Brand New Cadillac The Guns Of Brixton Koka Kola Clampdown The Clash

Brand New Cadillac Album: London Calling (1979) Side 1 Track 2
The Guns of Brixton Album: London Calling (1979) Side 2 Track 5
Koka Kola Album: London Calling (1979) Side 3 Trac 3 [33]
Clampdown Album: London Calling (1979) Side 2 Track 4
by The Clash

My most listened to album of all time. It just worked out that way.

London Calling is the third studio album originally released as a double album in the United Kingdom on 14 December 1979 by CBS Records, and in the United States in January 1980 by Epic Records.

The Clash recorded the album with producer Guy Stevens at Wessex Sound Studios in London over a five- to six-week period starting in August 1979, following a change in management and a period of writer's block for songwriters Joe Strummer and Mick Jones. Bridging a traditional punk rock sound and a new wave aesthetic, London Calling reflects the band's growing interest in styles beyond their punk roots, including reggae, rockabilly, ska, New Orleans R&B, pop, lounge jazz, and hard rock. Lyrical themes include social displacement, unemployment, racial conflict, drug use, and the responsibilities of adulthood.

The album was a top ten chart success in the UK, and its lead single "London Calling" was a top 20 single. The album has sold over five million copies worldwide, and was certified platinum in the US for sales of one million. It was also met with widespread critical acclaim and has retrospectively been named one of the greatest albums of all time. On Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, London Calling was ranked number 8 in the 2003 and 2012 editions, and number 16 in the 2020 edition. In 2010, it was one of ten classic album covers from British artists commemorated on a UK postage stamp issued by the Royal Mail.

"Brand New Cadillac" (also recorded as "Cadillac") is a 1959 song by Vince Taylor, and was originally released as a B-side. Featured musicians on the released recording were: Joe Moretti (guitars), Lou Brian (piano), Brian Locking (bass) and Brian Bennett (drums). While not successful in the UK, it got a huge surge in popularity in continental Europe, especially the Nordic countries, with acts such as The Renegades and Hep Stars bringing it to number one in Finland and Sweden respectively. Another Swedish act, the Shamrocks brought the song to number one in France.

Vince Taylor's record company eventually learned of these recordings and copyright claims ensued. The case was settled on agreement to add Taylor's name to songwriting credits alongside The Renegades members—sharing the royalties equally. Neither Hep Stars nor Shamrocks were aware of Taylor's original version at the time of recordings. Therefore, it is possible to find their 1960s recordings credited either to (Kim) Brown-(Denys) Gibson- (Ian) Mallet-(Stuart Graham) Johnson or Brown-Gibson-Mallet-Johnson-Taylor. (Denys Gibson should not be confused with Terry Gibson of Downliners Sect.)

The Clash covered it on their third album, London Calling (1979). The song was the first to be recorded for the album. The band cite the song as "one of the first British rock'n'roll records" and had initially used it as a warm-up song before recording.

"The Guns of Brixton" is a song written and sung by bassist Paul Simonon, who grew up in Brixton, South London. The song has a strong reggae influence, reflecting the culture of the area and the reggae gangster film The Harder They Come.

"The Guns of Brixton" was the Clash's first song to be composed and sung by Paul Simonon. By the time of London Calling, Simonon had learned to play guitar and started contributing more to the songwriting.

"You don't get paid for designing posters or doing the clothes", he said in an interview published by Bassist Magazine in October 1990, "you get paid for doing the songs."

The band, separated from manager Bernard Rhodes, had to leave their rehearsal studio in Camden Town and find another location. They began work on London Calling during the summer of 1979 at the Vanilla Studios in Pimlico. The band quickly wrote and recorded demos, and in August 1979 entered Wessex Studios to begin recording the album. Produced by Guy Stevens, who at the time had alcohol and drug problems and whose production methods were unconventional, it was recorded within a matter of weeks, with many songs, including "The Guns of Brixton", recorded in one or two takes. It was also revealed that while recording the lead vocals for the song, Simonon sang while staring directly at a CBS executive who had visited the studio during the sessions, giving Simonon the desired amount of emotion in his voice.

A section of the song is sung by a very young Maria Gallagher, accompanied by her father Mick Gallagher on the keyboards, as a reprise at the end of the song "Broadway" on the 1980 Clash album Sandinista!.

"The Guns of Brixton" predates the riots that took place in the 1980s in Brixton but the lyrics depict the feelings of discontent in the area because of the heavy-handedness of the police, the recession and other problems at the time. The lyrics refer to a Brixton-born son of Jamaican immigrants who "feel[s] like Ivan...at the end of The Harder they Come", referring to Ivanhoe Martin's death in the 1972 film The Harder They Come. Simonon was originally doubtful about the song's lyrics, which discuss an individual's paranoid outlook on life, but was encouraged to continue working on it by Joe Strummer.

Although the Clash had written and performed previous songs that combined reggae with punk rock, "The Guns of Brixton" was the first Clash song that was created purely as a reggae song. The rhythm guitar line has a Jamaican rocksteady sound. According to Allmusic critic Rick Anderson, "No song on London Calling (or on any previous album) demonstrated their mastery of reggae as effectively as 'Guns of Brixton' did."

"The Guns of Brixton" was a mainstay in the Clash's live set. When performing the song live, Simonon would switch instruments with Strummer because he was unable to play the bass line whilst singing lead vocals at the same time.

A somewhat heavier, faster version than the one found on London Calling appeared on the 1999 live compilation From Here to Eternity: Live.

Norman Cook (also known as Fatboy Slim) sampled the bass line of The Guns of Brixton for Beats International's 1990 song "Dub Be Good to Me", which became a #1 hit in the UK. Simonon, interviewed by Scott Rowley in October 1999 for Bassist Magazine, said that he "was surprised that it became number one that was quite shocking. And the fact that it was my performance that they had lifted. The smart thing would've been to copy it and change it slightly, but they just lifted it straight off. So, really, I have done Top of the Pops, but I met up with Norman [Cook] and we came to an arrangement which was much needed at the time. But I thought it was a really good idea and it was quite reassuring for that to happen to my first song."

Cypress Hill sampled the bassline of The Guns of Brixton on "What's Your Number?" from the 2004 album Till Death Do Us Part. The song also features Tim Armstrong on guitar.

Jimmy Cliff covered The Guns of Brixton on his 2011 Sacred Fire EP, and 2012 album Rebirth, produced by Armstrong. Will Hermes has called the cover "the sound of history circling in wondrous ways" because the song references Cliff's character Ivan from The Harder They Come.

"Clampdown" is a song that began as an instrumental track called "Working and Waiting". It is sometimes called "Working for the Clampdown" which is the main lyric of the song, and also the title provided on the album's lyric sheet. Its lyrics concern those who have forsaken the idealism of youth and urges young people to fight the status quo. The word 'clampdown' is a neat cover-all term the writers adopted to define the oppressive Establishment, notably its more reactionary voices who were to be heard throughout the 1970s calling alarmingly for "clampdowns" by government and law enforcement on strikers, agitators, benefits claimants, football hooligans, punks and other perceived threats to the social, economic and moral wellbeing of the UK.

In 1980 "Clampdown" was released as a single backed with "The Guns of Brixton" in Australia. The single was not released in any other territories, with the exception of US promos.

Bass player and Clash co-founder Paul Simonon, in an interview with the LA Times, spoke about the opportunities available to him in the early 1970s U.K. after he finished his secondary education:

What was worse was that when it got time for us to start leaving school, they took us out on trips to give us an idea of what jobs were available. But they didn't try to introduce us to anything exciting or meaningful. They took us to the power station and the Navy yards. It was like saying, 'This is all you guys could ever do.' Some of the kids fell for it. When we got taken down to the Navy yards, we went on a ship and got cooked up dinner and it was all chips and beans. It was really great. So some of the kids joined up – because the food was better than they ate at home.

— Paul Simonon

Strummer, like Simonon, spent time on the dole, but Strummer did not come from a lower-class family. In the same interview with the LA Times Strummer said,

You see, I'm not like Paul or the others, I had a chance to be a 'good, normal person' with a nice car and a house in the suburbs – the golden apple or whatever you call it. But I saw through it. I saw it was an empty life.

— Joe Strummer

Later verses suggest an alternative in revolution, a theme common throughout Joe Strummer's songwriting. This point of view also points to the lyric "You start wearing the blue and brown" as supporting their cause. The barely audible lyrics at the beginning of the song were deciphered by Clash fan Ade Marks, and first published in Q magazine's Clash special [citation needed]:

The kingdom is ransacked, the jewels all taken back
And the chopper descends
They're hidden in the back, with a message on a half-baked tape
With the spool going round, saying I'm back here in this place
And I could cry
And there's smoke you could click on
What are we going to do now?

"Clampdown" was later covered by Rage Against the Machine at their first live show in 1991, as well as during a show in Antwerp, Belgium, on 2 June 2008. It was also covered by Indigo Girls and can be heard on Rarities (2005) as well as the Clash tribute album Burning London: The Clash Tribute (1999). The song was also covered several times by The Strokes, most notably in 2003 at the Alexandra Palace, which was used as the B-side to their The End Has No End single. The Strokes also played the cover at their July 2004 T in the Park appearance. Poster Children covered it on their 2004 release, On the Offensive, and James Dean Bradfield on his solo tour in October 2006. Another band that covered this song was Hot Water Music, on their B sides and rarities compilation album called Till the Wheels Fall Off. The song was also covered by The National on the album A Tribute to The Clash, and by Inward Eye, which they released through a video on their YouTube channel. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band covered the song a few times on their 2014 High Hopes Tour. Metallica played the song at the 2016 Bridge School Benefit.[9] District Attorney of Philadelphia Larry Krasner covered the song with the punk band Sheer Mag days before his first election to office in May 2017, as documented in his memoir For the People: A Story of Justice and Power.

Clampdown was featured in the Futurama episode, "The Silence of the Clamps", where the song is played over a montage of Clamps and Fry spending time together. The song was also used in the US television show Malcolm in the Middle during an episode where Malcolm and some misfits organize an anti-prom called "Morp".

In September 2018, during one of the debates between incumbent United States senator Ted Cruz and United States congressman Beto O'Rourke held as part of the campaign for that year's United States Senate election in Texas, O'Rourke claimed that Cruz was "working for the clampdown". O'Rourke would later use the song in his official campaign launch in El Paso.

Clampdown was made available to download on 1 February 2011 for use in the Rock Band 3 music gaming platform in both Basic rhythm, and PRO mode which utilizes real guitar / bass guitar, and MIDI compatible electronic drum kits / keyboards in addition to vocals.

Paul Simonon – lead vocals, bass guitar (studio), rhythm guitar (live)
Mick Jones – lead guitars, backing vocals
Joe Strummer – rhythm guitar (studio), bass guitar (live)
Topper Headon – drums
Mickey Gallagher – organ