Jaguar, a unit of Ford Motor Company, has a new ad campaign for their cars featuring the song London Calling by The Clash. This immediately seemed totally wrong.
I was never a huge punk rock fan but I heard my share of Clash tunes and you only had to read their album covers to understand their politics (Sandinista anyone?). I really doubt they intended London Calling to be a tool the capitalists could use to sell more high end automobiles. The song is about the collapse of Western civilization.
Example lyric:
The ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in
Engines stop running and the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear error, but I have no fear
London is drowning-and I live by the river
At the end of the day, though the Jaguar ads bug me, the recent avalanche of Pontiac ads featuring Walking on the Sun by Smash Mouth was much worse. It seemed like it was on every five minutes. And the crowning moment was when I saw it on TV just before midnight on September 3rd and had to listen to the pitchman say "Hurry - sale ends September 3rd".
Sorry Charlie. Too late.
Back to The Clash. A quick Google search revealed plenty of other people who thought the mix of The Clash and Jaguar was, well, read their words:
Leanleft.com: "...the fact that Jaguar is using the Clash's "London Calling" in their TV commercials is just, well, wrong."
A poster on the Commercials I Hate board: "But NOW... NOW oh my GOD, it's almost too terrible to think about... The Clash's "London Calling" being used in a... JAGUAR ad!!!!!!! It was like an aural lobotomy..."
I think you get the picture. There were a few people who said they were cool with it, but they are totally outweighed by those who decry it as a crime against nature. But assuming it was the band members who took the money (and extensive Googling did not come up with any evidence on who owns the song), why shouldn't they profit from their work? Perhaps the band thought that if Jaguar was dumb enough to give them millions for a song that condemns Western culture then the joke would be on Jaguar. I doubt they worried too much about the band's reputation considering the band hasn't existed since the mid 1980s.
Instead the opinion seems to be that the band had no right to do this because "selling out" hurt the fans. The extreme viewpoint is that the song should not belong to the band at all, but to the public:
"legitimate or not, there was a popular culture in the 1960s and 70s (punk) that, while commercial, represented ideals of freedom for a lot of people. music is very powerful, perhaps the most powerful form of human expression (other than sex I suppose). we do need symbols to fight back. to reclaim public space.Continued on the next page Page 1 — Page 2
Article comments
1 - Kenan Hebert
"I can look forward to having Rock the Casbah serve as the official theme song for the campaign to squish Saddam."
I'm sure someone, somewhere is wayyyyy ahead of you on that one.
As for the ads, and the political significance of the music, well... does it still have any? I personally don't love this album for the politics. When "The Guns of Brixton" starts up, I'm not thinking about the plight of the working class in a neighborhood in London, I'm thinking about that incredible bassline. With a bassline like that, the song could be a desperate plea for more chocolate pie, and it would still rock.
Maybe the Clash does own the song, and did sell it to Jaguar, but simply aren't worried about their legacy. If I were them, I wouldn't be.
2 - Kevin Marks
John Densmore of The Doors wrote a very good article on the subject. (he mentions Jaguars too)
3 - Bill Sherman
While I know that we as listeners are not the keepers of a song, I can understand fans' reaction when a cherished tune like "London Calling" gets swept into adland. With the possible exception of a song like "Lust for Life" (where its placement in a cruise line ad was so off-the-mark, it might've been broadcast in Bizarro World), most ad placement puts an overlay on a song that for a time, at least, changes our listening experience. (My suspicion, though, is this doesn't last: I can hear the Stones' "Start Me Up," for example, without once flashing on Microsoft.) So while a group like the Clash does have the right to piss on its own work, I'm still claiming the right to not be happy about it.
4 - henry clay
I was just given this long diatribe on the Sandinistas and Ortega and the CIA and the Contras and it just went on and on and on...and how...I guess since the founding of the Republic, the United States military has never entered a foreign conflict justifiably.....except WWII...which we blew by dropping the atomic bomb...
No music for money for carmakers....enough of the phony clashmania...
In case the Jag doesn't impress, then maybe the Clash?
Noone ever criticises the advertising dudes that think of this shit...they outta be shot and hindquartered....
I'm on Phil Hendries side. later henry clay
5 - Pablito
Hey my friend, The Clash is still the only band that matters. Tha fact that Columbia-Sony has sold the license to Jaguar doesn´t change them.
Stay Free
6 - painters london
this is thrue
7 - STM
Lol. That's classic. How the wheel turns, and why not? Or maybe they should've used White Riot instead.
But in all seriousness, The Clash were a product of Thatcher's divided Britain ... and times have changed. Democracy clashed on the streets, and ultimately democracy won. Nothing that was relevant then carries much weight today in a reincarnated Britain that rejected much of the radical post-WWII experiment in socialism and social justice that started the movement to lift the working class out of the gutter and the middle-class out of the middle of the road and set Britain on the highway to meritocracy.
Now New Labour has turned Britain into a nation frozen by foreign policy entanglements, resurgent and all-powerful capitalism, political correctness and a belief in human rights so strong among lawmakers it even has the independent judiciary acting as activists - as Britain's constitution takes note of every decision and judgment made at law.
It's a lot different to way back then, when working-class Britons of the Left who didn't want to embrace the change turned on working-class Britons aligned with the new right-wing establishment, and vice-versa.
London Calling's still a great song, but these days that's all it is.
And I bet even Mick Jones had expensive cars once he started making a big quid from his music. Hard to see him tootling round forever in a beaten-up Vauxhall Cresta.
Perhaps the better choice all round would have been Mick's effort with Aztec Camera Good Morning Britain ;>)
The story goes that Aztec Camera rang him and said: "When you hear this, you'll either want to sue us, or sing on it".
Jones obviously chose to sing, decent man that he is. That story may be apocryphal, but he probably would have to have given the nod to London Calling going to air in the Jag ad. So good luck to Jaguar, and to Mick Jones and members of The Clash.
Great idea ... and more of it, pretty please.
8 - STM
BTW, Jaguar is now owned by Tata, an Indian motor-vehicle manufacturing company.
The cars are still made and designed in Britain, but they're only nominally British.
Maybe a Bollywood tune would be more appropriate for the next ad.
9 - Dr Dreadful
Maybe a Bollywood tune would be more appropriate for the next ad.
And maybe they should hire this guy as the new Face of Jaguar...
10 - Ruvy
Jaguar is now owned by Tata, an Indian motor-vehicle manufacturing company.
Maybe a Bollywood tune would be more appropriate for the next ad.
And maybe they should hire this guy as the new Face of Jaguar...
Yup! there goes the Empire - FLUSH!!
11 - STM
Guys ... I loved the comment made by an Indian bloke on this site recently.
Why didn't the sun set on the British empire?
Because you can't trust an Englishman in the dark :)
Lol.
12 - Christopher Rose
I don't think that the times have changed all that much. The sentiments expressed in London's Calling are still pretty much true and relevant today.
Furthermore, that collaboration between Mick Jones and Aztec Camera ought to get an award for one of the most embarrassing performances in rock. It was devastating to see two great artists reduced to such dreck.
13 - Painters
Good idea! this is thrue
14 - Surfer
Chris Rose: "Furthermore, that collaboration between Mick Jones and Aztec Camera ought to get an award for one of the most embarrassing performances in rock".
Sorry, missed that first time around, Yeah, it was bad ... but I've seen worse. Not much worse though.
But Rosey, you can't be serious about the similarities between that era and the post-Thatcherite new Britain under New Labour, and the sentiments expressed in that song/album???
I mean, we'd all like to think nearly everyone under 25 is still a radical cast in the mold of The Clash, but sadly, even over your neck of the woods, there's a certain blandness and comfortablity about life today (like there is all over the western world) that is killing free thought and the kind of expression that bred punk.
Life today has a different kind of inevitibility about it, especially in the anglo countries and in Europe.
My observation of the UK today is that it's become one giant middle-class (it's spread like Qatermass-5 - remember that old pom sci-fi classic?), which isn't really fertile ground for revolution. The main reason is that there's hardly any genuine blue-collar industry in the UK any more, and certainly not on the scale it was prior to Maggie tearing it down.
15 - The Scribe of Rotten Hill
Rock the Casbah was played as the first track on Radio Desert Storm during the first Gulf War. I believe the boys were truly upset about that.
Use of their songs in ads? I can live with it.
Vaguely related, but for some reason a couple of days ago I took it upon myself to review the B side of Hitsville UK, Mikey Dread's "Radio One". Wonderful stuff.