Strummersite - August 2003

Strummersite interview - By Rob Morgan
	On the swelteringly hot evening of Friday 8th August 2003, we caught up with Tymon to complete an interview started earlier this year. In the comfort of the 'Jenny Lind' in Hastings, Tymon gave us his thoughts on the upcoming tribute show in Granada, Spain, his life-long frienship with Joe, and some in-sights to his time with The Mescaleros.

STRUMMERSITE: You were up in London yesterday with Mick, doing a bit of rehearsing.

TYMON: We were rehearsing for the gig in Spain.

STRUMMERSITE: So how did this show come about?

TYMON: Joe has a house in Spain, near Almeira and he'd been going there for about twenty years. Every summer he's taken his kids and I think he fell in love with Spain. He's also got a lot of friends down there. The guy who really had this idea said that one day he and Joe had gone to Bizna, which was the place where Federico García Lorca was shot in 1936, on around the 20th August. Anyway, when he went there with this guy, whose name is Jesus, Joe perhaps slightly under the influence of drink was saying, let's get some shovels and find Lorca's body! Obviously Joe was very emotional being in the place where Lorca had been shot. Joe said to Jesus, one day I'm gonna come back and do a gig here. So the idea for the show really came from that.

STRUMMERSITE: Richard Dudanski has actually made it happen?

TYMON: I was over there about 3 months ago. Probably just after the Tabernacle show. I took my violin with me and Richard fixed up a gig with his band. This guy was there and we started talking about getting this show together then. And we thought it would be great to do it for Joe. We're actually gonna do it in Sacromonte now, which isn't the exact site we'd originally hoped for. Its gonna be really nice to be doing something like Spanish Bombs with Mick, singing Joe's lyrics, in Granada.

STRUMMERSITE: So I take it Mick's very enthusiastic about doing this?

TYMON: Oh yeah. We were sitting around yesterday with guitars, Mick was singing away and it sounded great.

STRUMMERSITE: So what other tracks were you rehearsing yesterday?

TYMON: I only felt that we should use Mescaleros tracks that I had most impact on. I wrote entirely the tune to Mondo Bongo, and I'd say the majority of the melody on Johnny Appleseed. It was like a tune we used to do years ago.

STRUMMERSITE: That was a great tune.

TYMON: It always got people going.

STRUMMERSITE: But it was strange that basically a country tune did have that effect.

TYMON: Well it came about basically because Scott was banging out a G chord moving to E minor and I picked up a mandolin and started playing it and Richard Flack, the 'inspirational scoop', just recorded it immediately. I had no idea that Joe would put his words to that tune. There was the guitar riff that Martin and Scott had got together, but Joe said he wouldn't start singing til the mandolin starts. It took me a while to realise what Joe was doing. Sometimes I'd just be walking up the corridor playing the violin to just a couple of chords that we could hear coming from the studio. And he'd be following me with a small tape recorder. And what he'd worked out is that the violin is very near the human voice. So, he was picking up melody lines from the violin, and even if we took away the violin he'd be singing it, like on Gamma Ray. He'd sussed this out and he knew that was what my job was. The point I'm making is that those two tunes, Mondo Bongo and Johnny Appleseed, I feel particularly close to.

STRUMMERSITE: And therefore appropriate for this show?

TYMON: Not just me, but other people too. I think Joe would like nothing more than Johnny Appleseed being played in the corner of this bar right now, and maybe nobody knowing who wrote it. That's when you really know you've got a great song. It's like, nobody knows who wrote Danny Boy.

STRUMMERSITE: You mean that there's something special about the way that it flows, its harmony, its melody, the fact that it gets inside you and you start moving your feet?

TYMON: Yeah, but also the lyric. It's a great song for singing round campfires. But anyway, that's the idea. We've also been thinking about doing X-Ray Style. I've always liked that song. But anyway, we're leaving things pretty loose at the moment. We'll wait til we do a full rehearsal in Spain and see what's feeling good. I did actually write a tune for Joe last year, as a kind of birthday present. Joe was sitting in this campsite where I'd been the year before with my son Emmanual, and he said to me, when I phoned to wish him a happy birthday, 'can you hear the gravel?' And that day I'd actually written him this very Celtic tune.

STRUMMERSITE: So it was a very personal tune?

TYMON: Well the last time I spoke to him on the phone, whilst he was up in Scotland, the week he moved on, I did play it to him. I also played it to Mick yesterday, the first other person I can remember playing it to. Mick said great, let's do this in Spain. I would love to get Mick to play some of his new songs. I just think there's times when it's right, like when Joe did The Who tour and did five new songs, if you include the one they're putting on this album [Silver and Gold], which is actually a recording from before Global a Go-Go.

STRUMMERSITE: I remember you playing that at your first gig as a Mescalero, at the 100 Club in London

TYMON: Well if you include that Joe had got five new tracks together that week. Mostly originals, but one of them was The Minstrel Boy. Those two, along with Bhindi Bhagee, Bummed Out City and Gamma Ray.

STRUMMERSITE: Do you see the show in Spain being an introspective event, a very personal performance, maybe just a one-off given the events being commemorated?

TYMON: At this moment in time, it is being done simply to remember Joe and Lorca.

STRUMMERSITE: Is it possibly something we could see happening over here in the future?

TYMON: Well I think not on the level of 'Spanish Bombs in Granada', on the day Lorca was shot, and moving through the night into Joe's birthday. Sorry Rob, it's gonna be a one-off! But you'll be there won't you? When I first met Joe he'd just lost his brother. He was moving through a lot of things very quickly. And I think Mick's been through a lot too recently. Being the co-writer of The Clash with Joe and also this massive thing The Clash has left and that certain sort of thing they have, almost more than any other rock band. Mick and Joe are intrinsically linked. To get that thing going they had to work really bloody hard. For a long time they were walking round sharing the same bag of chips. Mick and Joe went through that together. It's like a family bond. When I was talking to Mick yesterday, I was saying how lucky the Clash were to have two great, creative engines. Most bands are lucky to have one. You have to be moving in the moment.

STRUMMERSITE: The Clash were moving in the moment for sure, but they were also defining the moment. They were a product of the time, but they helped shape the time. If you look back now, they are a reference point. That was the sound of the period. It's a dialectical situation, it's a very interesting combination.

TYMON: That's right. I hadn't thought of it like that before.

STRUMMERSITE: But any kind of life, or musical career - it's like life, is a progression. It's about moving forward, to explore new areas, to have new experiences. That brings me to the Mescaleros. It was a project long in the making, with the band only emerging in 1999. Something that you were an integral part of, for the best part of three years.

TYMON: I did do another show with Joe early in 1999. We met up in London. The original bass player from the 101ers, Mole, had just died. He was quite influential on Joe. He helped write Keys to Your Heart. I arrived at the event [in Acklam Hall, West London] quite late, with a violin in my hand and suddenly someone said 'Hey Tymon!' and it was Joe. I asked him if he was going to do some songs and he said no, I haven't got a guitar, I just came to be here. I said to him, let's get a guitar and we'll go on stage and do something, a Woody Guthrie tune or even if we have to, make one up. And there were also a couple of the other members of the 101ers there that night, and then we found a drummer. Joe wasn't a man to turn down a challenge! He located a guitar. Next thing we're on stage. Unfortunately, following that memorable night we didn't have much contact with each other.

STRUMMERSITE: But at that point you didn't actually join the Mescaleros?

TYMON: No, no, I didn't even keep in regular contact with Joe. I went off to live in Spain, but I wasn't there that long.

STRUMMERSITE: And then about a year passed and you turned up at the Poetry Olympics. Rock Art and The X-Ray Style had been released. The band was getting a lot of very positive interest. And things were looking pretty steady. Then there was the slightly unexpected move to The Mescaleros "phase two". What happened?

TYMON: Well Antony Genn split from Joe. I never did talk to Joe about that. But when I did talk to him in October 2000 I got the feeling that the group had been disbanded. Antony had brought all those other guys to the band. They were Antony's scene. So they were left feeling a bit torn. I think they still do some work together.

STRUMMERSITE: I know that a lot of the band have been involved with Antony's new group Help.

TYMON: Right OK. Antony always seemed a really nice guy.

STRUMMERSITE: The time that you spent with the Mescaleros, you went into wholeheartedly as a musician and stuck with the project. Was it creatively satisfying?

TYMON: When I arrived in the studio we wrote literally a song a day for a while. It was brilliant. Just dossing down on those sofas in Battery Studios. Staying out all night, just wandering about West London, just a stone's throw away from where me and Joe used to live back in 1972. It was quite amazing to be back in that part of town again after all those years. When I first got there, there was only Joe and Pablo around, and Richard Flack. The other lads came in a bit later. What happened was that me and Joe started spending more and more time together. We'd put down a track or an idea and we'd leave it with Richard. Me and Joe had a lot of catching up to do. We spent a lot of time talking in bars. One night Joe got up and started playing with the band in this bar in Willesden, I think they were called the Celtic Balladeers. I tried to get the violin off the woman in the band, but she was having none of it! She said no way! There was no way she was not going to play with Joe Strummer.

STRUMMERSITE: So when did your musical career start? And how did you come to be known as Mr Dogg?

TYMON: I'd been christened Stephen. I started playing on stage in Liverpool at about the age of fourteen. I thought I needed another name, so I became Tymon. By the time I got to London in my early twenties, as a bit of a joke I called myself Dogg. There was this landlady in the place we were staying and I told her my name was Mr Dog for some crazy reason, and it stuck! The other guys thought that was very funny and they never let it go. Soon after I did some solo gigs in Germany, in Berlin, and that was the first time I ever played violin on stage. This was 1973. I had done a couple of solo albums back in the late sixties. In fact a compilation was recently re-issued and had a track by me on it from when I was seventeen. I think I'm sandwiched on it between the Small Faces and Status Quo! I appear on it as Tymon, rather than Tymon Dogg.

STRUMMERSITE: There were some fantastic Mescaleros shows. Do any stand out in your memory as really special ones?

TYMON: As a musician you tend to think of what were the best ones for you. However, I loved the New York gigs at Irvine Plaza in October 2001. This was just a couple of weeks after September 11th. They were special gigs. At the time New York felt like an open wound. Everything and everyone was so tender. A lot of bands weren't playing at that time. We played the David Letterman TV show because, I think it was, Feeder had pulled out. It was so cold that day, it was like playing in a fridge. My violin was changing pitch as I played it! Also the Brixton Academy show about a month later was great. For me I loved that show, it was like playing in a huge front room! Joe loved that show, too. It meant a lot to him. It was nearly completely full with about 4,000 fans that night. I was proud of us as a team that night. The last tour had some moments too. The Liverpool gig was great.

STRUMMERSITE: What about the Firefighters' benefit show at Acton Town Hall?

TYMON: I thought that was great because Mick grabbed a guitar, because something had 'come over him'. He actually grabbed Scott's guitar, and when he walked on he plugged into Joe's amp. The thing is that when I first saw them rehearsing in 1976 they used to share the same amp. So that night in Acton when I saw them sharing the same amp, I thought you're right back where you started! Then you think about how much money they'd been offered to get back together, and they spring up together for a cause like that. Didn't you organise that show?

STRUMMERSITE: Well yes, the FBU initially contacted Strummersite to see if there was anyway they could get the band to play this benefit show. I think you were actually out in Japan at the time. But after a few phone calls I got the message that Joe was really up for it. When I spoke to Gharda at the FBU to tell her the band would play, I think it's the first time I've ever heard somebody actually faint on the other end of a phone. And she was on the number 38 bus in Hackney at the time!

STRUMMERSITE: To risk your life for someone else's life. For someone to turn up at your house when it's blazing, go in and try to get you or your kids out, come on that must be worth something. It was a great cause and I think Joe was on the ball with that.

STRUMMERSITE: What about Mescaleros tracks? Do you have any personal favourites?

TYMON: I love Shaktar Donetsk. I supposed I influenced the Macedonian thing in it. Martin and Scott were messing around with a bit of a sample sound for days. I was never quite sure what it was. It then grew into something else. I remember letting loose on the violin, you know, that whole gypsy sound. I'd bought a record called Balkan Blues, which is in Joe's collection because he nicked it off me. I played it to Martin and said listen to that sound, try and get a part like that on to it. Martin's great with stuff like that, and he went off like a greyhound at it! I like the way that track ended up because it came out of something that might have been a total mess, actually. It was a classic track. In my mind that was the best work from Scott and Martin. They really did great on that.

STRUMMERSITE: And one that for a long time you opened most shows with.

STRUMMERSITE: That's right, and if we'd gone back in to do the Jools Holland show, we'd have done that one definitely. I also love Mondo Bongo. I never felt as though it was just right when we did it on stage. I don't know what the problem was. As I said before, we'll be doing that one in Spain.

STRUMMERSITE: What I think is that it needs more of a Latin sound to it.

TYMON: Well you're right Rob. It needs a Cuban rhythm section in it.

STRUMMERSITE: Maybe we should re-mix it one day...

TYMON: That's what I'm saying about Joe's music. It should carry on, and grow, and develop.

STRUMMERSITE: Seven and a half months have passed since Joe died and I want to ask you as one of his longest standing friends this very tender question, what have been your feelings over that time?

TYMON: Before I got back in touch with Joe, you know before the gig for Mole, I thought that it had been a long time since we'd worked together, something like fifteen years. And when you get to around the age of fifty you begin to think that soon one of us might be gone. I thought we needed to do something to wind up that dream we'd had thirty years ago. When he actually passed away, I'd been leaving him messages on the phone. We were discussing how to proceed with the recording, and how to fit it around me looking after my son. I needed to make a lot of prior arrangements so someone else could take care of him. Since then I've been thinking about not just what Joe was, but what anyone is. Joe had the ghost of his brother around him who had died six months before we first met. We'd also lost a lot of our friends who used to share a house with us. There's only a couple of us left from a very close circle. Death was a very close reality to us. It was always there. Joe was a very spiritual person. When we were in Japan last year, there were these huge flies that used to get into the tour bus and some people took great delight in swatting them against the window. Me and Joe ended up collecting them in little cups, and when the bus stopped somewhere we'd ask the driver to open the doors so we could release them. Still, one of these flies was squashed against a window and Joe said, to the individual, listen, we run this whole thing on grace, this band, we can't just go round being insensitive to life. I'd always had this thing when I was with Joe, an unspoken thing. We did the talking years ago and understood each other. We just knew you had to understand what a person was. I've spent a lot of time contemplating where Joe is right now. I'm sure he's out there. I think as a friend it's important to learn from him. Also to listen to him, what he did. Let your hearts and your ideas blend. Whether you're working together or not. I think it's important to honour the truth. Kevin from Manchester said to me at Joe's funeral that you might have lost a friend in terms of the body, but they're still with you in your mind. It's made me think more about what I do in the here and now. You've got to think about that all the time.

STRUMMERSITE: What does the future hold for Tymon Dogg?

TYMON: I'm gonna carry on putting out music. I'm recording songs for a CD that should be out by Christmas. Obviously there's the gig in Granada coming up. I'm gonna do the Dublin Fringe Festival on September 26th. I might also do one in Northern Ireland as well. I also want to work with other local musicians down here. If I find the right few people to work with, I'll be out there with a band.

Well, we at Strummersite wish you all the very best for the future. A musical career that's spanned four decades will continue and flourish. There's a lot of people out there who are keen to continue to hear your music.

Rob Morgan is the site host for The Official Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros web site at www.strummersite.com