Spending most of my life in Lubbock, Texas means I knew who Joe Ely was as much as the rest of the world knows Buddy Holly. But what many outside of Texas don’t know is how Joe changed rock music for all of America.
Joe Ely had just released his album Honky Tonk Masquerade in 1978, and his band was playing at the Venue club in London. The Clash showed up to Joe’s gig and despite him not knowing who they were at the time, they knew all of his songs by heart, and after the gig ended up hanging out together backstage, which started one of music’s greatest friendships.
When you listen to The Clash’s Should I Stay Or Should I Go that’s Joe Ely and Joe Strummer singing the Spanish background lyrics.
“I ran into them accidentally in New York when they were cutting ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ and Strummer said, ‘Hey, help me with my Spanish.’ So me and Strummer and the Puerto Rican engineer sat down and translated the lyrics into the weirdest Spanish ever. Then we sang it all."
And one of the most iconic parts of the song where Mick sings “Split!” was because of Joe:
“When you listen to ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go,’ there’s a place in the song where Mick says, ‘Split.’ Me and Strummer had been yelling out the Spanish background lyrics and we had snuck up behind him as he was recording. We were behind a curtain, jumped out at him in the middle of singing, and scared the shit out of him. He looks over and gives us the dirtiest look and says, ‘Split!’ They kept that in the final version.”
Sadly a musical legend has passed away. Here’s the story from Austin’s KVUE:
And it was Joe Ely that showed The Clash around parts of Texas, and America. The Rock The Casbah video was filmed in the Texas countryside outside of Austin, because Joe lived in Austin and the band saw it looks similar to parts of the middle East, so they filmed the video there and stayed with Joe in Austin the whole time.
It was a Texas troubadour that brought punk to America, and toured with one of the biggest rock bands in history, changing the face of American rock music forever. Thank you, Joe! R.I.P.