On 'London Calling', The Clash Proved Themselves As The Only Band That Matters

Описание: 00:00 - 01:45 How the end of The Sex Pistols changed the British punk scene in the mid-1970s
01:46 - 11:58 The Clash on the rise, 1976 - 1978: How Woody Mellor became Joe Strummer, Mick Jones kicked out the band, and the influence of reggae culture
11:59 - 14: 27 Writing London Calling: Mad Guy Stevens, and how this album changed The Clash from boys to men
14:28 - 21:42 The songs: How a 1972 cult film influenced Paul Simonon to write his first song, Mick Jones' rallying call to arms in Clampdown, and Joe Strummer feeling his age
21:43 - 25:00 The writing of the song London Calling: how Thatcher, Bowie and a nuclear incident influenced this punk classic
25:01 - 25:39 That iconic album cover, and how its biggest influence was Elvis Presley
25:40 - 29:27 London Calling's legacy: how it inspired bands like Rage Against The Machine, and how Paul Simonon's basslines live on in dub tunes today

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In 1978, British punk ruled the airwaves and influenced much of the youth culture. But, unceremoniously, when The S*x Pistols split up at the start of the year, the movement lost its de facto leaders. In the power vacuum that resulted, The Clash saw their moment to take the crown.

The Clash, who were a ragtag bunch of London misfits, had perfected the 'three chords and the truth' maxim of punk rock on their debut album, but by their second album they were starting to collapse under the strain of the restrictions of the genre. On that sophomore record, they lent clearly on the sounds of black American music: jazz, soul, and all that good stuff. Despite this, their record label weren't happy with their change in sound, and they parted ways with their maverick manager around the same time. The band were in danger of becoming unmoored.

In 1979, the band set about recording their third album - what would become London Calling. The band's chief songwriters, Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, thought it might well be their last roll of the dice. With that in mind, the band threw everything at it, the spoils being a double album that completely liberated the group from narrow genre expectations.

On Spanish Bombs, Strummer would invoke the names of Spanish Civil War revolutionaries, and on Clampdown, Jones would offer an excoriating takedown of capitalism and fascism. Paul Simonon, imbued with the sounds of British reggae and dub, wrote the haunting, stalking The Guns of Brixton, inspired by the cult 1972 film The Harder They Come. And of course, on the record's title track, the band would paint a picture of a London gone wrong: devastated by nuclear war, catastrophic flooding, and with a lone SOS signal sounding out across the waters. It was inspired by the election of Margaret Thatcher, of course.

Let's turn to this record together, and look at how the band's ceaseless appetite for different sounds inspired The Clash to take a different tack, and how the group saw that their time might be up.

Death or Glory? On London Calling, the band laid bare their uncertainty of where their story might end up. Decades later, it's clear: London Calling is a triumphant unmooring from genre expectations, and a template of how powerful a political message can be when packed up in a brilliant tune. Glory, then. Undeniably: glory.

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Note: None of the footage in this video is mine, and I do not own the rights, nor to the songs. Any copyright infringement is not intended, and this video should be considered as falling under 'fair use' classification.