Garbage Days Revisited #13: The Clash - "Sandinista!" (1980)

 

"The mutants, creeps and musclemen are shaking like a leaf/It blows a hole in the radio when it hasn't sounded good all week" - The Clash, Hitsville UK

So after last week's Metallica entry, we're gonna be leaving the '90s alone for a little bit on Garbage Days Revisited. As I said earlier, by the time I hit my Uni years I was finally starting to get hip to music from outside my '90s timeframe. Admittedly my first tentative steps outside it were checking out bands who were often namechecked by my favourite bands - as well as Metallica's aforementioned Garage Inc album, the Wildhearts' evergreen ode to the bands that set Ginger on his way 29 x The Pain was another where I was starting to look up some of these outfits like the Replacements, the Sex Pistols, Cheap Trick, the Ramones...and the Clash. The fact that Strummer and co were also frequently namechecked by another of my favourites in this era the Manic Street Preachers probably didn't hurt either.

I seem to remember I bought all of the first five Clash albums in quick succession around this time (they were regulars in the sale rack in HMV so it was a fairly easy task to do without breaking my very limited student budget). While there's a lot to be said for the cut-and-thrust year zero of the first album and the tuneful riff-heavy rock of Give 'Em Enough Rope, it was the epic soundscapes of London Calling and Sandinista! that were the ones I seemed to keep coming back to. Both of them were albums that you could lose yourself in for days on end and proved that, like the Damned did around the same time with The Black Album, the Clash were outgrowing their punk roots and expanding their sound to good effect.

It's always kind of annoyed me though that while London Calling is rightly hailed as a classic, Sandinista! tends to get written off by critics as just a bit too long and unfocused and with too much filler to be any good. I mean, for a start, as brilliant as London Calling is, it's not entirely filler-free itself (Lovers Rock anyone?), it's the fact that the good bits are that good that they comfortably make you forget the couple of slip-ups on the album. And yeah, maybe it could lose a few of the admittedly massive 37 tracks on here (pretty much everything after The Street Parade along with Mensforth Hill and One More Dub would maybe have been better off left for B-sides or an outtakes compilation) but like its predecessor, those highlights easily outweigh the odd mis-step.

And those highlights? I mean, where do you start? The Magnificent Seven and Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice) saw the group firmly mastering the dub/reggae influences they'd been slowly getting better at since Police And Thieves on their debut, Something About England was pretty much the basis for the Libertines' entire career twenty odd years later, Washington Bullets, Somebody Got Murdered, The Street Parade, Broadway, Ivan Meets GI Joe, the excellent breakneck cover of Police On My Back, let there be no doubt, if this had been 20 odd tracks instead of 37 then I'm pretty sure it'd be held up there in the same regard as its much more illustrious predecessor. As it is, while it takes a bit of patience, to me Sandinista! is a great album once you persevere with it. As I've said, controversial but I'd honestly put it second only to London Calling in my estimation.

I think similar to the Metallica GDR column last week (although the two bands couldn't be more different), there's also an element of the fact that Sandinista! was the last genuinely good album that the band did. While it performed modestly in the UK, it was the record that broke the band across the Atlantic and they would disappear touring over there for most of 1981. For Combat Rock, the group decided to return to the single album formula and it would be this that would prove their undoing. Similar to its two predecessors, it saw the band throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the pot but with only 12 tracks it left the weaker songs with less stronger ammo to hide behind and unfortunately on this one there really were quite a few below-par ones - half the album (Know Your Rights, Straight To Hell, Ghetto Defendant, Rock The Casbah and Mick Jones' prophetically titled Should I Stay Or Should I Go?) was quality, the rest verged between average and forgettable.

And unfortunately it wouldn't get any better - first Topper Headon (for drugs issues) and then Mick Jones (after a major fall-out with Joe Strummer) were given their marching orders from the band. Strummer and Paul Simonon would put a new line-up together under the guidance of reinstated manager Bernie Rhodes but the net result was the absolutely awful Cut The Crap album which had one almost-decent song on it (This Is England) and was almost unlistenably bad nearly everywhere else. The band weren't long for this world afterwards and sadly Joe Strummer's untimely passing in 2001 means that a reunion very much ain't on the cards.

Hearteningly, it does seem that in recent years Sandinista! has been subject to a bit of a reappraisal - there was a great article extolling its virtues by the very excellent Kris Needs in Vive Le Rock a few months ago. For those who may have missed it, I'd strongly advise you to give Sandinista! another spin if it maybe proved a bit too much of a headf**k for you first time out. It's one of those albums that takes a few listens to get used to but trust me, once you do, it really does become the lost classic in the Clash's very impressive back catalogue.