Having mythologised his life, he set about mythologising The Clash as towerblock dwelling anarchists who liked to drink, fight and hang out with the kids. All through his career and life he was drawn to the idea of the gang, and all that entailed. No band wrote more songs about themselves than The Clash.

A new biography . . . at 650 pages it's unlikely there will ever need to be another . . . is an exhaustive treatment of a life that ended far too early in 2002. Strummer was on one of his occasional creative upswings, his latest band The Mescaleros capturing much of the spirit of The Clash with greater musical skill, as they showed in some memorable gigs in Dublin. Strummer visited Ireland several times with The Clash . . . a fabled gig in the Trinity exam hall inspired a whole wave of bands to form, as well as providing the Evening Press with its first punk fury headline after someone defecated in the corner of the hall.

It was before their second gig, at the long-demolished Top Hat in Dun Laoghaire in 1978, that I met Strummer. Ticketless, a group of us were hanging around outside hours before the gig when Strummer stuck his head out the stage door and beckoned us in. The band's beer and sandwiches were shared, a magical experience that, the book explains, was a regular event at every Clash gig. Joe was funny and engaging, eager to know what the scene was like in Dublin and mischievous in defying the promoter to ensure we were allowed stay.

On their next visit, the Combat Rock tour, they set a notable milestone in Dublin musical history. It was the first gig for which credit card receipts were bigger than cash takings . . . which may seem an insignificant detail now but in grim early '80s Ireland a sign of how mainstream they, and their audience, had become.

It is hard to overestimate how important and exciting The Clash were at their peak. While they emerged from punk . . . and produced one of its best albums in The Clash and singles in 'White Riot' . . .

the band's musical and lyrical inquisitiveness meant they rapidly escaped the pigeonhole. They employed the Blue Oyster Cult producer to make a mature second album that critics hated, and by the time of their greatest record, London Calling, they were dabbling in jazz, funk, reggae and rockabilly.

The title track is an epic, angry song which . . . "The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in / Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin" . . . raises the spectre of global warming and nuclear meltdown years before Chernobyl or Kyoto.

Strummer's life before, during and after The Clash was a troubled one. He was deeply scarred by his schooling, and by the suicide of his elder brother David.

On her deathbed, Joe railed against his mother for sending her sons to boarding school while she and her husband, a diplomat, lived abroad.

Salewicz's book is packed solid with testimony from Strummer's friends, and their take-your-pick theories about his personality. His alcoholic, deeply reserved mother seemed to weigh heavily on him, and his relationships with women were complex and selfish. He was a rash, compulsive and selfdestructive man who consumed oceans of alcohol and plantations of marijuana (he mostly avoided harder drugs) but one remembered with affection and love by almost everyone he encountered and tens of thousands he didn't.

He was a sucker for worthy causes, once playing a benefit gig for a Vietnam veteran called Larry McIntyre who had been barred from his local swimming pool because his legs had been amputated in the service of his country. The band never got to meet Larry because Joe forgot his name and called him "the guy with no legs" from the stage. His politics seemed to come from a visceral level, relying on bluster at times but often with a sharpened instinct for the mood of the times. "Black man got a lot of problems, but they don't mind throwing a brick" he roared in 'White Riot', a sometimes misunderstood call to arms in the summer of 1976. But the increasing success of the band distanced him from the street. "Joe was always uneasy with our success, " said drummer Terry Chimes, "how do you be a rebel with all this money coming in?"

By the time of his greatest song, '(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais', he seems resigned to the futility of it all: "White youth, black youth / Better find another solution / Why not phone up Robin Hood / And ask him for some wealth distribution."

Becoming increasingly angry with his fellow 'punk rockers', he castigates them for 'Turning rebellion into money', before passionately declaring that 'All over, people changing their votes / Along with their overcoats/ If Adolf Hitler flew in today, They'd send a limousine anyway.'

Something else that seemed to eat away at Strummer was that although he was the frontman and spokesman, The Clash was Mick Jones's group. The Keith Richard-inspired guitarist had founded the band and approached Strummer to join, but eventually the centre of power shifted and it was Joe who sacked Mick in 1982. Pulling at Strummer's strings was manager Bernie Rhodes, a mostly malevolent figure who eventually muscled his way into writing songs for the final incarnation of the band, which became known as The 'dodgy' Clash. As Jones found success with Big Audio Dynamite, and The Clash petered out with a dismal sixth album Cut the Crap, Strummer realised his mistake. They made up but never played together again until a benefit gig for striking firemen just six weeks before he died.

Strummer was a thinker, occasionally a deep one, although his assessment of Mick Jones and Shane McGowan could just as easily be applied to himself:

"(They are) people who believe that the world revolves around them to such an extent that the whole world does revolve around them. Their opinion of themselves is so strong that it creates a vortex in which things spin around them."

After The Clash, the singer drifted for years, picking up little gigs here and there as producer or film score writer and, briefly, with The Pogues. He acted too, most notably in Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch's fabulous triptych of tales set after dark in a Memphis hotel. Joe played Johnny, a sullen rocker whose world is falling apart. There was real pain in his portrayal of a man who has lost his job and girl, and as he travels to the edge of suicide he seemed to walk his own line (although instead he shoots his brother-in-law, played by Clash fan Steve Buscemi). Jarmusch admitted that he didn't know how Joe's brother had died.

Salewicz intrudes into the story far more than any biographer should. Why he would think anyone would be interested in sentences like this is beyond me:

"he introduced me to Damien Hirst (whom I had already met in 1995 at Womad, although I was sure he didn't remember)". The former NME writer had once helped Strummer clear the house of louts who broke in during a party. Not content with telling this innocuous tale, he then refers to it THREE more times, smugly recounting about how Strummer had been "embarrassingly complimentary". Not that embarrassing, obviously. Lines like "Joe was always great about my writing" and "he rang me at 3 in the morning to tell me my book was a 'masterpiece', " spring up like weeds all over the book.

Strummer spent years trying to reassemble The Clash . . . the money on offer was enormous . . .

but Mick Jones was busy doing other things and then Paul Simonon became implacably opposed. One final attempt concerned the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame, to which The Clash were due to be elected in March 2003.

Simonon was dismissive of the idea of reforming for such an event . . . "tickets were £1,000 each!" . . . but Strummer nagged away. His death from heart failure just before Christmas 2002 . . . he had a flaw which could have killed him at any stage during his life . . .

came hours after he faxed the record company with his selection of songs for an 'Essential Clash' compilation.

While filming in Memphis, he met Michael Hutchence, who was surrounded by 14-year-old girls in mini-skirts. "Wow, it must be really strange to be a sex symbol, " said Joe.

"Well you're Joe Strummer, you should know, " replied the INXS singer.

"No, I was never a sex symbol", replied Strummer, "I was just a spokesman for a generation."