Today I saw a great article about London Calling on the anniversary of its release and that got me to re-listen to it for the first time in awhile. It's probably in my all time top ten, and was certainly one of the first albums I ever bought that branched out beyond classic rock and 90s alternative music I listened to at the time.
As I listened I slowly realized there was a reason I had put it down for so long. When my friend David and I roomed together in Chicago (one of the most fun years of my life) we listened to this album over and over. Whenever we were back in our favorite bar in Omaha (where he grew up and we both went to college) we'd pop "Death or Glory" onto the juke box. Dave also had a t-shirt of the album cover that I greatly envied. (My Clash shirt was of their first album.)
We were like two peas in a pod back then, about as close as friends could get. It was eight years this month that he died suddenly and unexpectedly. I realized I had unconsciously avoided this album because like some other things we enjoyed together (Army of Darkness, Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, and M*A*S*H* reruns included) being exposed to it brings up painful associations.
I guess that makes sense, since London Calling is as rich and sprawling as life itself. Genres explode out of every corner and amalgamate. Stories tumble out too, everything from the Spanish Civil War to the death of Montgomery Clift to the loneliness of suburban supermarkets.
"Death or Glory" is a more conventional rocker, but it is rock stripped of the bravado of youth. It's also cleaner and more direct than the chaotic spittle and crunch of the Clash's earlier punk efforts. "Protex Blue" this ain't. This is a song about what happens to young punks in middle age. "You end up making payments on a sofa or a girl." As the song goes, death or glory becomes just another story.
When Dave and I lived together in our Rogers Park apartment we got to live out the bohemian fantasy of lower-middle class Catholic Nebraska boys in the big city. We had espresso in coffee shops and read philosophy. We went to midnight showings of old cult classics. We drank in dive bars and ate at late night diners and talked big ideas. Neither one of us was all that interested in settling down or living the straight life but he ended up meeting his future wife and we both got accepted into doctoral programs in other cities that year.
Dave died at 36, right on the cusp of middle age. By that time we were both parents and pretty happy about it. "Death or Glory" is still right, though. The dreams of youth got eaten up for both of us. We were both PhDs working outside the academy by that point. If you hang onto those young dreams too tightly they will eat you alive.
It still stings that he and I were not able to grow old together, which is something I had somehow always expected to happen. If middle age has taught me anything, it's that you lose more friends than you pick up after a certain point. I can still pump my fist to The Clash and remember, though.
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