Joe is a legendary rock icon whose memory should probably shine brighter but a) because his death, though while only 50 years of age, was not romantic and b) the Clash, in this world of musical overload, are something close to a reference point, it ain’t.
His follow up band, The Mescalaros, never broke pop and Strummer himself went sideways, experimental, and strange.
On this, his birthday, fellow traveller Helen Bach advised me to give “Johnny Appleseed” a listen, the 2001 self-portrait (? -among other things) off Global-A-Go-Go.
Johnny Appleseed is the late 19th century folk hero and legend who introduced Apple orchards to the States and was famous for his charitable works. Strummer, in this Guthrie inspired, vaguely 3rd worldly, but weirdly timeless song finds himself buried deep, so deep in ideas. The hook is “If you wanna get the honey then you don’t go killing all the bees” and obviously, this is a worker’s rights songs: it is the worker bees not the Queen bees that are interesting him.
And sure, this is working class hero Strummer, so that’s a part of it, but Joe was a Johnny Appleseed himself, planting idea’s and while he probably didn’t have the ego to draw that conclusion, we certainly do.
The chorus is somewhere between an aphorism which makes so much sense I googled it, but I found no other references, and non sequitur. It could come from the Tao it is so smart.
The song itself builds from folk to rock and the image changes on you, in the end all you can see is Strummer singing “Hey… down the road” and walking, singing, away, away from us, into history.