Fact #159348
When:
Short story:
The Clash release a new single, Train In Vain, in the USA. It will give them their first Top 30 entry, peaking at No23.
Full article:
Train In Vain
by Johnny Black (feature first appeared in Blender magazine)
Thrown together at the last minute in the dying hours of sessions for their classic 1979 album London Calling, Train In Vain was uncredited on the album cover and never even released as a British single. It was the Clash song that very nearly never was, but it was also the one that introduced them to the US Top 30.
A perennial critics’ favourite, London Calling was chosen by Rolling Stone as “the album of the 80s”, and the story of how it was recorded is vital to an understanding of Train In Vain.
Like many of their earliest fans, The Clash felt that their previous album, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, produced by AOR rock guru Sandy Pearlman, had gone too far towards making them sound like Stateside stadium rockers. In search of a more credible alternative, Joe Strummer tracked down legendary British producer Guy Stevens. Not only was the band well-aware of Stevens’ reputation as a drunken, pill-filled studio hellraiser – they were counting on it. Crazed moments, such as flooding the interior of a piano with beer to make it sound better, indulging in fisticuffs with engineer Bill price, and passing out on top of the mixing desk, were precisely the kind of things that inspired The Clash to go hell for leather in pursuit of new and exciting musics.
As Mick Jones puts it, “Sure, Guy had a few drinks during the course of the session but he wasn't like that all the time. He was the catalyst for what was going on. He was only greasing the wheels, so to speak... or lubricating.”
Work on London Calling had started during August 1979, in what Strummer called “a grimy room” in London’s Pimlico district. Then, after a month-long US tour with soul veterans Sam And Dave, country-rocker Joe Ely and psychobilly combo The Cramps, they returned full of ideas and inspirations, to complete the album in the more salubrious Wessex Studios in Highbury, North London.
The Clash were now pumping out new songs so fast that London Calling evolved into a double album and, even after the sleeve was in production, new songs were still emerging.
Train In Vain, written in one night and recorded the next day, was initially considered for use as a give-away track on flexi-disc with UK rock paper the NME. It was only when that plan fell through that the song became an album contender. “It was only an afterthought,” pointed out Mick Jones, “just something we knocked out at the last minute. It’s funny how that turned out to be such a big song. It took something like a half-hour to write and a half-hour to record.”
Wessex Studios manager and house engineer Bill Price confirms that it was “the last song that we finished after the artwork went to the printers. If you look on a couple of the Web sites, it describes it as a hidden track, but it wasn’t intended to be hidden. The sleeve was already printed before we tacked it on the end of the master tape.”
There are times when it seems as if every little boy who ever dreamed of growing up to be a train driver became a songwriter instead, because in the wide landscape of popular music, from blues to country to disco and beyond, songs about trains are almost as numerous as songs about cars. The Chattanooga Choo Choo, the Midnight Special, the Mystery Train, The Love Train … the list seems endless.
For The Clash, however, things are never quite what they seem. For a start, no train is mentioned anywhere in the song. According to Mick Jones, who wrote most of it, the title came about only because, "The track was like a train rhythm, and it was, once again, that feeling of being lost. So there it was."
Another curious aspect of Train In Vain, given The Clash’s political stance and socially-aware ethos, is that it’s a love song, with an almost C’n’W lyric, echoing Tammy Wynette’s classic weepie, Stand By Your Man. Jones has admitted that they were reluctant, for obvious reasons, to call it Stand By Me, so they plumped for Train In Vain because of the song’s resemblance to the old Robert Johnson blues number, Love In Vain.
So if The Clash were hardline UK punks who despised America as much as their song I’m So Bored With The USA seemed to suggest, why did Train In Vain sound so much like classic American garage rock shot through with hints of Motown and a Nashville lyric? It’s simple. Joe Strummer has admitted that, despite all their posturing, much of their inspiration came from the far side of the Atlantic. “I was drenched in blues and English RAndB as a teenager. Then I went to Black American RAndB with my (pre-Clash) group the 101ers. Mick had heard a lot of that stuff too, and he also had this extra dimension of the glam/trash New York Dolls/Stooges scene.”
In his review of London Calling,Tom Carson of Rolling Stone reckoned that Train in Vain "arrives like an orphan in the wake of Revolution Rock. It's not even listed on the label, and it sounds faint, almost overheard. Longing, tenderness and regret mingle in Jones' voice as he tries to get across to his girl that losing her meant losing everything, yet he's going to manage somehow. Though his sorrow is complete, his pride is that he can sing about it. A wistful, simple number about love and loss and perseverance, Train in Vain seems like an odd ending to the anthemic tumult of London Calling.”
It was certainly untypical enough to be deemed unsuitable as a UK single, but it entered the US chart on 26 April, 1980. Although reaching no higher than No23, it paved the way for the Top Ten success of Rock The Casbah, and has since become a perennial favourite, covered by artists as diverse as EMF, Dwight Yoakam, Manic Street Preachers, Annie Lennox and Third Eye Blind. And next time you hear Stupid Girl by Garbage, play Train In Vain immediately after and it’s not hard to spot where producer Butch Vig located those distinctive loops.
Predictably, despite the song’s success, Joe Strummer has subsequently taken offence at those who claimed that London Calling “was deliberately designed to appeal to American Radio”. He blasts back at such critics saying, “The way we made that album was about as far from America as you can get,” but there’s no denying that it provided the song that finally got them the airplay they needed to crack the USA.
-------------------------------------------------
Jim Reid (Jesus And Mary Chain) : I like loads of Clash records but, this is my favourite … it shoulda been a huge hit all over the world but the world isn't fair.
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by Johnny Black (feature first appeared in Blender magazine)
Thrown together at the last minute in the dying hours of sessions for their classic 1979 album London Calling, Train In Vain was uncredited on the album cover and never even released as a British single. It was the Clash song that very nearly never was, but it was also the one that introduced them to the US Top 30.
A perennial critics’ favourite, London Calling was chosen by Rolling Stone as “the album of the 80s”, and the story of how it was recorded is vital to an understanding of Train In Vain.
Like many of their earliest fans, The Clash felt that their previous album, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, produced by AOR rock guru Sandy Pearlman, had gone too far towards making them sound like Stateside stadium rockers. In search of a more credible alternative, Joe Strummer tracked down legendary British producer Guy Stevens. Not only was the band well-aware of Stevens’ reputation as a drunken, pill-filled studio hellraiser – they were counting on it. Crazed moments, such as flooding the interior of a piano with beer to make it sound better, indulging in fisticuffs with engineer Bill price, and passing out on top of the mixing desk, were precisely the kind of things that inspired The Clash to go hell for leather in pursuit of new and exciting musics.
As Mick Jones puts it, “Sure, Guy had a few drinks during the course of the session but he wasn't like that all the time. He was the catalyst for what was going on. He was only greasing the wheels, so to speak... or lubricating.”
Work on London Calling had started during August 1979, in what Strummer called “a grimy room” in London’s Pimlico district. Then, after a month-long US tour with soul veterans Sam And Dave, country-rocker Joe Ely and psychobilly combo The Cramps, they returned full of ideas and inspirations, to complete the album in the more salubrious Wessex Studios in Highbury, North London.
The Clash were now pumping out new songs so fast that London Calling evolved into a double album and, even after the sleeve was in production, new songs were still emerging.
Train In Vain, written in one night and recorded the next day, was initially considered for use as a give-away track on flexi-disc with UK rock paper the NME. It was only when that plan fell through that the song became an album contender. “It was only an afterthought,” pointed out Mick Jones, “just something we knocked out at the last minute. It’s funny how that turned out to be such a big song. It took something like a half-hour to write and a half-hour to record.”
Wessex Studios manager and house engineer Bill Price confirms that it was “the last song that we finished after the artwork went to the printers. If you look on a couple of the Web sites, it describes it as a hidden track, but it wasn’t intended to be hidden. The sleeve was already printed before we tacked it on the end of the master tape.”
There are times when it seems as if every little boy who ever dreamed of growing up to be a train driver became a songwriter instead, because in the wide landscape of popular music, from blues to country to disco and beyond, songs about trains are almost as numerous as songs about cars. The Chattanooga Choo Choo, the Midnight Special, the Mystery Train, The Love Train … the list seems endless.
For The Clash, however, things are never quite what they seem. For a start, no train is mentioned anywhere in the song. According to Mick Jones, who wrote most of it, the title came about only because, "The track was like a train rhythm, and it was, once again, that feeling of being lost. So there it was."
Another curious aspect of Train In Vain, given The Clash’s political stance and socially-aware ethos, is that it’s a love song, with an almost C’n’W lyric, echoing Tammy Wynette’s classic weepie, Stand By Your Man. Jones has admitted that they were reluctant, for obvious reasons, to call it Stand By Me, so they plumped for Train In Vain because of the song’s resemblance to the old Robert Johnson blues number, Love In Vain.
So if The Clash were hardline UK punks who despised America as much as their song I’m So Bored With The USA seemed to suggest, why did Train In Vain sound so much like classic American garage rock shot through with hints of Motown and a Nashville lyric? It’s simple. Joe Strummer has admitted that, despite all their posturing, much of their inspiration came from the far side of the Atlantic. “I was drenched in blues and English RAndB as a teenager. Then I went to Black American RAndB with my (pre-Clash) group the 101ers. Mick had heard a lot of that stuff too, and he also had this extra dimension of the glam/trash New York Dolls/Stooges scene.”
In his review of London Calling,Tom Carson of Rolling Stone reckoned that Train in Vain "arrives like an orphan in the wake of Revolution Rock. It's not even listed on the label, and it sounds faint, almost overheard. Longing, tenderness and regret mingle in Jones' voice as he tries to get across to his girl that losing her meant losing everything, yet he's going to manage somehow. Though his sorrow is complete, his pride is that he can sing about it. A wistful, simple number about love and loss and perseverance, Train in Vain seems like an odd ending to the anthemic tumult of London Calling.”
It was certainly untypical enough to be deemed unsuitable as a UK single, but it entered the US chart on 26 April, 1980. Although reaching no higher than No23, it paved the way for the Top Ten success of Rock The Casbah, and has since become a perennial favourite, covered by artists as diverse as EMF, Dwight Yoakam, Manic Street Preachers, Annie Lennox and Third Eye Blind. And next time you hear Stupid Girl by Garbage, play Train In Vain immediately after and it’s not hard to spot where producer Butch Vig located those distinctive loops.
Predictably, despite the song’s success, Joe Strummer has subsequently taken offence at those who claimed that London Calling “was deliberately designed to appeal to American Radio”. He blasts back at such critics saying, “The way we made that album was about as far from America as you can get,” but there’s no denying that it provided the song that finally got them the airplay they needed to crack the USA.
-------------------------------------------------
Jim Reid (Jesus And Mary Chain) : I like loads of Clash records but, this is my favourite … it shoulda been a huge hit all over the world but the world isn't fair.
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