The Clash's Sandinista! - A Defense

Just about everything anyone ever said about The Clash's Sandinista! is true. In a way, it is a very bad album, especially coming after the focused brilliance of London Calling. But it is also fucking awesome.

Part of the album's charm is that you can totally see the logic that went into it. It's 1980. The Clash have just released London Calling. They're sitting around in New York, stoned out of their minds, wondering what the hell they should do next. But it's got to be BIG, people - The Clash are thinking BIG! Now what could possibly be bigger than a double album? How about a TRIPLE album! Yeah! Let's do it!

The only problem with that scenario, of course, was the slight possibility that maybe The Clash wouldn't have enough worthy, releasable songs for a triple album. "But fuck it!,” I can hear them saying with impatience. “Life is not for the faint of heart!" Perhaps not, but maybe life isn't for a bunch of coked-up reggae fans with half-baked song ideas either.

It's like they misunderstood what makes music effective. It's like they took a look around them, saw more and more injustice, and concluded, "The only proper way to battle more injustice...is with more songs!" I'm not sure it works that way. It's like sex. More sex doesn't necessarily equal better sex. Sandinista! is like trying to have sex three times in two hours. At first it's really exciting, and then it slows down a bit, and then it kind of gets exciting again, but by the end it's like a long, hard slough - and yet, in its own tiring way, still slightly enjoyable.

Sandinista! is like The White Album to London Calling's Sgt. Pepper, except it's not nearly as good as that comparison suggests. The White Album is one of the greatest albums of all time, and many even prefer it to Sgt. Pepper. Do I prefer Sandinista! to London Calling? Not really. But after listening to London Calling for the three hundredth time, I have to say Sandinista! is quite enjoyable on its own terms.

But let's go back to the White Album comparison. There were many people in 1968 who thought that The White Album was self-indulgent and should have been pared down to a single album, but this opinion has become a minority opinion over the years. The sprawling, unfocused nature of The White Album has become a major source of its charm. Of course, the Beatles in half-assed mode were (I think) still better than any other band ever. The Clash in half-assed mode were...uh...not as good. But in a similar way, you can see how people were doing the White Album a great disservice by sitting around and wishing it were as focused and well-produced as Sgt. Pepper was. There was some imaginary "Sgt. Pepper Part II" that existed in people's minds, but that was just not where the Beatles were at, man. Of course, a common argument from the White Album naysayers used to be, "Oh gimme a break, you know the songs are bad, you only like it because it's the Beatles." My father actually used to say this. I would try to explain to him that while perhaps unintentional, the messy, chaotic quality of The White Album influenced decades of alternative rock (to which he would reply, "Yeah, and all that music sucked!"). But enough of me ranting about my father. My point is that it takes all kinds of albums to make a world. Sometimes you want the focused ones, sometimes you want the unfocused ones. And the intentions of the artist don't necessarily matter in this game. The White Album was The White Album because the Beatles were falling apart, not because they sat around and thought, "Let's influence alternative rock." But who gives a shit?

The Clash were clearly hoping that a little of the White Album magic would rub off on them, but I think they misunderstood a few aspects of The White Album's success. The White Album is the work of three of the major singer-songwriters of rock. The Beatles' approach may have been haphazard, but for the most part, each song was fleshed out to its full potential. The Clash, on the other hand, consisted of one really great songwriting team. Joe Strummer couldn't really write music. Mick Jones could write decent lyrics but couldn't inject quite as much personality and charm into them as Joe could. Paul Simonom couldn't really write songs. Topper apparently laid down the basic structure of a lot of the songs in improvizational bursts, but this approach was probably about as fruitful as it sounds. In short, the individual members of The Clash weren't quite as gifted as the individual members of The Beatles. In other words, yeah, The White Album was a mess, but The Beatles could get away with it, because, hey, they were The Beatles. The Clash, well, maybe not so much. But they gave it a shot anyway, damn it, and that's why we love them.

Sandinista! is a hard album to take, though, because although the album is bursting with great ideas, it's so obvious that many of the songs could have been executed better. “The Street Parade” isn't a bad song in itself, but their performance sounds so lazy and half-assed. Couldn't they do a re-take? Likewise, “The Sound of the Sinners” wasn't necessarily a bad idea for a song, but Joe's vocal's are ridiculously buried in the mix, the choir wasn't recorded with the proper separation, and so the song just sort of rolls along limply. One could go on and on. I guess The Clash couldn't be bothered to polish up the record just a little bit more. I mean come on guys. You get the feeling they just stopped recording at one point and decided to release everything exactly as it was. “See what the fuckers think of all that!” Which leads me to another observation: you could accuse The Clash of many things, but one thing you couldn't accuse them of was meticulousness. Hell, that was prog rock's territory, and fuck prog rock, man. In this sense, maybe Sandinista! is the ultimate extension of punk's do-it-yourself aesthetic, except 20 years before the mp3: “We'll release every song we've recorded in the last five months, and you can make the god damn album yourself!”

So if you're the kind of listener who expects the artist to do all the work for you, then Sandinista! will not be your cup of tea. But if you're the kind of listener who would rather have a more participatory relationship with your favorite band, then, oh my friend, how The Clash are worthy of your fandom.