Punk Like Him

Conflict has always been part of being “punk,” and not just physical conflicts. In the mid- to late-’90s I knew a struggling musician, Elliott, and—burning through a series of pop-punk bands, part Kiss and part The Queers—he was struggling in more than the economic sense. Elliott was struggling with his identity. And as I watch The Future Is Unwritten, a lovingly assembled collage commemorating—and at times even criticizing—Joe Strummer of the Clash, who died from a congenital heart defect in 2002, I think back to a flinty veneer that cracked early in the a.m. one humid Alabama night in 1998.

We were a half-dozen friends going to see a band. Well, we’d really gone to get whiskey bent, and more memorable than the show was the wake of strewn trash as everyone marched Sherman-style across Birmingham’s South Side. Once back at my apartment, Elliott stayed out front to smoke a butt while the rest of us cracked some High Life. I started to get worried, though, when the beer got warm but perpetually squirrelly Elliott’s seat was still cold.

I found him, sprawled out on the lawn where he’d been deposited, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Except it was a metal “cigarette,” he smelled like scorched resin and fresh rain and through his glazed eyes I could see Elliott knew that I knew.

“Ah, shit, man,” he drawled hazily. “I know what you’re thinkin’, but I ain’t no fuckin’ hippie! I just like to smoke pot, man. But I’m still punk... I’m still punk!”

At that moment I wasn’t sure if Elliott—baked and fearing his cred emotionally battered—was trying harder to convince me or himself. And it’s that memory that resonates repeatedly during viewing of The Future Is Unwritten, because Strummer also comes across as a man sometimes caught in a schism of his own design. As presented by Julien Temple (The Great Rock & Roll Swindle, The Filth & The Fury), Strummer is his own narrator, drawn from archival radio shows. Filling in the gaps are bonfire conversations with family, friends and followers—kept equal by being kept “anonymous,” their anecdotes not their names or titles the focus. This is an homage to Strummer’s latter post-Glastonbury years rediscovering the communal spirit repeatedly, forcefully recast by but never expunged from diplomat’s son John Graham Mellor aka LSD-uncorked art collage busker Woody (aka political squatter and gypsy spokesman Joe Strummer). Strummer, like Elliott, couldn’t initially reconcile his identities, and he unflinchingly truncated relationships during reinvention.

The sketchbook opens as a cheekily self-proclaimed “punk rock warlord” blurts “White Riot,” proving punk isn’t about hitting every note, it’s noting what hits: It’s action and reaction. “Limited” to only hitting all six strings at once, hence the name “Strummer,” Joe the man and the myth exemplify how punk embraced its own flaws, including a self-defeating relationship with “success.” The Future Is Unwritten, accompanied on DVD by a director’s commentary and 100 minutes of additional campfire reflections, is a captivating, bittersweet epitaph acknowledging Strummer’s urgency and insecurity, the gradual dilating of his worldview and the filling in of the blank generation. A fire burning, so to speak.

Oh, and as for Elliott, he retired the leather jacket. Now he’s in country-rock bands and handcrafting furniture. I don’t know if he still smokes pot, but I understand he’s happy. To thine own self be true, they say.