This is London Calling... Trivia Quiz

Answer: Elvis Presley

A pastiche is an imitation or a take-off of someone else's work. The 1979 album cover for The Clash was designed by graphic designer Ray Lowry and it paid homage to Elvis' self-titled first album (1956) with his new record label, after switching across from Sun Records. Elvis' album cover was highly praised upon release and he would use the graphic and the cover photo again on an EP and a double EP that he would also release that year.

The Clash may have looked like upstarts with this move; after all, Elvis, in 1956 was hailed as the "King of Rock n Roll" while The Clash were still in the infancy of their own musical revolution. Bass player Paul Simonon saw it differently stating that "When that Elvis record came out rock n roll was pretty dangerous. And I suppose when we brought out our record, it was pretty dangerous stuff too".

Answer: Paul Simonon

The Clash performed at the Palladium (previously called the Academy of Music), in New York City, on September 20th and the 21st in 1979 as part of their "Take the Fifth" tour of the United States. Reports of the date that Simonon smashed his guitar are conflicting; suffice to say, it was one of these two days. The initial story that was released was that Simonon had become angry when he'd heard that bouncers were refusing to allow patrons to stand up and dance, however, this may have simply been the straw that broke the camel's back. The entire band were frustrated at both their treatment and receptions in the US and, by the time they'd reached New York their frustrations were high. This was partly echoed by Simonon in a later interview; "the show had gone quite well, but for me, inside, it just wasn't working well, so I suppose I took it out on the bass. If I was smart, I would have got the spare bass and used that one, because it wasn't as good as the one as I smashed up".

(Footnotes) Though it was utterly destroyed Simonon was quick to realise its value, and ensured he collected the pieces of his guitar. After briefly being loaned to Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum, it now resides with him.
In 1997, the Palladium closed and was later demolished.

Answer: False

It really was quite the opposite. Smith, a specialist in black and white photography who was working for NME magazine at the time, was appalled because the photograph was so out of focus. This was not a planned moment or a carefully choreographed shot, Smith saw the moment and hastily tried to capture it. The blurriness was caused by her trying to back away to avoid being injured by bass player Paul Simonon's violent action. She argued the shot should not be used but was vetoed by both Strummer and graphic designer Lowry, who both felt it captured the spirit of punk rock perfectly.

Despite the shot being ranked by Q Magazine, in 2002, as the greatest rock and roll photograph "of all time" Smith has remained lukewarm about it. In an interview in 2003 she advised; "It's very pleasant to be praised, but I can't see that picture now".

Answer: The Guns of Brixton

This track represented the first time the band had recorded a song written by Paul, and, with Joe Strummer's words "they're your lyrics, you sing them" ringing in his ear, it was also the first time he'd taken on the lead vocal. Simonon's move toward song-writing stemmed from a little bit of jealousy. He looked on the royalties that Strummer and Mick Jones were receiving from their work and he wanted some of it. In a 1996 interview with Bassist Magazine he advised "you don't get paid for designing posters or doing the clothes, you get paid for doing the songs".

Simonon grew up in Brixton, which is south of London, and wrote the track about the gangsters in the town and infused it with a reggae influence to reflect the culture of the area. Whilst the song became one of the band's live favourites it was almost imbued with a prophetic feel when race riots exploded in the area in 1981.

Answer: Brand New Cadillac

Written by Vince Taylor, the song was originally the B-side to the band's single "Pledgin' My Love". There's a chance that it may have faded into obscurity, but it was picked up by a band known as the Renegades. They removed some verses, shortened the title to "Cadillac", accredited the song to their own members and turned it into a hit in a number of Nordic countries and France. Needless to say, a copyright suit was filed and Taylor was soon added to the writing credits and earned half the royalties.

In the eyes of The Clash, this represented the first true British rock and roll song and it became their warm up track before recording. When they stepped into the Wessex studio to begin the album, they produced a ripping punk/rockabilly version of the track (in one take) and were so impressed with it that they decided to place on the record. From there, the song moved to become another of their live show staples.

(Note) This is the first song recorded "for" the album, not the first song "on" the album. In most places of release, the opening/first track on the album is the title track, "London Calling".

Answer: The album's biggest hit single was "Rock the Casbah"

The single "Rock the Casbah" appeared on The Clash's 1982 album "Combat Rock".

Joe Strummer often said that their music was dedicated to and aimed at the working class of Great Britain, and that this was the main reason they pushed to have their double album released for the price of a single album. This may have been true but another aspect of this is that most punk records released at the time had some form of gimmick or giveaway attached to them. In his 1998 book. "Route 19 Revisited: The Clash and London Calling" Marcus Gray reveals that the band's label was resistant to the price but the band eventually got their way. In the eyes of the band, the negotiations went something like this; CBS agreed to a £5 price for a single album only. They also agreed to allow a seven inch, two track single to be given away with the album. They then agreed to turn the two track single into a free four track EP. When they agreed to convert the seven inch EP into a twelve inch they had suddenly found themselves manoeuvred into a position where they had to admit that they could produce two twelve inch discs for almost the same price as one.

Fittingly, for an album aimed at the working class, the band put their own elbows and backs into completing this record. The process was completed within six weeks with the team often working eighteen hour days to bring it to a conclusion. Their producer on this disc was, what I would call, a different cat. He wanted to create a rock and roll atmosphere for the band to work in, so he overturned furniture in the studio, threw chairs, swung ladders at the band while they were playing and shouted obscenities at them.

Answer: The BBC's radio station identification during WWII

Whilst the title came from the BBC callout "This is London calling..." the idea for the lyrics came from an incident at the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. This allowed Strummer and Jones to gather a range of world events that were headlines around the globe at the time, and roll them into a single banner that proclaimed a conspiracy was in place to bring on Armageddon. The lyric "a nuclear error" references Three Mile Island, but then they build paranoia with lines such "the ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in".

Despite this litany of sins that the writers parade before us, they never lose their humour, as evidenced by the line "to the zombies of death, quit holding out and draw another breath", and this slightly dulls the edge of the song's prophecy of doom. The final touch of genius that is installed into this song is that the band do not allow the track to stop suddenly. Instead, they allow it to fade out in an eerie fashion while a Morse code staccato, in the background, delivers a solitary message... "S.O.S".

Answer: Train in Vain

"Train in Vain" was not intended to be on the album. At the end of their recording sessions the band hastily wrote the song and provided it to NME magazine as a give-away for a promo disc they (NME) were producing. The deal fell through and the band added it to the master tape of "London Calling" just before pressing. However, the cover design had already been completed and the first print run was already in progress. Accordingly, the track was not listed on the original sleeves but did surface in the next run. As a consequence, the track is incorrectly labelled by some as "hidden".

From what was, originally, a give-away, the song became the third single to be released from the album and the first record by the band to break into the Top Thirty of the US Billboard Hot 100 charts. Only two more of their songs would achieve this feat; "Rock the Casbah" and "Should I Stay or Should I Go", both 1982, reached numbers six and thirteen respectively. "We couldn't believe how popular it became, especially in America," Jones said. "That broke us in there. They thought it was a regular R&B song, then they found out it was The Clash".

Answer: The Vanilla Tapes

"The Vanilla Tapes" were recorded in a makeshift studio (called the Vanilla Studio) that was created within the warehouse of a dingy auto shop. On the tape were fifteen demos of songs that would appear on the final cut of the album and six unreleased tracks that included a cover of the Bob Dylan song "Man in Me".

The most interesting feature of these recordings is that they were put together only a week before the band went into Wessex Studios to put down the album and the difference between the songs in their genesis stage and the final product, in some cases, is quite startling. "Hateful" for example, was merely an instrumental piece with a rabid guitar solo built in; the lyrics for the title track, "London Calling", are virtually unrecognisable with what appears on the vinyl; and, whilst the structure and lyrics are complete in "Rudie Can't Fail", you hear the lengths the band was willing to go to with their experimentation and pushing of boundaries. The overwhelming idea that surfaces from these tapes is the speed at which the band was able to move with their song-writing, from generation to completion.

Sparked by an off-hand comment made by Joe Strummer in 1979, for years these tapes remained a myth. However, it became something a little more concrete when a book was published in 1997 by Johnny Green, for years a Clash roadie, called "A Riot of Our Own: Night and Day with the Clash". In it he provides an account of the sessions that are very detailed. Then, in 2004, Mick Jones, whilst searching through some old boxes, unearthed a copy of the tapes. The only irony here is that it happened to coincide with the twenty fifth anniversary of the original album's release.

Answer: Yes

The accolades for this album are as numerous as they are astonishing and Rolling Stone magazine joined the queue when they listed the album at number eight on their above list in 2003. John Rockwell of the New York Times indicated that "this is an album that captures all the Clash's primal energy" and "reveals depths of invention and creativity barely suggested by the band's previous work". Q Magazine called it the fourth greatest British album ever (1999), one of the "Greatest Ever Punk Albums" (2002) and placed it at number twenty on their 2006 list of "100 Greatest Albums Ever". As a tribute to its historical significance and influence, BBC Radio 1 incorporated the album into its "Masterpieces Series" in 2009 and, in 2007, the record was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Not everyone, however, was enamoured by it. British radio presenter, Charlie Gillett, proclaimed some of the songs as sounding like "poor imitations of Bob Dylan backed by a horn section" and Sounds magazine's Garry Bushell, could only give the album two stars out of five in his critique, panning the band for their "Rolling Stones-style outlaw imagery and tired old rock clichés".

The introduction to this quiz has probably given away my bias in respect to this recording. To me, this is an album that stomps, pulses, thrashes and hits all the right notes. It may be a punk rock digression in the eyes of some critics, but it still delivers a punk ethos, revels in its anti-establishment stances and delivers the anger of the oppressed. It rails at the abuses of power and deals with substance abuse without giving it any glory. This is the album that showcases four young men coming to grips with their art and showing how punk rock could grow to be something more than mere safety pins, torn clothing and an inability to play musical instruments well.