Rebirth and the Greatest Album of All Time
Despite a warm critical response and a debut at number two on the UK Albums chart, the consensus from London’s most ardent Clash faithful was that they’d missed it. Give ‘Em Enough Rope, the second album from The Clash, recorded in London and San Francisco with famed Blue Oyster Cult producer Sandy Pearlman was polished in a way the first Clash album hadn’t been, but fans thought that Pearlman’s treatment of the Clash tended too far toward the mainstream (Rolling Stone, in a positive review, remarked that the sound of Give ‘Em Enough Rope was “accessible hard rock”.) Songwriter and frontman Joe Strummer’s vocals were buried in the mix in favor of new Clash drummer Topper Headon’s (outstanding) drum parts. The album was included in many year-end best critics list, but as Robert Christgau wrote in The Village Voice, “This isn’t among the greatest rock albums ever, but it is among the finest of the year.”
Diehard Clash fanatics were not as kind. To some of them, the Clash had strayed away from their working class punk rock roots for no other reason than to create a more palatable version of their socially-charged 1976 masterpiece. Joe Strummer and Mick Jones agreed. In response, they parted ways from long-time manager and band organizer Bernard Rhodes and set out to create something worthy of their rapidly growing place in rock history.
Having to leave their rehearsal space after firing Bernard Rhodes, the Clash holed up in Vanilla Studios, a rehearsal space in the back of a garage in London’s Pimlico neighborhood. Both Mick Jones and Joe Strummer were suffering from a prolonged case of writer’s block - having not written a song in more than a year - and so the Clash began their next journey completely empty-handed.
Over the next three months, the Clash would stick to a daily routine: afternoon rehearsals, followed by a late-afternoon football match outside the studio, then drinks at a local pub, and finally a second rehearsal late into the evening. Slowly, they began to chip away at their blocks and create. What emerged from the ashes of the Clash’s rebuilding would be what would be referred to by music critic Mark Kidel as the first post-punk double album. Helmed by producer Guy Stevens, the Clash were able to speak directly into the cultural zeitgeist of the late 1970s, and by embracing a wide range of musical styles performed in a distinctly Clash way, created in London Calling what some consider to be the greatest album of all time.
In the title track, Joe Strummer lays out the path of destruction they’re about to lay in the fight to reclaim the soul of their band, and the path they’ll clear cut on the way to ushering a new era of punk:
Engines stop running, but I have no fear
‘Cause London is drowning, and I, I live by the river
No one can carve your path. It’s up to you.