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The third album by the Clash, Britain's premier new wave act, is a double-album set, selling at a lower price. The music the four-man band plays is still angry political rock, but now it is much more carefully wrought and realized, making it more palatable to American radio and mass tastes. The songs are performed at less than breakneck speed, horns are used to fill out the sound and singer Joe Strummer works harder at making the words easier to understand. LP is getting great initial critical response. Best cuts: "Wrong 'Em Boyo," "London Calling," "Lost In The Supermarket," "Koka Kola," "Revolution Rock."
- Billboard, 1980.
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This double album is filled to bursting with expressions of the energies of the Clash at their peak. The title tune was their biggest hit single at home. "Train In Vain (Stand By Me)" was their first US success. Ironically, it wasn't listed on UK labels in the interests of retaining street credibility.
"The Right Profile" touchingly saluted the troubled actor Montgomery Clift. It also included what must be the most difficult printed lyric any aspiring cover artist could have to tackle, Joe Strummer's "Arrrghhhgorra buh bhuh do arrrrggghhhhnnnn!!!!"
In 1987, London Calling was chosen by a panel of rock critics and music broadcasters as the #40 rock album of all time.
- Paul Gambaccini, The Top 100 Rock 'n' Roll Albums of All Time, Harmony Books, 1987.
The Clash were already the best rock-and-roll band in the world -- the Rolling Stones had long since peaked -- when they recorded London Calling. Their homonymous debut album (worth owning in both its overlapping U.S. and U.K. configurations) made the Sex Pistols sound gutless in comparison (the Clash's anger had an end beyond its means), and in songs like "White Man in Hammersmith Palais" and Junior Murvin's "Police and Thieves," they expanded even the most optimistic notions of what punk could include without selling out. "We're a garage band/We come from Garageland," sneered singer Joe Strummer, but from the start they were much more. Mick Jones was that rare guitarist who didn't turn dull as his technical expertise blossomed (that is, he didn't succumb to Eric Clapton Disease), and the open songs he and Strummer hammered out made the nihilism of their fellow punks sound silly. From the beginning they were pushing limits.
What remains most amazing about London Calling, a sixty-six-minute double-album, is its breadth. I don't mean this only lyrically, though any record that seeks to explain Spanish imperialists in Central America, the death of Montgomery Clift, American everymalls, nineteenth-century poker games, and the mean streets of Brixton screams ambition at every turn. Musically, the Clash use London Calling as a springboard away from punk in all directions -- basic rock and roll, mainstream rock, reggae, New Orleans-style rhythm and blues, calypso, even big-production pop -- although the punk ideal always holds sway. On London Calling, the Clash wanted to define an entire world just prior to blowing it up. Among double-albums, only Exile on Main Street covers more territory.
Yet these nineteen songs cohere magnificently. One of the numbers, "Train in Vain," isn't even listed on the sleeve. In a scenario typical of the Clash's wary/incompentent approach to commercial necessities, the song no one could find turned out to be their first hit single in America. Some of the tracks meander a bit before they fade and some of the lyrics devolve into Dylan-derived dirty doggerel ("I believe in this and it's been tested by research/That he who fucks nuns will later join the church"), but aside from those few flaws to remind you that these guys aren't perfect -- in fact, the group's inevitable self-destruction began almost immediately after the recording of London Calling -- every moment on London Calling is as brazen and ultimately true as any rock and roll ever made.
London Calling earns these accolades not because the band so fervently believes what they are saying (hell, Styx and Kansas believe in the mush they emit), but because their music backs up even their wildest assertions. Whether juggling lyrics in the anthemic "Spanish Bombs," offering themselves as house band anywhere in the hilarious "Revolution Rock" (the same song in which Strummer claims, "I'm so pilled up that I r-r-rattle"), finding a middle ground between satire and declamation in "Lover's Rock," or damning American consumerism in "Lost in the Supermarket" and "Koka Kola," the music, recorded in appropriately dirty-clean fashion by producer Guy Stevens and engineer Bill Price, is terse and direct, as in-your-face as the Clash's previous records, but with more breathing room. The music for the songs that are most explicitly about the band -- "Death or Glory" and "Four Horsemen" -- is muscular and trustworthy enough to justify the bravado of the lyrics.
The Clash didn't stop here. Their next album, Sandinista!, was a sprawling mess, three albums of ooze that were even more wide-ranging, though not quite as consistent. Over repeated listenings, even the songs that were considered filler -- dub versions of songs on the albums, children's-chorus versions of songs from earlier albums -- gain weight. Sandinista! was the only studio triple-album in rock and roll worth the time or monetary investment.
One of my greatest thrills as a rock-and-roll fan was in 1982, at a stadium concert in Philadelphia, when the Clash (opening for the Who, in the first of what will no doubt be several dozen farewell tours) kicked off their avalanche of a set with "London Calling" and Strummer punched the air to the beat. This commercially marginal band had gotten over to the masses without compromise. Ninety thousand hot, thirsty fans joined Strummer in motion. I knew at the time that it was an empty gesture, and probably a manipulative one to boot. It didn't matter.
- Jimmy Guterman, The Best Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time, 1992.
What are we gonna do now?" asks Joe Strummer at the start of "Clampdown," one of this album's songs. But by the time you get to that track, it's already clear that the Clash have solved that problem by taking a giant step toward making craftsmanlike rock without sacrificing the urgency that made them punk leaders. From the title track through the reggae, rock, and pop tracks that follow, this is one of the premier albums of its time. * * * * *
- William Ruhlmann, The All-Music Guide to Rock, 1995.
London Calling is the band's masterpiece, balancing high energy punk efficiency with forays into roots rock, blues and reggae. Less intense than its debut, but also more accessible, this is simply a great collection of songs. * * * * 1/2
- Alan Paul, Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide, 1996.
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- Collins Gem Classic Albums, 1999.
A revolutionary album that proved to be the voice of a generation, this sonic potpourri of rock, rockabilly, reggae and dub defines an era, yet remains relevant today. The UK godfathers of punk cast their jaundiced eye on politics, pop, consumer culture and, surprisingly, love on this staggering achievement-cum-encyclopedia for questioning authority and laid down the law -- which side are you on? This landmark screamed, making people want to dance, shout and incite riots. * * * * *
- Zagat Survey Music Guide - 1,000 Top Albums of All Time, 2003.
Recorded in 1979 in London, which was then wrenched by surging unemployment and drug addiction, and released in America in January 1980, the dawn of an uncertain decade, London Calling is nineteen songs of apocalypse fueled by an unbending faith in rock & roll to beat back the darkness. Produced with no-surrender energy by legendary Sixties studio madman Guy Stevens, the Clash's third album sounds like a free-form radio broadcast from the end of the world, skidding from bleak punk ("London Calling") to rampaging ska ("Wrong 'Em Boyo") and disco resignation ("Lost in the Supermarket"). The album was made in dire straits, too. The band was heavily in debt; singer-guitarists Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, the Clash's Lennon and McCartney, wrote together in Jones' grandmother's flat, where he was living for lack of dough. But the Clash also cranked up the hope. The album ends with "Train in Vain," a rousing song of fidelity (originally unlisted on the back cover) that became the sound of triumph: the Clash's first Top Thirty single in the U.S.
London Calling was chosen as the 8th greatest album of all time by the editors of Rolling Stone magazine in Dec. 2003.
- Rolling Stone, 12/11/03.
In 1979, London Calling was sold with a sticker declaring that the Clash were "THE ONLY BAND THAT MATTERS," and they acted as if they believed their own hype. Broadcasting from the middle of the wild-eyed mess that was English punk rock, a milieu that often dismissed idealism as a liability, the band was criticized as being too serious, even too nice, while its peers, the Sex Pistols, were uniformly regarded as the real thing. Twenty-five years later, Sony has expanded this reissue of the group's third album with some raw demo recordings and a DVD of documentary films, even as the basic political nightmares the Clash ripped into on the album have expanded exponentially. Then as now, it would seem that idealism was underrated.
London Calling is indeed a serious, ridiculously ambitious punk album that resonates within a largely American history of rebellion -- the lyrics invoke anti-heroes from tough-guy actor Robert Mitchum to gangsta legend Stagga Lee. It was originally underestimated as simply a bridge to reggae, classic rock & roll and pop radio. True, "Lover's Rock" is a jubilant rush of electric guitar and piano that brethlessly evokes the tenderness of reggae without becoming reggae. And the shuddering unforgettable "Train in Vain," which broke the band commercially in the States, is that rarest of hits: The band claps and harmonica sound vaguely prefabricated, but Mick Jones' wounded vocal feels utterly genuine, and the tune stays with you like a black eye.
The "lost" Clash songs unearthed for this release were lost for a reason: "Heart and Mind" is an anthemic throwaway, and "Lonesome Me," had it been released, would have killed cowpunk before it was invented. But London Calling proper sounds crucial right now because of righteous blasts such as the title track, which wails like a hundred car alarms. "The Guns of Brixton" is a dread-sick skank, a reggae song that evinces punk's political violence. The most astonishing number is "Clampdown," which burns through the middle of the album with kneecap-cracking beats and a heroic three-note guitar solo. It may be the most defiant rock song ever committed to plastic. (An early version, "Working and Waiting," is also here.) Feeling resigned to another four years of the Bush administration? Listen to London Calling and flame on, brothers and sisters. * * * * *
- Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 10/14/04.
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