If you were alive in the 1980s, and you cared about music, you knew about Joe Strummer and The Clash -- the English quartet who along with the Sex Pistols set the tone for the Punk movement. Earlier today it was reported that Strummer died, apparently of a heart attack. He was just 50.
My most vivid memory of Strummer and The Clash comes from the early 80s when the band was opening for The Who on the very first of their multiple farewell tours. After both bands had finished a gig at Shea Stadium, Pete Townsend, Strummer and Mick Jones did a live interview on New York's WNEW-FM -- what then was the metro area's leading Rock station.
Most of the interview was typical post-concert blather, but one comment from Townsend stuck with me all these years. He took time to say that he felt The Clash was the sort of band that The Who looked upon as picking up their mantle.
As it turned out, it would essentially be all over for the Clash not long after the mega-success of Combat Rock. Now, about two decades on, Strummer is dead, and Townsend, the man who wrote, "Hope I die before I get old," is still out on the road and cashing checks.
(Link via Instapundit.)
UPDATE: The Washington Post's Desson Howe actually went to school with Strummer, back in the days when he was known as John Mellor:
Joe Strummer wasn't Joe Strummer when I met him.That was in the late 1960s, in England. He was John Mellor, a thin-lipped, sarcastic prefect sitting in his study. The younger students had big collective rooms for their homework. But prefects had private rooms, which they'd share with one or two senior colleagues. He was older than I was
