So why is The Clash’s London Calling on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
There are so many places I could start with London Calling, The Clash’s best album (and one that Rolling Stone places all the way up at #16 on its greatest 500 albums list), but I’ll begin here: it’s one of those truly rare albums that when I look at its cover art – with its iconic photo of Paul Simonon preparing to smash his bass guitar to bits – the title track, “London Calling,” immediately starts playing in my head.
And although “London Calling” is a political punk rock song in the sense of (presciently!) calling out the dangers of modernity – including our climate crisis – the song title itself and its thrilling and anthemic vibe remind me of my lifelong love affair with the UK and all things British.
Although I’m not a Brit by ancestry, I inherited my adoration for the United Kingdom from my mother, and I was fortunate enough to visit England for the first time on a family trip when I was around thirteen years old. Just after college, I lived in the city of Rochester, Kent – an hour east of London – for about six months. More on my early adventures there below.
I wrote this piece during a heavily jet-lagged few days after returning from travels in Spain and Portugal. I had the opportunity to listen to London Calling several times end to end while catching up on work, and I was most struck by how vibrant and varied the sound is – particularly the first half of its hour-and-five-minutes of running time.
Our old pal Stephen Thomas Erlewine at All Music does a good job of cataloging London Calling’s range: “there’s punk and reggae, but there’s also rockabilly, ska, New Orleans R&B, pop, lounge jazz, and hard rock.”
This is The Clash transitioning from a great first-wave punk rock band into one of the most eclectic and rangy bands of all time.
For example, I can’t get enough of how the anthemic punk rock of “London Calling” transitions into the rockabilly of “Brand New Cadillac” and then the groovy rock of “Jimmy Jazz.”
And then we get “Rudie Can’t Fail,” which is my favorite song by The Clash, depending on the day you ask. In any event, it’s chilled-out ska punk perfection.
I’m blown away by how fresh and outstanding relative deep cuts like “Clampdown” sound, and the experimentation into strange-o territories on tracks like “The Guns of Brixton” work exquisitely. I can imagine the lads from Rancid playing the latter endlessly for inspiration, for example.
Personal stuff that has something to do with The Clash’s London Calling
When I moved to England on a six-month work visa just after college, I was fairly independent but uprooting myself at that age to a foreign country where I knew no one was a pretty big deal.
I couldn’t sleep during the overnight flight from New York to London. I packed six months’ worth of clothing to work and live, and I recall wearily pouring myself onto the Tube at Heathrow and then trudging through morning London streets, looking for the hostel that I was to stay in for a week before starting my new job out in Kent.
There were half a dozen other people staying in the same room at the London hostel. My initial worries that my stuff would get stolen soon melted away as everyone was very friendly and cool. I made fast friends with a Danish guy named Remy, even though his English was quite limited and my Danish non-existent. The others were a group of Swedish gals on vacation together. Although I was single and ready to mingle, they kindly took me under their wing and let me hang around with them a few times.
After a week, I headed deep into the British suburbs by train and finally arrived at a desolate train station. After a half hour or so, I was picked up by a guy named Peter – an employee of the company I was to about to start work for – and who I would live with for the next month.
I sometimes regret that I didn’t live in London proper during my England days, though I got into the city whenever possible. Enough friends visited me during my stay that I got adept at giving little walking tours of central London, in fact.
I do feel a sense of gratitude that I had the opportunity to live and work in a country outside of the U.S. And perhaps doing so outside of London gave me an even more unique experience than many ex-pats get. This feeling was particularly acute when I would visit friends participating in study abroad programs, who seemed to live within an American bubble of sorts among their fellow travelers.
While I occasionally change planes at Heathrow these days, I haven’t had a proper visit to England in many years. But my personal calling to London will always live on.
Some stats & info about The Clash – London Calling
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock Music, Punk Rock, British Bands, Old School Punk, New Wave
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – #16
- All Music’s rating – 5 out of 5 stars
- When was London Calling released? 1979
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #150 out of 1,000
The Clash’s London Calling on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from The Clash’s London Calling that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
How you get a rude and a reckless? Don’t you be so crude and feckless.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.