How Joe Strummer doomed his own original song on the U.K. singles chart

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how Joe Strummer left The 101ers — the pub rock band he started with fellow squatters in London — in late May 1976 to join the punk rock revolution by forming The Clash with Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Topper Headon, and a guitarist named Keith Levene.

Levene’s story is interesting. He was instrumental in persuading Strummer to abandon The 101ers for what became The Clash. Yet Levene himself soon became disillusioned with the new band’s direction and would depart by September 1976. (Less than two years later, Levine would form post-punk Public Image Ltd with Sex Pistols vocalist John Lydon.)

For Strummer, the timing of his departure from the retro 101ers was fortuitous: Pub rock had peaked in the U.K. and punk was about to explode, thanks primarily to the powerful and primeval live performances of the Sex Pistols.

For Chiswick Records, which signed The 101ers to a recording deal just two weeks before, Strummer’s destiny-inspired exit was considerably less fortuitous. The label, formed in 1975, was set to release the band’s first single, a Strummer original titled Keys To Your Heart. The song had become a part of the band’s live act; now there would be no live act, and no band. This is why all record company executives have liquor cabinets in their offices.

The cruel irony is that Levene apparently sealed the deal following a 101ers show at the Golden Lion pub on May 30, 1976 — by serenading Strummer with the song Chiswick was planning to release the next day! In this 2013 interview, Levene recalls:

“Joe had so much sincerity and motivation. He was the best front man on the scene. Everyone knew it. So Bernard (future Clash manager Bernie Rhodes) and I went to a gig one night and we approached Joe and suggested he come around to Davis Road. Shortly after that, it was me and Joe in a room together…I’m facing him at close range, right in his face, and playing a bunch of tunes on my Les Paul Deluxe. I then played ‘Keys To Your Heart,’ one of Joe’s songs, to him. That nailed it. He said he would join us.”

More like rip out your heart, amirite Chiswick? The 101ers played their final gig on June 5, never knowing whether their new single was the break the band needed.

That would have been highly unlikely. While the chorus to Keys To Your Heart is very catchy, the guitars chunk along to good effect, and there’s decent band energy throughout the recording, the sound The 101ers was making was outdated, and Strummer knew it.

Check out Keys To Your Heart below: