TRACK 40 Joe Where Are You Now?

Christmas was on its inevitable way. Fairy lights dotted London. We got a Christmas tree at the Columbia Road Flower Market. It was a beautiful sight, dark-green trees and multitudes of vibrant flowers overflowing all the pitches. I particularly loved the brilliant lavenders and blues.

The Nirvana compilation CD with the studio version of Kurt’s last song “You Know You’re Right” was finally released. Courtney Love and the remaining Nirvanas, Krist and Dave, had been fighting over the song for years. I’d heard it on a bootleg. At the time, the only known version was from a concert in Chicago in 1993 and was referred to as “Autopilot.” And Courtney had done a version of it on MTV Unplugged. Later I found a live, electric version of it on a website in Russia. It was a breathtaking song.

I screamed along, “‘Things have never been so swell! I have never failed to fail! PAI-AI-AI-AIN!’” At first I’d thought Kurt was yelling, “I have never failed to feel,” which seemed true. Melissa downloaded a copy of the video that went with the song. It looked like Kurt was performing it, even though there was no known video of him ever performing that version. He smashed his guitar. He leaped into the amplifiers. He threw himself into the drum kit. He spun himself around like a sprinkler with a spurting bottle of champagne.

I came home from busking to find Melissa looking upset in the sitting room. “Have you heard?” she asked. “Joe Strummer’s dead.”

“What?”

“Joe Strummer. He’s just died.”

“He can’t have. I don’t believe it.”

Joe Strummer from the Clash was our hero and the hero of the political punk movement. We rang Nick, and she came over wearing her red Brigade Rosse T-shirt, the same one Joe Strummer washes out by hand in a hotel basin in the film Rude Boy. Stunned, we listened to the 101ers album Elgin Avenue Breakdown, singing along with “Keys to your Heart” and “Motor Boys Motor.” Then we played every Clash album in chronological order. On vinyl, as they were originally released. I thought my heart would crack when we listened to Give ’Em Enough Rope, especially during “Guns on the Roof,” “Stay Free,” “Cheapskates” and “All the Young Punks.”

We got out Pennie Smith’s classic book of excellent Clash photographs. “Remember how we used to live by this book?” I said, as we paged through it.

“To Joe, a great man of integrity,” Melissa said, and we toasted him with cups of tea. We watched Rude Boy, Westway to the World and some high-quality Clash concerts Melissa had downloaded from the Internet.

We had a low-key Christmas, getting ourselves the Jam box set Direction Reaction Creation, the four-CD Jellyfish Fan Club box set and the hardcover edition of Kurt Cobain’s journals. Its cover was a photo of one of Kurt’s red spiral notebooks, and each page was a photocopy of the actual notebook page. I’d found Mexican milagros on Portobello Road, religious charms for healing and protection, and made us necklaces out of body parts like hands, feet, eyes, breasts, lips and hearts to keep us safe. I called them “OCD on a necklace.”