The Call Up

Album: Sandinista! (1980)
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Songfacts®:

  • Ivan Julian from the Voidoids played guitar on this track.
  • The lyrics are mostly an anti-war and anti-establishment screed, but feature a more touching sentiment underneath the rhetoric and sloganeering. "There is a rose that I want to live for" suggests that the singer is more concerned with a loved one than fighting and dying for a cause. It starts and closes with a US Marines' marching chant.
  • The Clash first played this song live in Berlin in May 1981 and it was played on and off until the end of 1982.
  • The video, directed by Don Letts, was filmed at the warehouse of singer Chris Farlowe, a collector of military items and paraphernalia, of which the band are dressed. Drummer Topper Headon is dressed as a World War II fighter pilot.

Comments: 2

  • Bruce from Australia I always thought “the rose” was a reference to The English Rose
  • Zabadak from London, EnglandThis reached #40 in the UK
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