Song:Love Kills
Album:Sid & Nancy: Original Soundtrack
Joe Strummer was best known as lead singer of The Clash, probably the greatest punk band ever. After The Clash split up in 1986, Strummer's solo career was sporadic and inconsistent partially due to a long legal battle with Sony Music about his contract status. He became friends with film director Alex Cox and Love Kills was the theme to Cox's 1986 film Sid & Nancy. He was born John Graham Mellor Aug. 21, 1952 in Ankara, Turkey to a British diplomat. His parents moved all over the world while Strummer and his brother attended boarding school in London. He became interested in music and of course was lead singer of The Clash from 1973-86. After The Clash split up, Strumer became friends with film director Alex Cox and appeared in several of his films. And Strummer appeared in other films too. As you may be aware, Sid & Nancy is about the self destructive lives of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen starring Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb. It's an outstanding film. Strummer doesn't appear in the film but he performs credited on two songs in the soundtrack including the theme Love Kills. Apparently he did a lot more on the soundtrack uncredited because he was still under contract to Epic Records and the soundtrack is on MCA. He didn't want Epic to know what he was up to or they would have stopped him from doing it. MCA released Sid & Nancy on CD in a remastered version in 2001. This lrgal battle with Sony continued for many years until Sony agreed to let him record elsewhere as Joe Strummer. There's no question that this hurt his solo career and then he died of a heart attack Dec. 22, 2002 at age 50. But I recommend you check out the Sid & Nancy film and soundtrack. Here's the video for Love Kills by Joe Strummer.
Cheers for blogging about Joe
ReplyDeleteLove Kills remains a great track