London Calling

The Clash

CBS, 1979

recorded in 1979 in London, which was then wrenched by surging unemployment and drug addiction, London Calling is 19 songs of apocalypse fueled by an unbending faith in rock & roll to beat back the darkness — skidding from bleak punk (“London Calling”) to rampaging ska (“Wrong ’Em Boyo”) and disco resignation (“Lost in the Supermarket”). Singer-guitarists

Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, the Clash’s Lennon and McCartney, wrote together in Jones’ grandmother’s flat, where Jones was living for lack of money. “Joe, once he learned how to type, would bang the lyrics out at a high rate of good stuff,” Jones noted. “Then I’d be able to bang out some music while he was hitting the typewriter.” The album ends with “Train in Vain,” a rousing song of fidelity (originally unlisted on the back cover) that became the sound of triumph: the Clash’s first Top 30 single in the United States.