Joe Strummer's sudden death on 22 December 2002, possibly from a heart attack, came as a shock. For the last three months of 2002 I had been re-exploring the agitpop legacy of The Clash, the influential punk band that Strummer fronted with guitarist Mick Jones, bassist Paul Simonon and drummer Topper Headon. Strummer had wisely avoided the multi-million dollar offers for a reformation and American stadium tour, preferring to concentrate on his new band the Mescaleros. He had just finished a United Kingdom tour with the Mescaleros and was planning a third studio album. But in press interviews Strummer had also made peace with his past. He had made up with Jones: ending a split that tore apart The Clash at their commercial peak. He now disowned the disastrous follow-up album Cut the Crap (1985). And, poignantly, he gave his approval to a one-night reformation of for their March 2003 induction into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. Now we'll never know what could have been.

The news sound-bites of The Clash's biggest hits—"London Calling", "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" and "Rock The Casbah"—don't do justice to Strummer's creativity and influence on a new generation of musicians. The Clash (1977), in both its U.K. and U.S. versions, was an incendiary 'wake-up call': a mix-tape that spawned a thousand bands. The band's intense performance at the 1978 Rock Against Racism concert, including their first single "White Riot", showed that there were reconstructive alternatives to media imagery of punk nihilism.

Reviewer Matt Cibula notes that, already by the release of Give 'Em Enough Rope (1978), album closer "All the Young Punks (New Boots and Contracts)" 'pretty much obliterates the entire punk scene-again-for being an arena for careerist posers.' One secret of the breakthrough London Calling (1979) was that Strummer's love of dub reggae and ska enabled the band to tweak with the parameters of rock 'n' roll. It’s no surprise that Rolling Stone voted it the most important album of the 1980s (despite being released in late 1979). Then onto the sprawling Sandinista! (1980), which name-checked the Nicaraguan revolutionaries and influenced Rage Against The Machine, and the "Straight To Hell" finale of Combat Rock (1982).

Complete Control

In just five years The Clash had evolved well past their Westway roots into a global phenomenon. Strummer remarked in Westway To The World (1999) that this partly happened because the band members were willing to explore new music and were open to multicultural realities. Insights like this are why I use the documentary in university classes about inter-group dynamics and leadership styles. The ability to transcend cultural imprints and change the Self is what connects Strummer to magicians like Robert Anton Wilson, Aleister Crowley and Timothy Leary. Archival projects like Black Market Clash (1993) and the remastered edition of The Clash on Broadway (2000) have documented how alchemical ontological transformations can be achieved through public service announcements with guitar. 'You can't start by changing the structure,' he stated in a Musician interview with guitarist Robert Fripp, 'change has to be a personal choice.' And the sonic experimentalist has changed many lives.

There's a moment near the end of Live: From Here To Eternity (1999) where Strummer yells at an audience member, "Sing in tune, you bastard!" Perhaps this moment captures the frustration Strummer felt at being trapped by very image—the conformist rock-star—that he had rebelled against. His appearances in films including Straight to Hell (1987), Candy Mountain (1987), Mystery Train (1990) and Doctor Chance (1997) didn't win any major awards but the performances did show how he wanted to explore new territory on his own terms. This creative drive was also exemplified in his exploration of dub reggae, hip-hop, rockabilly, salsa and other music styles with the Mescaleros. Rock Art and the X-Ray Style (1999) and Global a Go-Go (2001) captured a mature artist who was more reflective than Strummer's early sloganeering had suggested. He transmuted frustration into Work (not career) opportunities. Most of all he did the late-night interviews and constant touring that regenerated fans.

(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais

Strummer's career and interviews hold many underappreciated lessons—especially by those who mistakenly interpreted him as a doctrinaire Marxist. He fought a ten-year battle to get out of The Clash's recording contract for ten albums. During the national 'consensus trance' of Britain's first Jubilee he took on the underbelly of neo-Nazism and disenfranchised youth. He railed against recording conglomerates, numbed-out audiences and concert promotes who wanted to turn The Clash into a punk Rolling Stones. It's tempting in the post-9/11 era to reinterpret songs like "Know Your Rights" as prescient warnings of surveillance and risk architectures. But this reinterpretation would overlook his bracing humor and unrestrained experimentation. Remember his line about Lauren Bacall and carjacking.

After the death of Joey Ramone he reflected on the mortality of his hero. "Death or Glory?" or "Death Is A Star"? It's a sad irony that, in a world currently ruled by Destiny's Child, 'NSync and other manufactured pop, that it's artists with the Voice like Joe Strummer who pass into The Great Beyond first, before his Vision of a truly 'viable rock-culture politics' was completely realized.