A funny thing has happened over the last decade or so. Rock and roll has transformed from a music form that appealed only to the young to one that appeals to people of all ages. People in their forties and even in their fifties not only still like rock and roll, but they aren't ashamed to admit they like it, either.

But along with that goes a sobering fact. A lot of rock heroes are getting old, and for many of them, years of hard living seems to be taking a toll that's burying a lot of them a lot earlier than they deserve. Only the good die young they say. There’s certainly enough rotten apples in today’s world who seem able to keep doing damage well into their seventies and beyond.

This year took three of my favorite good guys. One was the Who's John Entwhistle, the stoic bassist for the first rock and roll band I really loved. The second was Dominique Laboubee, guitar player for the unknown but still great French band the Dogs. And now almost at year's end, we get word that the hands of time have taken Joe Strummer.

When we were in our immortal twenties we all laughed at lines like "Hope I die before I get old". It's easy to do at that age. Old people are slow, they’ve forgotten how to have fun, and they're wrinkled and ugly. We're not one of them, and wanting to die before we become one is an easy thing to promote, since the real choice isn't going to be there for us for a long time anyway.

But now Strummer's 50 years don't seem like so many. Granted, he hadn't really done anything in music that excited me since the Clash lp London Calling in what, 1980 or 1981? But that didn't matter - the man seemed still true to his basic ideals. He hadn't compromised to try to become a commercial success, and when his record label tried to tell him what to do, he said "fuck you, if that's the deal then I'm not doing anything".

The Clash myth is probably out of all proportion to what it should have been, but still, one can't deny that Strummer was a compelling figure and commanded respect like only four or five others in punk rock history. The Clash were on the short list of critical first generation punk rock bands, with the Ramones, Sex Pistols, the Jam and perhaps the Damned. And garbled as their message may have been at times (after all, a song about getting arrested for shooting pigeons from a London rooftop really shouldn't spark righteous indignation), the Clash still managed to motivate thousands of people to think about what they could do to change things and get involved. Every river is formed from countless raindrops, and on this scale the Clash were a storm of the century.

I remember reading about the Clash in magazines like Melody Maker, the NME, Zig Zag and Trouser Press as far back as 1976, but their records didn't show up in the US until their second lp, Give 'Em Enough Rope, was released in early 1979. I still remember buying my copy at the Licorice Pizza record shop in Pacific Beach. I got it on the way to playing basketball in a local league game at a gym about two blocks away, and it sat in my car until after the game when I drove home. I'd been thinking during timeouts about that blue, yellow, red and black cover with the crow picking at the body and wondering what it was going to sound like. In those days it seemed like every week when I stopped at Licorice Pizza before a game I’d come away with some classic lp – Wire’s Pink Flag, Ramones Rocket To Russia, or some other mind bending thing that’s still in my list of great lps today.

Back home I put it on, and that opening drum hit kicking off "Safe European Home" knocked me on my backside. I was instantly hooked by the power and passion of this band and to this day, no matter what half-baked complaints anyone can come up with about Sandy Pearlman's production, it’s my favorite Clash record. "Safe European Home" by itself would make the album worthy of knighthood even if the rest of the disc was a soundtrack of, say, pigeons chirping. "European Home" is just a careening, nearly out of control tour-de-force and out powers any six songs on critic’s fave third lp London Calling with one arm tied behind its back. Maybe it's because it was the first Clash sound I ever heard, but that opening snare flam always hits me like the first rifle shot in the war on complacent dinosaur rock (quickly followed by volley on volley of staggering machine gun fire guitar licks), and by the time it ends with those powerhouse drum rolls, I'm just bludgeoned. But that's not all, there's "English Civil War", "Tommy Gun", "All The Young Punks", "Drug Stabbing Time"...jeez, the whole damn record is classic Clash. Their finest hour.

I'll NEVER understand why so many people are down on the production of that record - to me it's the strongest and most potent sound the Clash ever had. Drums crack like gun fire, guitars slash and burn, and the interplay of vocals between Strummer and Jones is the best it ever sounded. To my ears London Calling sounds like it was recorded in a mattress warehouse by comparison.

The critical acclaim for Give ‘Em Enough Rope led CBS/Epic to finally give in and release the debut Clash lp in the US, dramatically altered with a batch of single sides. I got the US copy before I got the UK record, and probably as a result of this I’m always a little bemused by fans who like the UK release better. To give up songs like "Complete Control", "Clash City Rockers", "Jail Guitar Doors" or their withering version of the Bobby Fuller Four’s "I Fought The Law" to get "Protex Blue" and "48 Hours" just doesn’t seem like a good trade to me. But a lot of the songs common to both versions are brilliant, too, and the message is certainly stronger than on the second lp in tracks like "I’m So Bored With The USA", "Hate and War", or "Career Opportunities". This latter number certainly had a powerful appeal to a guy who was just entering the work force after leaving college and finding himself sitting in an office 9 hours a day after growing up out doors in Vermont.

London Calling left me feeling strangely let down when I first heard it, although I think it’s a fine record now. The two record set was a symbol of record industry decadence in that day – no punk band did double albums – only mainstream commercial sellouts. So alarm bells went ringing before the shrink wrap was even off the sleeve.

By that point I was buying most of my records at Off The Record, and the guys who ran that shop used to call me whenever something good came in. That week the phone rang for both the new Clash record and the Jam’s Setting Sons. The Clash mythology was reaching a fever pitch at this point, with their "only band that matters" campaign in full swing. To me the Jam’s message was a lot more coherent – people said that they were too English, but I had a more difficult time following what a Clash song about Montgomery Clift had to do with any punk rock concerns. And it seemed like every band in every bar in the US was soon taking the Clash’s cue to cover "Brand New Cadillac", which also didn’t mean much to me. "Train In Vain" and "Lost In The Supermarket" were nice pop but also didn’t really have a strong emotional impact. On the other hand, the title track, "Spanish Bombs" and "Clampdown" were pretty obvious winners. So I chalked it up as a decent, but not great record.

Over time, I’ve come to see the multi-faceted nature of London Calling much more clearly and I enjoy it a lot more (but it still doesn’t outstrip the first two lps). It certainly did break the Clash to the mainstream, and it showed Strummer’s concern for Clash fans by giving them a big pile of really solid material for only a buck or two more than a single lp. The Clash had fought CBS/Epic tooth and nail to keep the price down.

I saw the Clash live only once, on the tour to promote London Calling, and I’m sorry to say it wasn’t the revelation that Clash shows are often described to be. The band played an old theatre in downtown San Diego (might have been Golden Hall), and they were so loud that I couldn’t stay in the hall – in seeing hundreds of bands throughout the years, this was the only show ever where I went outside the hall because the band was too loud (I’ve left plenty because the band was horrible!). The sound was just a tearing, screaming mess, and sadly that’s obscured most of my memories of the show beyond the occasional glimpse of Paul Simonen with his bass slung impossibly low to the ground, Mick Jones cavorting about the stage, and Strummer in the middle with his body contorted and neck muscles stretched taut as he rasped into the mike – spit flying with every phrase.

Punk bands liked to pretend that they had no history – that they sprang like new seedlings on the rocky soil trampled by dinosaur bands – but Strummer DID have a past. Unprompted, he seemed to prefer to let the topic lie, but eventually the story of his high-octane pub rock band the 101ers came out. In fact, even an album came out – Elgin Avenue Breakdown – a collection of songs recorded for their two singles, outtakes, and some live tracks. The quality of recording and the production values on this record are very uneven, but there’s enough there to suggest that the 101ers might have been a band to rival the best pub rock outfits of the day – bands like Dr. Feelgood, Ducks Deluxe, the Gorillas, the Count Bishops, and Eddie and the Hotrods. The 101ers were energetic, rocket fueled bar band rock. "Letsagetabitrockin" certainly belongs on any compilation of the best pub rock songs ever.

But in a story that’s been told countless times, Strummer underwent a transformation to rival Saul’s on the road to Damascus when the 101ers shared a bill with the Sex Pistols. Immediately he told his band mates that what they were doing was a dead end and that he needed to take this new road. Only by trying to imagine the times in which this happened can anyone really understand what foresight was required to make this leap. The term "punk rock" was hardly known. There were no punk rock records. The Pistols were a relatively nothing band at this point – unrecorded, unsigned, and with only a few small articles written about them in the press. Most live Pistols recordings from the time reveal a band that was disorganized, chaotic, and far from the aural juggernaut they were to become – so what was there that seemed so attractive about them?

On the other hand, the 101ers’ chosen milieu of pub rock was a critic’s favorite and was starting to make substantial commercial inroads. Dr. Feelgood were having major chart success (and in fact would soon have the number one album in the country). Eddie and the Hot Rods were garnering big headlines and chart singles. Graham Parker got lots of ink in the UK and in the US. Yet somehow, one Pistols show was enough to convince Strummer that he had seen the future and that he could choose either to be part of it or to take a place in the dustbin of forgotten pub rock groups. He told his mates he was finished and set off to form the Clash.

Of course it wasn’t all his idea. The best bands are usually the sum of contradicting parts, and in the case of the Clash there was Mick Jones bringing his glam rock guitar style and the perfect voice to duet with Strummer’s own rasp, Paul Simonen with his love of reggae, Topper Headon providing terrific drumming, and manager Bernie Rhodes, the one-time Malcolm McLaren disciple turned heretic who was always pushing Strummer to look for the political angle. It could well be argued that much of Strummer’s idealism was learned from Rhodes, but one must learn idealism from someone. The point behind Strummer is that unlike so many others, he DID learn something of idealism, and he did quite frequently (but not always) put it to practice.

After London Calling the Clash made the sprawling three record set Sandinista, a record that was lyrically perhaps their most overtly political effort ever, but which sacrificed the red-hot throat grabbing musical passion of the first two albums for a more relaxed reggae-soaked presentation that seemed to dilute its fire. That the record was so impossibly long further watered its impact, with the result that most people admire it for the fact that the band was able and willing to change so much in such a short time, but few actually revere it as they do the earlier records.

By Combat Rock it may be that the Clash were believing their own press. Perhaps they felt that their message was important enough that commercial sacrifices had to be made to bring it to the masses, but in the end it’s hard to see what was accomplished by hit songs like "Rock The Casbah" or "Should I Stay Or Should I Go". These songs had good music and naff lyrics – by contrast the songs that did have good lyrics (like "Know Your Rights") had naff music.

The mythology of the Clash was towering by the time they folded, and it may be that Marcus Gray’s book The Last Gang In Town over-reaches in trying to debunk that myth. Regardless, its a worthy read to get a real sense of history about the group. But if the Sex Pistols can be rated a hall of fame caliber band on the basis of one great album, then certainly the Clash can be on the basis of two great ones and one very good. Groundbreaking as the Pistols were, they offered nothing but scathing condemnation of the status quo. On the other hand, the Clash in their best moments suggested where things might be taken as an alternative – perhaps not in any direct statement, but more as a spiritual thing. Even a song like "White Riot" suggested that something could be done, and that if it WAS done, things might be better.

Today, there are a million punk bands in the naked city. Most have nothing new to say, but at least they’re out there, trying, just wanting to play in the garage all night. They don’t feel like they have to have classical training to play rock and roll, and they feel like they’re succeeding if they get a few gigs in front of their friends. Bands today don’t all think it’s a liability to cut loose and play with some passion. In 1975 it looked like passion was finished. But thanks in no small part to people like Joe Strummer, passion is alive and well in the new millenium. We’re gonna miss you, Joe. You done well.