Sun22Dec02 - Joe Strummer dies of heart attack in Somerset

[TonyGosling]

Just over a year after 9/11 - as I remember Joe was planning to do a Stop The War gig at the time he died.
In view of the suspicious 'heart attack' phenomena of varous enemies of the US Israeli Nazis - adding this as a suspicious death.
The post mortem, as we know, easy to fix.

Revitalized by his domestic life and enthused by collaborations with Black Grape (1996) and Fat Les (1998), Strummer assembled a new band—the Mescaleros—and in 1999 released Rock Art and the X-Ray Style. With its blend of R&B, Latino vibes, and African beats, Strummer had clearly found a new niche as an elder statesman of ‘world music’. Not that senior status diminished his vitality. During tours, band mates half his age took turns to stay up with him, as he quaffed red wine until dawn (the affectionate expression for this was ‘you've been Strummered’). The old hippy in him resurfaced at music festivals when he would establish his own encampment for friends and fans to meet and chat. In the late 1990s he also hosted a radio show, London Calling, for the BBC's World Service. Interest in the Clash continued with the release of a live album, From Here to Eternity, in 1999 and the airing of a documentary, Westway to the World, the following year. In 2001 Strummer, Jones, Simonon, and Headon received the Ivor Novello award from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors for the Clash's outstanding contribution to music. Strummer's renaissance continued with another album, Global A Go-Go, that same year. In 2002, with work in progress on a third Mescaleros record, Strummer joined up with ailing country legend Johnny Cash to record a memorable cover of Bob Marley's ‘Redemption song’.

On Sunday 22 December 2002 Strummer collapsed and died at his Somerset home. He had just taken his dogs for a walk and was sitting on the sofa in the living room. His post mortem revealed that he had suffered from an intra-mural coronary artery, a rare congenital condition whereby one of the heart's main blood vessels grows inside the muscle wall; the result was a fatal restriction of the circulation. It could have killed him much earlier. His death was a major news story across the world. The irony in this was that Strummer had remained largely unrecognized in Britain, except to a niche audience, even in the Clash's heyday. In part this was because he had never been a tabloid punk rocker like Sid Vicious, but it was also due to the Clash's refusal to appear on the main TV music show of the time, Top of the Pops, owing to its insistence that acts mime. The prominence given to his death was thus more a measure of his influence than a reflection of his celebrity. In the pantheon of politicized popular music, he was placed on a par with Guthrie, Dylan, Lennon, and Marley. During his public funeral service at Kensal Green cemetery on 30 December (a private ceremony took place later that day at West London crematorium) his coffin was adorned with a sticker that urged ‘question authority’. A last testament to his career was the release of the Mescaleros album Streetcore in 2003. As for his longer-term legacy, he may well be remembered as a leading advocate of multicultural society at a time when the racialism associated with Britain's imperial past was still rife.

Michael T. Thornhill
http://www.oxforddnb.com/templates/article.jsp?articleid=88710

He met Lucinda Clare (Luce) Henderson, née Tait (b. 1962), daughter of the architect Gavin Nicholas Tait, and they married in London on 31 May 1995. Strummer, Luce, and Luce's daughter, Eliza (b. 1992), from a previous marriage, resided at Ivy Cottage in Heckfield, Hampshire, before settling at Yalway Manor in Broomfield, Somerset, in 1997.
Rebirth and death