Joe Ely

Joe Ely died last week aged 78. He'd been unwell for a while, diagnosed with Parkinson's and Lewy body dementia and it s pneumonia did for him in the end. Joe was a key figure in the Austin, Texas scene in the mid- to- late 70s. He started out in Lubbock, birthplace of Buddy Holly, and as one of The Flatlanders played a country and rock 'n' roll hybrid. Joe released his first solo album in 1977. In 1978 Joe and his band played in London and hit it off with Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, playing with each other when The Clash toured the USA in 1978 and 1979. The two Joes especially became good friends, finding plenty of common ground in their respective record collections.  

The photos on the back of London Calling are from a Clash gig at The Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, a nod of the black fedora to Joe Ely from The Clash and a raucous gig they played just before the release of London Calling, Ely supporting The Clash and then appearing with them. Joe appears on Should I Stay Or Should I Go (on backing vox) and when The Clash played The Tribal Stomp at Monterrey in 1979 they played Fingernails, a Joe Ely song, with Joe guesting on vocals.

Fingernails (Live at Tribal Stomp 1979)

On Sandinista!, The Clash's 1980 triple album (which I wrote about only last week on the occaison of it's 45th birthday) Joe Strummer included a line about Joe Ely in the song If Music Could Talk- 'Well there ain't no better blend/ Than Joe Ely and his Texas Men. If Music Could Talk is Sandinista! at it's most experimental, the music from Shepherd's Delight, a Clash/ Mikey Dread track from the session at Pluto in Manchester (that resulted in Bankrobber) with a stream of consciousness Strummer lyric split between the left and right channels. Joe Ely is in good company- the song also name checks Bo Diddley, Errol Flynn, Isaac Newton, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Jim Morrison and Samson. Gary Barnacle's jazz saxophone drifts in and out. Is talking blues crossed with experimental dub jazz what people wanted  or expected from The Clash in 1980? 

If Music Could Talk

Joe Ely's career resulted in a steady stream of albums, twenty studio albums and a handful of live ones. In 1992 he released Love And Danger which included this song (written by Robert Earl Keen), The Road Goes On Forever, country and rock 'n' roll

The Road Goes On Forever

Joe Ely RIP

Monday's Long Song

Today's long song comes in conjunction with Saturday's Apocalypse Now! post. A photo kept popping up in some of my social media feeds last week, a photo of Sean Flynn (below on the right).

Sean Flynn was the son of Errol Flynn and Lili Damita. Being the son of Errol Flynn, one of Hollywood's most famous stars (not to mention a notorious party animal and womaniser) must have had quite an impact on young Sean. His mother was a dancer, model, singer and actor. Before she met and married Errol she'd been in a relationship with Prince Louis Ferdinand, grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Trying to find your way through all of that as a teenager must have been interesting. Sean grew up and tried acting but got bored of it and in the mid- 60s he decided to become a freelance photojournalist. In 1966 he went to Vietnam. His photos of the war in Vietnam were soon being published in Time Life and Paris Match. Sean became part of a risk taking group of American photojournalists who wanted to take what they saw as the best pictures. This meant going into combat alongside US troops sometimes. 

Sean and friend/ colleague Dana Stone whizzed around South Vietnam on rented Honda motorbikes, wore military fatigues and took high risk jobs, going out on patrol with US soldiers. In March '66 he was wounded in the knee and a month later while out with the Green Berets they were ambushed by the Viet Cong. Sean and the platoon fought their way out of trouble, Flynn using an M16 assault rifle a Green Beret had given him. He later made a parachute jump with the 101st Airborne and helped an Australian platoon who he'd been photographing by identifying a mine and warning them. After spending part of 1967 covering the Arab- Israeli War he was back in Vietnam in 1968, photographing the aftermath of the Tet Offensive. He was struck by grenade fragments in a battle near Da Nang. It's probably fair to say that he blurred the lines around photojournalism and impartiality. I'm not sure Sean saw himself as impartial. He went to Vietnam to photograph American soldiers and he lived with them and among them while there. 

In 1970 Nixon invaded Cambodia as part of his attempts to end the war in Vietnam- some nicely contradictory policies there from President Nixon. Sean and Dana crossed the border into Cambodia on their motorbikes. They encountered a VC roadblock and decided they wanted to interview some VC. According to witnesses (other American journalists at the scene, ones who chose to travel by car rather than motorbike) Sean and Dana went up to the Viet Cong soldiers, were relieved of their motorbikes and then marched into a treeline. They were never seen again and their bodies were never found. The VC and Cambodian communist fighters the Khmer Rouge were responsible for kidnapping and killing several journalists around the time- it seems that Sean Flynn and Dana Stone were two of these. Sean's mother Lili spent a fortune trying to find her son. He was legally declared dead in 1984. She died a decade later. Errol was already gone- he died in 1959. 

Sean Flynn's story was part of Michael Herr's book Dispatches, a six part account of Herr's time in Vietnam in 1967/68. Dispatches is part journalism/ part fiction and was first published in 1977, a key text in the New Journalism. He also contributed to the script for Apocalypse Now! Dispatches and Apocalypse Now! were on The Clash's reading lists and film nights. Joe was fascinated by the Vietnam War, America's failure and the nation's guilt over it. 

The Clash spent months in New York in 1980 and 1981, recording some of the tracks that became Sandinista! in '80 and playing seventeen concerts at Bonds Casino in 1981. They met a Vietnam veteran, Larry McIntyre, who'd had both his legs blown off in Vietnam (as referenced in Combat Rock's Car Jamming). They wrote Charlie Don't Surf about Vietnam and inspired by Apocalypse Now! They wrote Washington Bullets about US foreign policy, the Cold War, Afghanistan and US actions in Cuba, Chile and Nicaragua. Straight To Hell included a verse about a child in Vietnam, fathered by an American soldier and refused permission to join him in the USA, left behind in post- war Vietnam. Joe found plenty of subject matter in Vietnam and in 1981 back in London, wrote a song inspired by Sean Flynn. 

Sean Flynn (Extended 'Marcus Music' Version)

The original version is over seven minutes long (cut down by producer Glyn Johns to four minutes for Combat Rock). In fact Sean Flynn may have been the song that tipped Bernie Rhodes over the edge when he complained 'does everything have to be a raga?!'. Strummer then used this too for the opening line to Rock The Casbah ('Now the king he told the boogie men/ You have to let that raga drop').

Musically and tonally, Sean Flynn (like Death Is A Star, also on Combat Rock) is a million miles from Career Opportunities and 1976, a song that shows how far the band traveled in just five years. Mick's guitar is covered in echo and FX, multiple guitars overdubbed over Topper's South Asian inspired drums and percussion. Gary Barnacle's saxophone wails away in the background, soundtracking Joe's existential ruminations. He sings some way off in the distance, low in the mix.... 

'You know he heard the drums of war

When the past was a closing door

The drums beat into the jungle floor

The past was always a closing door

Rain on the leaves and the soldiers sing

You never never hear anything

They filled the sky with a tropical storm

You know he heard the drums of war

Each man knows what he's searching for'

The full length version, the Marcus Music version (so- called as it was recorded at Marcus Music studios in April 1981), is an extraordinary Clash song, a real lost gem. It's atmospheric and experimental, Strummer writing an imagined poetic version of Flynn and his life and disappearance in South East Asia and Mick, Topper and Gary creating an inspired abstract, cinematic track. 

In Mick's version of Combat Rock, a double album with several songs running at over seven or eight minutes plus five songs that either became B- sides or were not released, and titled Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg, Sean Flynn is a centrepiece of the album, closing side two after Should I Stay Or Should I Go and the extended mix of Ghetto Defendant, The Clash pushing outwards and onwards. In the real world, the struggles over Combat Rock coupled with Topper's increasing drug issues and tensions between Joe, Bernie and Paul on one side and Mick on the other led to the band's demise. Maybe, as Joe once remarked, they should all have taken a holiday. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Sandinista!

I think I've said before that while Sandinista! may not be the greatest Clash album, it is their most adventurous, their most inventive and where the spirit of the band truly lies. Once they realised that they couldn't play 1977 and Garageland forever, they had to move on and that led them backwards into their record collections (rockabilly, blues, reggae, ska, dub) and forwards into the future (rap, hip hop, funk). They went from White Riot to Death Is A Star in six years, exploring everything they could along the way. Joe said in Westway To The World, that they went out to engage with the world in all its infinite variety (or something similar). They were never going to be stuck playing Borstal Breakout for the rest of their lives.

London Calling was the purest distillation of this, nineteen perfectly pitched slices of Clash. Sandinista! was The Clash doing whatever they wanted across the course of a year- 1980- starting with the recording of Bankrobber in Pluto Studio, Manchester and leading them back to London, to Jamaica and to New York. The idea that Sandinista! could have been a superb single disc album or double vinyl opus or a killer EP misses the point. Sandinista! is complete Clash. The roots of all of Joe's solo career, from his soundtracks to Earthquake Weather to the three albums with The Mescaleros are in Sandinista! as are the origins of Big Audio Dynamite. Fast forward to the 21st century and Mick and Paul turn up in Damon Albarn's touring version of Gorillaz, a band playing a hybrid, pick 'n' mix version of dub, pop, hip hop, funk, and whatever else- that's Sandinista! 

Forty Five Minutes Of Sandinista!

This is not an attempt to produce a perfect version of the album, a reduced version or a best of. It's some of Sandinista! mixed together, some of the lesser known songs and the ones where the spirit of Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Topper Headon and the rest of the cast that contributed to the sessions can be found, a cast that takes in Mickey Gallagher and Norman Watt- Roy (The Blockheads), Tymon Dogg, Mikey Dread, Ellen Foley, Don Hegarty (Darts), Gary Barnacle, Ivan Julian (Voidoids), Style Scott, Pennie Smith and cartoonist Steve Bell. There's something about the songs too which lend themselves to being sequenced together, seguing from one to another.

• Mensforth Hill
• The Crooked Beat
• Broadway
• Rebel Waltz
• One More Time
• One More Dub
• The Street Parade
• Something About England
• Up In Heaven (Not Only Here)
• If Music Could Talk
• Washington Bullets

Mensforth Hill is Something About England played backwards, the tapes reversed and with bits of Joe's studio chatter from New York's Electric Ladyland dropped in, the whooshing and rushing effects fading in and out. On the album it sits between Charlie Don't Surf and Junkie Slip. Here it is a slow, experimental entry to forty five minutes of deep Clash.

The Crooked Beat is Paul Simonon's tribute to South London blues parties with a lovely wandering dub bassline. Recorded in September 1980 it was one of the last songs recorded for the album, produced by Mikey Dread who drops in some additional vocals at the end. 

Broadway is a Strummer masterpiece, a mellow, late night, jazz inflected song for the bars of NYC. Joe's lyrics concern a meeting with a homeless man and former boxer in New York, Joe riffing on the sights and sounds of the city at night, a Scorcese film set to music. 

Rebel Waltz is a true hidden gem in the group's back catalogue and the album's tracklist. The lyrics are pure Strummer, a dream of armies and the losses of war. The music is Mick experimenting with playing a waltz crossed with dub, recorded at Wessex in London. The Clash as a folk band, in the truest sense of the word.

One More Time and One More Dub have to be taken together, the superb Clash- reggae of the first half dubbed out by Mikey Dread for the second. Joe sings of the poverty of the ghettoes, the civil rights movement and the Watts riots of 1965.

The Street Parade is another lesser known gem, hidden away at the end of side five on vinyl. On release some listeners may have taken ages to get to side five. The Street Parade is about losing oneself in the crowd, Strummer disappearing into the mass. The music is gorgeous, Topper and Mick showing by this point they could turn their hand to anything and do it well, with horns and marimbas carrying a Latin feel.

Something About England is a key Strummer- Jones song, marrying English music hall with lyrics spanning the 20th century, the wars, the Depression, the rebuilding of the cities and the British class system, Joe and Mick trading verses in character. 'They say the immigrants steal the hubcaps/ Of respected gentlemen/ They say it would be wine and roses/ If England were for Englishmen again', Mick sings at the start, the racism of Farage and Braverman rooted in the late 70s. 

Up In Heaven (Not Only Here) is one of Sandinista!'s few out and out rock songs, a Mick Jones guitar song with ringing lead lines and crunching riffs. Mick sings of the tower blocks he grew up in and the lives of the people that live in them. 'The wives hate their husbands/ The husbands don't care'.

If Music Could Talk is a New York song that began in Manchester, jazz blues of late night bars and not one but two Joe vocals. The backing track was recorded at Pluto with Mikey Dread and then added to later, sax wailing and floating on top. Joe's words take in Bo Diddley, Errol Flynn, Isaac Newton and Samson. 

Washington Bullets seemed the perfect place to close (though I was tempted to put one of side six's dubs last) if only because it finishes with Joe singing the album's title over the organ as it fades out. Lyrically Joe casts his eye over the USA's foreign policy in the 20th century, Chile, Cuba and Nicaragua (and the USSR's too in Afghanistan and Tibet) with a mention for Victor Jara, the Chilean singer, poet, writer and activist murdered by the CIA backed coup in 1973. Musically it started as many songs did, Topper arriving in the studio first and messing around while engineer Bill Price pressed the record button. The others would turn up one by one and start overdubbing and soon, as Bill Price says, 'we had thirty- five songs'. 

Taking Cover In The Bunker Tonight

I've said it before here and I'll probably end up saying it again, Sandinista! may not be the best Clash album but it could well be their greatest achievement- thirty six tracks over six sides of vinyl, covering every conceivable style of music they could think of, self produced at various locations from Pluto Studio in Manchester to The Power Station in New York and Channel One in Kingston, Jamaica, with a range of guests and extra players (including but not only Ellen Foley, Norman Watt Roy, Mickey Gallagher, Tymon Dogg, Mikey Dread, Ivan Julian, Den Hegarty, Gary Barnacle, Lew Lewis and Style Scott) and the band believing they were getting one over on CBS by putting out six sides of vinyl at a pay no more than £5.99 price. 

Every side (well, almost every side, side six is admittedly an opinion splitter) has stone cold classic or genuine lost/ hidden gems and even a conservative estimate would say the following songs were essential Clash- The Magnificent Seven, Something About England, Rebel Waltz, The Crooked Beat, Somebody Got Murdered, One More Time and One More Dub, Up In Heaven (Not Only Here), Police On My Back, The Call Up, Washington Bullets, Broadway, Charlie Don't Surf, Kingston Advice and The Street Parade. Tucked away on side five is possible the most Sandinista!- esque of all the songs on Sandinista!

If Music Could Talk

The music is from recoding session done with Mikey Dread at Pluto in February 1980, an instrumental backing track called Shepherd's Delight (which re- appears in dub form at the very end of side six), clearly derived from juices flowing while they recorded Bankrobber in Manchester in the snow. Now moved to New York and inspired by the city, it's nightlife and the people that live there, Joe Strummer lays down an astonishing stream of consciousness talking blues, reeling in a cast including Bo Diddley, Errol Flynn, Joe Ely, Sir Isaac Newton, the sale of London Bridge to a town in Arizona, Buddy Holly and Elvis, a voodoo shaman and Samson, Fender guitars and Mexican suits, the drummer man, wall Street and Electric Ladyland. 'Let's hear what the drunk man's got to say', he exclaims at one point. Later on, Strummer ad libs into a conversation with a girl he bumps into in a bar and asks if she needs 'a cowboy in bus depot jeans'. 

Strummer, Jones and engineer Bill price split the vocals into the left and right channel, two Strummers at once. Sax comes from Clash friend Gary Barnacle, overdubbed in Wessex back in London later on and as the horn wails away and the dub backing thunders on, Joe's voice comes in from left and right, the sound of New York at night captured and of music talking.