The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
The Clash · produced by Guy Stevens · engineered by Bill Price · CBS · about 65 minutes
Mode
Punk turned to the whole inheritance of popular music: rockabilly, ska and reggae, rhythm and blues with horns, lounge jazz, the pop ballad
Mythos
The city at the end of its world, and a gallery of outlaws who put the question whether the rebel survives his legend
Phase
Nineteen songs on four sides: an alarm, the disclosures of side two, the outlaws and a card cheat’s death on side three, a party to close, and one song beyond the order
Presentation
Double album; nineteen tracks, about sixty-five minutes, the last unlisted on the sleeve; on the cover a bass smashed on stage, lettered after Elvis Presley’s first album
Register
Defiance, satire and dread; a howled lead voice, a second voice for the pop songs, one song sung by the bass player; horns and keys
Scale
One city in 1979, and every music its people brought to it
Governing Proposition
A punk band that had declared the past dead takes up the whole of it, rockabilly, ska, reggae, rhythm and blues, lounge jazz and the ballad, on a double album broadcast from a city at the end of its world, and finds that the rebel music a young man inherits is offered back to him by the system that will employ him. The refusal is made or lost in small daily surrenders, and the plenty of the record is part of what it means.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens on an alarm. The title song takes the BBC’s wartime call sign and turns it into a broadcast from a city at the end of its world, under ice, flood and nuclear error. The guitars chop against a marching bass, Joe Strummer howls over them, and at the end a guitar figure falls away and the signal is gone. The song has to come first. Everything after it, eighteen songs and four sides, answers it: what the city is, who lives in it, what music they brought, and what it costs to go on refusing when the system that is ending is also the one that pays.
CBS released the album in Britain on 14 December 1979, and Epic in the United States in January 1980. Guy Stevens produced it and Bill Price engineered it, at Wessex Studios in London in the late summer and autumn of 1979. The band was Joe Strummer on vocals and guitar, Mick Jones on guitar and vocals, Paul Simonon on bass and Topper Headon on drums, with keyboards and a horn section added. The sleeve is Pennie Smith’s photograph of Simonon smashing his bass on stage in New York, lettered in pink and green after Elvis Presley’s first album: the past and its destruction in one image.
It is a double album: nineteen tracks on four sides, about sixty-five minutes. Seventeen tracks run under four minutes; the shortest, Koka Kola, is under two, and the longest, Revolution Rock, over five and a half. Three are covers, about a sixth of the running time. The idioms, counted by ear, are eight: rockabilly, ska and rocksteady, roots reggae, rhythm and blues with horns, lounge jazz, the pop ballad with strings or piano, punk at speed, and a disco-inflected pop song at the close. Strummer sings most of the record, Jones five or six songs, Simonon one. The last track, Train in Vain, is not listed on the original sleeve.
Movement II
Side two ends on its two hardest songs. Clampdown is the plainest statement on the record: a young man’s working life as a conscription, and the rebel choice made or lost not in one heroic act but in small daily surrenders (“working for the clampdown”). It rises through a long coda. Then The Guns of Brixton, with Simonon singing over his own bass line, brings the police to the door, heard from the side the violence lands on and in the voice of a Jamaican London. Conscription at work, then the gun at home: the side turns from the bargain to its enforcement.
What the record knows can be stated, and it holds. The rebel music a young man inherits is offered back to him as a costume by the same system that will employ him. Death or Glory, on side three, shows the rebels of a generation before grown into what they mocked. Lost in the Supermarket gives the consumer’s self as a vacancy the shop fills. Spanish Bombs lays the package holiday over the graves of the Spanish war. And the sound says it as plainly as the words: the reggae and ska are not decoration but the real population of the city the record is broadcast from.
The record says this more than it uncovers it. Much of it is stated as slogan, and the knowledge is spread across single songs rather than gathered into one. What gives it weight is the number of places it is found: a workplace, a street, a supermarket, a beach laid over a battlefield, a rebel grown old. Each song finds the same bargain in another room, and the length of the record lets it be found often enough to hold. A shorter album could have stated the argument. Only a long one could show it as the condition of a whole city.
Movement III
The second track is a cover, the first of three, of the old music punk had disowned. For a band whose first album had declared the past dead, it is a statement of intent made in the first minutes of the record: the old music is back, played with punk’s force. By the end of the first side the record has taken up most of what punk existed to refuse, and it goes on taking it up for three sides more: reggae and rocksteady, rhythm and blues, the pop ballad with strings, and a producer, Guy Stevens, who belonged to the 1960s.
The stake was real. The band’s standing was as the conscience of punk, and it was wagered on a double album that looked like the rock indulgence punk had been made to end, and on covers of the music it had disowned. The turn was taken from the band’s own ground: the year-zero punk of its first album and the larger rock sound of Give ’Em Enough Rope. But it ran back into a proven tradition, the whole history of the music, and the reggae turn had been made on the first album with Police and Thieves, and by others before. The departure was from punk’s orthodoxy into rock’s past: large in the band’s field, smaller in the music’s.
What carries the turn is the playing. Headon is the key, moving from rockabilly to reggae to a jazz shuffle without strain. Simonon’s bass carries the reggae and the title song; Jones’s guitars and arrangements give the record its pop and its scale. Price’s engineering keeps a live band present and the horns and keys clear. Stevens’s method kept the playing raw, and some of it is loose rather than live; Strummer’s voice commands in a narrow range and blurs words; the covers are played faithfully rather than remade. The grain is uneven, and the command of eight idioms is the record’s ground.
Movement IV
Side three ends on its grandest song. The Card Cheat doubles every part, piano and horns and voices, into a wall of sound, and spends it on a small death, a gambler’s. The grandeur is out of all proportion to the anecdote, and it is earned, because the record has spent three sides on outlaws and this is where it lets one have his legend at full size. It is the outlaw’s myth at its most inflated and its most moving, and its arrangement is the most ambitious on the record.
The gallery is long. The thief in Brand New Cadillac, Jimmy Jazz on the run, Rudie, Stagger Lee in Wrong ’Em Boyo, the card cheat, and Ivan of The Harder They Come, named in The Guns of Brixton. The Right Profile adds Montgomery Clift, a hero damaged by his own legend. Together they build one question: whether the outlaw, the poor man’s hero, survives his own legend. Death or Glory answers it in the negative, the rebels of yesterday grown into what they mocked, and in doing so turns the record’s argument on the band that is making it.
Around the outlaws stands the apocalypse. The title song opens on a flooded city and the Four Horsemen ride on side four; between them the particular stays particular, a river, a supermarket, a face. But several of the outlaws are cited more than carried: they are the record’s ancestors and its wardrobe, named and passed. And the end of the world is framed by the first song rather than borne by all of them. The sleeve says the same thing in one picture. A bass is smashed under the lettering of Elvis Presley’s first album, and the past is honoured and broken at once.
Movement V
Side four lightens. Lover’s Rock is a comic song about contraception in soft rocksteady, a good joke at length; Four Horsemen and I’m Not Down restate the band’s defiance in a lighter key. Revolution Rock, a cover played as a party, closes the order. Then comes Train in Vain, a love song added late and not listed on the sleeve. It stands outside the order and outside the city’s law, and it reaches one of the record’s plain, singable heights. The record ends where it was not planned to end, and the ending shows how much of its shape was found in the making.
What the record holds is wide. Labour and its conscription are in Clampdown, the state and the police in The Guns of Brixton, history in Spanish Bombs and in the inherited music itself, the city in the title song and the sound. Consumption is in Lost in the Supermarket and Koka Kola, drugs in Hateful, love and sex in Lover’s Rock and Train in Vain, fame in The Right Profile, the natural order as flood and ice, the sacred only as apocalypse. One city and one band’s voice join them. Most are single songs set beside one another, held by sequence more than integrated, and the family is barely present.
It has lasted. The double album as issued is still the record sold, and has been in print throughout; the title song has stayed in broadcast and in films and advertising, and the sleeve is known to people who have not heard the record. The record became the type of the punk band’s maturity; the band’s own Sandinista! went further down the same road, its mixture of punk and Jamaican music was carried through the next decade in Britain, and in America it became a touchstone. Its sound is live and unvarnished, fixed to no studio fashion. Part of its presence is the title song’s alone. The rest is a city’s music, played by four men as their own.
Act III · The Twelve
Nineteen songs in about sixty-five minutes, none long, and most are required. London Calling must open, the alarm the rest of the record answers. Clampdown and Death or Glory carry the argument of conscription and compromise; The Guns of Brixton gives the threat of the title a street and a voice; Spanish Bombs gives it a history. The double album is additive by design, and its plenty is part of its claim: a band that would play the whole city’s music has to play a great deal of it. The subtractive test still bites. Koka Kola is a sketch, I’m Not Down and Four Horsemen restate defiance in a lighter key, Lover’s Rock is a joke at length, and Train in Vain stands outside the order.
Score: 8.5 / 10
The disclosure can be stated and it holds: the rebel music a young man inherits is offered to him as a costume by the same system that will employ him, and the choice between the clampdown and its refusal is made in small daily surrenders, not in one heroic act. Clampdown sets it most plainly (“working for the clampdown”); Death or Glory shows the rebels of yesterday grown into what they mocked; Lost in the Supermarket gives the consumer’s self as a vacancy the shop fills. The Guns of Brixton discloses police violence from the side it lands on, in the voice of a Jamaican London, and the reggae and ska are that city’s real population, disclosed in sound. The limit: the meaning is often stated as slogan, and spread across single songs.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Elevation comes often, and mostly of one kind: a driven, defiant grandeur rather than beauty or terror. The title track is the height, the guitars chopping against a marching bass, Strummer’s howl, and the falling guitar figure at the end, a warning broadcast from a flooded city. The Card Cheat is the other summit, every part doubled into a wall of piano and horns, a gambler’s death given a grandeur out of all proportion to the anecdote, and earned. Clampdown rises in its long coda, Death or Glory at its chorus, and Train in Vain and Spanish Bombs reach a plain, singable height. Seven or eight of nineteen tracks rise, the highest very high for the kind; The Guns of Brixton has dread instead, and the slighter songs stay level.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Myth is evoked everywhere and built in one frame. The record opens on an apocalypse, the city under ice, flood and nuclear error, broadcast in the BBC’s wartime call sign, and the Four Horsemen ride on side four. Between them stands a gallery of outlaws: the Cadillac thief, Jimmy Jazz on the run, Rudie, Stagger Lee in Wrong ’Em Boyo, the card cheat, and Ivan of The Harder They Come in The Guns of Brixton. The pattern they build bears load: the outlaw as the poor man’s hero, and the question whether he survives his legend, which Death or Glory answers in the negative. The particular stays particular: a river, a supermarket, Montgomery Clift’s face. The limit: several outlaws are cited more than carried, and the apocalypse is framed by the first track.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The inheritance is the band’s own: the year-zero punk of its first album, which declared the past dead, and the larger rock sound of Give ’Em Enough Rope. The turn is to embrace exactly what punk had refused: rockabilly, rhythm and blues, ska, reggae, lounge jazz, the pop ballad, horns, and a producer who belonged to the 1960s. The stake was real and public: the band’s standing as the conscience of punk, wagered on a double album that looked like the rock indulgence punk existed to end, and on covers of the old music it had disowned. What limits it is the path. The turn ran back into a proven tradition, and the reggae swerve had been made on the first album with Police and Thieves: large in the band’s field, smaller in the music’s.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Change the form and much of what the record knows goes. The double album is the instrument of one claim: that the band’s music is all of this city’s music at once, and only a record of nineteen songs in eight idioms can show that. The plenty is the meaning. The sequence is counted here, once: the alarm of the title first, the disclosures of side two closing on Clampdown and The Guns of Brixton, the outlaws and the cheat’s death on side three, and side four ending in Revolution Rock, a cover played as a party. The limit: the songs are complete in themselves, the order could be reshuffled with modest loss, and the close on Train in Vain, added late, shows how far the shape was arrived at.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Evidence over forty-six years. The record has been returned to and reissued without a break; the release of its demo tapes opened the making to study; later bands have covered and played the songs, and the title track is still argued over as prophecy. In the recording, return yields: the bass lines, Headon’s change of idiom from track to track, the half-heard voices and horns in the mix, and words whose references, Lorca, Montgomery Clift, The Harder They Come, the Spanish war, reward following. The width is a depth of its own: eight idioms in nineteen songs are not used up in one hearing. The limit: much is taken on first hearing, the slogans state what they mean, and part of the return is ritual, a known record replayed for its energy.
Score: 8.8 / 10
The field is the rock album of its decade’s end, punk and what followed it. The intrinsic force: the record showed that punk’s energy and its politics could carry the whole inheritance of popular music, from rockabilly to reggae, without losing either, and so ended punk’s quarrel with the past on punk’s own terms. Little was invented; the force is in the breadth and the conviction, and the reach is wider than the reorganisation. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the record became the type of the punk band’s maturity and of the eclectic political rock album, a standard against which later bands measured breadth; its mixture of punk and Jamaican music was carried through the next decade in Britain; and in America it became a touchstone of rock criticism.
Score: 9.1 / 10
Survival is weighed over forty-six years and ten months. The form is whole: the double album as issued is still the record sold, in print throughout. Presence is wide and continuous: the title track has stayed in broadcast and in films and advertising, the album is heard whole, and the sleeve is one of the best known in rock; that presence is credited as presence, not proof, and it is wide without being the widest. The fabric bears its moment lightly: the production is live and unvarnished rather than of a studio fashion, and only a few references, the reactor scare of 1979 and the topical slang, are fixed to their year. But part of the presence is the title song’s alone, and the songs of side four are little heard. It stands far below what has lasted centuries.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with the words weighed elsewhere, and the making is load-bearing on most tracks. The band plays eight idioms with conviction. Topper Headon is the key, moving from rockabilly to reggae to a jazz shuffle without strain; Paul Simonon’s bass carries the reggae and the title track; Mick Jones’s guitars and arrangements give the record its pop and its scale, and The Card Cheat’s doubled parts are an arrangement of real ambition. Bill Price’s engineering keeps a live band present and the horns and keys clear. The faults are several and fall on a share of the record: some playing is loose rather than live, Strummer’s voice commands in a narrow range and blurs words, the covers are played faithfully rather than remade, and the slighter songs are routine in arrangement.
Score: 9.0 / 10
One law governs most of the record: the city at the end of its world, where the music of every rebel and every diaspora is taken up as one’s own and tested against the system that would sell it back. The two most distant elements are the title track’s apocalyptic march and Lover’s Rock, a comic song about contraception in soft rocksteady; they obey through the record’s idea of a band that can play the whole city’s music. The Right Profile, a song about Montgomery Clift, and Spanish Bombs obey through the hero damaged by his legend and by history. The range is very wide, which the axis credits. The limit: some elements obey by sound and attitude rather than by meaning, and Train in Vain, a love song added at the end, stands outside the law.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. Labour and its conscription are held in Clampdown; the state and the police in The Guns of Brixton; history in Spanish Bombs and in the inherited music itself; the city in the title song and the record’s sound; consumption and advertising in Lost in the Supermarket and Koka Kola; the body and drugs in Hateful; love and sex in Lover’s Rock and Train in Vain; fame in The Right Profile; the natural order as flood and ice; the sacred only as apocalypse. One city and one band’s voice join them. What holds the figure lowest is the join: most orders are single songs set beside one another, held by sequence rather than integrated, and the family, and consciousness beyond the slogan, are thin.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.8 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
Pressure on Tradition at 9.1 and The Made at 9.0, then The Unconcealment and The Sublime at 8.9. A record that ended punk’s quarrel with the past on punk’s own terms and became the type of the punk band’s maturity; eight idioms played with conviction and a live band kept present; one bargain with the system found in a workplace, a street and a supermarket; and a defiant grandeur on seven or eight of nineteen tracks, highest in the title song and The Card Cheat.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 8.4: labour, the state, history, the city, consumption, love and fame are each held in a song, joined by one city and one voice but set beside one another rather than integrated, with the family thin. Below the rest, The Inevitable at 8.5: a double album additive by design, with a handful of songs it could lose. Then The Archetypal Deep, The Living Form and The Imperishable at 8.6: outlaws cited more than carried, songs complete in themselves in an order partly arrived at, and a presence partly the title song’s alone.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.5 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.6, The Made at 9.0, The Inner Law at 8.8, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is met on all five: Pressure on Tradition at 9.1, The Unconcealment at 8.9, The Swerve at 8.8, The Archetypal Deep at 8.6 and The Imperishable at 8.6 clear the bar of 8.5, the last two by a tenth. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.5, against 7.5) and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 8.4. Every summit condition is met; the work is held below the summit by its aggregate alone.
Basis · the double LP as released by CBS in Britain on 14 December 1979 and by Epic in the United States in January 1980, nineteen tracks on four sides in their original order, the last, Train in Vain, unlisted on the original sleeve, about sixty-five minutes; produced by Guy Stevens and engineered by Bill Price at Wessex Studios in London; judged from knowledge of the recording, its words and its reception. No recording or lyric sheet was in hand, and running times are approximate. The demo tapes, later editions and the singles are evidence for the record’s return, reach and survival, not the object. Songs are cited by title, and words are quoted only where certain and never beyond four words. Facts that could not be verified, among them the months of recording, the names of the keyboard player and the horn players, the edition and year in which the demo tapes were issued, the exact timings and the chart figures, are not given.