Joe Strummer - Redemption Song
The thing I wanted most for Christmas was Redemption Song, the new Joe Strummer biography. 660 pages, with pics I hadn't seen before, lots of them of Mick Jones when he still had hair. I'd been looking forward to it since it came out in October.
Now that I've finished it I've decided I'm never going to read another biography again and I really wish I hadn't read this one. I can only assume that I'm too misanthropic to cope with the damn things.
Joe Strummer as a person disappointed me enormously. I'm not sure what I expected him to be, but what he was, wasn't it. One tends to forget, as a woman, that the norms that apply to other 'people' don't automatically apply to you. It's over-simplifying to say that the men he knew seemed to like him and the women he knew each had a different story to tell; but it's not too far off the mark. Certainly the guy seemed unable to treat any woman as anything other than a potential shag: his friends' partners and wives; women he met casually; complete female strangers. I thought it telling that he seemed to fall out of contact with his own daughters as they grew into their mid- and later teenage years.
His male and female friends and acquaintances seemed prepared to cut him enormous amounts of slack -- maybe that says more about the people who inhabit that world than it does about him. He seemed to be the sort of guy that thought being good to your kids was keeping them off school and feeding them lots of sweeties while you did it. The sort of guy that boasted to his pals about shagging (presumably in the marital bed) the female estate agent that came round to value the house where he lived with his partner and daughters. The sort of guy I would have called a 'creep' when I was younger. That saddens me enormously.
I think this bit from the book sums it up, for me:
'He was angry about women, distrustful, cynical, felt they'd always let you down, believed they always fucked around, that they behaved exactly as women say men behave. "They always do, all of them," he said, his voice rising almost into anger when I said I thought this wasn't always the case.'
This from a man who was shagging anything with a backbone that wasn't comatose. I'm not interested in the psychology of Joe Strummer or his displacement issues. For the most part, he sounds like he was just a shit towards women.
I do feel a bit foolish, expecting something more of -- not a hero; Joe Strummer was never that. But I did expect that he'd treat women as human beings. Wanky? Maybe. But it can be done.
It's not the best-written thing I've ever read -- maybe a bit too much of the NME school of journalism about it. But if you're interested in Joe Strummer warts and all, the Clash, the Pogues, the Mescaleros and anyone else who came into his orbit, it's definitely a book to get hold of. If you like biographies.
Now that I've finished it I've decided I'm never going to read another biography again and I really wish I hadn't read this one. I can only assume that I'm too misanthropic to cope with the damn things.
Joe Strummer as a person disappointed me enormously. I'm not sure what I expected him to be, but what he was, wasn't it. One tends to forget, as a woman, that the norms that apply to other 'people' don't automatically apply to you. It's over-simplifying to say that the men he knew seemed to like him and the women he knew each had a different story to tell; but it's not too far off the mark. Certainly the guy seemed unable to treat any woman as anything other than a potential shag: his friends' partners and wives; women he met casually; complete female strangers. I thought it telling that he seemed to fall out of contact with his own daughters as they grew into their mid- and later teenage years.
His male and female friends and acquaintances seemed prepared to cut him enormous amounts of slack -- maybe that says more about the people who inhabit that world than it does about him. He seemed to be the sort of guy that thought being good to your kids was keeping them off school and feeding them lots of sweeties while you did it. The sort of guy that boasted to his pals about shagging (presumably in the marital bed) the female estate agent that came round to value the house where he lived with his partner and daughters. The sort of guy I would have called a 'creep' when I was younger. That saddens me enormously.
I think this bit from the book sums it up, for me:
'He was angry about women, distrustful, cynical, felt they'd always let you down, believed they always fucked around, that they behaved exactly as women say men behave. "They always do, all of them," he said, his voice rising almost into anger when I said I thought this wasn't always the case.'
This from a man who was shagging anything with a backbone that wasn't comatose. I'm not interested in the psychology of Joe Strummer or his displacement issues. For the most part, he sounds like he was just a shit towards women.
I do feel a bit foolish, expecting something more of -- not a hero; Joe Strummer was never that. But I did expect that he'd treat women as human beings. Wanky? Maybe. But it can be done.
It's not the best-written thing I've ever read -- maybe a bit too much of the NME school of journalism about it. But if you're interested in Joe Strummer warts and all, the Clash, the Pogues, the Mescaleros and anyone else who came into his orbit, it's definitely a book to get hold of. If you like biographies.