The Call Up—The Clash
#365Songs: April 18
Cover songs are tricky things. Most of the time … well, let’s just be honest. Most of the time, they suck. Unnecessary, unimaginative, unpleasant.
That said, there are a few occasions when a cover song serves a purpose. However, the extent to which it does or doesn’t often depends on your definition of what actually constitutes a “cover.”
For example, bebop giants spent years reclaiming, reimagining, deconstructing, and leaping off from pre-existing songs. But can Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” properly be called a “cover?”
For our purposes here, let’s just traffic in the conventional definition. Someone “does” someone else’s song.
Now, a cover can do a few good things. Occasionally, it can introduce us to an artist in a way that showcases what that artist uniquely brings to the table. For example, Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll” is actually a cover, but in covering it, she showed us exactly who she was and what she was about, and we loved her for it.
A particularly amazing cover can actually become a thing of power and beauty of its own. Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah” is a fairly obvious example.
An especially imaginative cover can, in effect, “rescue” a terrible song and give it new life. Joe Cocker’s “With a Little Help from My Friends” is remarkable, whereas the Beatles version is unlistenable.
The holy grail for a cover song is that it not only becomes a thing of power and beauty of its own, but it causes us to rediscover and love anew the original, helping us to uncover and experience layers of excellence we may have not even realized. “All Along the Watchtower” is that kind of cover. The Hendrix version offers a level of otherworldly brilliance that is untouched and virtually indescribable. And yet, hearing it almost immediately makes me want to hear the original again, and I honestly love Dylan’s version more now for having heard Hendrix take it on.
Which brings me to “The Call Up” from the Clash’s three-album opus Sandinista!.
Sandinista! is a polarizing album. To some, it’s an uneven masterpiece. To others, it’s a bloated mess. To still others, it’s the pinnacle act from the only band that matters. Most of the musos I know I agree on its overall excellence, but they all believe it should have been, at most, a double album; i.e., it could have used some additional editing down.
Me, I’m in the “pinnacle” school. I wouldn’t dare change a thing even if I could. So what if certain songs are missteps, under realized, or of lesser caliber? The album is a bloody masterwork, and you take it in toto or you fuck off.
That said, I recognize there may still be doubters.
That’s where a cover song helps.
Consider “The Call Up.” It was the first single from Sandinista!. Top chart performance? Number 13 in … Sweden. It didn’t even crack Top 20 in their home UK charts. Fairly notable, given that the album came on the heels of London Calling, widely regarded as one of the greatest albums … well, ever. “The Call Up” was followed by “Hitsville UK” and “The Magnificent Seven,” with similar results.
REALLY??????
Sigh …
So, obviously there were doubters. There probably still are. There are also probably a lot of people who’ve never heard “The Call Up.” Or, they might have forgotten about it. The song came out in 1980, after all. 44 years ago.
Worse still, people might not realize just how powerful the song really is. And that’s where the cover song helps.
In this case, it’s Chris Whitley, who does “The Call Up” on his incandescently potent album War Crime Blues. If you don’t know who Chris Whitley is, stop reading right now and go listen to War Crime Blues, Living with the Law, Perfect Day, Dirt Floor, and Hotel Vast Horizon. Now. I’ll wait.
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And now we resume, on the assumption that you either knew Chris Whitley already, or that you know him now.
Having heard his eerie and chilling version of “The Call Up,” I will also now assume you better understand the plaintive, mournful, regret-laden pathos of this song’s pointed commentary on conscription, and the human pain left in its indiscriminate wake.
For he who will die
Is he who will kill
Maybe I want to see the wheat fields
Over Kiev and down to the sea
All the young people down the ages
They gladly marched off to die
Proud city fathers used to watch them
Tears in their eyes
There is a rose that I want to live for
Although, God knows, I may not have met her
There is a dance and I should be with her
There is a town — unlike any other
It’s up to you not to hear the call-up
Strummer’s voice is as heartrendingly passionate as it ever is here, and the minor chord melodies are sonically devastating. The spikily angular guitar of Mick Jones, the marching funk of Topper Headon’s drums, the insidious bass line from guest player Norman Watt-Roy — it all combines to become an incantation, a chant, a dirge. Call it funereal funk dub, call it what you will, it’s bloody brilliant, and if that’s not immediately evident, hopefully the unlayering afforded you by Chris Whitley’s cover will help you get there.
Just get there.
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