The day Clash frontman Joe Strummer ran the London Marathon
The incredible story of how Clash frontman Joe Strummer ran the London Marathon, as told by friend and photographer Steve Rapport
‘AS I WAS ABOUT TO LEAVE, I SEE JOE TRUNDLING ALONG WITH HIS BANDY LEGS AND ADIDAS SHOES. I GOT MY CAMERA OUT, SHOT A FEW FRAMES AND THAT’S IT’
The story goes back to 1982, when I went to LA with [music journalist] Johnny Waller. We were sent by
Sounds magazine to do a feature on Bow Wow Wow, who were finishing their US tour. They were staying at the Sunset Marquee in Hollywood, a bit of a rock’n’roll hotel. The Clash were also staying there, so I got to meet Joe Strummer and we went out drinking. I’m not much of a drinker, but we went to a place called Barney’s Beanery. We had a drinking contest where you had to name the first album you’ve ever bought. Mine and Joe’s was Every Picture Tells a
Story by Rod Stewart, so we bonded a little over that. I was a bit starstruck, as I’d been a huge Clash fan ever since I was a student, and this was only my second year of being a full-time professional photographer.
I lived in Clapham, southwest London, and, out of the blue, I got a call from Rolling Stone, who I’d never worked for. They said, ‘Joe Strummer’s running the [1983] London Marathon on Sunday. Can you get a picture of him for us?’ I don’t know if I was that naïve, but I said, ‘Yes.’ They didn’t give me his PR’s or manager’s number to arrange a meeting spot, so I drove from Clapham to Blackheath that Sunday morning. It was drizzling and there were about 20,000 people there. I parked at Blackheath, got out of the car – and there was Joe Strummer warming up – 10 metres from my car. If you look at the pictures, everyone else is wrapped up in rain jackets and then there’s Joe in a Clash vest. Legend has it, someone said, ‘Nice T-shirt, mate,’ not realising it was him.
I got a couple of frames before he went off to run the race. I thought I should get a few pics of him running, so I drove over to Tower Bridge and ended up on Lower Thames Street, which is around mile 21. I waited in the rain and thought I must have missed him, or that he wasn’t going to finish. As I was about to leave, I see Joe trundling along with his bandy legs and Adidas shoes. I got my camera out, shot a few frames and that’s it.
I processed the film, sent the black-and-white off to Rolling Stone, which I think NME also used. That pic lived on through the internet. People were fairly familiar with it, although some thought it was from the Paris Marathon rather than London. There was this story about him being told to disappear by [record producer] Bernie Rhodes, as tickets weren’t selling well for some Clash gigs in Scotland. So Joe went off to France, hooked up with a woman and together they ran the Paris Marathon.
I’m from east London and ran the marathon in April 1992. In June that year, I moved to San Francisco and have been there ever since. My library stayed at my friend’s garage in Oxfordshire, so I didn’t have my old pics, and I stopped being a photographer in around 1994. Years later, I got a call from a fashion label called Satisfy, who wanted to use my Strummer picture on a T-shirt.
I used to syndicate my images through London Features International. They went out of business and I think were taken over by Photoshop, who, let’s say, weren’t the best people to deal with. So earlier this year I gave up on them and said, ‘You must have some of my cull that you got from LFI – can you ship it to me?’ They shipped four boxes of colour transparencies to me. It cost me $200. Mostly, it was junk: pics of bands no one would be interested in. But among the pics of obscure bands were shots of Joe running the London Marathon – in colour. I have no recollection of taking colour pics. I was in tears when I saw them. I scanned them, got them cleaned up and put them up on Twitter and Instagram. The one of Joe waving at mile 21 just took off. It’s had 900,093 impressions on Twitter. I’m hoping it will get to a million but I put an ‘F word’ in it, so Twitter won’t allow me to promote it.
I put a few of the pics on Instagram. I know everyone’s skint through the lockdown, so I said, ‘I’ll make this picture available for a reduced price, I think it was $115, including shipping anywhere in the world.’ I said I’d offer that to the first 20 people but I did about 60.
Why did Joe want to run a marathon? Apparently, he was a cross-country champion in school and it sounds like the kind of thing he’d do. He wasn’t one to follow an expected path. Joe was the son of a diplomat, but he lived the punk life. Quite a few of the punks following me are runners. I don’t know if it has anything to do with Joe, but any self-respecting punk knows Joe ran marathons. So they know it’s cool to run.