Post by Fuggle on Sept 20, 2004 12:21:43 GMT -5
Twenty-five years on, London is calling once again
Fiona Shepherd
AT THE end of the 1970s, on the cusp of a new decade, The Clash released a double album which was to mark their graduation from snotty punks to fluent rock band. London Calling - from the foreboding rallying cry of its title track to the upbeat last-minute addition Train In Vain via the dub swagger of The Guns of Brixton, the whimsical Lost in the Supermarket and the politicised missives, Clampdown, and Spanish Bombs - was the White Album of its era.
It was eclectic, bursting with intent and amassing a reputation beyond its net worth. Rolling Stone voted it the greatest album of the 1980s - to which frontman Joe Strummer replied: "But it was released in the 70s".
London Calling is also wrapped in one of the all-time great album covers - the title in pink and green, aping Elvis Presley’s typography, frames Pennie Smith’s fuzzy photograph of Paul Simenon smashing his bass on stage at the New York Palladium. Like punk itself, her image, recently voted the most iconic in rock’n’roll, wasn’t technically perfect, but it was primal - and damn cool.
In their early days, The Clash rejected the past - no Beatles, no Stones, no Elvis. But punk was mutating by 1979 and such a restrictive credo was looking more like willful perversity. The Clash were dabbling in many forms of music. Their drummer, scrawny little Topper Headon, was jazz-trained. Two years earlier, he could have been lynched for admitting it. Now, with the group’s musical horizons expanding, it was a boon. Simenon was a confirmed reggae fan, and his songwriting contributions reflected that. He introduced the band to the rockabilly track Brand New Cadillac, old ska tune Wrong ’Em Boyo, and Danny Ray’s reggae song Revolution Rock, covers that ended up on the album.
These songs and a plethora of originals took shape in the summer of 1979, above a mechanics’ in Pimlico. Their isolated, rundown base was called Vanilla, and the band taped the rehearsals. When their roadie left a cassette of these rough sessions on the Tube, the myth of the "lost Vanilla tapes" was born. Only the most completist fan would have been interested in these demos, but the rumour of their disappearance somewhere around Hampstead station has passed into rock’n’roll lore.
The truth is more prosaic. There was more than one copy of the recordings and Mick Jones found a batch of Vanilla tapes when was moving house this year. So the 25th anniversary edition of London Calling is embellished with a second CD featuring 21 rehearsal tracks.
I’d like to say it’s like being in the room with the band, witnessing rock history unfold. At best, it’s like being next door, listening with a glass to the wall. But there are five tracks which are of more than archival interest - a cover of a Bob Dylan song, The Man In Me, and four Clash tracks which have not previously seen the light of day: the bluesy pastiches Lonesome Me and Walking the Slidewalk; the reggaefied Where You Gonna Go (Soweto), and the new wave Heart & Mind, which sounds like a portent of today’s London likely lads, the Mick Jonesproduced Libertines.
The handsome package also has unpublished Pennie Smith photographs and a DVD of The Last Testament: The Making of London Calling. Here, best of all, is the testimony of four punk veterans (including Strummer, in what must have been one of his last interviews), modestly assessing the gestation of a historic rock’n’roll album.
FIONA SHEPHERD
• The 25th anniversary edition of London Calling is released by Columbia on 20 September.
Fiona Shepherd
AT THE end of the 1970s, on the cusp of a new decade, The Clash released a double album which was to mark their graduation from snotty punks to fluent rock band. London Calling - from the foreboding rallying cry of its title track to the upbeat last-minute addition Train In Vain via the dub swagger of The Guns of Brixton, the whimsical Lost in the Supermarket and the politicised missives, Clampdown, and Spanish Bombs - was the White Album of its era.
It was eclectic, bursting with intent and amassing a reputation beyond its net worth. Rolling Stone voted it the greatest album of the 1980s - to which frontman Joe Strummer replied: "But it was released in the 70s".
London Calling is also wrapped in one of the all-time great album covers - the title in pink and green, aping Elvis Presley’s typography, frames Pennie Smith’s fuzzy photograph of Paul Simenon smashing his bass on stage at the New York Palladium. Like punk itself, her image, recently voted the most iconic in rock’n’roll, wasn’t technically perfect, but it was primal - and damn cool.
In their early days, The Clash rejected the past - no Beatles, no Stones, no Elvis. But punk was mutating by 1979 and such a restrictive credo was looking more like willful perversity. The Clash were dabbling in many forms of music. Their drummer, scrawny little Topper Headon, was jazz-trained. Two years earlier, he could have been lynched for admitting it. Now, with the group’s musical horizons expanding, it was a boon. Simenon was a confirmed reggae fan, and his songwriting contributions reflected that. He introduced the band to the rockabilly track Brand New Cadillac, old ska tune Wrong ’Em Boyo, and Danny Ray’s reggae song Revolution Rock, covers that ended up on the album.
These songs and a plethora of originals took shape in the summer of 1979, above a mechanics’ in Pimlico. Their isolated, rundown base was called Vanilla, and the band taped the rehearsals. When their roadie left a cassette of these rough sessions on the Tube, the myth of the "lost Vanilla tapes" was born. Only the most completist fan would have been interested in these demos, but the rumour of their disappearance somewhere around Hampstead station has passed into rock’n’roll lore.
The truth is more prosaic. There was more than one copy of the recordings and Mick Jones found a batch of Vanilla tapes when was moving house this year. So the 25th anniversary edition of London Calling is embellished with a second CD featuring 21 rehearsal tracks.
I’d like to say it’s like being in the room with the band, witnessing rock history unfold. At best, it’s like being next door, listening with a glass to the wall. But there are five tracks which are of more than archival interest - a cover of a Bob Dylan song, The Man In Me, and four Clash tracks which have not previously seen the light of day: the bluesy pastiches Lonesome Me and Walking the Slidewalk; the reggaefied Where You Gonna Go (Soweto), and the new wave Heart & Mind, which sounds like a portent of today’s London likely lads, the Mick Jonesproduced Libertines.
The handsome package also has unpublished Pennie Smith photographs and a DVD of The Last Testament: The Making of London Calling. Here, best of all, is the testimony of four punk veterans (including Strummer, in what must have been one of his last interviews), modestly assessing the gestation of a historic rock’n’roll album.
FIONA SHEPHERD
• The 25th anniversary edition of London Calling is released by Columbia on 20 September.