JOE STRUMMER – LOVE KILLS (CBS RECORDS)
The first time that I heard this song was during a club scene in the movie Wired, the much derided John Belushi biopic starring Michael Chiklis and based on the book by Bob Woodward of Watergate fame. Around the same time I would also have watched Sid & Nancy starring Gary Oldman and being in my early teens I was suddenly choosing some very flawed and hedonistic idols. And “Love Kills” was part of the soundtrack for both.
I must concede that I never noticed “Love Kills” in Sid & Nancy and for a very long time I knew the song but did not know that it was a work by Joe Strummer. And as far as post-Clash output goes, this is easily one of the best songs recorded.
Probably holding more in common with Big Audio Dynamite than The Clash, “Love Kills” is a stomping with large guitar licks that sound like they could easily be coming from a machine while the drums are of the big echoing eighties variety. On that description things could easily have gone very wrong but with Strummer driving the bus that record just has it.
Any song that ever contains the word “love” in its title is always going to be subject to vulnerability and generally a higher risk of running into cliché. And while some might say Strummer does fall foul of that here, all in all this is a song that remains solid, hardy and active. The textures woven are the kind to make a person move both internally and externally.
With lyrics that also relate to drugs and sirens this marked the retention of a punk legacy untarnished.
Thesaurus moment: affection.
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