(energetic rock music)
♪ London Calling to the faraway towns ♪
♪ Now war is declared
and battle come down ♪
- [Narrator] A sprawling
punk pastiche of reggae, ska,
R&B and rockabilly, the
Clash's London Calling
transcended the band's pub rock roots
and resulted in a classic double LP.
British favorites since their 1977 debut,
the ambitious and
politically-conscious quartet
now sought a global audience.
As some of London's last
surviving first wave punks,
in 1979 the Clash wanted
to prove their meddle
as a well-rounded rock band
and broadcast their message
of anti-racism, anti-capitalism,
and anti-fascism.
Broke and ready to rock, the band holed up
in a central London garage with,
in Joe Strummer's description, one light
and filthy carpet on the
walls for sound-proofing.
Taking its name from
the BBC World Service's
World War II-era station identification,
"this is London Calling",
the first of four LP sides
opened with the title track.
Singer and co-writer
Joe Strummer announces
the album's aggressive
politics with a dystopian rant
referencing the nuclear
era at Pennsylvania's
Three Mile Island earlier that year
as well as the local London
anxiety that if the Thames
were to flood most of
Central London would drown.
♪ 'Cause London is drowning
and I live by the river ♪
Strummer's message resonated.
The song was a hit at
home in the UK and became
the band's first single to
crack the American top 30.
The rockabilly punk of
"Brand New Cadillac"
was completed in one take,
declared to be a keeper
by producer Guy Stevens.
Employing chaos-creating methods
such as throwing furniture
around the studio
while the band played,
the former Mott the Hoople
collaborator dismayed the record company
but endeared himself to the musicians.
When drummer Topper Headon
asked for another take
of "Brand New Cadillac",
the producer imparted on him
the punk rock wisdom that all
great rock and roll speeds up.
♪ My baby drove up in
a brand new Cadillac ♪
♪ She said, "Hey come here, Daddy!" ♪
♪ "I ain't never comin' back!" ♪
"The Guns of Brixton", one of the album's
most heavily reggae-influenced songs,
was Paul Simonon's own crack
at a political call-to-arms.
Growing up in Brixton, the
largely Caribbean neighborhood
in South London, Simonon
channels the discontent
brewing beneath his hometown's surface.
Presaging the anti-police brutality riots
that erupted in Brixton in 1981,
Simonon references Ivanhoe Martin,
the rude boy anti-hero
played by Jimmy Cliff
in the 1972 Jamaican reggae
classic The Harder They Come,
ultimately gunned down by police.
♪ You see, he feels like Ivan ♪
♪ Born under the Brixton sun ♪
♪ His game is called survivin' ♪
♪ At the end of The Harder They Come ♪
The song would eventually
be covered by Cliff himself
♪ When they kick at your front door ♪
♪ How you gonna come? ♪
♪ With your hands on your head ♪
♪ Or on the trigger of your gun? ♪
While the album is rife
with existential angst,
their underlying optimism could be heard
on "Rudy Can't Fail", another ode
to the rude boys of Jamaica
who were challenging the status quo.
The Clash's own anglicized rude boy image
was augmented by their promotional tag:
The only band that matters.
One-time Sex Pistols devotees who rejected
the Pistols' nihilism, the Clash mattered
because they actually cared;
about political issues,
about the quality and
complexity of their own music,
and about their fans, even
entering into a protracted battle
with their label in order
to get the double album
priced the same as a single LP.
London Calling's final track,
and one of its most beloved,
"Train in Vain" was also
the last to be written.
Guitarist Mick Jones finished
the song in one night,
and the band recorded
it the following day.
♪ So alone I keep the wolves at bay ♪
♪ And there's only one things I can say ♪
♪ You didn't stand by me ♪
♪ No, not at all ♪
With the artwork already
on route to the printer,
it became an accidental hidden track,
scratched into the runoff area
at the end of the album's fourth side.
A love song with country western lyrics
that echoed Tammy Wynette's
"Stand By Your Man",
some see it as an answer to
the Slits song "Typical Girls",
written by guitarist Viv
Albertine, also Mick Jones's ex,
a theory Albertine has corroborated.
Like a prot-vision board, the
artwork for London Calling
referenced a rock stardom far beyond
what the Clash had yet achieved.
Designed by Ray Lowry, its
pink and green lettering
was an homage to Elvis
Presley's first 1956 LP,
now framing Penny Smith's
instantly iconic photograph
of the Clash's Paul
Simonon smashing his bass
onstage at New York's Palladium.
The Clash received
nearly universal acclaim
for London Calling's
deft handling of social
and political issues,
and garnered comparisons
to other legendary double albums,
like the Rolling Stones'
Exile on Main Street
and Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde.
To critics and fans alike,
the Clash actually was the
only band the mattered.
