Route 19 Revisited
(Badly Hidden Extra Chapter © Marcus Gray)
The Afterlife of London Calling: Part 1
Popular songs aren't fixed forever at the moment of recording. How they appear on a record is just one of the many contexts in which they will be used and abused. They will be covered and sampled by other artists, and inspire yet more artists to write their own songs in a similar vein. Any or all of these might then be employed to suggest mood, period or location on the soundtracks of movies, TV programmes, advertising commercials, or electronic games. They might even fulfill the same function in fiction and non-fiction books. They might be adopted as sports club or political campaign anthems. They might give their name to clubs, stores, clothing lines. And that's just the half of it. In short, they have rich and fulfilling afterlives, and an influence that extends way beyond record, radio or download. 'I'd say we sold a speck overall to what U2 sell now,' Joe Strummer told Musician's Bill Flanagan in 1988. 'We made it, but in another way. We made it in the culture.'
The Songs
'Brand New Cadillac'
As their name suggests, the Brian Setzer Orchestra recorded 'Brand New Cadillac' big-band style on their 1994 eponymous debut album, a cover of the 'balls to you' Clash version rather than the Vince Taylor original.
Horror writer Stephen King's 1983 book Christine - about a homicidal vehicle - crammed in as many references to driving songs as possible, including 'Brand New Cadillac'.
'Jimmy Jazz'
In 2000, 'Jimmy Jazz' was covered trad-style by jazz outfit the C-Nuts on the album Blitzkrieg Bop and other Jazz Mutations.
As early after the Clash original's release as 1982, it gave its name to a 26-minute film short written by Laurent Perrin and Pascal Bonitzer (and directed by the former) about a love triangle in the jazz demimonde. It won the Prix du Public at that year's Lille Festival.
Michael Slade is the pen name of Canadian writer Jay Clarke, a lawyer who specialises in criminally themed collaborations with other authors. In 1984, Slade published the first in the 'Special X' series of books. Entitled Headhunter, it concerns a serial killer who decapitates people in Vancouver and then taunts the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Towards the end, a very deliberate description is supplied of 'Jimmy Jazz': 'Third cut. Side one. Of the double, London Calling. Great disc.' In the context of the book (note the title), it's a less-than-cryptic reference to the line 'Cut off his ears and chop off his head.'
In 1989, Jimmy Khezrie opened his first hiphop and sportswear clothes store in New York. Obviously, his own given first name provided part of the inspiration for his decision to name the store Jimmy Jazz, but not all of it. 'The Clash song is the main reason I chose the name,' confirms Khezrie by email. By 2009, the Jimmy Jazz empire numbered 65 stores, mostly in the eastern states, and celebrated its twentieth anniversary by launching an online store in Spring 2009.
An edgy side to the store's public image was reflected in some of the grittier black female fiction to come out of New York in the Noughties. The Fulton Street shop is namechecked in the 2005 novel Criminal Minded by Tracy Brown.
The chain also pops up that same year in Something about a Woman by Bomani Shuru, where, after being robbed, a character notes wryly, 'I bet business in Jimmy Jazz is booming right now.'
In 2007's Grindin': a Harlem Story by Danielle Santiago, another character approvingly observes, 'they got the limited edition Jordans for babies'.
1989 saw the launch of a club named Jimmy Jazz at 52 MacDonell Street in the Downtown area of Guelph, Ontario. It boasts a heated patio area and a healthy live music programme. It's still running in conjunction with Vinyl, situated next door.
The same year Khezrie opened his first store and the club opened in Guelph, a Polish punk named Zdzislaw Jodko, nicknamed Dzidek, started a record label called Rock'n'Roller. He split with his partner in 2000, and decided to start over again with a new name. 'Because punk, ska, reggae and rock'n'roll is music I prefer, I needed a name which will show our music profile for people, and will be connected with kinds of music I like,' says Dzidek. 
'The Clash are one of the best bands for me, and London Calling is one of the best albums: strong music and strong verbal transmission. I'm sure many
people who are inspired by the Clash will give you the same opinion, in Poland, USA, Africa, Jamaica, Asia, heaven and hell. London Calling shows that mix of styles is the best way for fantastic music: punk, Jamaican sound, rockabilly, you know.' 
To reflect this eclecticism he decided to call his new business Jimmy Jazz. 'My label release two independent magazines in Poland. Garaz, punk, ska, hardcore, psycho, rock'n'roll, and Reggaebeat, Jamaican sound with many kinds of music. Also many albums of Polish indie bands, with punk, ska, hardcore, rockabilly music. Sometimes jazz bands ask me about co-operation. No problem if they are playing swing, but very often they are thinking we are a jazz label, because they don't know the roots of our name!'
In the Nineties, a writer and 'punk rocker from way back' based in San Diego adopted Jimmy Jazz as his nom de plume and stage. Sometimes described as a 'poetic terrorist', Jazz is the author of several novels, including Cadillac Tramps (1993), The Sub (1996) and Where Life Is Inappropriate (2004) and at least three poetry collections. He's a key member of Doi-oi-oi-oi-oing, a group of artists dedicated to overthrowing popular culture, and is responsible for a monthly webzine called Pirate Enclave. Jimmy Jazz also performs live, several performances having been captured and posted on YouTube, including 'Nostalgic Rock (Through Your Window)'.
Established by the University of Central London Union in 1998, Rare FM allows student DJs to broadcast via the internet when they're not doing exams or jet-ski-ing in the Caribbean. Kidding. On Sunday nights, it's possible to listen to The All New Jimmy Jazz Show, DJ James Suter proving he's got a handle on the vibe of the original song by advertising it thus on his Rare FM page: 'Jimmy Jazz, a flugelhorn-playing loner maverick, is back solving crimes using a stolen FBI radar-evading helicopter. During the day. But at night, he's here on Rare FM to provide an hour of fun, laughter, tears, some sweat but no blood. Unless the Feds find him...'
A shaggy dog story even more worthy of the song: James Barker, a Clash fan from Brighton who studies in Birmingham and calls himself Jimmy Jazz, is assaulted there by persons unknown. He's friends with members of a local student band called New Street Adventure - New Street being one of the main drags in Brum - who have third-generation mod trappings, but also cite the Clash as an influence. They immortalise his pain and woe in the title of their debut EP, Who Beat Up Jimmy Jazz?
It doesn't stop there. The mother of one of the band members goes along to a May 2008 performance by improvisational troupe Cartoon de Salvo - founded in 1997 - and when the audience is asked to provide inspiration for that night's piece, shouts out the title of her son's new record. Unaware of the background, Cartoon de Salvo respond to what actor Neil Haigh, blogging on the Theatre Voice website, subsequently describes as a title with 'everything: inherent dramatic events, mystery and a brilliant character name. A great springboard', and improvise 'a misty New York gangster drama'. Not a million miles away from what Joe Strummer started out with in 1979.
Following the show, Neil meets the woman backstage and asks her how she happened to come up with the phrase. She tells him. Which, following the trail backwards, is how I can tell you. 'I hope - even if it's a small consolation for his time in hospital - that Jimmy Jazz's real-life misfortune is a little mollified by his subsequent fame,' concludes Neil.
'Rudie Can't Fail'
In 1997, Joe Strummer was hired to compose music for the soundtrack of Grosse Pointe Blank. Very little of his original work was used in the film, but as co-writer and star John Cusack was a huge fan, a couple of London Calling era Clash songs did make the cut: 'Rudie Can't Fail' and 'Armagideon Time'.
When former World Footballer Of The Year Ruud Gullit took over as the manager of Newcastle United in 1998, the fans welcomed him to St James's Park with a singalong of 'Rudie Can't Fail'. They were a lot quieter when, after a string of poor results, he resigned less than a year later.
'Rudie Can't Fail' was used as the play-on music when Rudy Giuliani appeared at the MTV Awards in August 2002, at a time when New York and the wider world were still reeling from 9/11, and overflowing with warm feeling towards the former mayor of the city. On a superficial level, then, it must have seemed like the perfect theme song for Rudy's short-lived run for the Republican nomination as presidential candidate in 2008. until someone listened to the lyric. Whereupon it was quickly dropped. Rudy's approach to cleaning up New York had been almost as hard-line as that of the Red Angels and Travis Bickle, and he had helped popularise the expression 'zero tolerance': get caught drinking brew for breakfast on Mayor Giuliani's streets, and you'd be eating prison food by lunchtime. Alongside Ronald Reagan's attempt to appropriate Bruce Springsteen's 'Born In The USA' in 1984, it's now considered one of the great campaign song faux pas of the modern age.
Together with fellow Californian outfit Rancid, Green Day were largely responsible for taking punk into the American mainstream in the early Nineties. Although they experienced the kind of record sales the Clash could only dream of - Dookie (1994) sold over 10 million copies in the USA alone - they were fans. In September 2002, bassist Mike Dirnt paid homage when he reopened the former Eugene's Ranch House at 4081 Hollis Street, Emeryville, California with the new name Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe, a funky hangout decorated with Sixties memorabilia. and, from time to time, members of Green Day.
'Spanish Bombs'
Tijuana No! were a politically vocal 'ska, rock, punk' band from Tijuana, Mexico. They recorded a cover (in English) of 'Spanish Bombs' for their 1995 album Transgresores de la Ley. Five years later, they included the song in a set they played in the capital of the Basque region of Spain, subsequently released as Live at Bilbao. The band split in 2002, but vocalist Cecilia Bastida continues to perform the song in her solo shows.
Context runs wild: Clash songs including 'Spanish Bombs' and 'Train in Vain'were regularly performed by the Max Weinberg 7, the regular house band for US TV station NBC's talk show Late Night with Conan O'Brien, led by and named after the drummer of Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band. O'Brien is a Clash fan.
On 16 December 2006, Seattle's Sunset Tavern hosted the 4th Annual Sunset Double-Album Series, in which various combinations of local bands performed London Calling live, in sequence. Among those involved were Optimus Rhyme and the Cops. Michael Jaworski, still the guitarist with the Cops, is now also a booker at the Sunset. 
'I remember we covered "Spanish Bombs" and "Revolution Rock",' he says. 'It was an incredibly fun night. We dubbed the evening Ballard Calling after the area where the Sunset is located.'
A couple of years later came another tribute event, in some ways closer to home, and in other ways not. On 28 April 2009, as part of the London Latin Music Festival La Linea, the Barbican hosted the event Spanish Bombs: Tropical Tribute to the Clash, a concert where latin artists including Alejandro Escovedo, Ruben Albarran, Moyenei and Amparo Sanchez paid tribute by performing latin-style covers of song from the repertoire of a band that had so often shown itself willing to have a stab at latin rhythms and more than one serious assault on the Spanish language. Spanish Bombs was put together by producer and DJ Toy Hernandez and keyboardist Mike Smith, who had worked with Paul Simonon in The Good, The Bad and The Queen. The popular event was subsequently reprised in Leeds and Liverpool.
In October 2006, a Brooklyn-based thrash punk band named Spanish Bombs released their debut EP Spanish Bombs on Chunksaah Records. They split up soon afterwards. not for the first time, and not for the last, as they released a second EP Beasts: Man Is God in 2009, and are still fucking responsibility on MySpace.
In 2007, a slightly less in-your-face outfit in Nashville also chose the name the Spanish Bombs. 'We have cursed our band name since we decided to go with it, but can't think of a great new one,' says their jazz and trip-hop-favouring drummer Josh 'Chet' Minyard. 'We sound nothing like the Clash. I think I'm the one with the most Clash influence, and I play break-beat drums. But honestly, until someone suggested it as a band name, I wouldn't have been able to tell you it was a Clash song at all.' In early 2009, they released their debut EP, confusingly also entitled Spanish Bombs.
In Ask the Pilot: Everything You Need to Know about Air Travel (2004) - not a book for nervous flyer - pilot, author and Salon.com columnist Patrick Smith made passing reference to Joe Strummer's warnings about the DC-10 in 'Spanish Bombs'.
Joe Meno is a prize-winning and much lauded author who grew up in Chicago, and published his first novel in 1999. He contributed a comic strip to Punk Planet magazine until it closed in 2007, and teaches creative writing at Columbia College, Chicago. His third novel, Hairstyles of the Damned, published by Punk Planet in 2004, is about growing up a punk in Chicago. While attempting to get her car started, the hero's best friend, 
Gretchen, listens to the Clash blasting 'Spanish Bombs' and then fast-forwards to 'Straight to Hell' just before her cassette player dies.
Author Emily Franklin is the author of - among other things - a 'juvenile fiction' series called 'The Principles of Love', detailing the adventures of Love Bukowski. In book 5, Summer of Love (2007), Love runs her aunt Mabel's cafe in Martha's Vineyard for the three-month season of the title. She comes to realise that it's possible to love the Clash's 'Spanish Bombs' and Madonna's 'Borderline' equally. which is no bad philosophy of life, as at least one of the contributors to the London Booted mash-up Clash tribute album would testify.
'The Right Profile'
In Storms: My Life with Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham's former girlfriend Carol Ann Harris tells how London Calling inspired her ex to 'walk a new path with his music' and cut his hair: 'he looked like he belonged on stage with the Clash'. He knew all the album's lyrics off by heart, and was so taken by 'The Right Profile' in particular that Carol Anne bought him three framed Montgomery Clift movie posters for his birthday.
'Lost in the Supermarket'
When the Clash's old rivals the Jam released Sound Affects the year after London Calling, it was hard not to notice a titular similarity between 'Lost in the Supermarket' and 'Man in the Corner Shop', though Weller's lyric is actually more about about envy than alienation.
The Clash song was covered by Ben Folds - who wrote all the other soundtrack material himself - especially to be played over the closing credits of the 2006 animated comedy feature film Over the Hedge. A mixed bunch of woodland critters wakes up from hibernation to find a new suburban development encroaching on their habitat with a huge hedge thrown up around it. The first verse of Joe's lyric is so appropriate to the movie, that it could almost have inspired it. except the film is actually based on a long running comic strip by Michael Fry and T Lewis.
A spin-off from Beavis and Butthead, the MTV cartoon series Daria about wise-ass schoolgirl Daria Morgendorffer ran from 1997 to 2002. An episode first aired in 2000 entitled 'Mart of Darkness' was just begging to be soundtracked by 'Lost in the Supermarket'.
While Joe Strummer appropriated existing buzzwords and phrases for his own ends in 'London Calling' and 'Clampdown', 'Lost in the Supermarket' stands as an instance of him not creating one, maybe, but certainly establishing a new context for its use. 
While the 1981 Ladybird book Lost in the Supermarket, written by Jennifer Dyke and illustrated by Sally Long, refers to the expression's literal pre-Clash assocation with missing kid scares, Joe's particular application of the phrase as a metaphor for alientation in consumer society has also had a far-reaching effect. to the extent that in certain academic and quasi-acedemic circles it's acquired an almost philosophical status, and is much referenced in relevant texts.
In Stars Don't Stand Still in the Sky: Music and Myth (1999) edited by Karen Kelly and Evelyn McDonnell, it's the title of a chapter by Anthony deCurtis subtitled 'Myth and Commerce in the Music Business'.
Republic of Signs: Liberal Theory and American Popular Culture (1993), by political science and comparitive literature professor Anne Norton, is a book which throws phrases like 'semiotic networks' around perhaps a little too freely for the lay reader. Chapter 2's 'Culture of Consumption' discusses using 'significant commodities as a means for governing the construction of identity' and cites 'Lost in the Supermarket' as 'the most satisfying expression of the resulting panic', going on to quote the chorus in full. 
Norton also refers to an essay by Thomas Dumm about the anxieties of excess entitled 'Lost in the Supermarket'. (Dumm subsequently incorporated this essay into his own 1994 book United States.)
Lifestyle Shopping: the Subject of Consumption (1992), edited by Rob Shields, is another dry read on the theme of business and economics, and also quotes the chorus of the Clash song in full.
In Loretta Napoleoni's Rogue Economics: Capitalism's New Reality (2008) the song title is again appropriated for a chapter that reveals bananas to be the most profitable items sold in British supermarkets.
From Fiorucci to the Guerrilla Stores: Shop Displays in Architecture, Marketing and Communications (2006) by Claudio Marenco Mores, looks at the architecture that helped establish the brands of fashion houses and designers over the last 30 years, and quotes the chorus.
Deblurring Images: Matrices, Spectra and Filtering (2007) by Hansen, Nagy and O'Leary is a technology and engineering text with a section about decoding blurry barcodes rather wittily called 'Lost in the Supermarket'.
In the Nutrition Labeling Handbook (1995) by Ralph Shapiro, the song title is appropriated for a chapter by Stephen Gardner subtitled 'Consumer Confusion and Marketing Mania'.
It names another chapter in The Obesity Myth: Why America's Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to your Health (2004) by Paul Campos, subsequently 
republished as The Diet Myth. A law professor, Campos challenges the notion that fat is bad and takes issue with fatism generally.
Sticking with the theme of literal consumption: if you want putting in the mood to 'nosh'n'roll' (it says here), what better guide than Kay Bozich Owens and Lynn Owens' Lost in the Supermarket: An Indie Rock Cookbook (2008). It 'recalims the kitchen for the hip crowd', and offers recipes by such indie stalwarts as Animal Collective, Black Dice, Sunset Rubdown and the Country Teasers.
'Lost in the Supermarket' is a chapter heading in the social science text book Getting Started on Social Analysis in Canada (1994) by Czerny, Swift and Clarke.
The medical text Sex, Lies and Menopause: the Shocking Truth about Synthetic Hormones and the Benefit of Natural Alternatives (2004) by TS Wiley (with Taguchi and Formby) proves itself happy to make barely relevant pop cultural references with its main title, and doesn't let up inside. Most chapters are - for some inexplicable reason - named after Rolling Stones songs, while one subsection on turning to natural supplements instead of HRT is entitled 'Lost in the Supermarket'.
In David F Wells's Losing our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover its Moral Vision, (1999), the chapter 'On Saving Ourselves' quotes the chorus to support the claim: 'Our malls are the predictable and inevitable answer to the problem of our fragmenting self.'
This is evidently the kind of effect Joel Turnispeed was going for with Baghdad Express: a Gulf War Memoir (2003), an account of the conflict developed from the author's 1997 GQ feature with occasional comic book interludes. After learning he's going to be sent to the gulf, our hero goes to the Holiday convenience store and wanders through singing 'Lost in the Supermarket' to himself. He buys some pretzels and a Coca-Cola, 
but then feels this is too quotidian a way to mark such a momentous day, so buys some cigarettes instead. Even though he doesn't smoke.
In I Sleep at Red Lights: a True Story of Life after Triplets (2004), Bruce Stockler - sometime joke writer for Jay Leno - 
misses no opportunity to stress how dazing and confusing sudden multiple fatherhood can be, one of those opportunities being a chapter entitled 'Lost in the Supermarket'.
Fiction hasn't been immune to the phrase, either. Toby Litt's first book, Adventures in Capitalism (1996), a satirical examination of consumer behaviour via the medium of the short story, quotes the chorus.
In Never Mind Nirvana (2000) by Mark Lindquist - praised in reviews by Bret Easton Ellis, 
Tama Janowitz, R.E.M.'s Peter Buck and one of the Farrelly Brothers - contrarian Pete Tyler drops out of a Seattle grunge band to live a straight life in a suit. He likes London Calling, but not all of it. apparently: after listening to 'Lost in the Supermarket', he clicks forward 'to "Train in Vain", the unlisted track'.
Christopher Brookmyre's satirical Scottish thriller A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away (2001) includes an excrutiating flashback to a Battle of the Bands competition in which a future terrorist mastermind plays lead guitar in a student band called the Bacchae, while his future nemesis and the book's hero, Ray, plays drums. For their first and only live appearance, Ray attempts to sing 'Lost in the Supermarket' as his microphone slides down its stand onto his snare, rendering his vocals inaudible. Simon goes on to name his squad of mercenary terrorists after members of his favourite bands, four of them being addressed throughout as Strummer, Simonon, Headon and Jones.
Sock (2004) by Penn Jillette (of renowned magical doubtle act Penn and Teller) is narrated by a sock monkey named Dickie, who belongs to a New York City Police diver Dickie calls The Little Fool. It concerns the search for the killer of the diver's (not the sock monkey's) murdered former lover, and is packed with pop cultural references from the Seventies and Eighties. One chapter is headed 'I'm all Lost in the Supermarket'.
So on the money did Joe Strummer's lyric prove in summing up contemporary malaise that it has even been put forward as a possible influence on Don Delillo's post-modern classic, White Noise (1985). As Delillo is no more available to discuss this than JD Salinger or Thomas Pynchon, this one will have to remain hypothetical, but. During the course of the narrative, it is noted that the elderly are plunged into confusion when shelves in a supermarket are rearranged, causing them to take on an aimless and haunted look. A couple of characters, Old Man Treadwell and his sister, get lost at the mall - the supermarket writ large - resulting in the old lady's death from dehydration. The main character, Jack Gladney, chair of a college course in Hitler Studies, has an obsessive fear of death, and is preoccupied with such issues as identity, rampant consumerism and media saturation. At one point he evokes another London Calling track by alluding to the 'Coke is it' mantra emitting from his television set. DeLillo apparently initilly wanted to call the book Panasonic, but was refused permission because it's a registered trademark of the electronics company. small world: Panasonic would later use the London Calling cover image for a Technics ad.
'Clampdown'
Although the Clash aren't the most obvious punk forbears of The Strokes, the latter band covered 'Clampdown' during their July 2004 UK gigs as a comment on the previous year's invasion of Iran. A version of the song recorded at the Alexandra Palace was issued that same year as the B-side of 'The End Has No End'.
The Manic Street Preachers are more obviously built on a Clash template, and singer-guitarist James Dean Bradfield also covered the song on his October 2006 solo tour.
Again, even though the expression wasn't originated by the Clash, the way they used it evidently made an impression. The 1982 Socialist Review by the Center For Social Research And Education in Berkeley, California, notes that the way the establishment deals with public dissent is changing: 'To some observers, the state is gearing up for what the Clash calls the Clampdown.'
Law, Order and the Authoritarian State (1987), edited by Phil Scraton features an essay - also referenced by several other books on the same subject - entitled 'Working for The Clampdown: Prisons and Politics in England and Wales' by Joe Sim.
In The Seventies: the Great Shift in American Culture, Society and Politics (2002) by Bruce J. Schulman - a history book offering 'a fast-paced, wide ranging. examination of the political, cultural, social and religious upheavals' of that decade - we learn that the mid Seventies saw 'a bunch of London "rude boys" called the Clash burst onto the scene'. Schulman backs it up by quoting the 'no man born with a living soul' line from 'Clampdown'.
Joseph Tragert's Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Iran (2004) features a section heading entitled 'Working for the Clampdown'.
In a section in the previously-mentioned Stars Don't Stand Still in the Sky (1999) entitled 'I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song' - about our tendency to personalise songs - co-editor Karen Kelly admits that she 'boycotted the colors blue and brown because I didn't get the fascist reference in the Clash's "Working for the Clampdown"'. After running a mail order record retail business called Complete Control for several years, Clash fan Paul Ladley changed the name to Clampdown Records, which he still operates from Ashton Under Lyne. 'It's a favourite track, but also quite appropriate for the kind of "alternative" releases we specialise in,' he says.
'The Guns of Brixton'
Although decried by some at the time of its release as an example of irresponsible fantasy, 'The Guns of Brixton' has proved to be remarkably true-to-life. By 1981, high unemployment and a growing local crime rate had made for a powder keg situation in Brixton. Police responded in early April with Operation Swamp '81, an extreme application of the already unpopular and contentious Sus laws. On 10 April 1981 a crowd tried to intervene in the arrest of a young black man on Railton Road. Back-up was called, and police presence in the area increased into the following day, at which point a full scale riot kicked off, with the crowd even using petrol bombs, a first for England. The Brixton riot preceded major riots throughout UK over the summer, when predominately black areas of most of major cities erupted, including Handsworth in Birmingham, Toxteth in Liverpool, Southall in London, and Moss Side in Manchester. Along with the Specials' 'Ghost Town', 'The Guns of Brixton' became an unofficial anthem for this unrest: not a soundtrack to a film, but a soundtrack to reality.
And long-running reality, at that. Four years later, on 28 September 1985, there was another riot in Brixton when police searching for Michael Groce, who they suspected of possessing a firearm, stormed the house of his mother Cherry and accidentally shot her, paralysing her below the waist. Two days of burning and looting ensued. A week later came a similar riot at the Broadwater Farm Estate in Tottenham.
A decade later, on 13 December 1995, Wayne Douglas died in custody at Brixton Police Station. What started as a peaceful protest outside soon escalated into another riot.
That the song has been covered so extensively over the years cannot be solely attributed to adolescent fascination with its rebellious stance. For such a genre-specific song, it has translated into a wide variety of styles: punk and rock and reggae tinged versions, yes, but also acoustic, Tex-Mex, hiphop and bossa nova. For such a location-specific song, it has been covered by British, French, German, Polish, Italian, American, Canadian, Argentinean, Peruvian and Australian artists. And for a song so steeped in personal mythology, it still leaves enough space for reinterpretation. Time has proved the ultimate test: 'The Guns of Brixton' has been accepted as a great song, not just a great bassline.
In the early Noughties Pete Doherty and Carl Barat of the Libertines would play occasional ad hoc gigs in their London flat, the 'Albion Rooms'. On one occasion, neighbours called the police, and the duo sang The Guns of Brixton a cappella when the cops knocked at their front door.
In the mid-Noughties Michael Franti's politically conscious Californian funk-soul-reggae-rap outfit Spearhead would segue their own 'People in the Middle' into 'The Guns of Brixton' - among other songs - during live shows.
German punk band Die Toten Hosen recorded a cover of 'The Guns of Brixton' for the B-side of their 2005 single 'Freunde', and the following year released an 'unplugged' version of the cover as an A-side in its own right.
Tex-Mex outfit Calexico explored the original's Spaghetti Western inflections more extensively in an acoustic version released as a single in 2006. It's more Spanish than 'Spanish Bombs': there are Spanish guitars, mariachi horns, a verse entirely in Spanish, and Spanish backing vocals, which - following the 'black Mariah' line - offer up a beseeching prayer to 'Santa Maria'.
In 2006, Transformers-obsessed Seattle rock-rappers Optimus Rhyme were involved in the 4th Annual Sunset Double-Album Series at the Sunset Tavern in Seattle. Two years later, they included both their chosen London Calling songs (actually recorded at another Seattle venue, the Croc) on their EP Transformed, one of them being 'The Guns of Brixton'.
Montreal's Arcade Fire played an orchestral-acoustic version of the song - with hurdy gurdy, violins, tuba, mandolin, and vocals processed through megaphones - during their London shows in spring 2007, and the BBC2's The Culture Show filmed them performing it in the foyer of the Brixton Academy.
In the early Noughties, Santi White used to sing 'The Guns of Brixton' with the Philadelphia-Brooklyn punk band Stiffed. When the band split, she began recording and collaborating on a range of dance, hiphop and punk material as Santogold (now Santigold). In mid 2008, she and producer Diplo released a dub-heavy remix of the Clash track with vocals by Santi under the title 'The Guns of Brooklyn'.
It was by no means the first time the song had been adapted. In 1981, a Berlin punk band named Soilent Grun (after the sci-fi film Soylent Green) appropriated the tune for the song Spitz wie Lumpi. The following year, members of the band relaunched themselves as Die Arzte (The Physicians), and continued to play the song live.
In 1990, Norman Cook, the future Fat Boy Slim, then trading as Beats International, married the lyric and vocal melody of the SOS Band's 'Just be Good to Me' to the bassline of 'The Guns of Brixton' in a proto-mash-up entitled 'Dub be Good to Me'. 
'That's an affectionate tribute to the Clash,' Norman told the NME at the time of its release. 'It's like tipping my cap to them, because they were a huge influence on my growing up, both musically and politically.' When the song went to number one in February 1990 and stayed there for four weeks, going Gold on 1 March with sales of over 400,000 copies, Paul Simonon felt justified in asking for Norman to tip a little more than his cap. An amicable settlement was reached... eventually.
In October 2002, Faithless teamed up with singer-songwriter Dido to cover Beats International's semi-cover for the benefit album NME in Association with Warchild Presents 1 Love.
In September 2007, a version of the song by Jack Penate was the B-side of his single 'Second, Minute Or Hour'.
But all-male Australian band the Beautiful Girls had already had the last word four years earlier when they included a medley entitled 'The Guns of Brixton' / 'Dub be Good to Me' as one of the tracks on their single 'Blackbird'.
In 2004, 'The Guns of Brixton' was sampled for Californian hip-hop group Cypress Hill's single 'What's Your Number', about picking up a girl in a club and 'banging in the back of a Benz'. 
Clash fan Tim Armstrong of Rancid plays guitar, and also appears in the video.
Two years later, 'The Guns of Brixton' provided the beats for the MC Chris track Blastic.
In 2003, the Clash song gave its name to a French dub-rock band.
Three years later, a New York-New Jersey band of punk and power pop enthusiasts who put the Clash high on their list of influences named themselves The Brixton Riot.
When it comes to references in books, 'The Guns of Brixton' seems to be an automatic selection for guidebooks to the capital: a legacy of the 'no more than five minutes of in-depth Google research' rule. Sarah Johnstone and Tom Masters's London Lonely Planet City Guide (2006) says the song took a darker tone than Eddie Grant's 'Electric Avenue' in discussing 'the riots of the 1980s'. not bad work for a song written in 1979.
In Cathi Unsworth's introduction to London Noir (2006), a collection of London crime stories, she states that London 'pulses to the music of the world', with each district 'retelling its own folk legends' via such musics as bhangra, reggae, ska, blues, jazz, fado, flamenco, electronica, hiphop and punk. It's an exciting sounding pic'n'mix prospect, let down more than slightly by the four examples she offers: 'Waterloo Sunset' by the Kinks. and 'London's Burning', 'London Calling' and 'The Guns of Brixton' by the Clash.
Charles de Lint's Yarrow: An Autumn Tale (1986) is a fantasy novel - the cover illustration is of a naked half-woman, half-goat sitting in a tree with a couple of carefully positioned branches protecting her/its modesty - set in modern-day Ottawa. A character called Mick Jennings is an old hippy 'gone punk' who proves it by drinking beer and playing 'Clampdown' at full volume. While 'the Clash's bass player' sings 'The Guns of Brixton', Mick pauses to muse that he knew how he'll be stepping out when they came knocking at his front door.
Jonathan Franzen's debut novel The Twenty-Seventh City (1988) is set in a future dystopian St Louis, Missouri. 'The Guns of Brixton' is played, suitably menacingly, towards the end.
George P Pelecanos is an author with a track-record for soundtracking his crime fiction, using music to establish era and mood (and show off his eclectic tastes). In Nick's Trip (1994) barman-PI Nick Stefanos sticks a 'worn copy' of London Calling into the bar's cassette player just before two real detectives pay him a visit. 'The Guns of Brixton' starts to play, setting up a confrontation. One of the cops, Detective Goloria asks who the record is by, and when he gets the answer, tells Nick to 'turn that shit off'. Just to firmly establish him as No Good, he also makes a couple of racist comments. Within a couple of minutes, Nick's answered him back and been sideswiped by Goloria's partner. A hundred pages later there's the inevitable Wild West-style shootout.
Go to Part 2... (coming soon) »
This chapter is a work in progress. Any additions or corrections gratefully received (and possibly even acknowledged): info@marcusgray.co.uk