A Cohesive Shambles: The Clash's 'London Calling' and the Normalization of Punk

Abstract

The Clash's London Calling was released just at the moment when the British punk movement seemed to be imploding. From the earliest reviews, it was received as a musical masterpiece that drew on many styles while still managing to be ‘punk’ in some sense. This article argues that London Calling normalized punk, allowing it to be more than an event: punk could henceforth be assimilated into traditional musical discourse and aesthetics. As a careful balancing act between punk street-cred and mainstream musical values, London Calling allowed a double reading. Punk fans could find in it what they sought: anti-establishment anger and at times a messy, disdainful approach to conventional musicianship. At the same time critics and listeners who had come since the late sixties to assimilate rock into a Romantic (or post-Romantic) system of ‘art’ values could find in it what they sought: stylistic growth, organic coherence, originality, and even a ‘universal’ narrative of struggle, triumph, and redemption played out across the album. It is possible to isolate not only a story, but musical connections between the songs (keys, recurrent motifs, and topoi) all laid out in a logical manner. However, unlike concept albums in the seventies' progressive rock style against which punk reacted, London Calling often calls attention away from its musical coherence, and even its textual coherence, rather than towards it—such as by the last-minute addition of a bonus track that disrupts the narrative and key schemes established earlier. The ease with which the album can be praised in established musical language should not completely obscure its potential (and the general potential of punk) to undercut and confront conventional musical discourse.

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