KL: The loud and fast punk style became a straitjacket for many bands but with the masterful 1979 double album London Calling, the band broke free creating a multi-faceted sound that was all their own.
Video Footage: "London Calling."
PS: London Calling was really the album that marked a lot of changes because a lot of our musical interests sort of came all to the forefront. Like, I'm interested in reggae music which I suppose living in London we heard a lot of.
MJ: I think by the time of London Calling, punk music was painting itself into a corner or something. And I think we attempted to show that we could play any type of music and that is what we continued to do from that point on.
Concert footage:"Wrong 'Em Boyo."
KL: Voted Album Of The Decade by the Rolling Stone, London Calling featured keyboard by Mickey Gallagher of Ian Dury's band The Blockheads, and vivid production by local scenemaker and Mott the Hoople producer Guy Stevens.
PS: He was, I think, the best producer I ever worked with because, for a start, if I made a mistake with the bass, he said it didn't matter. So I felt pretty good. He was a bit, I suppose, emotional, you could say. We was doing one track and he came rushing into the studio. He started picking up chairs and throwing them against the wall. And we were sort trying to finish this one song and we were laughing our heads off and he was going mad.
Concert footage:"Wrong 'Em Boyo."
KL: More evident than ever on London Calling was the bands left wing political edge. A case of preaching to the converted perhaps but hardly a mainsteam, rock-star commercial ploy.
JS: After awhile the journalists would ask us, "are you musicians or are you politicians?" And I thought I'd watch us for 24 hours to get the answer. And I watched us and all we talked about was music in those twenty-four hours.
PS: The Clash to me was politics, but with a small "p": like personal politics and really that's how I feel about it.
Concert footage: "Clampdown."
KL: London Calling was boosted into the US Top 30 by a hit single, the band's first in this country, that wasn't labeled on the album jacket or even on the record label.
TV footage: Fridays: First Clash US TV appearance. Performing "Train In Vain." Mickey Gallegher on keyboards.
MJ: The real story on "Train In Vain" is that originally we needed a song to give to the NME for a flexi disk that NME was going to do. And then it was decided that it didn't work out or decided the flexi disk didn't work out so we had this spare track we had done as a giveaway. So we put it on London Calling but their wasn't time because the sleeves were already done.
TV footage: Fridays: "Guns Of Brixton." Paul Simonon on guitar and Joe Strummer on bass.
KL: Jones and Strummer provided much of The Clash's songwriting fire but bassist Paul Simonon contributed such gems as "The Guns Of Brixton" and one of the all-time coolest album cover moves.
PS: That really was just I suppose something to be Pete Townsend but I wish I hadn't done it because it was my best bass.
JS: I mean the sound of that bass hitting the stage was probably the best sound we ever made.
TV footage: Fridays: "Guns Of Brixton."
Video footage: "This Is Radio Clash."
PS: What we originally wanted to do was to bring out a new single every month. And the first single we brought out was a song called "Bankrobber" which actually turned out to be our biggest hit. And CBS didn't like it because they said it sound like David Bowie records all played backwards that's what it sounded like.
Video footage: "Bankrobber."
KL: Scrapping their series of singles notion, the Clash instead headed in the opposite direction entirely banging out a triple LP album that bid a nose thumbing farewell at the ousted US-backed Nicaraguan dictator Samoza with its title: Sandinista!
JS: At the end of "Washington Bullets" I shout, "Sandinista!" And I came out of the vocal booth and Mick said, "why don't we call the bloody album that," 'cause we were really thrilled about them getting rid of Samoza out of Nicaruagua.
KL: Also on the band's roll call of political concerns this time was military conscription.
Video footage: "The Call Up." 
KL: Not everyone loved the Sandinista! album. Some critics thought it was too scattered and others thought there was just too much of it.
JS: We were over-indulgent. We were creatively crazed. We were consumed with enthusiasm. We couldn't stop writing songs. We were on the road too much [laughs].
MJ: We had it as three for the price of one which was very difficult. We had to take a real cut in royalties, in order to do that. People really didn't get it the first time because it was so cheap they thought there must be something wrong with it. So we were just like... But nowadays, in retrospect a lot of people like it: Sandinista!
KL: Always up for something new the Clash flew to United States in the summer 1981 to play a what the band thought would be a simple series of seven shows at a club in New York City's seedy Times Square.
PS: Problem was was that we were supposed originally to do seven shows, and the dope oversold the shows and the Fire Marshall turned up at the shows and said there were too many people in the concert place so he closed the show down.
MJ: The fans held up the traffic in Times Square. They hadn't seen such a [farrah?] since the Bobby Socks and Frank Sinatra.
PS: So in the end to sort of sort out all the people who paid to see us we decided to do as many shows to cover everybody so we ended up doing something like 18 or 22 or something like that.
Concert footage: "London Calling."
MJ: Don Letts was making a film at the time called Clash on Broadway which we were bankrolling ourselves but it never saw the light of day.
Video footage: "This Is Radio Clash."
KL: The Clash movie was never made and "Radio Clash" is all that remains of the footage. The band was seduced by New York City though, and stuck around to record their next album there: Combat Rock.
KL: Combat Rock yielded the band its biggest hit with drummer Topper Headon's "Rock The Casbah."
JS: Topper had this riff. He apparently had it for years, but I wasn't aware of that. He could play the piano great in the key of D and he was a good bass player too, as well as a shit hot drummer. So he just came in and just banged down "Rock the Casbah" in about twenty minutes. He played the drum track alone in the studio. Thinking in his mind what was gonna happen on top. Bass, ran over the bass. All without coming out of the studio. Ran over the piano. In about 20 minutes it sounded like something already because it was piano, bass and drums.
Video footage: "Rock The Casbah."
KL: Despite the chart success all wasn't especially ell with the Clash. Joe Strummer disappeared for a month forcing the cancellation of a British tour. And when he returned drummer Headon dropped out with a drug problem. So original drummer Terri Chimes was re-recruited and the Clash took off once again for the USA.
Concert footage: "Career Opportunities."
KL: Wending its way across the US, the Clash quickly realized that something was strangely wrong.
JS: We had a chemistry and when we got rid of Topper left for being unhealthy, I don't think anybody there understood the first thing about chemistry that I've learned in the last 10 years. Unknown to me at the time the circle had been broken. So we carried on, we played a big US tour. But personally on-stage, nothing to do with Terri, it's just the way we were, the original four. I remember, very clearly, during that tour every night thinking it's never gonna burn again like those nights when it burns when you cease to be anybody at all. You're a part of something like your hands just take over. You don't know what you're doing or saying. It burns. That's what the audience wants to be part of. That burn is what it's about. I remember feeling really depressed as that tour went on. It began to dawn on me that we'd try to fix a clock that wasn't broke. And now we were gonna pay. Which we did pay the price for.
KL: Finally Strummer and Simonon parted ways with Mick Jones. The Clash lived on as a logo for awhile, but the real band was dead. The music lives though. A best of called The Story Of The Clash came out in 1988. And in 1991 postumously the band had its first UK number one hit courtesy of a jeans commercial.
Commercial Clip: British Levi's Jeans commercial featuring "Should I Stay Or Should I Go."
MJ: I think its good that Levi's used "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" as a commercial and that it did so well because it opened up a lot of doors and turned on a lot of people to the Clash that didn't know about the Clash before. And we got like a new audience as well now.
KL: For those coming late to the Clash saga there is now this [picture of Clash on Broadway]. Proof for sure that punk among several other things still lives.
PS: My time with the Clash looking back on it, really at the end of the day, I would say it was a lot of fun and a real lot of hard work. And that sums it up for me really.
MJ: I look back on it with great fondness. I have lots of great memories. The best time of my life.
JS: We did our creative work and we did it all in the space of only five years. We came and we went we came we spoke and we went. And I like that. As time goes on I appreciate that more.
Concert footage: "I Fought The Law."
End Credits.
Transcribed by 
David Y.
Hudson
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