This Is A Public Service Announcement, With Guitars! (Cont.)

For the second album, CBS wanted a more professional recording and hired, gulp!, Blue Oyster Cult's producer, Sandy Pearlman. Give 'Em Enough Rope has been jeered and cheered for it's big "arena punk" sound, but the record does sound BIG. Topper Headon, who was now the band's permanent drummer, loved the way Pearlman made the drums sound.

Give 'Em Enough Rope has great songs such as "Safe European Home", written about the band's trip to Jamaica at the request of Bob Marley:

Safe European Home

Well, I just got back an' I wish I never leave now
Who dat Martian arrival at the airport?
How many local dollars for a local anesthetic?
The Johnny on the corner was a very sympathetic

I went to the place where every white face is an
Invitation to robbery
An' sitting here in my safe European home
I don't wanna go back there again

Stay Free

As good as the second album is, it goes over too much of the same territory, sonically and lyrically, covered on the first album. Were the Clash out of ideas? Were they just going to keep making the same record over and over like The Ramones?

No, they were going to deliver what may be the greatest rock album of all time: London Calling. The double album, as mentioned before, sold for the price of a single album. But the record company hoodooed the band and only counted it as a single album toward their contract. They didn't care, it was important to them for the album to be offered to the public at a low price.

London calling to the faraway towns
Now that war is declared-and battle come down
London calling to the underworld
Come out of the cupboard, all you boys and girls
London calling, now don't look at us
All that phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust
London calling, see we ain't got no swing
'Cept for the ring of that truncheon thing

[Chorus:]
The ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in
Engines stop running and the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear error, but I have no fear
London is drowning-and I live by the river

HATEFUL

Well, I got a friend who's a man
What man?
The man who keeps me from the lovely
He gives me what I need
What you need? What you got?
I need it all so badly

[Chorus:]
Oh, anything I want he gives it to me
Anything I want he gives it, but not for free
It's hateful
And it's paid for and I'm so grateful to be nowhere

This year I've lost some friends
Some friends? What friends?
I dunno, I ain't even noticed

You see, I gotta go out again
Again? My friend
I gotta see that mainman

I killed all my nerves
My nerves? What swerves?
And I can't drive so steady

I've lost my memory
My mind? Behind!
I can't see so clearly

The tour was named the "16 Tons" tour after the Merle Travis country song. "You load 16 tons and what do you get? Another day older and more in debt". It was a swipe against the record company to whom they were going further and further in debt. Ah, the record business, just ask Grandpa of The Drovers Old Time Medicine Show.

The band also appeared on Fridays, ABC Television's answer to Saturday Night Live. Instead of getting the usual two songs, The Clash played four in two 2 song sets. It was the first time I had ever seen them outside of still photographs. They were cooler than even I had imagined. They played "London Calling", "Clampdown", "Train In Vain", and "Guns of Brixton". (after you finish this article, go to You Tube to view these performances!)

Next, the band released a 7" EP, Black Market Clash with heavy reggae dub songs such as "Armageddon Time", "Bankrobber Song", and punk "Capital Radio". This album had heavy Hammond B-3 organ courtesy of Gallagher and sent Mark and I in search of more reggae. It's worth mentioning, that only punks listened to reggae at that time. The unwashed Deadhead hippies hadn't started wearing their little red, green, and yellow hats yet and ruining Bob Marley for a lot of people!

After giving CBS Records a huge headache with the double album London Calling, the band found that they had too many songs for a double album, and they didn't want to save any back for a future album. So, they released the triple album Sandinista!. To be honest, there was only 5 sides worth of songs, the sixth side was rubbish, like an entire side of "Revolution #9".

They took the name of the album from the left wing rebels in Nicaragua who overthrew military dictator General Somoza in 1979.

On London Calling and Black Market Clash they had explored, and mastered, reggae and dub. On Sandinista! they experimented with almost every kind of music imaginable. Except bluegrass! Gospel, Calypso, even pairing the whitest music there is, the waltz, with Jamaican folk music. They recorded the album at Electric Lady  Studios in New York. While they were in NYC, there was a transit strike and they had to walk to the studio every day through black neighborhoods. Just as they had soaked up reggae back in Brixton, they absorbed, and were excited by the new music heard in those New York neighborhoods: Hip Hop and Rap. And Sandinista! opens with "The Magnificent Seven" a funky Joe Strummer rap.

The Magnificent Seven

The album was released in late winter in 1981, and got mixed reviews. Some thought it was overindulgent for a punk band to release a double album, much less a triple! Others who had seen London Calling as being too Americanized didn't like the hip hop influence and so many lyrics about New York. Yes, the band had soaked up the street beats of the Bronx and Brooklyn, but there were so many other kinds of influences that were definitely not American. Calypso, reggae, and third world folk music were just some of the music explored. On Give 'Em Enough Rope they had used honky tonk piano on two songs, and more piano, organ, and some horns on London Calling. On Sandinista! they used everything but the kitchen sink with fiddle, brass bands, steel drums and whatever else the songs called for to work. Hard line punks were dismayed. True music fans were delighted.

Mick Jones wrote about where he grew up, the high rises of the Westway area of London in "Up in Heaven (Not Only Here)", which is one of the impassioned songs they ever recorded, from the abrupt  opening to the riff Jones plays with that swelling Hammond organ behind it all.

One of the best songs on the album, musically and lyrically is "Something About England" which is told by a WWII veteran. This song shows that their songwriting was as good as anybody who ever put pen to paper. It starts with Jones singing, what sounds like it's going to be a Clash ballad, then Strummer comes in as the soldier "I missed the fourteen-eighteen war..."

Charlie don't surf and we think he should
Charlie don't surf and you know that it ain't no good
Charlie don't surf for his hamburger Momma
Charlie's gonna be a napalm star

The movies of director Martin Scorsese were also huge to the band. Scorsese was a big fan of The Clash and wanted them to write a song for Cruising starring Al Pacino. The song, "Somebody Got Murdered" was never used in that movie, but shows up on Sandinista! I swear, I have that CD in right now and just as I typed the title, the song came on the stereo!

Somebody lights a cigarette while riding in a car

Somebody takes a swig and passes back a jar

What a great song!

"One More Time" One more time in the ghetto, one more time if you please

One more time for the dying man, one more time to be free

This song has some of the best bass playing by Simonon of his career.

One of the most interesting songs is "The Sounds of Sinners", a gospel number that is tongue in cheek and totally serious at the same time. With gospel piano and church organ, the song just cooks. Strummer was repeatedly asked if he "had found religion".