Actually, sorry: take that back, Strummer himself mentioned The Who track 20 years ago:
JR: I remember when they did that tour, yeah. Bowie was covering his song "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday", which was a rip-off of Bowie's "Rock n' Roll Suicide", which itself was no coincidence, since Mick Ronson produced that LP for Morrissey. So I am sure he was very serious about having you produce him. He likes working with his old heroes. You know he wrote a book on The New York Dolls before he was in The Smiths. I bet he would ask Thunders to produce him if he was still alive!
Joe:
Ahh, but I wasn't having it. The whole situation was beginning to piss me off. And his manager, it was a lady at the time, she came to me before the show and said, "So, what do you think?" And I said [snaps fingers], because I knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to cover "Can't Explain", that was part of the initial phone message. And I tried to imagine Morrissey singing "Got a feelin' inside". And I thought this was a stupid idea! So I said, "No, no. I've got a plan for Morrissey." And they went "what is it?", I said, "Let's have him cover 'Pop Music' by M."
Had to dust that
quote before using it
FWD.