Song 32: Redemption Song

Redemption Song - Joe Strummer

Yes, so this is Joe Strummer's Redemption Song, and I'll mainly be talking about Joe Strummer, not Redemption Song. Bob Marley's version will mean more to more people, but not to me. And Bob Marley was a great, great songwriter, you'd have to be an idiot not to think that, and he was a powerful revolutionary figure who has more of a global reach than almost anyone else in popular music, but he's not central to my musical story, not really, perhaps because his beautiful songs had the misfortune to be used as background music for so many insipid ads in the 80s and 90s.

So I'm not going to talk about Bob Marley, I'm afraid, and what Redemption Song really means. I love it. It's a beautiful song. You'd have to be an idiot not to think that too.

Joe Strummer loved it and thought it would work as a great duet with Johnny Cash for his 'American Recordings' Series. The duet would eventually go on the Cash boxset 'Unearthed', released after both these singular artists had died.

This version here was, apparently, Joe Strummer's guide vocal which he sent to Johnny Cash as an idea of what the song would be like. But history has made it one of Strummer's best known and most beloved recordings. Indeed, it's the title of Chris Salewicz's exhaustive biography of The Clash frontman.

It's a good day to be writing about Joe Strummer, as it's in the new today that there's going to be a square in Spain named after him, which I'm sure he'd be delighted by. It is just over ten years since Strummer died just before Christmas, and at the time it mattered to me a lot, as much as any famous person dying has done. I went to Midnight Mass in my Clash t-shirt [the first album cover] and was chuffed when an emotional older dude (actually of the right generation to idolise Strummer rather than a Joey-come-lately like myself) came up to me and said how great that was. I wore Joe and Jesus on my heart. Ha!

Yes, it meant a lot to me then, even though I'd only been a big Clash fan for less than five years. I remember telling someone that night that Joe Strummer was the only idol I had that I actually wanted to be like. Well, I wouldn't say that was still true after reading Salewicz's biography, utterly loving though it is, it's also scrupulously honest and unhagiographical; I was under no illusions by the end that Strummer was a common man with common flaws. Well, no, not a common man, a marvellous man, but still, maybe kids are better off aspiring to be like Jesus than like Joe (having said that, Joe lived 67 per cent longer, and probably had a fair bit more fun).

'Redemption Song' was released as a posthumous single, a fitting tribute, and i'm not sure his voice had ever sounded better. It was particularly sad because Joe Strummer was again making great, vibrant music, had just been back on stage with Mick Jones and didn't die some premature rock'n'roll death, he died quietly of a congenital heart defect. His greatest work may have been well in the past but it's pretty likely some great work was still ahead of him.

A lot of the writers who'd grown up with punk liked to pit Joe against his contemporary Paul Weller, and though Weller had far more chart success, there's no doubt where most acifionados's heartfelt allegiance lay. And though the Jam were my first band, my first love, at that stage I could entirely see why The Clash were the people's band. And it wasn't a purely imagined rivalry. In 'White Man in Hammersmith Palais' there's a line "They've got Burton suits, they think it's funny turning rebellion into money" which was transparently about The Jam. Aah well, the good thing is music doesn't always have to be tribal. I'll take Weller AND Strummer, thanks.

The Clash had innumerable great songs of their own - probably my two favourites are Spanish Bombs and Death or Glory, but equally, I very nearly wrote this post about the joyful and hilarious Rudie Can't Fail - The Clash's lionisation of ska, reggae and rudeboy culture makes that a great companion to 'Redemption Song'.

This song can be associated with four of the most revered artists in music of the last 60 years, Marley, Strummer, Cash and Stevie Wonder, all of whom had a limitless influence on their own particular sphere. Pick your own favourite. For me, Joe Strummer took a hold of this song, and it will always be his, even though it ought to sound daft when he sings "Pirates yes they rob I, sold I to the merchant ships", it doesn't, he carries it off, just like an overage diplomat's son slumming it managed to carry off being the great hero of punk rock. That's some achievement.