On a misty morning in April 1983, a black Morris Minor skidded to a stop in Blackheath, London, and out stepped the lead singer of The Clash.
Joe Strummer had come to run the London Marathon, and as he stripped off his sweats and began warming up, Steve Rapport—the photographer assigned to document the punk icon’s now legendary race—crossed the street to shake his hand. The rest, as they say, is history—and what a history. What follows is the story of a long-forgotten box of dusty snapshots, the chance resurrection of a charmed career in rock photography, and the dark and shameful secret Joe Strummer took with him to the grave—namely, did he or did he not stop off at a pub and then catch a bus to the finish line? We’ll never know. But what we do know is Steve was there that day to capture that first collision of punk rock and distance running, so we gave him a call at his New Orleans-based gallery on, funnily enough, the eve of International Clash Day.
Photos courtesy of Steve Rapport
‘I got a call from the Rolling Stone photo editor in New York, and she said, “Joe Strummer is running the London Marathon on Sunday—could you get a photo for us?”’
Steve, did you come up during the punk years?
No, no. Post-punk, I would say.
I was gonna ask if you attended the famous Sex Pistols show at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in ‘76.
No, I actually never saw The Sex Pistols. I saw The Clash a ton—and pretty much every other band—but Sex Pistols, every time I got tickets, they’d cancel, or else they’d change the date and location.
Bummer.
Yeah. So many Sex Pistols gigs were canceled.
But you have seen them all. Looking at your work here, you’ve shot The Clash, The Jam, Ramones, Kate Bush, Lemmy, Elvis Costello, The Cure, Miles Davis, Freddie Mercury and Queen, Bruce Springsteen, Siouxsie Sioux, Depeche Mode, Iron Maiden, The Pogues, AC/DC, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, Paul McCartney, Echo & the Bunnymen, Iggy Pop, Prince, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, David Bowie... The list is endless. Is there anyone you wish you’d shot but didn’t get a chance?
Yeah, Marvin Gaye. What a talent. That would have been an amazing experience.
Do you run?
Yeah, I’m a runner, but I’ve had to stop a bunch of times because I’ve got a fucked-up knee, but I still run. I can’t do what I used to do, but I try to do 5K a day, six days a week—
Holy shit. You don’t break that up with rest days?
Just Sunday.
Damn. Okay.
I used to race long-distance, and there was a time about eight years ago when I was nearly 60, I got into ultrarunning, and I was running a race every weekend for a whole year.
No shit?
Yeah, a lot of half marathons, marathons, ultras... There was a trail marathon I did, and one of the ultras was up in the mountains south of San Francisco, up in the redwoods.
Wait, so were you a runner when Joe ran the 1983 London Marathon?
Yeah, I was always a runner, but I didn’t run my hometown London Marathon until 1992. That was just before I moved to San Francisco.
What was your time?
Three hours and forty-two minutes. I also ran the S.F. and Marin marathons in 2016, and a 50K Ultra in and around Kings Mountain, near Woodside, California. That was also in 2016.
So, how did you come to shoot Joe at the marathon? Because I know you shot The Clash at the Lyceum in ‘81... You must’ve seen and shot The Clash a bunch, right?
Yeah, I saw The Clash at Victoria Park ‘Rock Against Racism’ in 1978... That wasn’t actually documented, but I know I was there. And then also in 1978, they played at Tiffany’s [nightclub] in Coventry, and I smuggled in my camera and took pictures—
How’d they turn out?
They’re really blurry, you know, smuggled-in-camera, the light was crap and it was my student days. I was 22, and I didn’t have a pass or anything. But people actually like those pictures because they’re from ‘78 and they’re kinda impressionistic... Then I shot [The Clash] on June 30, 1982, at Fair Deal... And I know that I went to see them at the Hollywood Palladium on June 19, ‘82. But I must have seen them at least another ten times between ‘78 and ‘82. I’d see them whenever I could.
When did you meet Joe?
Well, in June 1982, me and [music journalist] Johnny Waller, went from London to Hollywood with Bow Wow Wow for a cover feature with Sounds, and we stayed at the Sunset Marquis. It was just for a weekend, like, a two- or three-day rapid-fire adventure. So, The Clash were staying there too, and so were The [English] Beat. And I was actually friends with Ranking Roger and Dave [Wakeling] and the guys in The Beat—
Amazing.
—and Kid Creole and the Coconuts were staying there as well, so it was kinda wild. We had a football match in the parking lot, on concrete: The Beat and roadcrew against Bow Wow Wow and roadcrew, and I played for Bow Wow Wow and actually scored a goal.
Nice.
Yeah, it was a bicycle kick, and I remember being in mid-air thinking, ‘Concrete!’
[laughter]
And then I landed.
Hurt?
That hurt. Anyway, the point is The Clash were staying there as well, and they invited us to their gig at The Hollywood Palladium, so we went to that, and I have a picture of the outside of The Palladium, but I didn’t take pictures of the gig; I don’t know why. I guess they didn’t give me a photo pass. But Joe and Terry Chimes actually came to the Bow Wow Wow gig at Perkins Palace in Pasadena, and I got pictures of him and Terry backstage with the boys in the band. I also got a couple of frames of Joe and Annabella [Lwin] from Bow Wow Wow.
What about the London Marathon pics—Rolling Stone hit you up to shoot that, right?
Yeah. I think I only ever worked for them twice, maybe three times, and this was one of them. I got a call from the photo editor in New York, and she said, ‘Joe Strummer is running the London Marathon on Sunday—could you get a photo for us?’
‘It actually turns out that he was a runner in high school. He was a cross-country champion in high school... and there was one year—and it might’ve been 1983, when The Clash were touring America—he had everyone run every day.’
Just one photo?
Yeah, it was for ‘Random Notes’, so not a big deal to them; they probably paid me two hundred dollars or something, maybe not even that much. So, anyway, I said yes, but they didn’t say, ‘Here’s [manager] Bernie Rhodes’ phone number’ or ‘Here’s Joe’s phone number—arrange it with him—’
Wait, so they just expected you to find him among the tens of thousands of people at the race?
Yeah. Go find him—he’s at the London Marathon.
[laughter]
Easy enough.
Right. So, it was Sunday morning and it was raining, and I drove across South London—because I lived in Southwest London—and I drove on to Blackheath Common in the rain. Sixteen-and-a-half-thousand people ran the marathon that year, plus you’ve got all their friends and family, everyone wearing anoraks and rain jackets, you know, and there’s thousands of umbrellas...
You’re never gonna spot him.
So, I get there, park the car, grab my camera bag, get out, and I look across the street... And there’s Joe Strummer warming up.
Shut up.
Directly across the street from my car.
That’s incredible.
So, I go across to him, and I say, ‘Joe! Alright, mate. Remember we met in Hollywood last year?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah! Alright.’ I can’t remember the conversation, but I took a bunch of pictures of him. And it’s amazing because, in the black and white ones, he’s just surrounded by light... In an ocean of people. I’m actually looking at one of those photos right now, and he’s got all of this space around him, and there’s this one kid who’s kind of turning around looking at the camera while everyone else is looking in the other direction. And Joe’s just got this smile on his face; he’s wearing a cut-off 1977 Clash ‘Complete Control’ t-shirt; he’s got his reggae/Jamaican adidas wristband on, and those adidas shoes...
Zeniths?
I don’t remember what they were called [adidas Joggens] ... So, we get a bunch of pictures, and his mate was there... And I found out a few years ago his mate was named Alex Chetwynd, and he knew Gaby [Salter], Joe’s common-law wife. You can see her in some of the photos. She’s the light-haired woman with the camera. She was taking photos too... I often wonder if she got any photos of me taking photos that day... Anyway, then they walked off to start the race, and I thought I’d only got a couple of pictures, so I needed some shots of him actually running the marathon, y’know?
Yeah.
Like, I’ve done my job, but I should try to get some pictures of him running, which is going to be hard to do. So, I parked south of the river, walked across Tower Bridge, and waited on Lower Thames Street for what seemed like hours. It was cold, it was April, it was wet, and after a couple of hours, I was like, ‘Fuck it. I’m just gonna go home. I’ve obviously missed him or he’s not going to finish the race, so I should just go.’
That sucks.
So, in my recollection, I started packing my gear away, and then, way up the road, I see Joe Strummer with his bandy legs.
[laughter]
Great!
And I thought I’d just got a couple of frames of him—black and white. But then, years later, I managed to get some of my photos back from an agency. They sent me out this box of mostly crap. I was excited when I opened it, but it was mostly junk, bands no one had ever heard of or would be interested in, but interspersed were some sheets of kinda interesting pictures, like, the odd picture of Prince or something like that, but then I came across these color pictures of Joe running the marathon! And, honestly, I didn’t know or remember that I’d taken any color pictures of him running.
You had no idea?
None at all.
That’s amazing. And those are the color pictures that we all know.
Yeah! I’d taken a whole roll of color pictures in addition to the black and white. It was like finding unknown pictures. So, I started scanning them, and then I posted one on Twitter and it went viral, got over a million views, and I sold a shit-ton of prints. And that’s what really started my career back up again.
That is so cool.
Yeah, so I started getting back into photography, putting stuff online, selling online, and then opening up the gallery, and all of that led me to being a fulltime photographer again.
And the weird thing is, had you decided to pack up your gear a few minutes earlier, you might not have caught Joe coming around the corner!
I still would have had the ones from the start of the marathon, but you’re right, the pictures of him toward the end of the marathon around mile twenty... So, Rolling Stone used a color picture from before the race, and the NME used one from the end of the race, and I think that’s the one your man, Brice, found online all those years later when he made the SATISFY shirts.
‘The magazine Stepping Out interviewed him and asked about his training regiment, and he said, “Well, I didn’t run a step for three weeks before the marathon and stayed up all night the night before and drank ten pints.”’
Did anyone else get snaps of Joe running?
No one else got photos of Joe running the marathon, and I think he was pissed off about that.
Why?
Well, he thought it was going to be a press event as well, like, he’d get great media coverage for it, but he didn’t.
That’s interesting because famous people run marathons all the time these days, but back in 1983, it must’ve been novel to have a rock star show up to a race, right?
Yeah, it definitely was.
Was it punk?
It was kind of punk. It actually turns out that he was a runner in high school. He was a cross-country runner, and in his biography, Redemption Song, Chris Salewicz wrote that Joe was a cross-country champion in high school, and he also said that there was one year—and it might’ve been 1983 when The Clash were touring America—he had everyone run every day.
Really?
Yeah, yeah. Actually, I’ve got a tear sheet in front of me right now—I think it’s from Smash Hits—and it says, ‘The Marathon Man’, and there’s two pictures of Joe that I took: one before the race and one toward the end. And the picture before the race is captioned ‘Here’s Joe Strummer in good spirits at the start of the London Marathon,’ and the end photo caption reads, ‘and then again—Mohican beginning to wilt a bit—26.25 miles later. Joe was on The Sun newspaper team, who were running in aid of Leukaemia Research, and was it seemed, just about the only entrant who wasn’t either a medical student or someone in a large woolly hat shouting “Hello, mum!” The Clash singer was “too knackered” to talk about it, but we know he finished in 4 hours and 13 minutes.’
Is it true that he ducked into a pub for a pint along the way?
Okay, a couple of things. The magazine Stepping Out interviewed him and asked about his training regiment, and he said, ‘Well, I didn’t run a step for three weeks before the marathon and stayed up all night the night before and drank ten pints.’
[laughter]
Yeah, right.
And then he said, ‘But you probably shouldn’t publish that because only me and Hunter S. Thompson could do that,’ or words to that effect. So, this became the myth: the night before the London Marathon, Joe was up all night, he didn’t train, and he drank ten pints.
Outrageous.
Well, I’ve been trying to correct that impression. In the Rolling Stone piece—and these are quotes attributed to Joe— it says, ‘I took the race seriously, I trained every day; I liked it because I’d go out in the morning and I could run and people wouldn’t bother me, and I could write songs in my head,’ and he even said he swore off drinking.
Okay...
And Rolling Stone didn’t have a journalist interviewing him at the London Marathon, so either I got the quotes for them and called them in—which I don’t think I did—or maybe they had a call with Joe after the race, but what makes me think they called him is this: Rolling Stone wrote that he ran it in four-hours and thirty-minutes, and that sounds like they’re on the phone and he’s said ‘four-hours thirteen’ and they’ve heard ‘four-hours thirty.’ Anyway, that must be right. If Joe said that, if he said he trained, he worked out, he took it seriously... A little while ago, I had a chat with Alex Chetwynd, who was a serious runner and a better runner than Joe, and a faster runner than Joe—
What did he say?
Well, he said, ‘I always wondered how Joe ran it fifteen minutes faster than me.’ And he said, ‘The drinking thing—what I remember is we were up drinking martinis the night before, and I went to bed at about 2 AM. I said, “Joe, we’ve got a race in the morning, and we have to get up really early.” So, I went to bed. I don’t know what time Joe went to bed, but in the morning, we drove off to the marathon in his Morris Minor.’
A Morris Minor?
Joe had a souped-up Morris Minor and he didn’t have a license, so he used to get nicked all the time. They’d be like, ‘Oh, it’s Joe Strummer again.’
[laughter]
But Alex said that Gaby drove the car and took them to Blackheath Common. And then he said, ‘Well, you know, him doing it in four-hours-thirteen, I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that maybe he stopped in the pub on the way for a swift half [pint], and then I think he might’ve hopped on the bus.’
[laughter]
No way.
Look, that’s what Alex told me. He was there. He ran it with Joe and would’ve gone home with Joe at the end of the race. They would’ve talked about it and he would’ve been taking the piss out of Joe—
And asking how he could’ve possibly got such a better time.
Yeah. And I don’t know why Alex would make that up, and if that’s what he thought, then there’s a very good chance that that’s what happened.
‘It’s incredible to think Joe Strummer ran the ‘81 Paris Marathon in two hours and forty-three minutes.’
Oh, Joe.
But I don’t know. I don’t know what the myth is or what is true. And I don’t know if Joe was just winding that journalist up by saying he was awake all night drinking ten pints and the whole him and Hunter S. Thompson bit. He could’ve just been taking the piss, but now it’s accepted fact. The thing is, that ten pints quote is not from the London Marathon.
No?
Categorically, it’s from the Paris Marathon, either in ’81 or ’82.
He ran Paris as well?
Twice, yeah.
Oh, I thought he was a one-and-done in London.
No, I believe he ran three marathons in total.
Okay, so we could add to the myth and just mention here that Joe Strummer ran the ‘81 Paris Marathon in two hours and forty-three minutes.
[laughter]
Perfect.
I’ll slip in a pull quote and get the rumor started.
[laughter]
I had an idea to make it my life’s work to rehabilitate Joe’s running image, and then it turns out, well, maybe he did stop in for a half, and maybe he did jump on a bus, but I credit him for making the effort—
And raising money for Leukemia Research.
—right. And, you know, like you said, a punk running a marathon was a pretty big deal back then. It was good for running and for punks.
Okay, final question.
Okay.
In 2016, Henry Rollins said in an interview, ‘This is not a time to be dismayed—this is punk rock time. This is what Joe Strummer trained you for.’
Right.
What do you think Joe would say if he were here today?
He’d be like, ‘Again?! What the fuck?! What did we do it for? What was all that for? All the power in the hands of the people who are rich enough to buy it—while we walk the street too chicken to even try it.’
Is it punk rock time again?
It’s punk rock time.
