London Calling New York New York - by Peter Silverton (Paperback)

About the Book

The Clash recorded "London Calling" the same summer Sinatra cut "New York, New York." That nearly simultaneous expression of dystopic modernity and optimistic striving sparks this tale of two cities and two songs that exemplified them.

Book Synopsis

How's this for a surprising musical coincidence: Frank Sinatra cut his version of "New York, New York" within weeks of the Clash recording "London Calling" in 1979. That nearly simultaneous expression of optimistic striving and dystopic modernity is the jumping-off point for London Calling New York New York, a tale of two cities and two songs that came to exemplify them.

Peter Silverton, the veteran English author and journalist who died in 2023, did numerous interviews and in-depth research to dig deep into the history and impact of the two songs on their respective cities. Combining musical scholarship, cultural analysis and personal memoir, London Calling New York New York is rich with wit, fascinating detail and scholarly insight.

Although the book is about two popular songs from two different cultures, it also addresses nostalgia, mythmaking, family, crime, war, art, terrorism, politics, film, fidelity and propaganda. From the Great Fire of London to a White Castle in the Bronx, from the Thames to the Hudson, Joe Strummer to George Gershwin, Noel Coward to Jay-Z, Primrose Hill to Yankee Stadium, Maggie Thatcher to Fiorello La Guardia, Silverton marshals connections and coincidences to illuminate the creative process and its enduring cultural impact.

As Silverton writes in his author's note, "This is a story about two songs and the cities they came to represent, those songs' writers, the two cities' many other emblematic songs (and their writers) and the two metropolitan cultures: their differences and their similarities. It's also a personal story: mine. It reaches back to my decades-long light friendship with Joe Strummer, my presence at several significant early performances of 'London Calling' and at Joe's West London cremation in December 2002."

Review Quotes

Hinged around a pair of epochal songs, Pete Silverton's tale of two cities is a masterpiece that you will read right through to the end without putting down. This multi-faceted, compulsively readable work: complex in both structure and erudite (but never pedantic) thought ranges across the entire 20th century and before and beyond. Part autobiography (but without a hint of unseemly narcissistic ego), Silverton's role in the tale is as an enlightened Greek chorus. Often through the experiences and words of others - his wife, his kids, his friends, lesser and greater name archetypes -- he unravels his (our!) culture and himself. I always knew Pete was a great writer. But I didn't know he was this good.

-Chris Salewicz, author of Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer

London Calling New York New York unpacks how Sinatra and the Clash shaped their cities -- and how those cities in turn shaped their iconic songs, recorded at the same time but worlds apart... a factual, fun, and fascinating read.

-Don Letts, filmmaker, DJ, artist, cultural icon

Equal parts music biography, personal memoir, autoethnography, and psychogeography, London Calling New York New York is ultimately unique. It crackles with the energy that the two eponymous cultural capitals demand of their habitants, yet it maintains a tourist-like inquisitiveness for the various side streets, delivering minute urban details and anecdotes that even this London-raised New Yorker was entirely unaware of. A special book.

-Tony Fletcher, author of The Clash: The Music That Matters and All Hopped Up and Ready to Go: Music From the Streets of New York 1927-77

Pete Silverton's passionate voice about music lives ever on in this transatlantic voyage between two seminal ports of rock and roll call and response. Illuminating paired music scenes through their iconic anthems, he reveals similarities and differences with a fan's ear-witness to the process of creation and how geography affects the geology of rock as it begins to roll.

-Lenny Kaye, author, producer, musician