The Ukrainian Group Added A New Meaning To The Clash Hit With The Song "Kyiv Calling"

Members of the Ukrainian band Beton Bohdan Grynko, Andriy Zholob and Oleg Gula pose for a photograph as they prepare to head to a studio in Lviv to record their single “Kyiv Calling”, in this undated promotional image taken on March 19, 2022. Concrete Panel/Handout via REUTERS

LONDON, March 19 – Ukrainian punk band Beton has remastered Clash’s iconic “London Calling” into “Kyiv Calling” to highlight events in Ukraine and raise funds for the resistance movement.

The three-piece group, consisting of an architect, an orthopedist and a businessman, recorded their reworked version of the 1979 hit Clash in a studio in Lvov, western Ukraine.

They hope it will help raise funds for the non-military operations of the Free Ukraine Resistance Movement (FURM), a FURM publicist said, adding that the Clash have agreed to donate all royalties raised to the movement’s communications department.

“Kyiv calls out to the whole world… Come out of neutrality, boys and girls,” read the new lyrics. The song is accompanied by a clip of the band with clips of combat damage in Ukraine.

“Many Ukrainian musicians are now on the battlefields or defending the territory. This time they changed their guitars to weapons,” said Andrei Zholob, lead singer of the Beton group.

“We hope that this song will show the Ukrainian spirit and our defiance of Russian aggression.”

The Clash were one of the biggest bands to emerge on the British punk scene in the late 1970s and had several hits including “Should I Stay or Should I Go” and “Rock the Casbah”.

“The Clash were one of our inspirations when we fell in love with punk rock and music in general, there is no snobbery or pretentiousness in the music, they had something to say and they spoke their mind against human anger,” Zholob said.

“London Calling epitomizes it all and we’re thrilled to be able to take this cult classic and turn it into our very own anthem with new meaning and life.”

Moscow calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation” to weaken the military potential of its neighbor and eradicate people it calls dangerous nationalists.

Reporting by Andy Bruce; editing by Jason Neely

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