The Westway — The Clash, London

The Westway — the elevated section of the A40 motorway that cuts through west London from Paddington to White City, roaring over the rooftops of Ladbroke Grove, Portobello Road, and Notting Hill — is the most potent piece of architecture in the Clash's mythology. It appears in 'London's Burning' ('all across the town, all across the night / everybody's driving with full headlights / black or white turn it on, face the new religion') and in the band's visual identity, a concrete monument to postwar urban planning that casts a shadow over the working-class and immigrant communities beneath it. For the Clash, the Westway was the sound of the city at night — speed, danger, alienation, and energy compressed into one structure.

The Westway was built between 1966 and 1970, demolishing hundreds of homes in its path and creating a vast concrete underbelly beneath which various communities and subcultures gathered. The space under the Westway at Portobello Road became a market; the area around Ladbroke Grove was heavily West Indian in population, the community that created Notting Hill Carnival and the reggae sound system culture that influenced the Clash so directly. Strummer, Jones, and Simonon lived and moved through this landscape in the mid-1970s, and it shaped their music more than any studio or rehearsal room.

The Westway still stands and still dominates the streetscape of west London. Standing beneath it at Ladbroke Grove — with the motorway thundering overhead, the market stalls of Portobello Road nearby, and the street geography of the Clash's early years unchanged in its basic character — is one of the more visceral music heritage experiences available in London. No formal marker identifies the Westway as a Clash landmark, but its presence is self-evident to anyone who knows the music.