THE LONDON CALLING STORY
The Clash were never going to let themselves be shackled by the stylistic limitations of punk
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By January 1979, the glorious ball of raging energy that was punk had burnt out. The Sex Pistols had been reduced to a shambolic mess live on stage in San Francisco a year earlier, and while John Lydon had regrouped with the more experimental Public Image Ltd, his sardonic “ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” Pistols sign-off seemed a fitting epitaph for a movement that had promised so much. The only true torchbearers left standing appeared to be Messrs Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Topper Headon. However, The Clash themselves were, as Strummer readily admitted in Don Letts’ excellent documentary The Clash: Westway To The World, at their lowest ebb. “I think,” he said, “that is when we showed our greatest mettle.”