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*** stargore-77.neocities.org ***********************************************
****************************************** e-mail: stargore@disroot.org *****
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*** Title: This Train Is Bound For Glory ************************************
**                                                                         **
** Fandom: Hard Core Logo (movie & book)                                   **
** Summary: "every cheap hood strikes a bargain with the world".           ** 
** Some overheared bullshit about punk politics. Also, Hard Core Logo are  **
** there.                                                                  **
** Notes: This fic was first posted to Ao3 on the 25th of June, 2025.      **
**                                                                         **
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**                                                                         **
** Chapter 1                                                               **
**                                                                         **
** Here's a true confession about Joe Dick, something Billy is pretty sure ** 
** only he and Joe and maybe some of their old classmates from high school ** 
** know: when Joe was a teenager, he had desperately wanted to be          **
** Joe Strummer.                                                           **
**                                                                         **
** The Clash played Vancouver for the first time in 1979. They let all the ** 
** kids who were too young or poor to go to the show come in for the sound ** 
** check. Joe had played hooky and gone while Billy was stuck talking to   ** 
** his fucking guidance counsellor.                                        **
**                                                                         **
** Joe had been allowed to hold Joe Strummer's guitar. He hadn't shut up   ** 
** about it for weeks.                                                     **
**                                                                         **
** Joe was always terribly, hopelessly infatuated with the people he       **
** looked up to. He'd been like that about Joe Strummer, and then about    **
** Bucky Haight. He'd even looked up to Billy that way, for about two      **
** weeks: trying to copy the way that he walked, trying to copy the way he ** 
** pushed his hair back off his forehead, buying the same kind of soda as  ** 
** him when they went to the corner store.                                 **
**                                                                         **
** That was back when they'd just met and Joe still thought Billy was a    ** 
** car thief, a hood, a real JD, not just a poor kid who'd been sitting in ** 
** a stolen car with a bunch of older kids when then cops came. He'd been  ** 
** crushed when Billy admitted he wasn't really in a gang.                 **
**                                                                         **
** You were never uncertain about how Joe Dick felt about you. He loved    **
** you or he hated you, and either way, he would let you know.             **
**                                                                         **
** Joe, whatever else about him, loved people immensely, pathetically,     ** 
** helplessly. Billy had never loved anybody more than he loved himself.   ** 
** "You have all the warmth and compassion of a rattlesnake," a girl       **
** called Crystal told him once during a breakup, and Billy'd just felt    **
** touched that she knew him so well.                                      **
**                                                                         **
******* Joe Strummer: /....If you're really serious, you know, you    *******
******* can't-- you haven't even got time to have a personal life/.   *******
*******                                                               *******
******* Interviewer [sarcastically]: /If you want to join the         *******
******* revolution, you have to jump in with both feet/.              *******
*******                                                               *******
******* Joe Strummer: /Well, before we talk about revolution, let's   *******
******* talk about the fact that everybody's fast asleep. Y'know,     ******* 
******* you're running way ahead of yourself there/.                  *******
*******                                                               *******
******* Interviewer: /You still think that the general public is      *******
******* fast asleep?/                                                 *******
*******                                                               *******
******* Joe Strummer: Definitely. Otherwise, why would all the cons   *******
******* be foisted on us? You know -- the education system's a con.   *******
******* The record business is a con -- big business is a con.        *******
******* City life is a con, country life is a con. The army's a con,  ******* 
******* the navy's a con -- even cable television is a con.           *******
******* Even rock and roll is a con!                                  *******
*******    - The Clash, interviewed in Toronto, 1984.                 *******
*******                                                               *******
**                                                                         **
** It seemed like the world was full of suckers, and the cons they eagerly ** 
** bought into. Billy had never wanted to be a sucker or a con, and        ** 
** neither had Joe.                                                        **
**                                                                         **
** The only difference was that Billy thought that caring about politics   **
** made you a sucker, whether you were getting conned by the left or the   **
** right, while Joe thought that not caring about politics made you the    ** 
** biggest sucker of them all.                                             **
**                                                                         **
** Joe breathed fire in those days. Viva la revolution, viva la rock and   ** 
** roll. But it seemed like he'd come around to Billy's way of thinking,   ** 
** by the time they did the reunion.                                       **
**                                                                         **
** Billy had been watching. Billy had sat in the corner while Bruce        ** 
** interviewed Joe for the documentary -- footage that ended up on the     ** 
** cutting room floor, Billy was sure, if only because you could see the   ** 
** giant coke booger hanging off the end of Joe's nose. Joe had told Bruce ** 
** the whole history of the band -- "from rags to rags," he said  -- but   **
** he'd never mentioned politics once.                                     **
**                                                                         **
** Bruce had just lapped up everything Joe said. Bruce, Billy thought,     **
** had a very one-dimensional idea of what punk was about, and Joe's       **
** stories about drugs and fights fit into it perfectly.                   **
**                                                                         **
** Billy hadn't tried to correct the record. What would he even say?       **
**                                                                         **
** All those gigs for Rock Against Racism and Punks Against Nukes, all     ** 
** those benefits for strike funds and women's shelters, all those         **
** heavy-ass boxes of ALF leaflets and Stop The War posters that they'd    **
** lugged from town to town. Gone, vanished, like they never happened,     ** 
** like they never mattered.                                               **
**                                                                         **
** Billy had always had limited patience for Joe's activist bullshit.      **
** He should have been happy that it seemed to be over for good.           **
** Instead, as he walked away from Bruce's little office and went looking  ** 
** for a taxi, he'd just felt sad.                                         **
**                                                                         **
** The world was full of suckers and cons, and it looked like Joe had      **
** decided to become a con. Fine. Great. He definitely had the             **
** skills for it.                                                          **
**                                                                         **
** Billy had never wanted to be either a con or a sucker. But if you had   **
** to choose -- and it turned out that sooner or later most people had     **
** to choose -- it was better to be selling than to be buying,             ** 
** better to kill than to be killed.                                       **
**                                                                         **
** It just wasn't easy to watch.                                           **
**                                                                         **
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**                                                                         **
** Chapter 2                                                               **
**                                                                         **
** Joe loved people immensely, hopelessly, pathetically, right up until he ** 
** decided he was done with them. Then he dropped them like                **
** a piece of trash.                                                       **
**                                                                         **
** By 1980 Joe'd been telling everyone that Joe Strummer was a fat         **
** coke-addicted hypocrite, and the Clash were sellouts, and their         **
** new album sucked.                                                       **
**                                                                         **
** So maybe Joe had fallen out of love with the left. And, just like       **
** always, decided to pretend that he'd never really cared.                **
**                                                                         **
** The left had let Joe down. You just had to look around you to see that  ** 
** the revolution hadn't happened, and probably never would.               **
**                                                                         **
** And Joe was stupid for ever having believed in it, but Billy realized   **
** now that some part of him had been hoping that Joe was right. Had been  **
** hoping that someday they'd stop torturing bunny rabbits in labs, and    **
** bombing poor countries for oil, and letting people go hungry when       **
** there was plenty of food.                                               **
**                                                                         **
** It wasn't like punk rock had ever been the most efficient way to stop   ** 
** any of those things, and Billy was sure that there were other people    ** 
** out there trying to make it happen. But if Joe had given up, Joe who    ** 
** had been such a true believer, then maybe they were in bigger trouble   ** 
** than they thought....                                                   **
**                                                                         **
** "I'm not gonna go out like the Woodstock generation," Joe told a        **
** journalist once. "Where are those people now?" he asked, not knowing    **
** that what happened to them would happen to him too, and he answered     **
** his own question. "They're dead, or they sold out."  Nothing changes.   **
** The beat goes on. /Every gimmick hungry yob digging gold from           **
** rock 'n' roll grabs the mic to tell me he'll die before he's sold/.     **
** Death or glory, just another story.                                     **
**                                                                         **
** Joe could still quote every lyric to every song on London Calling,      ** 
** long after he sold his copy of the record. He'd organized the benefit   ** 
** for Bucky Haight, even though the last time they'd seen Bucky           **
**  he'd called Joe a talentless, flashy attention seeker and then         **
** stolen all their coke.                                                  **
**                                                                         **
** And Joe could never, ever, let go of Billy, all these long years since  ** 
** Joseph Mulgrew nudged Bill Boisy in the line outside the old Vancouver  ** 
** courthouse and asked /hey, you got a light/?                            **
**                                                                         **
** So maybe Joe's politics would come back to him, in some new shape.      ** 
** Billy hoped so. Because right now, Billy thought, Joe looked like       ** 
** somebody who had fallen out of love with life.                          **
**                                                                         **
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******* End Notes: **********************************************************
*** The Clash interview quoted in Chapter 1 is real, and can be found on  ***
**  YouTube and Archive.org (Toronto Tour Bus Interview, MuchMusic).       **
*   There's also some quotes from the lyrics of /Death or Glory/ from the   * 
*   album /London Calling/.                                                 *
*                                                                           *
**  This fic was inspired by how different Joe Dick's characterisation is  ** 
**  in the movie versus the book, and by my long-standing interest in the  ** 
*** relationship between punk and politics (a complex and fascinating     ***
*** topic which I have done no justice here). I am sure I will be         *** 
*** returning to this topic in other Hard Core Logo fics.                 ***
**                                                                         **
**  The giant coke booger in Joe's nose was inspired by the giant coke     **
*   booger in Neil Young's nose which had to be painstakingly edited        *
*   out of The Last Waltz.                                                  *
**                                                                         **
*** This file was created on the 2nd of December, 2025.                   ***
**                                                                         **
******* The men at the factory are old and cunning **************************
******* You don't owe nothing, so boy get running *************************** 
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