Redemption Song: The Definitive Biography of Joe Strummer

By now Mickey Foote had moved out of Orsett Terrace and was living with his girlfriend in Sebastian Conran’s palatial house by Regent’s Park. Paul Simonon and Sid Vicious replaced him in the Orsett Terrace squat. ‘By then Joe’s new group had obviously formed,’ said Jules Yewdall. ‘The 101’ers were no more and the squat was starting to come to an end as well. Everyone was trying to figure out what they were going to do next. By then Joe had already moved. Everyone was losing touch with each other.’ 42 Orsett Terrace continued as a squat until November 1976, with Joe and Paul spasmodically living there. However, with the end of the 101’ers the spirit of the squat had significantly declined.

Joe’s breaking up the 101’ers caused ructions among his squatter mates. Jill Calvert remembered him being called to ideological order one night by Tymon Dogg and Dave Goodall in the kitchen of 23 Chippenham Road, as rainwater ceaselessly dripped into a plastic bucket from the leaking roof: ‘Tymon and Dave were outraged with him: “You can’t do this. How can you do this?” Joe almost asking permission, “Can I go with a clear conscience?” It was painful. There was something very parental about it.

‘Joe only drank in those days if it was around: if dope was about he’d have it, if drink was about he’d have it. He was much more of a drinker once he got into the Clash. I think there was a lot of pressure once he was in the Clash. [Mick Jones disagreed: ‘He drank loads. The 101’ers was pub rock, after all.’] I think there was an awful lot of keeping up he had to do, with Mick and Paul, to prove he wasn’t a hippie. So he had to become a bloke. But there was a life-support system that had been taken away from him. When he came to London, Dave and Gail were there and he met Paloma, he was anchored. I think that gave him a sense of family.’

Joe had attempted to bring one member of the 101’ers into his as yet unnamed new group – Richard Dudanski was offered the drum-stool: ‘I was in bed one night, and Joe came up with some of the guys in this new group. I went down to Davis Road, and the first guy I met was Bernie Rhodes. Bernie was not the easiest person. I just didn’t want to work with him. So I said, “We can change the name of the 101’ers, but let’s keep doing what we are basically doing, and we’ll be fine.” But Joe was sold on Bernie’s ideas of management. So I went off to Italy – that was that. Joe had to totally deny the 101’ers and anything to do with them. After about a year I found him sleeping out in the garden one morning, where the rubbish was. He had come down to see us, but, being Joe, didn’t want to wake us up at 2 in the morning. For me the Clash’s political approach was very ironic, because the 101’ers were living political stuff – that was our existence as squatters, literally the politics of the street. We were laughing at society from which we managed to be rather separate, living another way.’

Pat Nother simply said, ‘I don’t understand why my brother didn’t join the bloody Clash.’

Bernie Rhodes had rented premises from British Rail in Camden Town which he named Rehearsal Rehearsals – abbreviated by its users to simply ‘Rehearsals’. ‘Rehearsals’ consisted of one large downstairs room, and two upstairs rooms, one filled with second-hand pinball and fruit machines (a further sideline of Bernie Rhodes, as was selling second-hand Renaults), and another a band office and recreation area, with a jukebox.

This new group may have had space to rehearse but they still didn’t have a drummer. Joe Strummer called up Paul Buck. Paul had seen the 101’ers once, at a show in Hammersmith, but he was unaware that Woody now had another name. ‘I called him “Wood” and he snarled at me: “I’ve changed my name.”’ Although he appears in the earliest photographs of the still unnamed group, Paul lasted for only a couple of rehearsals. ‘The group came down to our farm in a big truck which they’d borrowed,’ Paul told me. ‘ To see them all in the Sussex countryside was very funny. They were all there, including Keith Levene and other hangers-on, and Bernie.

‘Unbeknownst to everybody I recorded the whole afternoon. I had a foot switch I used to flick when I was playing with another guitarist so we could ascertain our progress. I recorded the whole afternoon so I could learn the songs, if it all worked out. Unfortunately Bernie realized I’d made a copy and asked to borrow it. That’s the last I ever saw of it.’