Mick Jones of The Clash curates new music event Krug Island

Former guitarist of The Clash Mick Jones has curated a new music event Krug Island. Hotly tipped band Rationale, endorsed by the likes of Pharrell Williams, Elton John and Annie Mac, Hollie Cook, daughter of Sex Pistols drummer Paul, Liverpool’s Sugarmen, who have supported Blur, The Who and Paul Weller, and folk-blues musician Willow Robinson, will head from London to Osea Island on 1 September for the Krug Champagne evening of music, food and bubbly.

Osea can only be accessed for an hour each day at dawn and dusk, so guests will be truly immersed for the duration.

We talked to Jones about his experience curating the event, his work mentoring young acts and the songwriting chemistry he had with Clash frontman Joe Strummer.

Tell me about the mentoring work you do with young bands and the acts you've picked for Krug Island.

I have a studio where I work in North Acton. I’m around in the studio most of the time and there’s usually someone in there. It’s a lovely little set up [I've had] for over 20 years now. A lot of groups come in and I help them if I can just by providing the environment. The most important thing in music is trying to find out what you’re about and once you find that out you can do it. But nobody seems to know when they’re younger and so you have to try and help them. A lot of groups go there; Hollie Cook works there with another band she’s involved with (not her own) and Sugarmen I’ve worked with at Paul Weller’s studio at Woking. A bunch of groups are going to the island and are going to make a record. There’s a recording studio - that’s what I’m interested in especially. I want to record the actual sounds of the river and mix it.

Do you look back on your songwriting partnership with Joe Strummer and that special songwriting chemistry you had?

I look back on some of the stuff Joe wrote then and I didn’t realise the meaning of it until now. Everything in his writing had meaning which is so rare these days. And so it would be impossible [to recreate that songwriting chemistry] and I did have other people I wrote with afterwards with, but… It was one of those Rodgers and Hart [partnerships].

It was incredible – we were so lucky to find each other at that time and we were able to produce such a lot in such a short time and then we couldn’t do anything else after that because it was too big and it was impossible. It was such a moment. We just wrote and it was of the time.

How did the songwriting work between you?

We didn’t know what we were doing, it just came out. That still happens in terms of composing; it comes from up there. I love the blank page, writing the blank canvas when there’s nothing there and then there’s something there and no one knows where it came from. And I love that. You have to be in the right frame of mind to receive it.

We would sit at the typewriter. I had the guitar at the other side of the table and he’d bang it out. He’d sit and type the lyrics and hand them over and then he’d give me the page and the tune would already be there. Seriously; the tune came out. It’s incredible and so spooky. And when you got to know his writing, he’d write a couple of lines up the side that he’d think would make a good chorus. Usually it jumped out the page.

Was your 2013 box set really the final Clash release?

I said that. The others didn’t! [laughs]. I don’t know. I said that’s it for me. We were different to everyone else. Everyone else does outtakes. We did complete recorded works and then we remastered everything so it was actually the real thing not all the different bits.

I’m sure we would have spoilt it by now if we did that and kept it going. It has meaning and there’s not that much meaning in things anymore. In fact one of the things we have to do with our music is try and stop it becoming meaningless like everything else, by negative associations.

Are you still friends with the remaining members of the band?

Yes, the surviving members. We soon became friends after the group split up. That was one thing that was really good about the break up was getting back together again – we never got back together as a group, but we became better friends in a way afterwards. But we didn’t go and spoil it like most people would do. We were lucky enough not to have to. It never seemed like the right moment to do that so we never did. Although some other groups did it instead.

Who would you like most to work with?

Jerry Dammers who I love. He has a Sun Ra-type orchestra when he can afford to and can. He’s really great. He’s a contemporary. I bumped into him the other day. It would be nice to do something. Most of the people I like are not around anymore sadly. I really loved Gil Scott Heron, especially that Reflections album.