Memories of the Clash have never been so fond. March saw the release of Burning London, a Clash tribute compilation featuring modern music stars ranging from No Doubt and Third Eye Blind to Ice Cube and Moby. Last month, retail stores received Live From Here to Eternity, a long-awaited live Clash album recorded between 1978 and 1982. And Will Smith is getting jiggy with a sample of "Rock the Casbah" in his current hit, "Will2K." Epic/Legacy Records, meanwhile, will release remastered versions of nearly all of the band's back catalog in January.

To top things off, relations between guitarist/singers Joe Strummer and Mick Jones and bassist Paul Simonon are warm, requiring only "a bit of a microwave" now and then, Strummer, 47, says.

Given the comeback hoopla that's surrounded the re-emergence of other late-Seventies/early-Eighties stalwarts like the Sex Pistols, Culture Club and Blondie, what's to stop the Clash? For one, Strummer and his backing band, the Mescaleros, are currently touring in support of his second solo album, Rock Art and the X-Ray Style. Theoretically speaking, the Clash could pull something together once Strummer's jaunt wraps in Australia in February.

But Strummer has never really craved stardom. After the Clash folded in 1986, he quietly escaped to his country home 300 miles from London. Except for a 1989 solo album, some soundtrack recording and bit acting roles, he's been content to let the spotlight pass him by. (Of course, that was before the spotlight swung back to him in the Nineties, with ska-punk bands such as Rancid, Sublime and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones recasting the Clash at the center of the rock universe.)

"My motto is, 'What's the hurry?'" he says. "I'm trying to get it across to the modern world that we need to sit around and think a little bit more." (Truth be told, his time off was partly to wait out what he called a "stupid" contract inked with Columbia Records some years ago.)

"I think the shadow the Clash casts is probably endless," he adds. "I'm proud of it, but I do feel it's a sticking block. If you really wanted to do something new in music or move it forward, I think it's a real lumber around your neck."

Strummer said Epitaph, the L.A.-based indie punk label, was the only record company willing to release "Rock Art," adding that he "couldn't even get arrested" in Britain.

"Sometimes I despaired that nothing would go right for me," he said. "But I always knew that there were songs there."

Should Strummer's latest solo project bomb, he doesn't rule out the possibility of a Clash reunion.

"The thing is this -- we ain't never gonna reform by people offering us money," he said. "That just makes it impossible.

"But we might reform when no one's looking."

COREY LEVITAN
(December 2, 1999)