Here’s What Happened When I Met My Hero
Confession: I was named after Joe Strummer, leader of the 70’s punk band The Clash. My real name is…well, you can probably guess. The reason why you know me as Kelly is ‘cause I blog about some seriously personal stuff here, like my battle with and recovery from an eating disorder, getting sober before I turned 21, and endless stumbles and lessons learned from perilous romantic entanglements. I’m not down with being Google-able in that way—and I’m sure you understand. That being said, I got to meet my namesake out of sheer NYC serendipity when I was an 18-year-old freshman at NYU.
It all started when I was three months old. Joe was giving an interview at a radio station in Philadelphia. My parents but me in a little carrier and drove over there posthaste and waited outside. When Joe came out my parents said: “Joe! Joe! We love you! We named our kid after you!” Joe said, “Awww, little Joe,” and rubbed my head. Then my mom said, “No, it’s a girl. We named her…”
Fast forward 18 years. By this time, I’m a major Joe Strummer fan in my own right. Joe’s music was deeply political. He was an advocate for the lower, forgotten middle class. He has one of the grittiest, most haunting, instantly identifiable voices in rock music, and the range of The Clash’s sound over their short catalog of five records is impressive. Punk, reggae—the poet Allen Ginsberg even reads poetry on their album Combat Rock. So one night I’m at the Beauty Bar on 14th Street (I know, I know, I should have been at my dorm studying), and the owner says, “Hey, you know who’s here tonight? DJ Scratchy. He used to tour with The Clash and now he’s touring with Joe’s new band. You should meet him.” So, I met Scratchy, and I told him the story about “meeting” Joe back when I was a newborn baby. Scratchy loved the story, said I should meet Joe, and put me on the guest list for the show the next night in Brooklyn.
I told EVERYONE I knew that I was going to meet Joe Strummer. Excited doesn’t even get close to describing how I felt that night. I got to the venue and laughed when I gave the door guy my name and he looked at me like I was a nut. The show was killer. I mean, out of this world. When they ended their set, I hung around a little barricade that separated the crowd from the backstage area. I saw Scratchy, he said hello, and then, “Give me a minute.. Gonna try and get you in.” Try?! Uh oh. I waited and waited. It wasn’t looking good. This can’t be happening, I thought. I finally gave up and went to the bar next door. A drunk fireman started hitting on me and suddenly I decided that this was the worst night of my life.
But then! No more than five minutes later I felt a tap on my shoulder and it was Scratchy. He said, “We’re going to Three of Cups”—a bar in the East Village—”for the after party. My friend’s waiting outside to drive us. Let’s go.” Then I heard this weird chorus of people—angels?—singing “Hallelujah.” We got to the party and the rest is history. Joe and his bandmates were charmed by me. I was just a kid, But I could hold shop in conversations about music with the best of them, (I did grow up in my dad’s record store after all), and they loved that I was carrying around a copy of Paradise Lost (I was reading it for school, and the subway ride out to the show in Brooklyn was far!).
Joe was doing five nights in Brooklyn, and he told me to come out for another show. I brought my BFF Tina this time, and she had the brilliant idea that I should give Joe my driver’s license to “prove” I was named after him—but really just for him to have a memento commemorating my parents’ over-the-top love for him. Then Bob Gruen—a famous rock photographer best known for his pics of John Lennon—took my picture with Joe, who was holding up my license. I knew I would have bragging rights for years—scratch that, for the rest of my natural life. Tina and I finally called it a night around 5:30 AM and finished off the fun at a 24-hour diner, going over all the details of our night hanging out with Joe Strummer and his band.
And then, ten months later, Tina was at a rock festival in Japan. She got backstage (God we’re good, no?). There was Joe Strummer. She approached him, said, “I met you in New York when you played at Saint Anne’s Warehouse. I was with my friend who’s named after you!” And then Joe reaches into his pocket, pulls out his wallet, and takes my drivers license out.
Joe died suddenly, that same year, of complications from a heart condition. I guess staying out until daylight—in your 50s, no less—takes its toll. Needless to say, I felt extremely lucky to have met my hero before he died.
