The 1970s
must have been a worrying time in
England, with the Cold War still raging, the three day week, "Winter of Discontent",
oil price rises, so it must have frequently seemed that imminent destruction
was just around the corner. The Clash closed the decade by releasing "London
Calling", a dystopian nightmare, that still resonates today.
The Clash
came out of the initial fury of punk, and blossomed into a great political band,
mixing rock 'n roll, reggae, ska and even pop. They had already chronicled
1970s London with classics such as "London's Burning" and ""White
Man in Hammersmith Palais", but
"London's Calling" took it to another level. Lead singer and
writer Joe Strummer was an interesting contradiction - a punk "voice of a
generation" rebel, but also a privately educated son of a Foreign Office
diplomat.
In "London
Calling" he imagines not one but several apocalypses simultaneously befalling
London, encompassing war, flood, nuclear annihilation, oil shortages, new ice
age and famine (but no pestilence?). The optimism of swinging London and
"phoney" Beatlemania of the 1960s had been replaced by fear, terror
and the police's "truncheon".
He instructs
people to find their own solutions ("don't look to us"), and settles
scores about punk "I was there, too / And you know what they said? Well,
some of it was true!"
Strummer
wrote the song after reading a newspaper report about the threat of London's River
Thames flooding, and his concern as
"I live by the river". The recent Third Mile Island nuclear accident in
America was also influence in raising the fear of the unknown. The title came
from the BBC's World Service's historic radio call "This is London
calling".
The song is fast and loud, and the backing is
simple and effective. The drums stand out, and are in sync with the insistent staccato
guitars. Strummer snarls and spits out the words, even yelping at one point,
with backing on the "London Calling " phrase. There is a controlled guitar
break before it ends with a morse code SOS signal played on guitar.
The single was
a top 20 hit in the UK, and it has become one of the Clash's most iconic
moments, although surprisingly they also sold it to Jaguar and British Airways
for TV adverts (Strummer was always very contrary).
Hear Next -
The other Clash albums are good (apart from "Cut the Crap"),
but the "London Calling" double album is undoubtedly their
masterpiece.
