It’s time for another WIS special as the blog is spending some time in London this week. So feast your mince pies on these six tunes set in The Smoke. Enjoy!
(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais – The Clash (1978)
I am well aware there was a Clash tune on last week’s playlist but there was no way that the band formed under the Westway was not going to feature on a playlist of capital city songs. In fact, all six tracks could have been Clash tunes. For someone who watched from 500 miles away as they emerged in the late 70s to be the self-styled “only band that matters”, they were synonymous with London. From their first single being inspired by the riot following the Notting Hill Carnival in 1976 and London’s Burning on the debut LP, to the lyrics of fourth single Clash City Rockers (“You see the rate they come down the escalator/Now listen to the tube train accelerator”), everything sounded so damned metropolitan! Nothing changed on this fifth single from June 1978, which Strummer wrote after attending a reggae all-nighter at the Hammersmith Palais. While the London-centric references remained, what did change was the form of the music. After an opening guitar salvo (counted in by Mick Jones), the song drops into a slow ska beat, building on their cover of Junior Murvin’s Police & Thieves on the first LP. Strummer spends the first part to the song bemoaning the performances of Dillinger, Leroy Smart and Delroy Wilson at the gig for being too mainstream and pop – “on stage they ain’t got no roots rock rebel”. Strummer spends the rest of the tune giving a blistering state of the nation address covering everything from punk bandwagon jumpers “turning rebellion into money” to racism and rising nationalism: “If Adolf Hitler flew in today/ they’d send a limousine anyway”. In its glorious choice of pop-art sleeve colours (mine was green!), the song was voted best single of 1978 by readers of the NME and features at the top of many ‘best of’ lists of Clash tunes prepared by critics. Strummer loved it and played the tune later in his career with the Mescaleros. It was played at his funeral in December 2002 and gets the nod for this list, just in front of his post-apocalyptic masterpiece London Calling.
Soho Square – Kirsty MacColl (1993)
When Kirsty MacColl died after being struck by a powerboat while diving with her kids on holiday in Mexico in 2000, the UK music industry lost a true original talent. The daughter of folk singer and activist Euan MacColl, she is best known for her duet with Shane McGowan on the Pogue’s Fairytale Of New York. But I first became aware of her as one of a new group of female artists signed to Stiff Records in the late 70s which included Lene Lovich and Rachel Sweet. Stiff released her debut single They Don’t Know in 1979 which was later to become a huge hit for Tracy Ullman in 1983. MacColl actually sang on this single which includes her high octave “bay-bee” line which Ullman couldn’t reach! MacColl’s version features her distinctive overdubbed multi-harmony vocals, something she is said to have taught herself at a young age with a copy of her brother’s Beach Boys single Good Vibrations. She fell out with Stiff boss Dave Robinson and the label stopped promoting her and shelved her second single and she left for Polydor only to return when they dropped her. This sums up her roller coaster career which has hits and misses with some of the former being her own There’s A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop and her covers of Billy Bragg’s A New England and Ray Davies’ Days. Her harmony skills made her a sought after backing vocalists and she worked with a wide range of artists like Robert Plant, the Smiths, Alison Moyet, Simple Minds, Talking Heads, Big Country, the Wonder Stuff, often with her husband Steve Lillywhite at the mixing desk. She was an underrated songwriter with some great songs on her albums including this one from her 1993 album Titanic. Ostensibly a hopeful relationship song about a failed meet up on a bench in the historic and much loved garden square in London’s Soho, the song has become a touchstone for her cruelly shortened life. It has a contemplative bittersweet feeling to it with the gentle jangling guitar swept up into the chorus by a beautiful string arrangement, perfectly complementing one of her loveliest vocal performances. There is real poignancy in the wonderful last verse in the light of her tragic death: “One day you’ll be waiting there/no empty bench in Soho Square/no I don’t know the reason why/I’ll love you till the day I die.” As you can see above, there is now a bench dedicated to Kirsty in the corner of Soho Square which seems a fitting memorial to her life.
Up The Junction – Squeeze (1979)
There have been many thousands of London based bands but once you tick off The Kinks, The Clash, Ian Dury and Madness from the list of those bands that ‘sound most like the city’, my instinct puts Squeeze next. Starting their band together south of the river in Deptford in 1975, lyricist Chris Difford and music writer Glen Tilbrook were masters at capturing those little vignettes of London life in the late 70s and early 80s. Their first EP was wittily titled Packet Of Three and released on Deptford Fun City Records in 1977 with a cover picture of the band performing at a pub in Haddo St in south London. This got them a contract with A&M records in 1978 where over the next four years they released a series five albums. These long players generated a run of beautifully composed pop singles which, although not generating massive sales, had some critics reaching for the Lennon/McCartney songwriting comparisons. Tilbrook knew how to write a pop hook but it was Difford’s dry and acerbic lyrics which really set them apart from the competition. The songwriters regularly shared vocals and, rather than adopt harmonies, they quick developed a trademark style where Difford sang the melody an octave lower then Tilbrook. After modest hits with the singles from their first LP, their second collection of tunes Cool For Cats delivered their two biggest hits, both reaching No2 in the UK. The title track went first and unusually featured Difford’s deeper vocal as lead, emphasising his strong cockney accent and phrasing. But it is this follow up single which easily gets on this London list, even though it was written when the band were in New Orleans. Famously inspired by the 1960s kitchen sink dramas he had seen as TV plays as a youngster, Difford carefully crafts his story in a Dylan-like format with no chorus. How can you resist his opening couplet: “I never thought it would happen/With me and the girl from Clapham”? Images are beautifully created with simple words and knowingly naff rhymes like telly/smelly and fifty/nifty, all helped on their way by Tilbrook’s beautiful melody. The bridge arrives with minor chords alerting you of the trouble to come in the story before bursting into the next verse about the birth of the baby with a wonderful uplifting key change. A complete masterclass in writing a pop song – I can still recall watching it on Top Of The Pops in our front room and my father turning round as it finished and saying to me “that was brilliant!”.
Sonny’s Lettah – Linton Kwesi Johnson (1979)
Looking to London from an overwhelmingly non-diverse Scotland in the late 1970s, I learned about the incredible diversity of it’s population through music. The punk scene had developed a strong affinity with reggae and I recall seeing various bands from south of the border in the Apollo and other venues where the music played over the PA before the performances was reggae, particularly dub. John Peel’s show was also where reggae could be heard and my interest in music of a Jamaican origin was fired by all this. Although never becoming hardcore fan I got to know my Steel Pulse from my Black Uhuru. I was particularly taken by Linton Kwesi Johnson, a Jamaican-born poet and black rights activist who I now know came with his family to London as part of the Windrush generation. His performance poetry involves him reciting in his distinctive deep voiced Jamaican patois over a dub-reggae backing often in collaboration with producer and reggae artist Dennis Bovell. I recall Peel playing his 1978 track All Wi Doin’ Is Defendin’ but can’t recall who I managed to borrow a copy of his 1979 LP Forces Of Victory from to allow me to tape it. Much of this record deals with political themes around the black community in London but it was Sonny’s Lettah which stopped me in my tracks when I heard it. It highlights the much hated Sus (Suspected Person) law which, in effect, led to police stopping, searching and arresting a disproportionate number of black youths. The poem is based on a letter and opens with the senders address: “Brixton Prison, Jebb Avenue, London SW2, Inglan”. The letter is from Sonny to his mother back in Jamaica who he politely hopes “in the best of health” before telling her the terrible the story of how he ended up in jail protecting his brother ‘lickle Jim”. The drama of the words is matched by the music, with the rhythm of the violence building to the incredible drop into a sole harmonica wail when the fatal blow lands. The “be of good courage, I remain your son” sign-off is a poignant ending. It’s strange to find something so depressing to be so gripping but it is a stunning piece of music which I always think about whenever I see or hear mention of Brixton prison. Johnson continues to write and perform to this day and in 2002 he became the second living poet, and the only black one, to be published in the Penguin Modern Classics series.
We Are London – Madness (2009)
Although arriving on to the music scene as part of the Coventry based label 2-Tone’s explosion of hits and style, there was never any doubt that Madness were a band from The Smoke. Formed in 1976 in Camden Town, they only released one record on 2-Tone in 1979, The Prince, their tribute to their idol ska singer Prince Buster whose song Madness gave them their name and was on the b-side. I was lucky enough to see them on the incredible 2-Tone Tour in Tiffany’s on Sauchiehall St on 11 November 1979, playing with the Selecter and the Specials. They left 2-Tone and, like many others in this blog, signed for Stiff Records where they were one of the London label’s most successful artists with a run of 22 consecutive hit singles over six years, 14 of them top ten hits. Supported by a series of popular videos, they developed their initial punky ska sound over the years, writing some great pop tunes, to these ears rooted in a quintessentially London sound – 1984’s gorgeous One Better Day being a particular favourite of mine. The front cover of their second LP Absolutely sees the band standing in front of Chalk Farm tube station in Camden, an image which is used as a line drawing for the Baggy Trousers single with the name changed to Cairo East station, reflecting their previous hit single the wonderful Night Boat To Cairo. But it wasn’t until much later in their career, after a split and a reformation, that they released an album fully immersed in London. Released in 2009, The Liberty Of Norton Folgate is a ‘concept album’ about their home city where the 10 minute title track recounts the social history of a corner of east London that until 1900 was controlled by St Paul’s Cathedral. Loved by the critics, The Word magazine described it as “Peter Ackroyd writing for the Kinks, it’s Sherlock Holmes in Albert Square, it’s a Mike Leigh movie of Parklife, it’s Passport To Pimlico meets Brick Lane, and it is Madness’s masterpiece.” The track chosen for the blog feels like a love letter from the band to their home city in all it’s guises: “In all the nightclubs, strip joints and the bars/From its poorest paid to its highest stars/The poets, plumbers, painters, spreads and sparks/From its inner city to its furthest parts”.
My Old Man – Ian Dury & The Blockheads (1977)
No London playlist could exist without a contribution from Lord Upminster himself, Ian Robins Dury. Although, if truth be told (which Dury frequently didn’t), he was not born in Upminster in Essex but in Harrow in west London in 1942. Estranged from his father at a young age, he contracted polio aged seven which left him paralysed on his left side. He was determined to overcome his physical challenges and went on to study under Peter Blake at the Royal College of Art. He formed his first band Kilburn & the High Roads in 1971 who developed a career in the pub-rock scene in London in early 70s. They released a couple of records with favourable press coverage but had broken up by 1975. As independent labels appeared on the back of the punk scene, Dury was one of many idiosyncratic and often eccentric artists who found a home at Dave Robinson’s Stiff Records. Backed by The Blockheads, the band developed a unique sound drawn from their diverse musical influences, including jazz, funk, rock’n’roll and reggae all mixed together with Dury’s love of music-hall. Stiff released what was to become Dury’s signature song Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll in August 1977 which had the brilliant Close To Home on the b-side. Firing my long distance interest in the …erm… streets of London, Dury’s gentle vocal described the joy of heading home from a night in the city: “Twenty minutes from Trafalgar Square/Lambeth Bridge in the late night air/The pale old river makes me shiver/But also I’m glad it’s there”. Frustratingly not on Spotify, it can be heard on Youtube here. The track I have chosen for the playlist is equally evocative of Dury’s London of old and comes from his brilliant debut record New Boots and Panties!! released a month later in September 1977. In comparison to other tracks on the LP, this is gentle ode to his estranged and recently dead father, which rides on a lovely Norman Watt-Roy rolling bass riff and Davey Payne’s gorgeous sax. Full of lovely imagery (“My old man wore three piece whistles/He was never home for long/Drove a bus for London Transport/He knew where he belonged”), the final verse telling of their reconciliation before he passed tugs hard at the heart-strings. It was fitting that Madness were to cover this track on the New Boots and Panties!! tribute album in 2001 – also not on Spotify!
Last Word
So the challenge of using Spotify for this blog was never more obvious in compiling my London tracks. Two songs from my vinyl singles collection which are so evocative of my musical geography of London are sadly missing from the streaming giant’s database. The good news is that they are available on YouTube at the links below. I know many of you struggle to read to the end of the blog never mind get diverted by clicking on my additional links. But these ones are well worth taking the time to listen to.
Saturday Night Beneath The Plastic Palm Trees – The Leyton Buzzards (1979) “There were crews from Balham and Golders Green/And loads of places I’d never been.”
Rossmore Road – Barry Andrews (1981) “Next stop on the tube Marylebone Road/And you can see Balcombe Street from Rossmore Road”
The Master Playlist has had its metropolitan update and is waiting now at the link below for your finger to hit the shuffle button.
AR
Week In Sound 
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