Sandinista!

Sandinista! is the fourth studio album by the punk rock band The Clash. It was released in 1980 as a triple album containing 36 tracks, with 6 songs on each side. Anticipating the “world music” trend of the 1980s, it features reggae, jazz, mock gospel, rockabilly, folk, dub, rhythm and blues, calypso, and rap.

For the first time, the band’s traditional songwriting credits of Strummer/Jones were replaced by a generic credit to “The Clash”,and the band cut the album royalties, in order to release the 3-LP at a low price. The title comes from the Nicaraguan left-wing guerrilla organization, the Sandinistas, and its catalogue number, ‘FSLN1’, refers to the acronym for Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional.

Sandinista! was voted the best album of the year in The Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop critics poll, and it was ranked number 404 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all timeThe album was recorded over most of 1980, in London, Manchester, Jamaica and New York. It was produced by the band (which essentially meant Mick Jones and Joe Strummer), recorded and mixed by Bill Price, and engineered by Jeremy “Jerry” Green (Wessex Sound Studios), J. P. Nicholson (Electric Lady Studios), Lancelot “Maxie” McKenzie (Channel One Studios), and Bill Price (Pluto + Power Station Studios). Dub versions for some of the songs and toasting was done by Mikey Dread, who had first hooked up with the band for their 1980 single “Bankrobber”. With Sandinista! the band reached beyond punk and reggae into dub, rhythm and blues, calypso, gospel and other genres.