Joe Strummer: The Leo Connection
One of the astrological aspects that sets the punk movement apart from its musical counterparts in the 60s and early 70s is a sub-generational shift from Uranus in Cancer to Uranus in Leo. The astrological chart for the United States as a whole is heavily influenced and populated by Cancerian planets – that’s what makes the nation conservative at its core. Cancer is anything but revolutionary: it’s all about hearth and home, nurturing and providing life. Leo is the sign of revolution and change.
The spirit of ’76 was pure punk. Leo was no longer interested in disassembling purely American culture – the sign had much bigger targets in its cross hairs. It wanted to take it all down.
Joe Strummer was born at the tail end of Leo, but unlike his younger Clash mates, Paul Simonon, Mick Jones and Topper Headon, Strummer was definitely a baby boomer. Strummer was weaned on sixties idealism. He was at the center of a collective in London, where he helped stage the takeover of an abandoned building and started a squatters commune, out of which The 101ers were born.
The 101ers were an amalgam of Strummer’s love of rockabilly, folk and world music. But the group was short-lived as soon as Strummer met Bernie Morrison, an ambitious manager who sculpted the vision of punk with nearly as much impact and verve as Malcolm McClaren. Once Strummer met Morrison, he wasn’t content to slum it with the 101ers any longer. With his Sun in Leo, Strummer was into power and stardom – so much so that he jumped right onto the mystery train to the limelight, intuitively knowing that punk was the ticket to the stardom he so hungrily desired. This move is evident in The Future Is Unwritten Julian Temple’s biopic of Strummer’s life. In it, the dismay of Strummer’s ex-band mates is palpable. While one can tell that they still loved him, there’s also a real sense of betrayal – especially when he would no longer even acknowledge them in public. Punk Rock Joe was too cool for school, and he was playing the new game with an air of defiant indifference.
Strummer’s musical DNA is displayed in full on the film’s soundtrack. From Eddie Cochran to Rachid Taha, rockabilly to rai, the influences are all there. In the middle of the mix is “Black Sheep Boy,” a song by ’60s bard Tim Harden, which harkens back to Strummer’s boomer roots and sheds some light on his position in his own generation – he was a black sheep amongst a collective of black sheep. It was his destiny to be one of the few boomers who crossed over the River Styx to the dark side of a new musical and cultural form of self-expression.
Virgos tend to be blessed with young and boyish looks throughout most of their lives and with both Mercury and Venus in Virgo on his star chart, Strummer was the recipient of this blessing. The alignment also gave Strummer a penetrating mind, one unafraid of traveling deep into dark, musical and political territories, as he did on the sprawling and powerful Sandinista, which explored the nuances of rebel culture and the politics of power from a populist perspective.
Strummer’s success in the States can in some ways be attributed to his Saturn in Libra, which extols and works hard towards freedoms and rights. Strummer’s fiery odes to liberty did not fall on deaf ears in the US. Songs like “White Riot,” which could be thoroughly misconstrued as agit-prop for “The National Front,” were a welcome broadside against the stifling Carter era, with its dysfunctional response to the hostage crisis, record interest rates and Soviet-style gas pump lines. As Reagan took office, Strummer’s message had and even broader appeal; Sandinista became the multi-culti backdrop of dissent for Ronnie’s favorite little war. Ultimately, Saturn in Libra became Strummer’s “right” to pass freely through the vast, cultural landscape of The United States.
Was there an element of excess in his chart? Of course! Strummer wouldn’t have been an archetypal rocker and rebel if there wasn’t. His Mars opposed Jupiter and Mars also opposed Pluto (which typically represents power + drugs).
What we are left with was an incredibly unique persona, born under the stars of the ’60s, influenced deeply by the collective gestalt of that era. Like a chameleon, he shed his skin, recast in leather and fury as a true punk rock icon.
