The Key to Joe's Art

Punk pioneers THE 101ers gave us Joe Strummer’s earliest recordings. The band’s drummer Richard Dudanski reminisces with Terry Staunton.

Often relegated to a footnote in lightweight retellings of the mid-70s London punk scene, The 101ers were nonetheless a hugely popular live attraction who promised great things – until frontman Joe Strummer jumped ship to form The Clash.

Now the band are ripe for reappraisal, with the release of the 20-track Elgin Avenue Breakdown (Revisited), an expanded version of a compilation last seen in 1981, put together by original drummer Richard ‘Snakehips’ Dudanski. Taking its title from the address of The Elgin, the Ladbroke Grove pub where the group had a legendary residency (their name comes from the house number of their West London squat), it’s a frenetic cocktail of 50s R&B, pub rock and embryonic punk – several elements of which survived in the records of Strummer’s next, more famous outfit.

The 101ers had already called it a day before the release of their only single, Keys To Your Heart, on the famed Chiswick label. But their legacy has continued to grow, and it’s plain from listening to Clash albums like London Calling or Sandinista! that Strummer never abandoned his roots entirely. Dudanski, who was still a close friend of Strummer’s up until the singer’s death in 2002, is still active from his base in Spain as a musician, …

by Terry Staunton
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