London Calling (song)

Writing and recording

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...", that was used during World War II. 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. Ironically, Strummer lived in a high rise flat at the time that he wrote the lyric.

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/All that phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust" reflects the concerns of the band over its situation after the punk rock boom in England in 1977 had ended.

"London Calling" was recorded at Wessex Studios located in a former church in Highbury in North London. This studio had already proved to a popular location with The Sex Pistols, the Pretenders and the Tom Robinson band. The single was produced by Guy Stevens and engineered by Bill Price.

Chart success and critical response

"London Calling" was released as the first and only single in the UK from the album and reached #11 in the charts in December 1979. The song did not make the US charts as "Train in Vain" was released in a single and broke the band in the US reaching #23 on the pop charts.

"London Calling" was the first Clash song to chart elsewhere in the world reaching the top 40 in Australia. The success of the single and album was greatly helped by a memorable video shot by Don Letts showing the band playing the song on a boat on the Thames in the pouring rain.

Over the years, "London Calling" has become regarded by many critics as the band's finest. Rolling Stone rated the song as #15 in its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time released in late 2004. That magazine also rated the album of the same name as the best album of the 1980s even though it was released in late 1979.

A supergroup consisting of Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Dave Grohl, Steven van Zandt and Tony Kanal of No Doubt performed the song as a tribute after the death of Joe Strummer at the 2003 Grammy awards. Bruce Springsteen had earlier offered to join the band at the induction ceremony in 2002 for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame but the band had refused to play at the ceremony claiming that they did not want to play at a function for record company executives.

In 2002, the band incurred criticism from many of its hardcore fans when they sold the rights to Jaguar for a car advertisement. In an interview posted on his website, Strummer explained the reasons for the deal. "Yeah. I agreed to that. We get hundreds of requests for that and turn 'em all down. But I just thought Jaguar ... yeah. If you're in a group and you make it together, then everybody deserves something. Especially twenty-odd years after the fact."

Trivia

An earlier version of the song from The Vanilla Tapes, with noticeably different lyrics, was released with the London Calling Legacy Edition in 2004.

A live version of the song, recorded in Boston on September 7, 1982, was released on the 1999 album From Here to Eternity: Live.

References

• Rolling Stone article on London Calling
• All Music Guide article on London Calling
• BBC 2 Sold on Song article on London Calling
• Songfacts article on London Calling
• Art for a Change article on the use of London calling for a Jaguar advertisement