Carnival of Soul

In August 1979, the four members of the London-based band The Clash stepped into Wessex Sound Studios to record their third album after the first two, a self-titled debut and the follow-up, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, established the band as one of the most important voices in punk. The record that emerged after four months in that infamous Highbury New Park studio would end up becoming one of the most critically-acclaimed albums of the year, and four decades later the double album London Calling remains one of the most influential and essential rock albums of all-time. The album celebrates its 40^th anniversary this December.

After bouncing around London bands with names such as the 101’ers and London SS, the four members of the group, guitarists/vocalists Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, bassist Paul Simonon and drummer Nicky (Topper) Headon, formed The Clash in 1976. They would make their live concert debut on July 4^th of that year, somewhat ironically opening for the Sex Pistols.

The Clash’s first two albums charted well in the U.K. but received minimal airplay in the U.S. other than on select college and alternative radio stations, mainly in the Northeast and the West Coast. The band’s raucous, rebellious brand of rock failed to appeal to a rock radio public accustomed to a decade’s worth of the corporate rock of bands like Kansas and Styx.  

Lack of U.S. airplay aside, the band’s first two efforts did announce the group as one of the leading voices in the punk movement and hinted at the band being more than the often incoherent and directionless ranting of fellow countrymen The Sex Pistols and the driving 1-2-3-4 pounding of their New York counterparts, The Ramones. There was still the same passion and rage as their punk mates on both sides of the Atlantic but The Clash’s anger and ferocity was more focused, especially as it related to social and political issues. Many in U.S. radio complained the band was too British, too unrestrained and, quite frankly, a bit obnoxious, even for rock audiences whose heroes included Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith and AC/DC. But like it or not, London Calling was about to turn U.S. rock radio on its head.

Much like The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night fifteen years earlier, the album begins with one of the most famous guitar chords in recorded history and its in-your-face immediacy cold-cocks the listener right from the title track. It doesn’t take one long to realize The Clash had now successful bridged the gap from wild, out-of-control punk to measured, explosive and supremely relevant post-punk.

Up until this point, most punk fans knew what they were going to get from their heroes. Devotees of Black Flag, Dead Kennedys or the Buzzcocks in the 1970s could figure on lyrics more apropos to a drunken rage than a dissertation on the Spanish Civil War or the death of actor Montgomery Clift. London Calling was as far from that predictability as one could imagine. Attempting to describe the album to non-converts was next to impossible. The album would careen from the straight-ahead driving rock of the title track to the rockabilly and surf guitar sounds of Brand New Cadillac, to the reggae-flavored Jimmy Jazz—complete with horns—to the anti-drug lyrics of Hateful to the ska/reggae beat of Rudie Can’t Fail. And that’s just Side One.

London Calling can best be described as a musical and lyrical smorgasbord. Spanish Bombs, which starts off Side Two, revolves around the Basque separatists group ETA’s terror bombings of tourist hotels and the haunting, reggae-propelled Guns of Brixton, written and sung by bassist Paul Simonon, exposes the deep-seeded feelings of distrust and hatred that the residents of the primarily-immigrant London section of Brixton had for the police. Dust in the Wind this was not.

With London Calling, The Clash had brought global social and geopolitical issues to a hitherto uninformed audience. When the area exploded in riots two years after The Guns of Brixton was released, many listeners in areas far-flung from Brixton were well-versed in the troubles of that powder-keg of an area, thanks simply to three-plus minutes of recorded music.

For many Americans, especially those under 30, world news in the late 1970s was all but nonexistent. We as a country had begun to turn ourselves inward, concentrating on the problems we were experiencing here at home, leaving global crises to be sorted out internationally by organizations such as NATO or the United Nations. London Calling would bring many of those issues to light in a way that newspapers or Ted Koppel never could.

One of the delights of the album is its ability to wind its way through a variety of musical styles like a fish flopping on the deck of a boat, fueled by the imagination and collaboration of songwriters Strummer and Jones. Rather than a well-oiled Lotus, the album feels like an out-of-control pick-up truck, barely remaining on the road despite every effort of its driver to veer headfirst into the guardrail. Then just when you think the album was out of surprises and had finally pulled into the garage, the band throws in the final song on the album, Train in Vain, an unapologetically infectious piece of pop perfection that was added so late in the recording process that it didn’t even make it onto the track listing on the back of the album in its’ initial printing. This last-minute addition would end up becoming a top 25 hit on the Billboard charts in the U.S. and, if the rest of London Calling had announced the band’s arrival to rock radio, Train in Vain brought the band to the mainstream American music public. When The Clash made their U.S. TV debut in April of 1980 on the ABC late night show, Fridays, it signaled that the safe, sublime rock of the 1970s from bands like The Eagles, Boston, and Journey was about to be turned on its ear.

Critical response on both sides of the Atlantic to London Calling was overwhelmingly positive with countless music outlets including it into their top 10s for the year. In fact, Rolling Stone lists the album at #8 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time. The album would also prove to be highly influential with other bands of that and future eras. Both Bruce Springsteen and U2 admitted to have been greatly influenced by the album and grunge artists of the 1990s such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden all list London Calling as highly significant in their own musical paths as would bands such as Green Day, Rise Against, Moby and Beastie Boys.

Over the course of the four sides of London Calling, The Clash successfully mined its rage and despondency over both the domestic and international political landscape into an immensely listenable record. It had touched every conceivable musical genre and brought punk out of the seedy clubs of Soho and Lower Manhattan and into suburban teenage households. American music fans who had previously dismissed rock bands who had even remotely addressed social issues as “still lost in the 60s” were now blasting songs with titles like Clampdown, Revolution Rock and Death or Glory and developing an understanding of world events as well as the social landscape of Britain in the late 1970s that was about to result in eleven years of Thatcherism.

The group’s 1980 follow-up, the triple album Sandinista!, would further solidify The Clash as one of the leading voices in rock and 1982’s Combat Rock would produce top 40 hits Rock the Casbah and Should I Stay or Should I Go. But by this time tensions within the band were beginning to put a pall on its future. Drummer Headon’s continued drug use resulted in his expulsion from the band and co-founder Mick Jones would leave prior to the group’s final album, 1985’s ill-fated Cut The Crap, to start the band, Big Audio Dynamite.

In early 2003 in a fitting tribute to the group’s lasting legacy, four of music’s greatest performers, Bruce Springsteen, Steven Van Zandt, Dave Grohl and Elvis Costello, assembled four months after the death of Strummer for one of the most memorable Grammy performances of all-time, belting out a scorching version of London Calling. It wasn’t merely great TV. Rather, it vividly showed the adulation that these musical megastars had for The Clash’s music and, specifically, the album that would be known as the band’s crowning achievement.

The Clash was famous for labeling itself “The Only Band That Matters”. For many in the music industry, London Calling is one of those precious few albums that truly do matter and it remains as influential and important to the music scene four decades later as it was when it was unleashed on an unsuspecting musical public 40 years ago.