Welcome to Season 3 of According to Doyle. If you are just joining us, feel free to read the About This Project page for information about what else I’ve ranked (and am going to rank) here as well as statements about hubris and my cat. All songs here are ranked based on the guiding principle of “do I like each song more than the last song?” No science was harmed (or employed) in the creation of these lists. I welcome editing feedback because Doyle brain too fast for Doyle fingers.
I have posited numerous times that certain great musical acts (I’ll mention Gram Parsons and Big Star here as examples) are simultaneously incredibly important to the history of music and, at the same time, somewhat underwhelming the first time you hear them if you heard the bands they influenced first. My hypothesis is that an innovative but comparably obscure band that influences dozens of other bands doesn’t sound so innovative if you hear them last.
I got deeply into The Clash before I listened to a whole lot of The Sex Pistols. Very frankly, without the Sex Pistols, The Clash would not have existed. They influenced The Clash’s sound and punk approach to music, but they also created an environment that allowed bands to grow and thrive in their wake. Furthermore, The Clash’s manager was a protege of Malcolm McLaten, The Sex Pistols’ manager. I want to acknowledge the importance of the Sex Pistols and the enormous influence they had on something like 75% of all music that I loved growing up. I also want to acknowledge that – while I recognize the quality of the band – I don’t really enjoy listening to them (on the other hand, I love former Pistols lead singer Johnny Lydon’s next band, Public Image, Ltd). Set that relationship to “It’s Complicated.”
There’s some real depth – both lyrically and musically – to the Sex Pistols’ work, but let’s never forget that Sid Vicious was invited to join the band because he had the right look and attitude. It is debatable whether he ever figured out his way around the bass guitar. Not unlike the episode of The Brady Bunch where Greg is invited to become a pop singer because he’ll fit the costume, Sid became a band member because he went to the right clubs, wore the right clothes and had the right criminal record. Classic British punk, from the start, was a weird mix of authenticity and capitalism – the desire to sell clothes was never far from the minds of the managers. Rebellion was never far from being turned into money, as Joe Strummer wryly observed in “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais.” Or, as Lydon put it at the final Sex Pistols gig in ’78, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”
So that all said, I acknowledge that the phrase “The Only Band That Matters” was a marketing phrase to make The Clash seem more authentic and move more units. I also acknowledge that there’s times when I’ve believed that that slogan is absolutely true.
10. Somebody Got Murdered
Spain only single from Sandinista! (1980), released as a single in 1981
I’ve been very tempted to grab it from the till
I been very hungry but not enough to kill
While Mick Jones is the vocalist of “Somebody Got Murdered,” Joe Strummer clearly wrote the lyrics. The song is a somber (but very catchy) reflection on an actual murder in the carpark kiosk where Strummer lived. The emphasis in the song is on the permanence of murder – “somebody’s dead forever” – and the trivial reason the person got killed – a petty robbery. Strummer contrasts this with the fact that everyone around goes on with their business as if nothing happened – the blood will be washed away and it will be as if the person never existed.
Several years back, I witnessed the aftermath of a death – not a murder, thank goodness. A man had been working in the trees and had a heart attack. I was profoundly affected and needed to go into counseling. I never learned the man’s name or anything about him and my brain invented a whole thing about the horror of dying at work. I guess dying anywhere is all the same, but that thought in particular hit me. When I listen to this song, I think about the effect seeing that body had on Joe Strummer (so much worse to know it was murder) and I wonder if that’s part of why they agreed Mick Jones would sing it.
9. Rudie Can’t Fail
Dutch only single from London Calling (1979), released as a single in 1980
I went to the market to realize my soul
What I need I just don’t have (oh no)
First they curse, then they press me ’til I hurt
They say, Rudie can’t fail
London Calling is one of my favorite albums of all time. I’ve owned it in three formats (vinyl, cassette and CD – never got the 8-track). I initially owned it on vinyl and remember that I was annoyed when my copy arrived to discover that both discs were in the same sleeve. Indeed, this double album did not have a double sleeve that folded out. Sure it cost a little less than other double albums, but my teenage brain didn’t understand anything about the economics of record creation. The things we value at different stages of life!
As I’ve mentioned, I wasn’t aware that “Train in Vain” (#12) was on the album so the only song I knew was the title track. My first time listening through the album was a real challenge for my adolescent brain. Songs about Montgomery Clift and shopping for groceries? And wait some of these songs sound reggae and a little polished? With the exception of “Train in Vain,” I found side 4 unlistenable – I found their cover of “Revolution Rock” to be excruciating. My point is, my first impression was not positive because I wanted familiar cake like “London Calling” and not a glorious banquet for the senses. I think it’s like how sometimes when you’re little you prefer fast food to something genuinely well cooked. After that initial listen, I popped “London Calling” and “Train in Vain” onto a mix tape or two but otherwise shelved the album for a time.
Now we get to my dreadful mental block. When people tell me how much I will like something – or how much they think I should like something – two things invariably happen. First, I insist that they are wrong. Second, they are inevitably right. When I told my friends about my reaction to London Calling, I recall most of them giving me a hard time (The Clash was a band that the rockers and the punks agreed on in my world – they all liked the band). This strengthened my resolve to avoid listening to the album again. Honest to goodness, I don’t think I dug it out again until the 90’s. Meanwhile, I fell in love with Sandinista! and the debut album, continued a complicated relationship with Combat Rock, was repulsed by Cut the Crap, was unaware of Give ‘Em Enough Rope (see my commentary on “Tommy Gun” – #15) and delighted in Big Audio Dynamite and some of Joe Strummer’s solo work (“Love Kills” is a favorite). One day, my friend Harry mentioned that the first line of “Clampdown” (coming up) was a paraphrase of the title of Lenin’s What is to be Done? and I think I made the “Scooby Doo is intrigued” noise that I sometimes make.
I went out and bought the album on cassette (this was the early 90’s), listened to it until the tape wore out, bought the CD (and made another cassette because I had a Walkman and not a portable CD player) and wore that tape out too. Somewhere between first listening to it and 1994-ish, London Calling transformed into one of the greatest albums of all time. Magic!
London Calling was The Clash’s zenith as a team and a production unit. They’d fired their original manager (when they eventually rehired him, they sacked Mick Jones who, as I’ve mentioned, wrote all the music), were rehearsing with great discipline and (over the record company’s objection) brought in rock producer Guy Stevens to produce the album. Stevens and The Clash got along famously – when Stevens died a couple of years later, they wrote and recorded a rather lovely tribute song to him. Strummer and Jones produced a remarkable set of songs and advanced light years as musicians while recording the album – Paul Simonon in particular went from a journeyman bassist to a virtuoso during these sessions. The band was also able to take full advantage of drummer Topper Headon’s range by exploring half a dozen distinct musical styles. Obviously the band continued to create strong work together for a few more years, but that strange alchemy that creates the greatest music wasn’t ever as present for them as it was on London Calling.
“Rudie Can’t Fail” – an ode to rude boy culture in the U.K. – is a great example of how The Clash had evolved since their last album. Featuring extensive horn work, a reggae beat and fantastic lyrics (Strummer imagines a conversation between a Rude Boy and some conservative folks on a bus), the song manages to have a strong message in the chorus (about choosing a life of non-conformity), some genuinely thrilling musical moments (I love how Jones and Strummer trade vocals on the chorus) and is catchy as heck. If you’d asked me 20 years ago, this would have maybe been my favorite song of all and I still like it just as much as I did then. I just like some other songs more.
8. Should I Stay or Should I Go
Third single (and double A-side with “Straight to Hell”) from Combat Rock (1982), released as a single in 1982
If I go there will be trouble
And if I stay it will be double
Jeans are rock and roll. That was Mick Jones’ rationalization for letting Levi’s use this song in a British ad in the early 90’s. That ad propelled the song to the top of the charts years after The Clash had, well, split. Having an older song become a huge hit years after its initial release is unusual in the U.S.A. (though, just last year, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” managed to hit number 1 – 25 years after its original release) but is more common in the U.K. Anyhow, I think it’s important to note that sometimes a song becomes more popular years after its release – the example I like to use is “What I Like About You” by The Romantics which was not nearly as big a hit as “Talking In Your Sleep.”
Jones wrote pretty much all of “Should I Stay or Should I Go” and it’s essentially a song about a break-up or a fight. Jones would later write songs with deeper lyrics, but really the words to this song are exactly as deep as they need to be. I’ve said time and again that I love a big unapologetically dumb song. Mick Jones’ Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg version of the song features more Ecuadoran Spanish (second verse) and is deliberately a little less polished than the final single. I’ve always liked this song, though sometimes I’ve grown bored with it over the years. Recently, I’ve been paying close attention to Simonon and Headon – particularly Simonon’s bass – when I listen to the track and it’s given me a renewed appreciation for just how tight a rhythm section they were.
7. This Is Radio Clash
Non-album single released in 1981
When I was a kid, I didn’t quite grasp the idea that a song could be a single but not an album. As you can imagine New Order totally flummoxed me with their albums with no singles and singles with no albums. MTV staple “This is Radio Clash” (The Clash officially had more song titles where they name-dropped the band name than the Backstreet Boys) also left me at a loss. I really wanted this song but I didn’t want to shell out for the 12″ and couldn’t find the 45. Of course, the two versions are slightly different – here’s the 12″ and here’s the 7″ which was called “Radio Clash” (without the “This is”) instead. I would have been completely thrown off by the 45 because the music video was based on the 12″. Why you gotta be that way, Clash?
“This is Radio Clash” was, as other writers have said more eloquently than I, ahead of its time. The Clash had spent several weeks performing at Bonds International Casino in New York City in 1981 and had selected a wide variety of opening acts, including both punk and rap acts. The band members loved all of the music of the city and it’s therefore not a surprise that a band that had already embraced reggae and would embrace rap. Of course, their fans took a while longer to catch up – the hip-hop acts that opened for The Clash were routinely heckled by the New York crowd which led to Strummer scolding the audience on multiple occasions. I’ve discussed the whole “what is punk” question before with the thesis that, in the 70’s, it was an approach and attitude more than a sound (see what I wrote about Sid Vicious above) but that it came to be associated more with an aggressive rock sound. By 1981, that was already getting baked in.
I feel like you can draw a straight line from “This is Radio Clash” to Mick Jones’ work with Big Audio Dynamite – the name of their first album was even This is Big Audio Dynamite.
6. Straight to Hell
Third single (and double A-side with “Should I Stay or Should I Go”) from Combat Rock (1982), released as a single in 1982
When I was writing about “Oliver’s Army” by Elvis Costello (#23), I waxed ineloquently on how I’ve ranked down songs on a number of occasions due to the inclusion of certain words in the lyrics. Regardless of the artistic intent of a songwriter, when a lyric includes racist (or sexist or homophobic) content, it becomes difficult for me to listen to. Indeed, I mentioned this while discussing “Rock The Casbah” (#14) – Strummer was appalled that the song was used by U.S. Marines while bombing Iraq. “Straight to Hell” is one of The Clash’s finest songs and I might have ranked it at #1 on this list thirty years ago. In 2020 – especially in a 2020 where the President of the United States of America is inciting racist violence against Asian Americans through his deliberate choice of what he’s called Covid-19 – I can’t overlook the second verse. It is intended as a critique of American soldiers during the Vietnam War and the language choices reflect the racism of that time (for example, referring to Vietnamese parents with the Japanese honorific “san”). I recognize that Strummer’s heart was in the right place (the song, as a whole, is about how abysmally the English and the Americans treat immigrants) but ironic racism functions the same as actual racism, once it’s out in the world. Anyhow, great drumming by Topper Headon and the Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg version of the song is pretty epic. This song first made an impression on me when I saw them play it on Saturday Night Live back in 1982. Strummer, with his Taxi Driver inspired haircut, looked every bit a punk rocker to 15 year old me.
5. Clash City Rockers
Non-album single released in 1978
Oh, say, here’s another song by The Clash about The Clash. The first one, in fact. Despite the fact that the song slags on Bowie, it is one of my favorite classic punk tunes. Jones’ guitar progression is pure gold and Topper Headon quite possibly needed new drum heads after every performance. I absolutely love the transition to the chorus – it’s like Mick Jones decided “we’re not even going to try to connect these melodies – let’s just stop and switch.” “Clash City Rockers” is surprisingly optimistic – even aspirational. While the music doesn’t yet sound like they’re exploring reggae, the lyrics make several references to Jamaican reggae – most notably the title, which is referencing the rockers reggae sub-genre and the use of the word “pressure” in the same sense as Toots and the Maytals’ “Pressure Drop.”
I first heard this song on my U.S. copy of The Clash’s debut album. It was not, in fact, on the original release. American record labels routinely messed with British albums before releasing them in the U.S.A.
4. London Calling
First single from London Calling (1979), released as a single in 1979
When Joe Strummer passed away, this was the tribute paid to him at The 2003 Grammys. Entirely appropriate – both the song “London Calling” and, more generally, its parent album were huge leaps forward for the band on every front.
The song got a ton of airplay from every local radio station in my world for the whole of the 80’s. I think “London Calling” is the song, in particular, that united the punks, metalheads and mainstream rockers in my high school in their appreciation of The Clash. I mean, the punks already liked them. The apocalyptic lyrics responded to Three Mile Island, the cold war, the dark side of drug culture, and the collapse of the punk rock boom. Everything felt like it was coming to an end in 1979 (and for the whole rest of the 80’s – and right now for that matter) and the songs lyrics are abstract enough that they can stand in for whatever Armageddon you have on hand.
To wit, something is always about to flood London.
3. The Magnificent Seven
Third single from Sandinista! (1980), released as a single in 1981
I don’t know that this is a better song than “London Calling,” but I do know that I like it just a little more. That’s what this list is about.
There’s a number of possibly dubious claims made about this song at the current iteration of its Wikipedia article. Among them, the writing collective suggests this is “the first attempt by a rock band to write and perform original rap music” and that it’s “one of the earliest examples of hip hop records with political and social content.” I mean, I can’t offer evidence to dispute either of these things, but the second point in particular seems a little overstated, especially since The Clash cited both The Sugar Hill Gang and Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five as influences on them at the time.
The remarkable bass work on this album is by Norman Watt-Roy, best known at the time for his work with Ian Dury and the Blockheads. He and fellow Blockhead (and first rate organist) Mickey Gallagher worked extensively with The Clash on both Sandinista! and London Calling. The bass work is absolutely the best thing about this song, but Strummer’s epic lyric about some bloke working a soul-killing 9-5 job with nods to both the need for socialism and the hopelessness of getting support for this among the teeming masses who are more familiar with Rin Tin Tin than Socrates. I mean, when your central philosophy is “arf” instead of “an unexamined life is not worth living,” it’s tough to wrap your brain around the value of wealth distribution.
2. (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais
Non-album single released in 1978
The Clash had several moments where they broke through into new musical territory, but for my money, none is quite as glorious as “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais.” The Clash were aware they were doing something different musically and opened the song with a great little bit of bait and switch – it begins as a rock song and then immediately transitions into a rock reggae number. While The Clash had previously covered Junior Murvin’s “Police and Thieves,” I feel like they rocked that one up a little more. On this track, they turn the reggae way up without completely losing the rock. Top rate cultural appropriation.
What really sets this song apart is Strummer’s lyric which moves from describing his disappointment with a reggae concert (it was too pop and not political enough for his taste) to a meditation on working class life in England, to calls for solidarity between white and black young people, to the disillusioning turn punk rock was taking away from its authentic (sic) roots and towards “turning rebellion into money.” Strummer had written some fine lyrics before, but I feel like he really came into his own as a songwriter on “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais.” “London Calling,” “The Magnificent Seven” and “Straight To Hell” could not have existed if he hadn’t written this song first.
Also, it is wicked fun to sing along with.
1. Clampdown
Australia only single from London Calling (1979), released as a single in 1979
Let’s take a minute to enjoy Bruce Springsteen playing “Clampdown.” If you don’t get why Springsteen and Joe Strummer were kindred spirits, you don’t really understand either of them. Looking at you, Chris Christie.
Also, let’s enjoy Rage Against The Machine covering the song at their first gig in 1991 and also later in 2008.
“Clampdown” was only released as a single in Australia – and I’m glad it was because it’s probably my favorite song by The Clash. Strummer’s lyrics are about how idealistic young people are swept up into the capitalist system and turned into eager parts of it (he explores a similar theme on “Death or Glory”). You stop being the one oppressed in the titular clampdowns and start being the oppressor. Alfred Jarry, writer of the infamous play Ubu Roi, wrote this great passage that I think reflects this idea:
We too will become stern fat men and Ubus and, once we have published books which shall become classics, we shall probably become small-town mayors and the firemen will present us with ornamental vases; after we have been elected to the academy, they’ll present their cut off mustaches to our children on velvet cushions; and a new generation of young people will come up who will find us out of date and write ballads to insult us, and there’s no reason for it to ever end.
Alfred Jarry, quoted in Alfred Jarry and Guillaume Apollinaire by Claude Schumacher
I was really into Jarry when I started getting into London Calling in the early 90’s and was nervous that I was going to turn into a part of the machine (to be raged against). I’m not convinced I haven’t, but Lord, I’m trying.
In addition to all that, I also feel like this is one of Mick Jones’ best straight-up music compositions. After the cry of “what are we gonna do now,” there’s this marvelous little moment where Headon’s drums are the only instrument before the whole band attacks the song again. The suspension and tension in that moment is just thrilling to me. The kind of off-harmony backing vocals thrill my soul. You couldn’t ask for a better catchy rock tune.
So what is punk rock? I still don’t know for sure, but this song is my best guess.
Coming Soon: The Pretenders