London Calling - if only for London 2012

If only...

Were he still with us Joe Strummer, born John Graham Mellor, would have been sixty today. He was, as the result of a congenital and undiagnosed heart defect, taken away in December 2002.
Were that not so I can hardly imagine that he would not have been on the stage at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympiad. 'The Clash' was not the first punk band, by any means, but they gave the whole genre wings...
They focussed their anger on sensible issues. In fact the members were from really quite comfortable backgrounds; and while they were genuinely angry they were also rather annoyingly but curiously, simultaneously, disarmingly literate.
This 1979 album was, I think, not just the defining moment of British Punk...

Had it not been for this album, and the inspiration it provided, the whole punk movement might have faded into obscurity - a bright spark, lit for the most part by angry young men in a fit of pique, that lasted for so little time.
There would thus have been no Green Day, just to make a single example.
The bad behaviour in this image is all down to Paul Simonon, who lives on, and so does the bass guitar in question (in bits as destroyed in this rampage, something that he later much regretted doing), in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, OH.
The inspiration for the album cover is down to that of Elvis Presley's first.