My friend Robin describes Joe Strummer with a guitar as "soft porn." She is a wise woman.
Filmmaker Julien Temple (whose film work I am an unrepentant fan of) knew Strummer when he was in his first London band, the rock-a-billy 101ers.
He started filming Strummer and The Clash in 1976, when they lived in squats around the corner from each other. Temple attended a benefit Strummer played about a week before he died in 1992, they lived in the same small town at this point.
The frame for this documentary is the bonfire. Old friends, fans, bandmates, family, people with every reason to love and hate Strummer sit around bonfires and talk about him and sing along to songs on recordings of his BBC World Service program "London Calling."
Even people with every reason to dislike Strummer, such as two bandmates who were fired for being junkies, show their dislike of the circumstances but not of Joe. Even when there is residual anger at the circumstances of their dismissal, they don't seem to hold it against him, at least not completely.
Joe Strummer, guitar god, punk rock warlord, artist... Child of a diplomat who lived all over the world before being sent to boarding school in England. Loving and imperfect husband and father.
Julien Temple has made a touching tribune to his friend and neighbor.
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