WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif.--As one half of the Clash songwriting brain trust, Joe Strummer [ tickets ] seamlessly blended elements of reggae, rock, rockabilly and ska into smart punk rock songs. The Clash put an indelible stamp on the music world during its 10-year run, mapping out a blueprint that the likes of Rancid and Green Day would take to the top of the charts in the '90s.

Strummer still draws from a deep pool of influences. In writing the songs that would become Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros' 11-track "Global A Go-Go" album, Strummer turned his keen political eye on the impact of a globalized economy, ("Johnny Appleseed"), the plight of Chinese immigrants who suffocated in a truck en route to England ("Shaktar Donetsk") and on a more local level, the frustrations inherent in intimate relationships ("Bummed Out City").

Only a couple weeks shy of his 49th birthday, Strummer sat down with liveDaily's Colin Devenish on the patio of Hollywood's Chateau Marmont to talk about the new record.

Tell me about the tour you’re on right now.

The world’s first international in-store tour. To wit, we have played London, Leeds, New York, Toronto, Chicago, San Francisco and now L.A.--tomorrow the world. If you can’t get on the radio, you’ve got to pull something out of the bag. The only thing we could think of was--as soon as the record came out--to try and do some in-stores, moving as fast as we could. We’re gigging in-stores--we’re not just standing around--and then afterwards, we sign stuff. The full kebab. We have lost a percussion player to Moby, but we’ll get him back on the 4th of August.

How do you write songs as Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros?

Everyone co-wrote this record. If I could sort of sketch in the average day, Scott Shields and Martin Slattery might start some weird groove up, and then Richard Flack and Pablo Cook might put some beats there on it, and then other people might start adding a little bit of violin. Nobody knows at any point what they’re doing, never mind my saying, "Let’s do an Indian track," or whatever. Nobody at any point really has any idea of what’s going on. That’s the best bit about us, is that we don’t know what we’re doing, so it allows us to sort of give birth to itself somehow.

Then we discuss. "What should we do with it?" Or, "What is it?" While this is going on, I’m thinking, "What if any lyrics could be on it." I try to get inspired by the music, the atmosphere of the music--the whole feel of the track points to where the lyric is. Then I try to get the lyrics on pretty quick so that you can really see what you’re doing, what needs to be a solo or some other instrumentation or--if someone’s got a killer riff--where to put it in. Get the vocal on there, then you can see how it’s shaping up really. The shape is really apparent--whether it’s any good or not, a cuts-the-mustard type of thing.

This was a spontaneous session. We went in for five days. We immediately started to rock and roll, as they say, and kept rolling like that. The only thing I had before we went in for the session was "Bummed Out City," and that was kind of in bits and pieces. That was the only thing I had. It just began to be a spontaneous get-together.

How does writing in a group compare with working on your own?

Unless you’re Mozart or Beethoven, from what I can see, six heads are better than one. One of those six heads is going to think of something you’d never thought of, or would never got around to, or never approached from that angle. So I’m thinking, unless you’re Mozart, you’re going to up the ante for the listener.

How do you think these songs would have been different if you had been left to your own devices?

Got no idea, really. More boring. Flatter. More one-dimensional. You’ve got to let the music people do the music. I really feel my strongest quadrant would be lyric-writing, because I can’t play the guitar for f---, or sugar--whatever you say here. You might as well get the experts to hone in and bring their expertise to bear on the final thing, instead of hogging it all for yourself.

Was there a song you wrote for this record that dictated the direction the album would go in?

There's a guy called Michael Horovitz. He put on Allen Ginsberg at the Royal Albert Hall in 1965, where you can mark the beginning of the British underground scene of the '60s--it started that particular night. He still puts on shows. He puts on something called the Poetry Olympics, and we went to one. We played there in November 2000. And that gave me the vibe, because we went there stripped down, with congas and acoustics. It was kind of a beatnik evening--there weren’t any road managers or that kind of stuff. That really gave me the feeling of, "This is the way to go," or "Let’s relax into this for a bit."

Sometimes you get tired of the big guitars and the walloping drums and all that stuff. It can get boring. I was looking for a break in the weather, or some ways to change things up a bit. And doing that beatnik Poetry Olympics evening gave us the feeling to go onto this record and try a little bit of grooving around, whether we kept to it or not--we changed our minds several times.

Throughout your career, your lyrics have had a political bent. How do you stay informed? What do you pay attention to stay up on current affairs?

I find that very difficult. Every paper in Britain has got a slant to it, like everywhere, I guess. I find it difficult to get any pure information at all. Everything, you have to filter it thought the filter they’re filtering it through. So I try and read both sides of the press and try to get a glimmer of what actually might be going on out there in the world. I think all the information is tainted, therefore all our opinions are tainted. I find it very difficult. I find the world confusing now. Over in Britain, we have a very confusing situation. Nobody knows if left is right or right is left or up is down. I give up.

Were there specific situations you were responding to on this album?

Yeah. One day we woke up and the lead story was 58 Chinese people were discovered suffocated to death in the back of a container lorry. And every day they dug that tunnel for the train. And there’s people hanging onto that train underneath it, on top of it, on the side of it. Death-defying routine.

"Bummed Out City" was triggered by having a row with my wife.

The song "Minstrel Boy" has a very traditional feel to it. Do you feel a kinship with English folk singers and troubadours?

That’s Irish, that tune. That’s ancient history. The composer’s friend was executed by the British for being an Irish freedom fighter in the early 1800s, and he wrote that song as a lament for his friend. Maybe that’s the power of it--it’s really heartfelt. We didn’t use the lyric--it’s a great lyric, too, two-verse lyric.

I wanted to do that in 1983. I remember learning that tune laboriously off of sheet music. It took me about three years. It seemed right to bring it out. I was totally unprepared for what was going to happen to it.

Did you teach the song to the band on guitar?

You know, not being a player, you can sit back a bit. Musicians are often unaware of what they’ve done. It’s good to have somebody in the room saying, "Hey, that’s great." When I said it was great, they all thought I was insane. ... We were trying to make a B-side in fact. Sometimes at the end of the session, [record label people] go, "Hey, any extra tracks for a B-side?" So I just suggested, at the end of the session, "Let’s record that three minutes and 20 seconds ... It’s going to be really useful." And they went on for 21 minutes, and I said, "Stop, that’s great."

Do you ever feel like you're in competition with your past?

Not really, because it’s so long ago. The past is past. I always feel to live in the present. Blank piece of paper is always the same. You’ve got to fill the blank piece of paper. It’s crazy.

You’ve got to face up to your past. It can feel like a millstone in that situation, but mainly, I feel proud about it. It’s a good spur to try and top that. I don’t really dwell upon it. You can’t throw yourself off too much. It’s great to live in the moment and not think too much about the past. It can really drag you down. I would say the past is like treacle. It can get stuck on your feet if you go back. Can’t get in and out that easy. Dylan said, "Don’t look back."