{"id":198240,"date":"2025-12-22T15:27:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T15:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/198240\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T15:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T15:27:07","slug":"the-day-joe-strummer-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/198240\/","title":{"rendered":"The Day Joe Strummer Died"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Joe Strummer<\/a>, former lead singer for the Clash<\/a>, was found dead in his home on Dec. 22, 2002, he was only 50 years old.<\/p>\n

He’d just gotten back from walking his dogs near where he lived in Somerset, an area of Southwest England. It was his wife, Lucinda, who found him unresponsive. Following an autopsy, it was discovered that Strummer had died from\u00a0an undiagnosed congenital heart defect that could have killed him at any point in time.<\/p>\n

“It was such a shock. It wasn’t like he’d been ill,” his daughter, Lola, recalled to The Guardian<\/a> a decade after her father’s death. “The day before, we’d all had such a great day with him. He had been away on tour and we hadn’t seen him for a couple of months. So we all met up \u2013 our mum, our grandparents, his second wife Lucinda and her daughter Eliza, and we’d all gone out for a meal and then sat in the Groucho [club] drinking champagne. It was a really, really lovely day.”<\/p>\n

Lola was 16 at the time. Her sister, Jazz, 18. Lola had been out Christmas shopping in London when she got a phone call requesting that she come home.<\/p>\n

“So I got on the tube and I remember sitting there, weighing up the options,” she recalled. “I knew it wasn’t my mum because I had spoken to her earlier, and\u00a0so I thought it must be either Jazz or my dad. By the time I got off the tube I\u00a0rang home and said, ‘Dad’s dead isn’t he?'”<\/p>\n

Joe Strummer’s Last Years and Months<\/p>\n

At the time of his death, Strummer was at work on a third album with his post-Clash band, the\u00a0Mescaleros. (Streetcore would eventually be released posthumously in October of 2003). Additionally, he was in the process of writing a song with Bono<\/a> and Dave Stewart<\/a> that would be used at the upcoming\u00a0Mandela SOS fundraising concert, an AIDS awareness\u00a0event to be held in South Africa\u00a0on Feb. 2, 2003.<\/p>\n

If it sounds like Strummer was busy, he was. From just about the moment the Clash ended in 1986,\u00a0the singer\u00a0moved ahead with other work. He dabbled in film, toured\u00a0with the Pogues<\/a> and formed the Mescaleros.<\/p>\n

It was liberating for Strummer.\u00a0“This is my Indian summer,” he said<\/a> to a reporter in 2000. “I learnt that fame is an illusion and everything about it is just a joke. I’m far more dangerous now, because I don’t care at all.”<\/p>\n

But Strummer was also ready to relax a bit. After all, he’d already been in “the only band that matters,” as the famous slogan went. There were plenty of projects for Strummer in the ’90s, but not so many that his whole life was consumed.<\/p>\n

“Well, there’s a nice hammock in my yard, made from Guyanese mountain goat wool. [Laughs] I am a lazy sod though \u2014 let’s put that down front,” he said<\/a> in a September 1999 interview. “I have reached the top, now I can coast! [Laughs]\u00a0… Yes! Me and Isaac Hayes, buddy. The rest of you guys, lick your hearts out! You’ll never make that rarified plateau. Give up now! [Laughs]”<\/p>\n

The Rock World’s Reaction to Joe Strummer’s Passing<\/p>\n

Naturally, an outpouring of tributes followed the announcement of Strummer’s death.<\/p>\n

“That heart of his always worked too hard,”\u00a0Pete Townshend<\/a>\u00a0said in a statement shortly after the news broke (via\u00a0Rolling Stone<\/a>). “I will really miss him.”<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Clash was the greatest rock band,” Bono added. “They wrote the rule book for U2<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

“He was a clear contemporary and we were rivals,” Live Aid<\/a> organizer and Boomtown Rats vocalist Bob Geldof<\/a> said. “I believed we had to get inside the pop culture \u2014 he believed you should always stay outside and hurl things at it. He was a very important musician. The Clash will be endlessly influential. They will always be one of the deathless rock bands.”<\/p>\n

READ MORE:\u00a0When the Clash Finally Played Their First U.S. Show<\/a><\/p>\n

The following January, the Clash was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame<\/a>, something Strummer had spoken to Rolling Stone <\/a>about a month before he died. He was asked then whether the band \u2014 Strummer,\u00a0Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Nicky “Topper” Headon \u2014 would reform for the ceremony.<\/p>\n

“I’m sure I’d do it,” he replied, “and I’m sure Topper would do it, but it’s only fair and polite to inquire of the others.”<\/p>\n

A week after giving that answer, Strummer and Jones performed a handful of Clash songs together in London, marking the first time they’d played together on stage in close to 20 years. The full reunion, of course, would never take place.<\/p>\n

Tom Morello<\/a> and the Edge<\/a> did the honors of delivering the Clash’s induction speech.<\/p>\n

“Joe Strummer died on December 22nd, 2002,” Morello said<\/a>. “But when Joe Strummer played, he played as if the world could be changed by a three minute song. And he was right. Those songs changed a lot of people’s worlds forever, mine at the top of the list. He was a brilliant lyricist, with anger and wit, always stood up for the underdog. And his idealism and conviction instilled in me the courage to pick up a guitar and the courage to try to make a difference with it.”<\/p>\n

In February, an all-star lineup of\u00a0Elvis Costello<\/a>,\u00a0Bruce Springsteen<\/a>,\u00a0Steven Van Zandt<\/a>,\u00a0Dave Grohl<\/a>,\u00a0Pete Thomas and\u00a0Tony Kanal performed “London Calling” at the Grammy <\/a>Awards in honor of Strummer.<\/p>\n

Watch the Joe Strummer Tribute at the 2003 Grammys<\/p>\n

Toward the\u00a0end of his life, Strummer found himself in an enjoyable artistic\u00a0position. He was at once excited about the prospect of new ideas and content to enjoy the little things in life.<\/p>\n

“I look forward to things like last night \u2014 we stayed up all night writing songs,” he said in the aforementioned 1999 interview. “Out in the city, brimming full of ideas, jabbering like madmen, writing on everything, meeting new people. I get my energy from the idea of ideas. The notion of a good idea or the thought of a good idea. That’s when I perk up, when I feel that there’s a good idea in the house, in my brain pan. That’s when I feel alive and that’s what I want to continue doing, connecting with that. Also, I want to continue eating sardine sandwiches with sardines and tomatoes. That’s what I did today.”<\/p>\n

The Clash Albums Ranked <\/p>\n

There was a time when the Clash were called “the only band that matters.”<\/p>\n

Gallery Credit: Michael Gallucci<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Joe Strummer, former lead singer for the Clash, was found dead in his home on Dec. 22,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[53553,146,85,46,409,1347],"class_list":{"0":"post-198240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-anniversaries","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-original-features"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}