Revolution rock: when Joe Strummer, lead singer of the Clash, died one year ago this month, the music world lost a true visionary. With the release of Strummer's final album, two legends discuss the legacy of one of rock 'n' roll's most innovative, irrepressible, and influential artists

ELTON JOHN: So, Bono. As you know, this is the first anniversary of Joe Strummer's death. To mark the occasion, I wanted to take a moment to talk with you about the huge importance of his work, which was very political and experimental, as well as Streetcore (Hellcat), the album he was in the midst of recording with his band, the Mescaleros, at the time of his death. I once heard you say that were it not for the Clash, there would never have been a U2. What did Joe and his work mean to you?

BONO: Well, without exaggeration, the Clash were the first rock 'n' roll band that we ever saw perform. It was in 1977, in Dublin, on the Clash's Get Out of Control tour--in fact, we wrote a tune called "Out of Control" after seeing that show. I was 17 at the time, and I remember being frightened because there was a lot of aggression at the gate. But I was also elated. I was in awe at the sight of their clothes--they were wearing very militant guerilla-style, art-attack gear--and there was an atmosphere in the crowd that felt like something was going to happen, like somebody could die or a revolution could start. It was one of those nights that just turns your world upside down.

EJ: What was Joe like back then?

B: When I was a teenager, some of the punk-rock stuff that was kicking around at the time was kind of daft, a little bit silly--you know, middle-class kids pretending that they were working class. But Joe seemed to be singing from a different place--the kind of place that I suppose Bob Dylan sings from, or John Lennon sang from. He was part town crier and part storyteller. The Sex Pistols were punk, and I loved them because of the sort of Richard III character that John Lydon was playing, and just the sheer noise of the guitars; but what the Clash did was more like roots music. They were a garage band, but they were also fucking around with reggae, rockabilly, and bluegrass--Joe just put all these different ideologies into the blender. There was this idea that came across in their music that it is possible, as Patti Smith later said, to "wrestle the world from fools"--that the world is much more malleable than you think.

EJ: They also dabbled in old-fashioned American pop, with songs like "Should I Stay or Should I Go" on Combat Rock [1982]. You can hear the reggae roots of that song, and then suddenly it turns into this great pop song.

B: They did something that was very, very uncool in Britain in the mid-1980s: They fell in love with American music. I think the original rock 'n' roll music of the 1950s was important for Joe because it was the zeitgeist when he was a teenager. You know, the reason that people get into music is never an intellectual one. It's because they've heard your piano playing or they've heard you singing a tune, and it's gone into their hearts when they're young; it's made them think that melodies are something you can hang onto in your life--you certainly had that effect on me. The striking thing about the Clash was that, as universal as their appeal grew to be, all the influences in their music could be attributed to a few square miles of London. When I think of them, I think of Ladbroke Grove, in West London--I can see the doorways and the record shops; I can remember the smell of the Jamaican restaurants. It was a long way from fish and chips. [laughs] It was also exciting to see a British band break through, which hadn't happened since the Who and the Rolling Stones.

EJ: Did you ever have a chance to meet Joe?

B: I met him a few times. He was very nice to me, and nice about me, though it must have been irritating for him--we were a really young, gauche, unsauced group when we started off. With U2, I always felt like we had a lot going wrong, but ultimately, we had something special. Lots of bands around us were much better-looking, better players, better songwriters-they had everything. But we had the "it"--whatever "it" might be--and we built around that. That idea comes from the Clash--that you could come out of the audience, get up onstage, grab the microphone, and if you had something to say, then you had a valid reason for being there. That idea changed my life: It's the reason that U2 exists today.

EJ: There was always something to take away from Joe's lyrics. He was always trying to raise awareness of what was going on in the world, both socially and politically.

B: You know, that aspect of their music really had an impact on me. The Clash got terrible criticism for Sandinista! [1980]. But were it not for that record, I would have never heard about Nicaragua or ended up going there and meeting with Daniel Ortega, the leader of the revolution, and Ernesto Cardenal, a minister of culture, or ended up writing "Bullet the Blue Sky," because my mind was blown by the experience. Those were the kinds of doors that the Clash--and Joe, in particular--opened up for me, and there were worlds behind them.

EJ: What sort of influence do you think the Clash had on the political bands that came afterwards, like Pearl Jam or Public Enemy?