241. Rock Goes the Gospel - The Clash "London Calling"

"London Calling" is a song by The Clash. It was released as a single from the band's 1979 double album London Calling. This apocalyptic, politically charged rant features the band's famous combination of reggae basslines and punk electric guitar and vocals. The Album was released in the United Kingdom on 14 December 1979 by CBS Records, and in the United States in January 1980 by Epic Records.  The album's subject matter included social displacement, unemployment, racial conflict, drug use, and the responsibilities of adulthood. The album received widespread acclaim and was ranked at number eight on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003. London Calling was a top ten album in the UK and has sold over five million copies worldwide,

London is a shit hole. But it’s our shit hole. A chaotic worm farm that bears scant regard to the nation it holds at bay through a moat of gridlocked tarmac, London long ago ceased to be the beating heart of Britain and effectively became a citadel which happens to share a flag and media with those beyond its boundaries. A patchwork quilt of ethnicity, belief and values, London is a remarkable place that repels mass gentrification in favour of conflicting identities and a creative hunger which makes it one of the most exciting places on Earth. However, back in 1979 London was fucked - struggling to identify a means of becoming a tertiary society as the economy jack-knifed and a desperate populace lived under the Soviet Union’s nuclear cosh. Taking this unease and reducing it into a pithy rash of guitar and snarls, The Clash’s ‘London Calling’ is the spiritual forebearer of every song played on Rinse FM with Joe Strummer balancing the sickly reality of life in the capital against the siren song it omitted to those stranded in the sticks. Be standing please for our true National anthem.

London calling to the faraway towns
Now war is declared, and battle come down
London calling to the underworld
Come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls
London calling, now don't look to us
Phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust
London calling, see we ain't got no swing
'Cept for the ring of that truncheon thing

[Chorus 1:]
The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in
Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin
Engines stop running, but I have no fear
'Cause London is drowning, and I live by the river

London calling to the imitation zone
Forget it, brother, you can go it alone
London calling to the zombies of death
Quit holding out, and draw another breath
London calling, and I don't wanna shout
But while we were talking, I saw you nodding out
London calling, see we ain't got no high
Except for that one with the yellowy eyes

[Chorus 2: x2]
The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in
Engines stop running, the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear error, but I have no fear
'Cause London is drowning, and I live by the river

Now get this

London calling, yes, I was there, too
An' you know what they said? Well, some of it was true!
London calling at the top of the dial
After all this, won't you give me a smile?
London calling

I never felt so much alike [fading] alike alike alike

This morning we concentrate on the idea of a city "Drowning". Joe Strummer sings 'Cause London is drowning' this could be taken literally, but this morning we will explore it figurativly speaking. London the great city, a modern, and industrious city. This city is a place where cultures collide. Full of ethnic diversity. London whose streets who over centuaries have been filled with sailors, military men, businessmen, and thrill seekers from all corners of the earth and a place full of people who never stay very long, but only come to fulfill their base desires. It's in this place of drowning that we hear Paul the great apostle addresses in 1 corinthians 13, the ineffective and immorally weak church in the city of vice, with an anthem of love.

We will get to the anthem of love in a few moments but first a backdrop to the city of Corinth. Few cities have ever had or will ever have such a reputation as Corinth. A city filled with hundreds of thousands of people. We’re talking about one of the largest, most beautiful, modern, and industrious cities ever known at the time. This city has several characteristics. It was an inclusive place, full of ethnic diversity. This is a place where cultures collide. Corinth was a place with a revolving door whose streets are filled with sailors, military men, businessmen, and thrill seekers from all corners of the earth and a place full of people who never stay very long, but only come to fulfill their base desires. It was also a place of perpetual vanity, where every imaginable sin and vice is not only indulged, but celebrated openly. A place where people are robbed of purpose and where young women and teenagers are exploited for their sexuality.  A place where the well-to-do come to squander their prosperity. Where commercialised gambling, debauchery, drinking, and prostitution fails to raise a single eyebrow. A place where true faith is debased in the name of entertainment. Where sex is practically considered a religion in itself and sexuality is flaunted ad nauseum.  We are talking about a city without limits, where all inhibition is cast aside. A place unshackled by morality or God’s laws. A place where people feel free!

Corinth was so important and a key city. The city of Corinth had three harbours and was strategically located along a prominent north-south trade route. It was a place of commercial trade, where merchants from all over the world would come. Corinth was inhabited by over 400,000 people. Her population was mixed, including Greeks, Jews, Italians, and other foreigners. And get this—her transient population was ever-changing. Corinth was a city without foundations or moral roots. The city featured new shops, sprawling marketplaces, restored and greatly enlarged temples, fresh water supplies, numerous public buildings, governmental buildings, and an amphitheater that sat over 14,000 people. Recent excavations have uncovered over thirty-three wine shops, or bars, located in downtown Corinth. The wine shops featured lofted rooms. Travelers would get plied with wine and then enticed into these lofts for illicit activity with prostitutes and other partygoers. The Soho of it's day.

In the apostle Paul’s day, Corinth was known as Sin City. To "corinthianise" a person was to corrupt a person. It was to take them beyond their moral limits. People went to Corinth to be corinthianised. It was like a rite of passage. Come indulge here. There was no greater insult that could be given to someone than to be called a Corinthian.

Smack dab in the middle of Corinth / Sin City, with the help of missionaries Aquilla and Priscilla, the Lord Jesus Christ sent the apostle Paul to establish a church. (Acts 18) The apostle Paul established a church in one of the darkest, most morally corrupt cities in the Roman empire. He placed it in a stronghold of Satan’s kingdom. Paul began the church in a place without hope in a city without morals. Paul began his work in a metropolis that was drowning in broken dreams and fractured lives. The church in Corinth had it's many problems. "What do you prefer? Shall I come to you with a whip, or in love and with a gentle spirit?" wrote Paul in his first letter to the church in Corinth. With their internal squabbles, disorderly worship, false apostles, and sexual immorality, the Corinthian followers of Jesus earned the dubious honour of having their shortcomings immortalised in two New Testament letters. How could a church started by the apostle Paul be fractured by divisions, filled with arrogance, seemingly supportive of immorality, involved in litigation, and struggling over whether sexual relations are appropriate within the husband-wife relationship? These are just a few of the problems facing Paul as he seeks to deal with the church he planted in the city of Corinth. Not to mention abuses of the Lord’s Supper, the abuse of Christian freedom, and doctrinal controversies over such issues as spiritual gifts and the future bodily resurrection of believers. The church was out of control in a city of freedom.

Having said all that it is with this city in mind and to this Corinthian church that Paul communicates perhaps the greatest and most telling essay on Love that is contained in the New Testament. 1 Corinthians 13. It is with the culture of this city seeping into the church that Paul writes with passion about what life looks like as a true follower of Jesus. It is in the mess and chaos of this fractured church that Paul speaks with power, authority and hope. It is in the "Drowning" of the city and the "Sinking" of the church in the immoral tide, that in Paul's love anthem there rests the hope of something different for the church and for the dark culture in Corinth.

I also wrote about this track in Rock Goes the Gospel - Song 111.

A different take on it.