As the countdown to the 2012 Olympics kicks off with an unlikely theme song, I look London Calling and its zombies and heroin for the BBC.
“The Clash were supporters of pirate radio and considered launching their own station; this love song to the wireless signal recounts what, in punk terms, is up-to-the-minute and truthful news. But it isn’t saying ‘come and enjoy the canoe slalom’.”
Major hoorays to Marcus Gray’s Route 19 Revisited for the key fact that London Calling was originally inspired by Joe Strummer’s dislike of sports fans visiting London, as he explained to Kosmo Vinyl (Clash On Broadway box set booklet, 1991). Awkward [Update [1 Aug]: Praise be! Route 19 is imminently in paperback. There is nothing more interesting to say about 1979; I know – I tried! Buy it – it is The One.]
Sadly there was no space to mention Clash fan of Indian origin Harraj Mann, questioned in 2006 under the Terrorism Act after a taxi driver taking him to Heathrow airport became alarmed that he was listening to London Calling and called the police. The incident was seen as a massive overreaction, suggesting either that the song has lost its incendiary power, or that the authorities were being over-cautious – or both.
Also neglected was the way Strummer starts “doing” Tommy Steele’s Singing The Blues at the end (“I’ve never felt so much a-like…”), never better described than by Tom Ewing: “No consonant is safe with Steele around, words pool into one another in a shrugged gush of pre-meditated moodiness.”
Update [30 Jul]: Here is wireless nabob Scott Simon of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday yakking with me (see also NPR’s blog The Record):
- Image of comedy London punks in Westminster, 2006. It turned out, as they snarled at me, that I’d broken some implied contract where I’d pay to photograph them in a public place.
- Here’s an old BBC “London Calling” poster: “Throughout Europe, men and women are risking imprisonment, and even death, to hear the news from London, because they know it tells them the truth.”
- Some overlap with an earlier piece I wrote about (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais.
- People who like to know about mixing an instrument DI with a Neumann U87 on the cabinet will appreciate Mix’s Classic Tracks feature on the song; this BBC audio slideshow on the London Calling album is less abstruse.
Tags: 2012, bbc, bbcnews, drugs, london, londoncalling, music, olympics, politics, punk, smashedhits, sport, theclash, writing
