Willard Snow : Legends & Idols

Thank heavens! I was worried about him. He can’t die till I see the Stones live.

Watch the She Rocks Awards and be inspired! This year's show features heartfelt speeches and performances by The Go-Go's, Heart's Nancy Wilson, Amy Lee of Evane...scence, Margaret Cho, Cherie Currie, Cindy Blackman Santana, Magnolia Boulevard and many more! Hosted by Lzzy Hale of Halestorm! Join us as we watch it live on January 22, 2021 at 6:30pm PT/ 9:30pm ET. Get your VIP ticket now and you'll get a cool gift box! See more

ON THIS DATE (43 YEARS AGO) December 13, 1977 Joni Mitchell: Don Juan's Reckless Daughter is released. # ALL THINGS MUSIC PLUS+ 4/5 # Allmusic 2/5 # Rolling S...tone (see original review below) Don Juan's Reckless Daughter is a double album by Joni Mitchell, released on December 13, 1977. It reached #25 on the Billboard 200 Top LP's chart. Don Juan's Reckless Daughter is unusual for its experimental style, expanding even further on the jazz fusion sound of Mitchell's Hejira from the year before. Mitchell has stated that, close to completing her contract with Asylum Records, she allowed this album to be looser than anything she'd done previously. Much of the album is experimental, but especially so are: "Overture," played with six simultaneous guitars, some in different tunings from others, with vocal echo effects; "The Tenth World," an extended-length instrumental of Latin percussion; and "Dreamland," which features only percussion and voices (including, notably, Chaka Khan). Most experimental of all is "Paprika Plains," a 16-minute song played on improvised piano and arranged with a full orchestra; it takes up all of Side 2. In it, Mitchell narrates a first-person description of a late-night gathering in a bar frequented by American Indians, touching on themes of hopelessness and alcoholism. At one point in the narrative, the narrator leaves the setting and enters into a dreamstate, and the lyrics become a mixture of references to innocent childhood memories, a nuclear explosion and an expressionless tribe gazing upon the dreamer. In speaking to Anthony Fawcett about working on "Paprika Plains," Mitchell said: "The Improvisational, the spontaneous aspect of this creative process - still as a poet - is to set words to the music, which is a hammer and chisel process. Sometimes it flows, but a lot of times it's blocked by concept. And if you're writing free consciousness - which I do once in a while just to remind myself that I can, you know, because I'm fitting little pieces of this puzzle together - the end result must flow as if it was spoken for the first time." __________ ORIGINAL ROLLING STONE REVIEW In retrospect, Blue turns out to have been the album that displayed Joni Mitchell at her most buoyant and comfortablewith herself, with the nature of her talents, and with the conventions of pop songwriting. From that happy juncture, she has moved on to more graceful and sober self-scrutiny (For the Roses and Court and Spark), to dramatic musical experimentation mixed with failed social commentary (The Hissing of Summer Lawns), to ever-more-seductive singing (Miles of Aisles) and to rambling, hypnotic flights of fancy (Hejira). She has dabbled with jazz and African tribal music, ventured deep inside herself and fled far away. But, always, the unpredictable caliber of her work has been as exciting as it is frustrating. Now, for once, she has gambled and lost. The best that can be said for Don Juan's Reckless Daughter is that it is an instructive failure. Since Blue, Mitchell has demonstrated an increasing fondness for formats that don't suit her. Not that this awkwardness can't be occasionally successful: on Hejira, she clung so resolutely to even the stray flat notes that the impression was an attractive one of stubbornness and strength. But, increasingly, Mitchell's pretensions have shaped her appraisal of her own gifts. At her best, she is a keen observer but not a particularly original one, and she has never been an interesting chronicler of experience other than her own, though the new LP finds her trying. Instead, she has been inexplicably inclined to let her music become shapeless as she tries to incorporate jazz and calypso rhythms that eventually overpower her. Her most resonant lyrics have been simple and concise, spinning out images rather than overburdening them, but lately the endearing modesty of "California" or "Just like This Train" seems far behind her. These days, Mitchell appears bent on repudiating her own flair for popular songwriting, and on staking her claim to the kind of artistry that, when it's real, doesn't need to announce itself so stridently. Don Juan's Reckless Daughter is a double album that should have been a single album. It's sapped of emotion and full of ideas that should have remained whims, melodies that should have been riffs, songs that should have been fragments. At its worst, it is a painful illustration of how different the standards that govern poetry and song lyrics can be, and an indication that Joni Mitchell's talents, stretched here to the breaking point, lend themselves much more naturally to the latter form. Her writing works best when it's compact, yet the record's expansive mood forces her to belabor, in the title song, the precious contrast between a snake (or a train, as well as the author's baser instincts) and an eagle (or an airplane, plus a longing for "clarity") for nearly seven minutes. Mitchell's music has evolved into a kind of neutral background, rolling on endlessly in either a languid spirit ("Jericho") or a nervous one ("Dreamland"). Somehow, she has chosen to abandon melody at a time when she needs it urgently. The painful banality of Mitchell's lyricsthere is nothing said here that she hasn't said better before, except those things she should have kept to herselfis almost the least of her problems. Behind a treacly title like "The Silky Veils of Ardor" lurks an even treaclier notion: that the romantic visions of love put forth by certain folk songs are one thing, that reality is another, and that the singer apparently yearns for both. "It's just in my dreams we fly," the song concludes, with a reference to "The Water Is Wide." Or, as a dialogue balloon on one of the inner sleeves puts it, "In my dweems we fwy." The album offers what is, one can only hope, the ultimate in cute cover art. It also offers the ultimate in potshots: "Otis and Marlena," a facile, snidely sung song about tourists who come to Miami "for fun and sun While Muslims stick up Washington." This leads into "The Tenth World," a mostly instrumental percussion track featuring Jaco Pastorius (who plays on a majority of the record with distinction, but without much helpful influence), Airto and Chaka Khan (who hums). Here and elsewhere, there seems to be the notion that blacks and Third World people have more rhythm, more fun and a secret, mischievous viewpoint that the author, dressed as a black man in one of the photos on the front jacket, presumes to share. On the numbing, sixteen-minute "Paprika Plains," we also learn about Indians, who "cut off their braids/And lost some link with nature." "Talk to Me" is the LP's most enduring number: as a terrible, embarrassing song about feeling terribly embarrassed, it has a scary appropriateness. But even though there are no real solutions to the album's mysteries or explanations for its lapses, Joni Mitchell's resilience has been demonstrated often enough to make speculation about such things appear superfluous. She's bound to be back when the time is right and her mood is less drowsy, less disengaged than it seems here. Until then, we're left with Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, in all its recklessness. ~ Janet Maslin (March 9, 1978) TRACKS: All songs written by Joni Mitchell; except for "The Tenth World" by Joni Mitchell, Don Alias, Manolo Badrena, Alejandro Acuña, Airto and Jaco Pastorius. Side one "Overture/Cotton Avenue" 6:41 "Talk to Me" 3:45 "Jericho" 3:22 Side two "Paprika Plains" 16:21 Side three "Otis and Marlena" 4:09 "The Tenth World" 6:45 "Dreamland" 4:38 Side four "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter" 6:36 "Off Night Backstreet" 3:20 "The Silky Veils of Ardor" 4:01

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Mike Scott (The Waterboys, Another Pretty Face, DNV, Funhouse, solo) (62)

I don’t care who you are, that’s funny right there

Charlie Rich / The Silver Fox (country singer, pianist) was born on this date in 1932. He died on July 25, 1995, aged 62.

ON THIS DATE (41 YEARS AGO) December 14, 1979 The Clash: London Calling is released. # ALL THINGS MUSIC PLUS+ 5/5 (MUST-HAVE!) # Allmusic 5/5 # Creem (see ori...ginal review below) # Rolling Stone (see original review below) #TheClash London Calling is the third studio album by The Clash, released in the UK on December 14, 1979 (January 1980 in the US). It reached #27 on the Billboard 200 Top LP’s chart and #9 on the UK chart. In 2003, it was ranked at #8 on Rolling Stone’s list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The album represented a significant change in The Clash’s musical style, which now featured major elements of ska, funk, pop, soul, jazz, rockabilly and reggae far more prominently than in their previous two albums. The album’s subject matter included social displacement, unemployment, racial conflict, drug use, and the responsibilities of adulthood. After recording their second studio album Give ‘Em Enough Rope (1978), the band separated from their manager Bernard Rhodes. This separation meant that the group had to leave their rehearsal studio in Camden Town and find another location to compose their music. Drawing inspiration from rockabilly, ska, reggae and jazz, the band began work on the album during the summer of 1979. Tour manager Johnny Green had found the group a new place to rehearse called Vanilla Studios, which was located in the back of a garage in Pimlico. The Clash quickly wrote and recorded demos, with Jones composing and arranging much of the music and Strummer writing the lyrics. In August 1979, the band entered Wessex Studios to begin recording London Calling. The Clash asked Guy Stevens to produce the album, much to the dismay of CBS Records. Stevens had alcohol and drug problems and his production methods were unconventional. While recording he would often swing ladders and throw chairs around the group to create an emotional atmosphere. The Clash got along well with Stevens, especially bassist Paul Simonon, who found his work to be very helpful and productive to his playing and their recording as a band. While recording, the band would play football to pass the time. This was a way for them to bond together as well as take their minds off of the music, and the games got very serious. Doing this helped bring the band together, unifying them, making the recording process easier and more productive. The entire album was recorded within a matter of weeks, with many songs recorded in one or two takes. If punk rejected pop history, London Calling reclaimed it, albeit with a knowing perspective. The scope of this double set is breathtaking, encompassing reggae, rockabilly and the group’s own furious mettle. Where such a combination might have proved over-ambitious, the Clash accomplishes it with swaggering panache. Guy Stevens, who produced the group’s first demos, returns to the helm to provide a confident, cohesive sound equal to the set’s brilliant array of material. Boldly assertive and superbly focused, London Calling contains many of the quartet’s finest songs and is, by extension, virtually faultless. __________ LONDON CALLING THE SONG London Calling / Armagideon Time (CBS UK 8087) UK Picture Sleeve (Red) London Calling was released as a single in the UK on December 7, 1979, and is from the band’s double album of the same name. This apocalyptic, politically charged rant features the band’s post-punk sound, electric guitar and vocals. The song was written by Joe Strummer and Mick Jones. The title alludes to the BBC World Service’s station identification: This is London calling , which was used during World War II, often in broadcasts to occupied countries. The lyrics reflect the concern felt by Strummer about world events with the reference to a nuclear error to the incident at Three Mile Island, which occurred earlier in 1979. Joe Strummer has said: We felt that we were struggling about to slip down a slope or something, grasping with our fingernails. And there was no one there to help us. The line London is drowning / And I live by the river comes from concerns that if the River Thames flooded, most of central London would drown, something that led to the construction of the Thames Barrier. Strummer claimed the initial inspiration came in a conversation he had with his then-fiancee Gaby Salter in a taxi ride home to their flat in World’s End (appropriately). There was a lot of Cold War nonsense going on, and we knew that London was susceptible to flooding. She told me to write something about that, noted Strummer in an interview with Uncut magazine. According to guitarist Mick Jones, it was a headline in the London Evening Standard that triggered the lyric. The paper warned that the North Sea might rise and push up the Thames, flooding the city, he said in the book Anatomy of a Song. We flipped. To us, the headline was just another example of how everything was coming undone. Strummer’s concern for police brutality is evident through the lines We ain’t got no swing / Except for the ring of that truncheon thing as the Metropolitan Police at the time had a truncheon as standard issued equipment. Social criticism also features through references to the effects of casual drug taking: We ain’t got no high / Except for that one with the yellowy eyes. The lyrics also reflect desperation of the band’s situation in 1979 struggling with high debt, without management and arguing with their record label over whether the London Calling album should be a single- or double-album. The lines referring to Now don’t look to us / Phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust reflects the concerns of the band over its situation after the punk rock boom in England had ended in 1977. The song fades out with a Morse code signal spelling S-O-S, reiterating the earlier urgent sense of emergency, and further alluding to drowning in the river. Joe Strummer explained in 1988 to Melody Maker: I read about ten news reports in one day calling down all variety of plagues on us. This was recorded at Wessex Studios, located in a former church in the Highbury district of North London. Many hit recordings had already come out of this studio, including singles and albums by the Sex Pistols, The Pretenders and the Tom Robinson Band. Chief engineer and studio manager Bill Price had developed a slew of unique recording techniques suited to the room. The single was produced by Guy Stevens and engineered by Bill Price. Fellow punk band The Damned were recording overdubs to their album Machine Gun Etiquette in the studio, and as they were old touring buddies of The Clash they roped Strummer and Mick Jones into record backing vocals for the title song to their album the shouted lines of second time around! in that song are actually Strummer and Jones in uncredited cameos. Interestingly, the band initially wrote most of the London Calling album at the Vanilla rehearsal studios near Vauxhall Bridge in London. Roadie Johnny Green explained: It had the advantage of not looking like a studio. Out front of a garage. We wrote a sign out front saying ‘we ain’t here.’ We weren’t disturbed. With a great vibe going in the studio and having already recorded some demos with The Who’s soundman Bob Pridden, Strummer had the crazy idea to record the entire album there and bypass expensive studio time. CBS refused point blank, so Wessex was chosen because it had a similar intimacy to Vanilla. The B-side, a cover of reggae singer Willie Williams’s Armagideon Times was recorded quickly on Bonfire Night in 1979. The video was filmed at Cadogan Pier, next to the Albert Bridge in Battersea Park in London. It was directed by longtime friend of the band Don Letts, and made on a wet night in December 1979 which sees the band performing on a barge. Letts didn’t have a happy time doing the video. He explained: Now me, I am a land-lover, I can’t swim. Don Letts does not know that the Thames has a tide. So we put the cameras in a boat, low tide, the cameras are 15 feet too low. I didn’t realize that rivers flow, so I thought the camera would be bouncing up and down nicely in front of the pier. But no, the camera keeps drifting away from the bank. Then it starts to rain. I am a bit out of my depth here, but I’m going with it and The Clash are doing their thing. The group doing their thing was all it needed to be a great video. That is a good example of us turning adversity to our advantage. __________ THE COVER ARTWORK On September 20, 1979 The Clash had a gig at the Palladium club in New York. During the concert, the upset bassist wrecked his guitar on the scene, and the moment was captured on photography by Pennie Smith. Thanks to this photo, one of the most famous album covers in the history of rock came to existence. According to NME magazine (March 16, 1991), Paul Simonon smashed his bass guitar as photographed on the cover of the album at exactly 10:50 pm. This is because he broke his watch in the process and handed the busted bits to photographer Pennie Smith, who snapped the photo. Pennie Smith, who photographed the band for the album, originally did not want the photograph to be used. She thought that it was too out of focus, but Strummer and graphic designer Ray Lowry thought it would make a good album cover. Lowry thought it was an homage to the design of Elvis Presley’s self-titled debut album, with pink letters down the left side and green text across the bottom. In 2002, Smith’s photograph was named the best rock and roll photograph of all time by Q magazine, commenting that it captures the ultimate rock’n’roll moment total loss of control. The album cover for London Calling was among the ten chosen by the Royal Mail for a set of Classic Album Cover postage stamps issued in January 2010. Pennie Smith Pennie Smith is one of the UK’s leading rock photographers. She had been photographing for NME when she first met The Clash in 1976. She recalls They knew my work through NME. I think they decided I was the photographer for them because I could do in pictures what they made in noise. She stayed with them throughout their US tour in 1979, and a book of her Clash photographs, The Clash Before and After, was published in 1980 by Eel Pie Publishing. The Clash and Elvis She is modest about her contribution: I don’t think I created their image I just added atmosphere and perhaps the setting to the image they already had I remember thinking something was wrong, realising Paul was going to crack and waited. The shot is out of focus because I ducked he was closer than it looks ~ Pennie Smith __________ LONGTIME BAND ASSOCIATE, FORMER BIG AUDIO DYNAMITE MEMBER AND BBC 6 MUSIC DJ DON LETTS’S PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE ON ‘LONDON CALLING. The record Rolling Stone magazine voted album of the decade for the 1980s, even though it was released in 1979! Now, I could have easily chosen The Clash’s debut album, as it’s hard to think of a better musical statement of intent. But I went for this album for a couple of reasons besides the fact I directed the video for the ‘London Calling’ single as well as ‘Clampdown’ and ‘Train In Vain’. I chose this record because not only was it a quantum leap from their debut release, it was also a quantum leap for punk itself, which by this time had painted itself into a corner you can’t do this, you can’t do that. Punk was never about nihilism and negativity it was about empowerment, individuality and freedom, personal and musical. ‘London Calling’ embraced these ideals like no other punk record from the period. A double album, sold for the price of one The Clash took a cut in royalties to make this possible ‘London Calling’ reflected the band’s musical tastes as a group and individually. It’s a culture clash of musical styles that include reggae, old-school R&B, jazz, rockabilly, ska, pop, soul and rock that signposted new possibilities for the punk movement. It was produced by the legendary Guy Stevens (RIP) who came with some serious credentials as he was the ‘missing link’ in the UK beat and blues scene of the 1960s, having produced the likes of Mott The Hoople a big plus as far as Mick Jones was concerned. Don Letts: Punk was never about nihilism and negativity it was about empowerment, individuality and freedom Guy had been involved with some of the band’s early demos which didn’t go as planned. Nevertheless, The Clash got him to produce the album against the wishes of the record company. Truth be told, Guy was a wild card yet he was key to the process, and not always by design. His production methods were kind of ‘out there’, to put it mildly, as he was more into vibe than technique. This would include antics like swinging ladders around the studio and pouring wine onto the Bösendorfer piano while Joe Strummer was playing, as he thought it made it sound better. Guy was all about creating a rock ‘n’ roll atmosphere. Recording wise, a lot of the songs went down in one or two takes during 18-hour days over a six-week period the band was never work shy, and they were on it 24/7. In typical Clash style, many of the lyrics and topics were about issues that had direct impact including: unemployment, drugs, consumerism, racial problems, paranoia, adulthood and even love, as demonstrated in ‘Train In Vain’. And then there was the album artwork designed by Ray Lowry (RIP) as homage to Elvis Presley’s debut album. It features Pennie Smith’s incredible picture of Paul Simonon smashing his Fender Precision Bass on the stage of The Palladium in New York City and if you wanted to sum up the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll in one picture, well, that would be it. From its release over 35 years ago to this very day, ‘London Calling’ is still acknowledged as one of the most critically acclaimed double albums ever, right up there with The Stones’ ‘Exile On Main Street’. In fact, Rolling Stone ranks it as number eight on its list of the 500 greatest records of all time no shit, Sherlock. __________ ORIGINAL CREEM MAGAZINE REVIEW As much as I like and admire the Clash, London Calling leaves me caught in a dilemma that I’m not at all pleased to be in. The problems that I have with the two-record set actually lie somewhat to be outside of the LPs themselves and, because of that, it’s probably better to first discuss the work itself and then get on to what seem to be the more important questions raised by it in regard to the Clash’s self-pledged role in the world. If it seemed to some that all the musical growth so evident in those absolutely amazing singles which followed the Clash’s debut album (in particular, the Clash City Rockers and Hammersmith Palais singles, and both sides of each as well) was stunted by te somewhat overbearing metalloid tendencies of producer Sandy Pearlman on Give ‘Em Enough Rope, then London Calling is a fine re-affirmation of the unbridled adventurousness and progress that the Clash are capable of. The band, with the considerable aid of long-lost Mott the Hoople producer Guy Stevens, touch the kind of bases that one used to expect, but now hardly ever sees from one, let along two albums (if Tusk is F. Mac’s White album, I’m J. Lennon’s monkey’s uncle). The approaches here range from all-out sonic attacks (the title cut, which I’ll have more to say about later, is so powerful that one is utterly drained physically by the end as the Morse Code S.O.S. fades with Joe Strummer’s wails) to souped-up rockabilly (Brand New Cadillac) to free-wheelin’ r ‘n’ b (Lover’s Rock, Wrong ’em Boyo, the later featuring some swift Stagger Lee into Sea Cruise horn swings) to suds ‘n’ sods pub croons (Jimmy Jazz) to Spectorial/Springsteen melodrama (The Card Cheat). In short, everything that is around now musically meanders in for the ride somewhere along the line, and just about all of it does sound of a piece. Stevens has deftly brought out the best of this band, in particular the unfailing intimacy of Joe Strummer’s vocals and the constant supportive interplay between Strummer’s voice and Mick Jones’ chip-ins, both in his own singing and more importantly, in his gut-wrenching guitar playing. And the sheer strength of the Clash’s energy is used deftly here, bursting forth at times and riding under the current at others. Stevens has managed to give the Clash the same kind of wonderful edge that he gave Ian Hunter and Mott, and it sure makes sense when you hear the almost Dylanesque way Strummer shouts You can go it alone on London Calling and That’s just Montgomery Clift, honey! on The Right Profile, a song that could very well have been found somewhere on the Basement Tapes. In these days of Chapman explicitness, it’s a treat to hear such un-overly-conscious production values. But like I said, I don’t find London Calling an easy album to handle, and when I stated previously that my problems lay somewhat outside the work itself, you’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned many of the lyrics. That’s because the unavoidable fact of London Calling is that that very first track almost makes the rest of the two records immaterial. So explosive is it in its depiction of apocalypse now, so strong is its message, so challenging is its putting forth of all the questions and abhorrences that are flying through all of our lives at the present time, that the rest of the album’s lyrics just seem to be a weak addendum to a case already stated as well as it can be. Which is something that I can’t help thinking about. For, having been attacked rather idiotically for the one instance so far where they’ve managed to forget about the world’s troubles and their fist in the air righteousness namely the light and buoyant 1-2-Gotta Crush on You, they seem almost too self-consciously on the offensive here, and with this much room to spread out, I was praying that there’d be a little more light shed on what, if anything, the Clash can see on the other side. And if that light just isn’t there for them, then it is indeed some kind of vast wasteland they find themselves in. I guess perhaps that’s why those startling singles throughout ’78 meant so much, for they just seemed to spring up and grab you, shake you and hold you for three minutes and then release you, to mull it over. Here, though, the absence of relief is wearisome, and since there is no turf here that hasn’t been mentioned in some shape or form beforehand on earlier Clash efforts (war, oppression, racism, sexism) I’m just kind of ambivalently perplexed. Because by now, we all should be hopefully well aware of all the dangers that the various political and social systems that be are placing us in and under. But it’s hard for me to believe that’s all that runs through Jones’ and Strummer’s heads, hearts and veins 24 hours a day. Which is not to say that all I want is a worldful of numbed Mr. Joyboys. But that rough mix between politics and music, one which heretofore the Clash had managed to incorporate into everything they did better than anyone else has ever done because they are such a phenomenal group is getting a little messy. Even the MC-5, at their most blatant, still tossed in Looking at You on Back in the U.S.A. without it interfering with the overall message. The four sides of London Calling have me feeling like I’ve been levelled by the weight of the world. Which very well may be the Clash’s intent. But I’m not sure if that sticker that’s mentioned elsewhere in this section is really what I want as a sum total of my feeling about the Clash. Billy Altman (April, 1980) __________ ORIGINAL ROLLING STONE REVIEW By now, our expectations of the Clash might seem to have become inflated beyond any possibility of fulfillment. It’s not simply that they’re the greatest rock & roll band in the world indeed, after years of watching too many superstars compromise, blow chances and sell out, being the greatest is just about synonymous with being the music’s last hope. While the group itself resists such labels, they do tell you exactly how high the stakes are, and how urgent the need. The Clash got their start on the crest of what looked like a revolution, only to see the punk movement either smash up on its own violent momentum or be absorbed into the same corporate-rock machinery it had meant to destroy. Now, almost against their will, they’re the only ones left. Give ‘Em Enough Rope, the band’s last recording, railed against the notion that being rock & roll heroes meant martyrdom. Yet the album also presented itself so flamboyantly as a last stand that it created a near-insoluble problem: after you’ve already brought the apocalypse crashing down on your head, how can you possibly go on? On the Clash’s new LP, London Calling, there’s a composition called Death or Glory that seems to disavow the struggle completely. Over a harsh and stormy guitar riff, lead singer Joe Strummer offers a grim litany of failure. Then his cohort, Mick Jones, steps forward to drive what appears to be the final nail into the coffin. Death or glory, he bitterly announces, become just another story. But Death or Glory in many ways, the pivotal song on London Calling reverses itself midway. After Jones’ last, anguished cry drops off into silence, the music seems to scatter from the echo of his words. Strummer reenters, quiet and undramatic, talking almost to himself at first and not much caring if anyone else is listening. We’re gonna march a long way, he whispers. Gonna fight a long time. The guitars, distant as bugles on some faraway plain, begin to rally. The drums collect into a beat, and Strummer slowly picks up strength and authority as he sings: We’ve gotta travel over mountains We’ve gotta travel over seas We’re gonna fight you, brother We’re gonna fight till you lose We’re gonna raise TROUBLE! The band races back to the firing line, and when the singers go surging into the final chorus of Death or gloryjust another story, you know what they’re really saying: like hell it is! Merry and tough, passionate and large-spirited, London Calling celebrates the romance of rock & roll rebellion in grand, epic terms. It doesn’t merely reaffirm the Clash’s own commitment to rock-as-revolution. Instead, the record ranges across the whole of rock & roll’s past for its sound, and digs deeply into rock legend, history, politics and myth for its images and themes. Everything has been brought together into a single, vast, stirring story one that, as the Clash tell it, seems not only theirs but ours. For all its first-take scrappiness and guerrilla production, this two-LP set which, at the group’s insistence, sells for not much more than the price of one is music that means to endure. It’s so rich and far-reaching that it leaves you not just exhilarated but exalted and triumphantly alive. From the start, however, you know how tough a fight it’s going to be. London Calling opens the album on an ominous note. When Strummer comes in on the downbeat, he sounds weary, used up, desperate: The Ice Age is coming/The sun is zooming in/Meltdown expected/The wheat is growing thin.’ The rest of the record never turns its back on that vision of dread. Rather, it pulls you through the horror and out the other side. The Clash’s brand of heroism may be supremely romantic, even naive, but their utter refusal to sentimentalize their own myth and their determination to live up to an actual code of honor in the real world, without ever minimizing the odds makes such romanticism seem not only brave but absolutely necessary. London Calling sounds like a series of insistent messages sent to the scattered armies of the night, proffering warnings and comfort, good cheer and exhortations to keep moving. If we begin amid the desolation of the title track, we end, four sides later, with Mick Jones spitting out heroic defiance in I’m Not Down and finding a majestic metaphor at the pit of his depression that lifts him and us right off the ground. Like skyscrapers rising up, Jones screams. Floor by floor I’m not giving up. Then Joe Strummer invites the audience, with a wink and a grin, to smash up your seats and rock to this brand new beat in the merry-go-round invocation of Revolution Rock. Against all the brutality, injustice and large and small betrayals delineated in song after song here the assembly-line Fascists in Clampdown, the advertising executives of Koka Kola, the drug dealer who turns out to be the singer’s one friend in the jittery, hypnotic Hateful the Clash can only offer their sense of historic purpose and the faith, innocence, humor and camaraderie embodied in the band itself. This shines through everywhere, balancing out the terrors that the LP faces again and again. It can take forms as simple as letting bassist Paul Simonon sing his own The Guns of Brixton, or as relatively subtle as the way Strummer modestly moves in to support Jones’ fragile lead vocal on the forlorn Lost in the Supermarket. It can be as intimate and hilarious as the moment when Joe Strummer deflates any hint of portentousness in the sexual-equality polemics of Lover’s Rock by squawking I’m so nervous! to close the tune. In Four Horsemen, which sounds like the movie soundtrack to a rock & roll version of The Seven Samurai, the Clash’s martial pride turns openly exultant. The guitars and drums start at a thundering gallop, and when Strummer sings, Four horsemen , the other members of the group charge into line to shout joyously: and it’s gonna be us! London Calling is spacious and extravagant. It’s as packed with characters and incidents as a great novel, and the band’s new stylistic expansions brass, organ, occasional piano, blues grind, pop airiness and the reggae-dub influence that percolates subversively through nearly every number add density and richness to the sound. The riotous rockabilly-meets-the-Ventures quality of Brand New Cadillac (Jesus Christ! Strummer yells to his ex-girlfriend, having so much fun he almost forgets to be angry, Whereja get that Cadillac?) slips without pause into the strung-out shuffle of Jimmy Jazz, a Nelson Algren-like street scene that limps along as slowly as its hero, just one step ahead of the cops. If Rudie Can’t Fail (the She’s Leaving Home of our generation) celebrates an initiation into bohemian lowlife with affection and panache, The Card Cheat picks up on what might be the same character twenty years later, shot down in a last grab for more time away from the darkest door. An awesome orchestral backing track gives this lower-depths anecdote a somber weight far beyond its scope. At the end of The Card Cheat, the song suddenly explodes into a magnificent panoramic overview from the Hundred Year War to the Crimea that turns ephemeral pathos into permanent tragedy. Other tracks tackle history head-on, and claim it as the Clash’s own. Wrong ‘Em Boyo updates the story of Stagger Lee in bumptious reggae terms, forging links between rock & roll legend and the group’s own politicized roots-rock rebel. The Right Profile, which is about Montgomery Clift, accomplishes a different kind of transformation. Over braying and sarcastic horns, Joe Strummer gags, mugs, mocks and snickers his way through a comic-horrible account of the actor’s collapse on booze and pills, only to close with a grudging admiration that becomes unexpectedly and astonishingly moving. It’s as if the singer is saying, no matter how ugly and pathetic Clift’s life was, he was still in spite of everything one of us. Spanish Bombs is probably London Calling‘s best and most ambitious song. A soaring, chiming intro pulls you in, and before you can get your bearings, Strummer’s already halfway into his tale. Lost and lonely in his disco casino, he’s unable to tell whether the gunfire he hears is out on the streets or inside his head. Bits of Spanish doggerel, fragments of combat scenes, jangling flamenco guitars and the lilting vocals of a children’s tune mesh in a swirling kaleidoscope of courage and disillusionment, old wars and new corruption. The evocation of the Spanish Civil War is sumptuously romantic: With trenches full of poets, the ragged army, fixin’ bayonets to fight the other line. Strummer sings, as Jones throws in some lovely, softly stinging notes behind him. Here as elsewhere, the heroic past isn’t simply resurrected for nostalgia’s sake. Instead, the Clash state that the lessons of the past must be earned before we can apply them to the present. London Calling certainly lives up to that challenge. With its grainy cover photo, its immediate, on-the-run sound, and songs that bristle with names and phrases from today’s headlines, it’s as topical as a broadside. But the album also claims to be no more than the latest battlefield in a war of rock & roll, culture and politics that’ll undoubtedly go on forever. Revolution Rock, the LP’s formal coda, celebrates the joys of this struggle as an eternal carnival. A spiraling organ weaves circles around Joe Strummer’s voice, while the horn section totters, sways and recovers like a drunken mariachi band. This must be the way out, Strummer calls over his shoulder, so full of glee at his own good luck that he can hardly believe it. El Clash Combo, he drawls like a proud father, coasting now, sure he’s made it home. Weddings, parties, anything And bongo jazz a specialty. But it’s Mick Jones who has the last word. Train in Vain arrives like an orphan in the wake of Revolution Rock. It’s not even listed on the label, and it sounds faint, almost overheard. Longing, tenderness and regret mingle in Jones’ voice as he tries to get across to his girl that losing her meant losing everything, yet he’s going to manage somehow. Though his sorrow is complete, his pride is that he can sing about it. A wistful, simple number about love and loss and perseverance, Tram in Vain seems like an odd ending to the anthemic tumult of London Calling. But it’s absolutely appropriate, because if this record has told us anything, it’s that a love affair and a revolution small battles as well as large ones are not that different. They’re all part of the same long, bloody march. ~ Tom Carson (April 3, 1980) TRACKS: All songs written and composed by Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, except where noted. Side one 1 London Calling 3:19 2 Brand New Cadillac (Vince Taylor) 2:09 3 Jimmy Jazz 3:52 4 Hateful 2:45 5 Rudie Can’t Fail 3:26 Side two 1 Spanish Bombs 3:19 2 The Right Profile 3:56 3 Lost in the Supermarket 3:47 4 Clampdown 3:49 5 The Guns of Brixton (Paul Simonon) 3:07 Side three 1 Wrong ‘Em Boyo (Clive Alphonso) 3:10 2 Death or Glory 3:55 3 Koka Kola 1:46 4 The Card Cheat 3:51 Side four 1 Lover’s Rock 4:01 2 Four Horsemen 2:56 3 I’m Not Down 3:00 4 Revolution Rock (Jackie Edwards, Danny Ray) 5:37 5 Train in Vain 3:09

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