"Train in Vain" (The Clash)

I remember being about 4 years old (so, around mid-1982) and there being a rebroadcast of a late-1979 episode of 20/20 (the long-running ABC "news" magazine show that should have taken a dirt nap years ago) about punk rock.  (Oh, the things you can find on YouTube if you look hard enough.)
I recall sitting on our living room floor, listening to the painfully out of touch reporter talking about the mayhem at punk shows and how punk rock "noise" was going to bring an end to civilization as we knew it, all while stock footage of guys and gals with spiked hair, piercings, and black lipstick flashed across the screen.  
I was intrigued.
"How did that guy make his hair stand up like that?"
"Why do they wear earrings in their noses?"
"What was that song those loud guys were singing?" I asked my mom and dad.
My parents were, quite frankly, scared shitless by the report (as I'm sure half of America was).  After all, the neighbor girl had just returned from studying abroad in England, and she had come back with pink hair!  Obviously, the menace was right in our back yard, just as Hugh Downs and Baba Wawa had said!
Looking back, the most laughable part of the program was how desperately it tried to vilify The Clash as some sort of ringleaders, all but telling parents to burn any Clash records they found in their kids' bedrooms before their message of anarchy, wild dancing, and rock & roll infiltrated the fertile young brains of America's yoots.
My guess is that ABC rebroadcast the show to coincide with The Clash hitting the Top 10 with the single "Rock The Casbah."  (More on that sometime soon.)  
But the very first song that got The Clash on the US charts was "Train in Vain"--a song that wasn't even intended for release on the double-album London Calling (1979), but got tacked on at the very last minute.
According to The Clash's former guitarist Mick Jones in a 2002 Blender magazine article, the track--essentially a break-up song--was written and recorded in a 24-hour period for a New Musical Express (NME) magazine promotional single in the UK that never came to be.  Rather than just leave the song lying around for a subsequent release, the band tacked it on to the end of the master tapes for London Calling.  However, by that point, the album cover art had already gone to press.  As a result, the song title was left off the cover; the intent was not to have a so-called "hidden track" on the album.
As far as the title goes, "Train in Vain" never actually appears in the lyrics.  Instead, it had more to do with the feel of the music and the lyrical topic of a relationship falling apart.  As Jones explained, “The track was like a train rhythm, and there was, once again, that feeling of being lost.”
When it was released as a single in 1980, the song helped ease the stigma (fostered by programs like 20/20) that they were a bunch of no-talent louts who knew one chord only.  But anyone with a half a brain and a working set of ears could hear that they had a real sense of roots and musicality.  Just because they had criticized the US for its crass commercialism didn't mean they didn't have an affection for American music and/or the chops to play original music that was heartily indebted to it.