Bob Dylan on The Clash song ‘London Calling’: “They were a desperate group”
Though their music was born from vastly different contexts, Bob Dylan and The Clash shared one crucial thing: a belief that “three chords and the truth” were all that was necessary to change the world. Like punk, Bob Dylan’s brand of folk celebrated amateurism. It demonstrated that brilliant music was not the sole reserve of Julliard jazz players and well-schooled composers. In fact, it made it abundantly clear that the opposite was often the case: that imperfection was the fuel of sincerity; that the harsher a singer’s voice, the more authentic their message.
By 1977, the countercultural ideals of the 1960s had ceased to feel relevant. Those who had once railed against the establishment had come to form a new kind of bloated rock aristocracy. Youth culture was dead and buried, but buds of new growth were stirring beneath the soil. For punks, Dylan was a strange sort of anti-hero, a symbol of the rock establishment and a reminder of pop music’s sole purpose. As Patti Smith once put it: “Punk made sure that having something to say was more important than how you said it, and Dylan certainly embodied that ideal over a decade before the event”.
Given his immense influence, it’s unsurprising that, in recent years, Dylan has taken it upon himself to act as a sort of curator of modern song. His new book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, comprises 66 in-depth essays concerning songs he regards as important, one of the most surprising of which is ‘London Calling’ by The Clash. Featured on The Clash’s 1979 album of the same name, ‘London Calling’ perfectly captures the disillusionment and anxiety that fuelled the punk movement. Groups like The Sex Pistols are often held up as examples of punk angst, but The Clash were always slightly more rickety than their contemporaries, though no less confrontational.
‘”Punk rock is the music of frustration, and anger, but the Clash are different,” Dylan writes in The Philosophy of Modern Song. “Theirs is the music of desperation. They were a desperate group. They have to get it all in. And they have so little time. A lot of their songs are overblown, overwritten, well-intentioned. But not this one. This is probably the Clash at their best and most relevant, their most desperate. The Clash were always the group they imagined themselves to be.”
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Punk Newsletter
All the latest Punk content from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.