UNCUT magazine, December 2003, p. 62
"NO INPUT, NO OUTPUT"
Jim Jarmusch, cult film director, on Joe Strummer and The Clash
Interview: Chris Roberts
"A LOT OF JOE'S FRIENDS, we always quote what we call Strummer's Law -- or at least one of them -- which was, "No input, no ouput!" He'd always shout that at us. I'd be going, 'Aw, I really gotta work, Joe, I can't go out all night again.' He'd reply: 'That's lying-down talk! We're bloody going out!'
"Strummer was so incredibly valuable to me, both as a friend and for all the things he created. The Clash, too, I gotta say -- I don't know Topper, but I definitely count Paul and Mick (and certainly Joe) as really close friends. I've known them for quite a while now, and I love them all.
"I think I met Jo
e first in the early '80s, and then consequently met and spent time with Mick and Paul. I lived in Berlin in 1987, and Mick came to visit and crashed in my house there for a week. I see Paul often in New York and always when I'm in London. I own a beautiful painting of his, of eggs and bacon in a frying-pan on a table, which is almost abstract, a kind of looser version of Cezanne.
"They are amazing people, very rare, who together made something incredibly rare. I'm writing a series of essays, sort of to amuse myself, a sorta Battle Of The Bands thing. One is Duchamp versus Warhol. And one is The Clash versus The Sex Pistols. The Pistols, like The Ramones, were to me about reduction, and reducing rock 'n roll to its absolute essentials. They were masterful at that. They created one record, basically. In the pantheon of rock 'n roll they are perfect in their ability to reduce rock 'n roll to that degree and to have that kind of emotion and anger in it. I love them for that.
"The Clash, on the other hand, to me were so incredibly open to everything. Rather than reduce music to an essence, what they did was take anything that flowed in to their hearts and souls. They grabbed onto that essence and used it and made it part of themselves, whether it's rockabilly or dub or reggae...so I find them almost diametrically opposed, in a way, to the Pistols. They just opened their hearts to the universe and anything that is real or moving to them became part of them. That's what The Clash were always, continually doing. Whether they pulled in fragments of English folk tunes, or elements of hip hop, stuff like that.
"There's some people who make great work and then you meet them and you're not so sure about them personally, but that's OK. But the thing is about those guys from The Clash, they are all so...generous and open, wonderful people. They're just really amazing cats, all of them."