The shift from aggressive guitars (surely copied from the Who’s I Can’t Explain) to something more mournful suggest musical adventure to come. Year zero meant many punks hurriedly buried their pasts in pub rock bands with long hair, but this 1978 single reworks a song from Strummer’s old pub rock band, the 101’ers, around trademark Clash self-mythology. Photograph: Sheila Rock/Rex/Shutterstock 31. (from left) Joe Strummer, Topper Headon, Paul Simonon and Mick Jones. In 1990, Simonon received an unexpected windfall when Norman Cook (later Fatboy Slim) sampled the groove for Beats International’s hit Dub Be Good to Me. The Guns of Brixton (1979)īrixton boy Simonon wanted some songwriting cash and so penned this memorable song about police harassment and discontent in his London neighbourhood, two years before the district exploded into rioting. From the double album London Calling, the Clash’s creative zenith. This bracing cover of a 1959 Vince Taylor and the Playboys track refers to the early Brit rockers’ glamorous dream car (when most of them probably had to make do with a humble Ford Anglia).
Titled after a Lt Col Kilgore quip in Apocalypse Now, there’s an element of the doo-wop era to this sweet song about, well, cultural imperialism. Charlie Don’t Surf (1980)īy the epic three-disc fourth album, Sandinista!, the Clash arguably had too many ideas for their own good, but within the 36-song sprawl are undoubted treasures. On release, the convicted madam returned Strummer’s affections in the song Letter to Joe. Original Clash drummer Terry Chimes – uncharitably credited as Tory Crimes on The Clash – propels the debut’s storming opener, a eulogy to a 60s pop celebrity and libertine who had been jailed for vice offences in 1973. The blistering critique of US imperialism and exported culture (“Yankee detectives are always on the TV”) didn’t stop the Clash’s love of American iconography, cars and clothes. This hugely anthemic track on debut album The Clash began life as I’m So Bored With You, a song about Jones’s girlfriend, before Strummer’s ad-libbed “… SA” took it in a new direction.
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The tank was getting emptied, but Strummer’s black humour brims through lines such as “You have the right to free speech / As long as you’re not dumb enough to actually try it.” 36. Know Your Rights (1982)įrom Combat Rock, the final album by the classic quartet of Strummer, Jones, bassist Paul Simonon and drummer Topper Headon. Levene showers melodic gold dust all over this otherwise shouty punk stomper, but is better known for his work with John Lydon in Public Image Ltd.
What’s My Name (1977)Ī Clash curio in that it’s the only one of the group’s songs to bear a writing credit for Keith Levene, the band’s original guitarist. The sentiment hasn’t aged well, but the song exemplifies the amphetamine-fuelled punk the band would leave behind. Guitarist Mick Jones now dislikes the first Clash single, its lyrics written by Strummer after the band were caught up in the 1976 Notting Hill riots and he concluded white people needed “a riot of our own”. “No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones / In 1977,” sang Joe Strummer, hardly about to let his love of such pop greats get in the way of punk’s declaration of year zero. A historical artefact, not for the proto-punk music, but because the lyrics epitomise the new wave’s perceived threat to the old guard.
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