The life and times of rock ‘n’ roll frontman, rude boy, and departed punk legend are preserved in Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, Julien Temple’s ode to The Clash, their lead singer, and his close friend. SIMON SWEETMAN reviews.


IT HAS BEEN nearly five years since the erstwhile leader of The Clash shifted off this mortal coil. And fan-frenzy seems to want to compensate those rum years when the Mescaleros (Strummer’s post-Clash backing unit) allowed Joe to make average-if-we’re-being-honest albums; or the booze-filled days that were even worse long before he picked his ass up and decided to start writing again. That’s fair enough – it’s what we do. Johnny Cash died and all people tend to focus on were the early Sun triumphs, the classic prison concerts and the stark storyteller reborn by Rick Rubin’s hand. We don’t dwell on his dodgy amphetamine past, his tempestuous (to put it kindly) relationship with June Carter, or the madness that was his own movie (written and narrated by The Man In Black) re-telling the tale of The Man From Nazareth (an oddly appropriate alter-ego of sorts for Cash’s rough troubadour). Death makes us happy for the triumphs – when Woody Allen goes, we’ll all praise Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah And Her Sisters and forgive him for making, or simply ignore, The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion.

So, Joe Strummer died. And all of a sudden it was acceptable to listen to his Mescaleros records. The posthumous release that had him warbling through Bob Marley’s Redemption Song wasn’t just okay; it was a god dammed masterpiece!

Julien Temple’s documentary isn’t quite the hagiography that it could be. It manages to be an honest and sincere portrait of the man born John Mellor. And there is, of course, reason to rave. The Clash were brilliant – still are. Their London Calling album was named Rolling Stone’s album of the 1980s. The only thing more impressive is that the band had arguably already made two albums that were better. The Sex Pistols were a gimmick, a flash in the pan cartoon, The Clash were, very much so, the real deal. The Clash is English punk. Only the music of The Damned comes close.

Joe Strummer was a man who loved life and a musician who loved all kinds of music – it sounds like the most terrible cliché, but it’s true, and The Future Is Unwritten is the ultimate testimony to that fact, bringing with it a dynamite soundtrack that traverses the reggae and rockabilly roots of punk – on through the challenging metal and new-wave angles that pushed against and pulled away from punk.

Temple, having documented the odyssey of The Sex Pistols, in both a naïve, jokey way (The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle, 1980) and in a more studied, poignant unpacking (The Filth And The Fury, 2000) is the perfect person to collect and collate these views on Strummer, centred around audio interview clips with The Clash singer himself. Like Don Letts (interviewed here), Temple is both a filmmaker and a scenester,a hip player with an eye for the detail of how it should be but a head already full of the awareness of the way it was.

We do get a good look at some of Strummer’s pursuits outside of The Clash, his cameo in Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train (1989) which was right in the middle of his so-called wilderness years (1985-1999) which saw him experimenting with film and not even caring about remaining relevant. And then, eventually, the man so often accused of taking himself too seriously appeared on South Park, drolly lampooning his legacy. He also settled in to a role that he enjoyed, playing strange and oddball records on his own radio show.

Outside of the standard cast of talking heads (some great leftfield inclusions: Steve Buscemi, Jarmusch) there is a range of archival clips, most never seen before, containing some true magic. And then of course, just a few days before Christmas, in 2002, on the possible verge of a resurgence (or is that merely hagiography?) Strummer suffered a fatal heart-attack.

The Future Is Unwritten will really only appeal to fans of the scene, the style, the sound and the time, but for anyone keen to revisit and re-learn what it was all about then you will find a semi-portrait of one of the most important songwriters to emerge at the end of the 1970s – a time when songwriting seemed secondary to the singing of the tune. A spiritual man, a musical magpie, a quintessential punk who, by virtue of his literal lust for life, transcended the punk subculture.

And for Temple, a master of the music video (having created iconic clips for a varied bunch that includes Enigma, David Bowie, ABC, Duran Duran, Tom Petty, The Beat, Stray Cats and Whitney Houston) and a veteran of the music documentary, this is a fine follow up to his rambling Glastonbury (2006) and it serves the spirit of his friend well.