Jim Jarmusch and others. The Unknown Immortal is Joe reflecting on the nature of fame and greatness, and losing it. From the epicentre of his wilderness years.

Seven
Tennessee Rain (from the soundtrack to Walker)
Another song hidden away on a film soundtrack Tennessee Rain is a lilting, rootsy thing. 'I wish I was drunk in Havana, I wish I was at the Mardi Gras'.

Six
At The Border, Guy (off Global A Go Go)
An extended dub influenced song with Joe stitching together lines from an old notebook while The Mescaleros organ, guitar and bass cook away slowly. One of my favourites from his solo career that seems to pull a lot of what he did best into one song and let it go.

Five
Sleepwalk (Earthquake Weather)
Joe again full of self doubt, ruefulness and searching for something, vocals buried low in a muddy mix, acoustic guitars plucked and the Latin vibe going on. Joe almost croons on this one, asking 'What good would it do?' repeatedly, with no answer.

Four
Yalla Yalla (Art, Rock and The X Ray Style)
Magnificent Richard Norris co-write and production, with acid house and reggae influences lifting it up and Joe's vocal brimming with confidence again. I saw this one done live at least twice, a great set closer and a real return to form at the end of the 90s.

Three
Johnny Appleseed (From Global A Go Go)
I've written about this one before, an almost definitive Joe Strummer solo single with the revving guitars, great playing from the band and Martin Luther King and a Buick '49. Nice video too.

Two
Burning Lights (from the I Hired A Contract Killer soundtrack)
The greatest of the great lost Joe Strummer solo songs, just a man with a Telecaster and some poetry about losing it. 'You are the last of the buffalo' he sings, to and about himself possibly.

One
Trash City (off the soundtrack to Permanent Record)
Cracking three chord riff, clattering drums and pots and pans backing from Latino Rockabilly War and some typically Joe lyrics- 'in Trash City on Party Avenue, I got a girl from Kalamazoo' is the starting point and it takes in 'fifty seven records that you think you oughta own' and 'a hotdog in the nightmare zone'. Sounds like the best Joe Strummer song The Clash song never recorded.

Trash City




Bubbling under the top ten were Minstrel Boy, Coma Girl, Sandpaper Blues, and especially From Willesden To Cricklewood which is gorgeous.

Philip Chevron

Philip Chevron of The Pogues died yesterday aged 56. He'd been diagnosed with cancer of the head and neck back in 2007 and in 2012 was given the all clear. The tumour came back and took his life yesterday morning. Philip's best loved song is the truly great Thousands Are Sailing, which I've posted before. This song- Haunted- was from the soundtrack of Alex Cox's Sid And Nancy film, sung by Cait O'Riordan, and deserves to be more widely known. RIP Philip Chevron.

Haunted

Joe 88

I seem to be blogging something Clash related on a weekly basis at the moment- which is no bad thing. I found this interview with Joe from back in 1988, a late night Channel 4 affair. The young man interviewing Joe is a little combative- it seems strange now that there was a time when The Clash appearing on cd was seen as a sell out, as was a Clash greatest hits compilation of any kind (The Story Of The Clash in this case- the first of many). But then I was anti-compact disc well into the 90s so I guess I'm not one to talk. Strange too that this interview was in reality only a few years since The Clash had broken up (five years since Mick was fired but The Clash Mk II or The Rump Clash kept going until 1985) so for Joe this stuff was recent history.



Given the smug. self-righteousness of the interviewer Joe did well to be so tolerant throughout this interview.

This song is from Joe's soundtrack to Alex Cox' film Walker, a soundtrack that's well worth picking up second hand if you can. As far as I know it's out of print at the moment

Tennessee Rain

Love Kills

Watching BBC 4's superb Punk Britannia three-parter reminded me of Alex Cox's not entirely successful attempt to film the story with his 80s film Sid And Nancy, which told the story of the Pistols and Sid and Nancy's demise. On the soundtrack was Joe Strummer's first solo effort, a 12" single called Love Kills. To be honest the song isn't entirely successful either but it has got its charms. Love Kills, like This Is England off  Clash Mk. II album Cut the Crap, is spoilt by the rudimentary 80s drum machine and lack of decent instrumentation despite Joe's heartfelt lyric and vocal. And I'm not convinced it was love that killed Sid and Nancy either. But the song is worth a look.

Love Kills