Joe Strummer Quotes

37 Sourced Quotes

For me the music is a vehicle for my lyrics. It's a chance to get some really good words across.

Joe Strummer
It's good to be sent back to the underground. There's always a good side to bad things and the good side to this is that at least everyone has to go back down.

Joe Strummer
I was trying to prove that I was the Clash and it wasn't Mick (Jones). I learned that that was kind of dumb. I learned that it wasn't anybody, except maybe a great chemistry between us four, and I really learned it was over the day we sacked Topper, and not the day we sacked Mick. There was quite some time between them. We played a whole tour between those times. But it was the day we sacked Tops.

Joe Strummer
When freedom rises from the killing floor,
No lock of iron or rivet can restrain the door.
And no kind of army can hope to win a war
Like trying to stop the rain or still the lion s roar,
Like trying to stop the whirlwind scattering seeds and spores
Like trying to stop the tin cans rapping out jailhouse semaphore.

Joe Strummer
Every gimmick-hungry yob digging gold from rock 'n' roll
Grabs the mike to tell us he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this – and it's been tested by research –
That he who fucks nuns will later join the church.

Joe Strummer
The way you get a better world is, you don't put up with substandard anything.

Joe Strummer
I'd just like to say to everybody that it's best to check out the independent life: the independent stores and the independent everybodies. We should try not to give our money to any corporations, if we can help it.

Joe Strummer
I have a big legacy of The Clash to live up to and I don't intend to uriny on a legend. I intend to build forward into the next century. The music has to be by the musicians, and there's too much changing things by the record company. I got a message for everyone in a record company: We don't care if you lose your job! You ruin music and I'll get all the smoothers out off the way, the people who smooth the sound off. Let the musicians have the music the way they want it, and not the way you think the grandmothers and 3-year olds will gonna buy it. Cause this is not about 3-year olds or grandmothers... This is Rock and Roll!

Joe Strummer
London Calling - Yes, I was there, too,
And you know what they said? Well some of it was true.
London Calling at the top of the dial…
And after all this, won't you give me a smile?

Joe Strummer
I'll tell you something. When you see you become part of the cycle of generations, you lose your ego in the process, because you ain't nothin' special. You're just another cipher in the generations. When you devote all your interest into another person, you lose your self-obsession, and that's when you understand what it is. You don't know (anything) without that moment. You don't want anything to harm this helpless being. That's a fantastic change. And that's when you understand what's happening. I never understood anything until my first baby looked at me. I didn't understand (anything). Now I understand.

Joe Strummer
Career opportunities, the ones that never knock,
Every job they offer you is to keep you out the dock.

Joe Strummer
All the power's in the hands of people rich enough to buy it.

Joe Strummer
I just want to go back to rockin', but I'm uncertain as to what to actually do … The truth is, I never stopped thinking about rock 'n' roll for a second that I'm on holiday.

Joe Strummer
The toughest thing is facing yourself. Being honest with yourself, that's much tougher than beating someone up. That's what I call tough.

Joe Strummer
We got all the influences for it [Global a Go-Go] from Willesden High Road. When you go out for milk and cigarettes you go through three countries because all the shops and cafes are playing their own music, like going through hell.

Joe Strummer
I hate it when I go out and I see parents going, 'don't do that', or 'stop doing that' when some kid's just hanging off a staircase or something. There's too much of this, 'don't do that'. The whole thing baffles me.

Joe Strummer
Everything's fucked! It's down to individual people to make life enjoyable. I don't have anything more to say than that. I think people should avoid the world fucking them up. People are becoming too uptight, treating their children bad, being negative.

Joe Strummer
Everyone has got to realise you can't hold onto the past if you want any future. Each second should lead to the next one.

Joe Strummer
When you blame yourself, you learn from it. If you blame someone else, you don't learn nothing, cause hey, it's not your fault, it's his fault, over there.

Joe Strummer
What I like about playing America is you can be pretty sure you're not going to get hit with a full can of beer when you're singing and I really enjoy that!

Joe Strummer
White riot! I wanna riot!
White riot! a riot of my own.

Joe Strummer
What's holding me up is I'm confused about the nature of the music. Because the modern music doesn't reach me. I mean to say the sound of the modern electric production. A lot of sequencers... synths. That's what people are buying. Because that doesn't reach me, it throws me back to like 1948, but I don't want to be there. Back there, I'm talking about blues records.... The roots of rock 'n' roll is rhythm and blues and that's like really where I'm at, where I was always at.

Joe Strummer
If you're allowed to make your mistakes, I think you should. But people don't really like hearing you admit them. Although I'd never wanted to dump on the musicians that were involved in that.... Because it was not their fault.

Joe Strummer
I would say it was about time that you believe in something. And sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll ain't it.... A lot of people used to think they were.

Joe Strummer
I kept trying to stress that — "Hang on, we're be-bop guys, we're down in the alley on 57th Street. We're not in there with John Reed and "Ten Days That Shook the World." We'd be in the alley with (Charlie) Parker shooting up junk. That's where we were at really.

Joe Strummer
My motto is, 'What's the hurry?' I'm trying to get it across to the modern world that we need to sit around and think a little bit more.

Joe Strummer
Singing into a cold wind is the worst nightmare for any singer. You could hear it in the voice.

Joe Strummer
Anybody who makes speeches written by someone else is just a robot.

Joe Strummer
I think that the corporation is running it and will always make it appeal to the lowest common denominator. I think we're going to have to forget about the radio and just go back to word of mouth.

Joe Strummer
You have the right not to be killed, unless it was done by a policeman or an aristocrat.

Joe Strummer