Joe Strummer - Glastonbury 1999 (2025)

Following the disbandment of The Clash in the mid-1980s, for almost a decade (a period which Strummer himself described as the ‘wilderness years’) not much occurred in Joe Strummer’s career. A handful of appearances in certain cult movies was augmented by some soundtrack work, and Joe even joined The Pogues for a year. But in the mid-to-late 1990s, Strummer gathered top-flight musicians into a backing band he called The Mescaleros. Strummer and the band signed with Mercury Records, and released their first album in 1999, Rock Art and the X-Ray Style. A tour of England, Europe, and North America soon followed. Joe was later to comment; ‘This is my Indian summer ... I learnt that fame is an illusion and everything about it is just a joke. I'm far more dangerous now, because I don't care at all’. One of the finest live appearances The Mescaleros made during their ’99 tour took place on June 26th at that year’s Glastonbury Festival. Playing a set just short of an hour’s duration, the band performed a tight mix of new tracks mixed with Clash classics, which delighted an expectant crowd of fans, festival eccentrics and almost everyone in-between. Just over a month after Glastonbury, The Mescaleros were in Japan, and on 1st August played a stunning set at the Fuji Rock Festival in Yuzawa, Nigata. With both these appearances recorded for live FM radio broadcast, they now feature on this superb new CD.