London Calling

The Clash had no business making this album. They were a punk band, they were broke, they had just parted ways with their manager, and CBS Records was watching them closely with dwindling patience. What they did instead of falling apart was rent a converted auto garage in Pimlico, London, lock themselves inside for months, and quietly become the best rock and roll band in the world.

The producer they chose, Guy Stevens, was notorious for drinking heavily and once spent a recording session swinging a ladder around the studio to, as he put it, create the right atmosphere. Mick Jones meanwhile snuck off to use the studio bathroom as a makeshift echo chamber for drum overdubs, and recorded the sound of velcro separating on the studio seats, which you can hear in the intro to "Guns of Brixton" if you listen closely enough. The album's most successful single, "Train in Vain," was added so late that it did not make the track listing printed on the cover. The finished record was a double album that CBS had initially refused to approve. The band insisted, and rather than price it as a double album, they sold it at the price of a single LP.

London Calling is one of the most purely generous rock albums ever made. Punk, ska, rockabilly, reggae, jazz, soul, all of it passing through the same four people, all of it sounding urgent and alive. Joe Strummer's voice is the thread that holds every genre shift together, equal parts hoarse conviction and controlled fury. The cover, a direct visual reference to Elvis Presley's debut album with Paul Simonon's bass guitar replacing Elvis's guitar, is a declaration of intent. This band knew their history and intended to surpass it. On this album, they did exactly that.