London Calling: New York New York by Peter Silverton
Revealed by: Rocket 88 Books (UK), Trouser Press (US)
Launch date: ninth April 2025
Music journalist Pete Silverton’s swansong is an enchanting examine of two – surprisingly contemporaneous – songs and the 2 cities that impressed them.
Among the finest writing comes from making connections. And a number of the most attention-grabbing connections are those that take you abruptly. The premise behind this guide is that (Theme From) New York, New York by Frank Sinatra and London Calling by the Conflict are nearly the identical age – each have been recorded within the late summer time of 1979.
It sounds counterintuitive: Joe Strummer’s response when his previous buddy Silverton advised him of his discovery was “How might that be?” The Conflict file sums up the dystopian zeitgeist of the late Seventies. The Sinatra present tune feels just like the product of one other period.
How that may very well be is defined by the a part of a title that’s in brackets – the Sinatra tune was already retro in 1979 as a result of it got here from a movie (it was initially sung by Liza Minnelli). Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York was set within the Nineteen Forties, the period of Sinatra’s early profession. By the point he recorded the theme tune, his profession was in its late interval. It was to change into his personal, closing theme tune.
Regardless of all this, Silverton finds an affinity between the 2 songs and the 2 cities they got here to exemplify. One of many guide’s refrains is “As one metropolis breathes in, the opposite breathes out.” (The opposite one is “Ah, pop music.”) Each songs have been a product of their – shared – instances. Silverton describes the tip of the ’70s as “wild and whirling instances” and 1979 as “a tipping level within the biography of the fashionable world”.
The world over, geopolitical upheaval. Throughout the West, the Chilly Conflict and the nuclear menace. Throughout the UK, racism, battle and the start of Thatcherism. In London, the specter of apocalyptic flooding. In New York, a metropolis in decline, broke and decaying.
The response, two dramatic hometown anthems that gave legendary standing to each their cities. As Strummer put it: “I’ve at all times thought London is a really poetic metropolis. It actually impressed me.” That’s why, regardless of its sense of foreboding, there’s nonetheless one thing romantic about London Calling.
The genesis of New York, New York was relatively totally different; written to order for Scorsese’s 1977 movie by Kander and Ebb of Cabaret fame. The transient was “an enormous, huge dramatic music” and so they, ultimately, delivered. (The music was additionally, as Silverton factors out, extra musically adventurous than London Calling.)
These tales type the spine of the guide, however there’s far more: songs about London, songs about New York, fan-level musical geekery, gossip about well-known folks, and a number of impressively interweaving histories.
The guide was written throughout the two and a half years between Silverton’s prognosis of a mind tumour and his demise in 2023. It’s a becoming fruits of a profession: musicological, historic, political, journalistic and autobiographical. (And infrequently parochial – Silverton was determinedly a North Londoner and couldn’t resist sharing the wide-ranging cultural connections of his locality.)
He poured into the guide a lifetime of writing and music; his reminiscences of dwelling in London and visiting New York, of the early days of punk, his friendship with Strummer, and touring with the Conflict. Mixing these reminiscences with interviews and historic analysis, the guide is densely detailed, typically stunning and at all times entertaining.
And there are some fantastically deadpan rock journalist asides. My favorite is the outline of Marc Bolan’s music New York Metropolis “asking about ladies who come out of town with a frog of their palms”.
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London Calling New York New York is out there in any respect good bookstores.
Phrases by Penny Kiley. You may learn her Louder than Conflict opinions at her creator profile, and her archive music journalism on Substack.
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