Joe Strummer and Punk Understatement

From Chris Salewicz’s new biography of Joe Strummer Redemption Song (Faber and Faber):
In his June 1979 NME interview with Charles Shaar Murray [Strummer] had declared, “There’s ten thousand days of oil left. It’s finite.” Joe Strummer had been inspired to write the song riding back with Gaby Salter in a taxi from Vanilla to World’s End. As the cab drove along Cheyne Walk, next to the River Thames, they were talking about the state of the world in the light of the nuclear disaster in the united States that March at Three Mile Island — an event that worried people around the globe. “There was a lot of Cold War nonsense going on,” Joe said. “We already knew London was susceptible to flooding. She told me to write something about that. So I sat in the front room, looking out at Edith Grove [a street near their place]. Years later, I found out I was looking right onto the flat where the Stones lived when they started out, which seemed appropriate…” (p. 251-2)
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