London Calling

Songwriters Strummer and Jones had hit a period of writer's block, and the band had lost their Camden rehearsal studio. Tour manager Johnny Green and a roadie found Vanilla Studios, in the back of a garage in Pimlico. The Clash arrived there in May 1979 with no new songs. They kept the rehearsals private, with afternoon sessions, a football game, drinks at a local pub and a second rehearsal in the evening. Demos made on a TEAC 4-track recorder, later called the Vanilla Tapes, hold early versions of 15 of the album's 19 songs. They were believed lost until Jones found them while moving house in 2004.

Strummer wrote Lost in the Supermarket after imagining Jones's childhood in a basement with his mother and grandmother. The Guns of Brixton was Simonon's first composition to be recorded by the band, and the first to feature him on lead vocals. The band asked Guy Stevens to produce. Stevens swung a ladder, upturned chairs and poured wine over a piano Strummer was playing. The album was recorded at Wessex over five to six weeks of 18-hour days, with many songs done in one or two takes, and Brand New Cadillac was the first track recorded.

Bill Price, the chief engineer, later recalled that the sessions were booked for weekdays but ran seven days a week until two hours before the band flew to New York for gigs. He mixed the album himself with his assistant Jeremy Green and played the mixes backstage at the Palladium, where the band approved them. Train in Vain was the last song finished, after the artwork had gone to the printers, which is why it is missing from the original sleeve. Tim Young mastered the album at CBS Studios in Whitfield Street.

It was sold at about the price of a single album. It reached number 9 in the UK and was certified gold in December 1979. In the US it peaked at 27 and was certified platinum in February 1996. Pennie Smith's cover photograph shows Simonon smashing his Fender Precision Bass at the Palladium on 20 September 1979, and Ray Lowry's sleeve design nods to Elvis Presley's debut album.

Tom Carson wrote in Rolling Stone in 1980 that the record leaves listeners not just exhilarated but exalted and triumphantly alive. It won the Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll for 1980, and Rolling Stone later placed it eighth on its 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums. Reviewing the 2004 reissue, the BBC's Mark Sutherland called it surely the quintessential rock album, and Pitchfork wrote that it is the band's creative apex. The reissue added the Vanilla Tapes and Don Letts's film The Last Testament. The album entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2007.