In the annals of punk rock history, few bands have left as indelible a mark as The Clash. Formed in 1976, the band emerged from the vibrant and politically charged music scene of 1970s London. They shared the rebellious spirit of their peers but went much further than all of them when it came to blending genres. They pushed the boundaries of punk rock by incorporating elements of reggae, ska, and funk into their music.
On their fourth release, 1980’s triple album Sandinista!, The Clash freely experimented with styles, including the aforementioned funk and reggae in addition to jazz, gospel, rockabilly, folk, dub, calypso, rhythm and blues, disco, rap, and at times even leaning towards avantgarde. They pushed the envelope for what a punk song could be as far as possible.
The Clash had always changed things up musically between albums. Sandinista! had been so wildly eclectic that people were honestly not sure what to expect as the band was getting ready to release their fifth studio album Combat Rock in 1982. The band knew that pushing beyond where they’d gone on the previous album would be a step too far. As so often was the case with The Clash, the path onward would be found by taking a step in the total opposite direction.
The decision to embrace more straightforward rock songs and a more polished and radio-friendly sound was not unanimous, but with Joe Strummer (guitar/vocals) and Paul Simonon (bass) leading the charge, and Topper Headon (drums) alienating himself from band decisions due to his escalating drug habit, Mick Jones (guitar) was outvoted. The band would do it on their own terms, though. Combat Rock is hardly filled with your average pop music. Album opener Know Your Rights showed that the band was as political and in-your-face as they ever were. It is full of defiant punk spirit, even though the overall sound may have been less anarchic. The album was far from full-on commercial, but the material was more accessible than it had been before. Some songs more than others.
The change in the band’s overall approach had started before the album had even been written, going all the way to their management set-up. Strummer and Simonon were bored with the professionalism of the Clash’s then-managers Blackhill Enterprises, and felt that the band had started drifting creatively. In order to restore some of the chaotic and anarchic energy of the Clash’s early days, they convinced their bandmates to reinstate the band’s original manager Bernie Rhodes in February 1981. This decision was not welcomed by guitarist Mick Jones, who again was outvoted. You might be sensing a theme at this point. Jones was often at odds with his bandmates during this time, becoming progressively estranged from them.
Still, the Strummer-Jones songwriting partnership persisted, with most songs on the album originating from the two of them, even though the majority of the tracks would be credited as group compositions due to everybody’s input. The recording itself was described as going smoothly, although the producing process was tiring and full of infighting between Strummer and Jones.
One song they all rallied behind with little to no disagreements at all was Rock the Casbah. Notably, this is the only song on the album that did not originate from Strummer and/or Jones, the music being fully composed by the band’s drummer Topper Headon. It was based on a piano part he had been toying with.
The album was recorded at Electric Lady Studios in New York in November and December 1981, where the band had recorded Sandinista! In 1980. The band (except Jones, who lived with his then-girlfriend Ellen Foley) stayed at the Iroquois Hotel on West 44th Street, a building famed for being the home of actor James Dean for two years during the early 1950s.
Topper Headon recalled to Mojo magazine November 2008: “I loved New York, the 24-hour city. But we’d lost that unity and had stopped hanging out together as friends, and would all turn up at the studio at different times, writing stuff as and when it came up. The sessions were supposed to start at two in the afternoon, though by the time everyone turned up it was seven. I got there early, and what else was I going to do except put down an idea?”
At one such point during this time, Headon found himself in the studio without his three bandmates. He brought out his piano idea and decided to work on it. Headon would in turn tape the drum, piano and bass parts, recording the bulk of the song’s musical instrumentation himself.
When the other Clash members arrived later on, they heard the recording and were all impressed with Headon’s creation. This was definitely a song they could get behind. They even felt that the instrumental track was essentially complete. They ended up keeping it, only adding relatively minor overdubs such as guitars and percussion.
Strummer was always more than happy to give Headon his due. In an interview, he said “the real genius of Rock the Casbah is Topper. He banged down the drum track. Then ran over to the piano and then the bass.”
However, Strummer was far less impressed with the page of suggested lyrics that Headon gave him. “They were a soppy set of lyrics about how much he missed his girlfriend,” guitar technician Digby Cleaver said in Pat Gilbert’s Story of the Clash book in 2004. “Strummer just took one look at these words and said, ‘How incredibly interesting!’, screwed the piece of paper into a ball and chucked it backwards over his head.”
Soppiness may not have been the only lyrical issue. According to former Clash co-manager Kosmo Vinyl, Headon’s original words were a filthy ode to his girlfriend. Vinyl recalled to Rolling Stone: “He had really pornographic lyrics for it if I remember correctly. Very, very pornographic lyrics.” As usual the truth is probably somewhere in between the differing accounts.
In any case, after hearing Headon’s music, Strummer went into the studio’s bathroom and wrote a final set of lyrics to match the song’s melody. Before hearing Headon’s music, Strummer had already been developing a set of lyrical ideas that he was looking to match with an appropriate tune, and found that the existing phrases “rock the casbah” and “you’ll have to let that raga drop” worked like a charm with this piece of music.
Now, the king told the boogie men, “You have to let that raga drop”
The oil down the desert way, has been shaken to the top
The sheik he drove his Cadillac, he went a-cruising down the ville
The muezzin was a-standing on the radiator grille, ow!The shareef he don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah, rock the casbah
The shareef he don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah, rock the casbah
The phrase “rock the casbah” had originated during a jam session with Strummer’s violinist friend Tymon Dogg. Dogg began playing Eastern scales with his violin, which led Strummer to start shouting “rock the casbah!” Not hearing Strummer properly, Dogg thought that Strummer had been shouting at him to “stop, you cadger!”
Further inspiration came as Strummer observed the band’s manager Bernie Rhodes moaning about The Clash’s increasing tendency to perform lengthy songs. Rhodes asked the band facetiously “does everything have to be as long as this rāga?” (referring to the Indian musical style known for its length and complexity). Strummer later returned to his room at the Iroquois Hotel in New York City and wrote down the line “The King told the boogie-men ‘you have to let that rāga drop.'”
Strummer told Rolling Stone shortly before he died in 2002: “I got back to the hotel that night and wrote on a typewriter, ‘The King told the boogie men You gotta get that raga drop.’ I looked at it and for some reason I started to think about what someone had told me earlier, that you get lashed for owning a disco album in Iran.” This served as inspiration for the rest of the lyrics, about the people defying the Arab ruler (Shareef)’s ban on disco music and “rocking the casbah.”
“Casbah” (also spelled “Qasbah” or “Kasbah”) refers to walled areas in many North African towns, especially the one in Algiers. The lyrics use many different terms in humorous context from Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish and Sanskrit language and culture – along with Casbah, there are also Sharifs, Bedouins, Sheikh, kosher, raga and minerets in the song.
The song gives a fabulist account of a ban on Western rock music by a Middle Eastern king. The lyrics describe the king’s efforts to enforce and justify the ban, and the populace’s protests against it by holding rock concerts in temples and squares (“rocking the casbah”). This culminates in the king ordering his military’s fighter jets to bomb the protestors; however, after taking off, the pilots ignore his orders and instead play rock music on their cockpit radios, joining the protest and implying the loss of the king’s power.
By order of the prophet, we ban that boogie sound
Degenerate the faithful, with that crazy casbah sound
But the Bedouin they brought out, the electric camel drum
The local guitar picker got his guitar picking thumb
As soon as the shareef cleared the square they began to wail
The events depicted in the song are similar to an actual ban on Western music, including rock music, enforced in Iran since the Iranian Revolution. Though classical music and public concerts were briefly permitted in the 1980s and 1990s, the ban was reinstated in 2005, and has remained in force ever since. Western music is still distributed in Iran through black markets, and Iranian rock music artists are forced to record in secret, under threat of arrest.
The version of the song on Combat Rock features an electronic sound effect beginning at the 1:52-minute point of the song. This noise is a monophonic version of the song Dixie. The sound effect source was generated by the alarm from a digital wristwatch that Mick Jones owned, and he intentionally added to the recording.
It is worth noting that the single version of the song is different than the album version. It features a remix by Mick Jones and Bob Clearmountain with a murkier sound, more pronounced guitar and piano, more prominent sound effects, and with the digital wristwatch sound in the third verse turned down.
The disagreements between Jones and the others on the creative direction also extended to discussions about how the album should be mixed and put together. The band had been very productive in the studio, recording 18 tracks. Jones wanted to use most of it, if not all, favouring a double album with somewhat lengthier, dancier mixes. The other band members argued in favour of a single album with shorter, straightforward rock mixes, and that’s exactly what it became.
Combat Rock was released as the Clash’s fifth studio album on 14 May 1982 through CBS Records. Rock the Casbah was released as the second single from the album a month later, on 11 June 1982. This would become a popular song in the US in particular, where it reached #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US. It was the band’s only top 10 single in that country, also reaching #8 on the dance chart.
Internationally, the song mostly hit the Top 10 or Top 20, interestingly doing less well in the UK where the song “only” reached #30. That public was very familiar with the band and may have had different expectations of them, being less keen on “commercial Clash.” The song actually fared a lot better in the band’s homeland when it was reissued as a single in 1991, going all the way up to #15.
The album did a lot better, charting at #2 in the UK and spending 23 weeks in the charts. In the US it peaked at #7, spending an impressive 61 weeks on the chart. The album’s incredible chart longevity was no doubt a result of the Rock the Casbah video becoming a staple on the newly launched MTV.
The music video for Rock the Casbah was filmed in Austin, Texas by director Don Letts on 8 and 9 June 1982. It intermixes footage of the Clash miming a performance of the song with a storyline depicting two characters travelling together throughout Texas. An Arab hitchhiker (played by actor Titos Menchaca) is picked up by an orthodox Jewish limo driver (Dennis Razze). The characters befriend each other on the road, and end up skanking (ska dancing) their way through the streets and experience crazy incidents on their way to a Clash concert at Austin’s City Coliseum.
Don Letts later stated that a lot of the imagery in the video was all about breaking taboos. At one point, you see the Arab (a Muslim character) drink a beer. They are also seen eating hamburgers in front of a Burger King restaurant, grappling money out of the hands of capitalists, and skanking past the band who chills by a pool. Throughout the video, an armadillo appears, seemingly showing the way onwards towards the gig.
The Clash is shown miming a performance of the song in front of a pumpjack in a Texas oil field. For most of the video clip, guitarist Mick Jones’s had his face obscured by a veiled camouflage hat as he was in a bad mood during the film shoot. His face remains hidden until the final 30 seconds of the clip, when Strummer pulls the hat off at the “he thinks it’s not kosher!” line.
Sadly for him, Topper Headon did not get a chance to appear in the video of his own song. The band felt they had no choice but to let him go after the album recordings – before their planned tour and before the video shoot – as his drug problems were spiralling out of control. He was replaced by Terry Chimes – the band’s original drummer in 1976-77 – who appears in the video, albeit only in the very background.
Mick Jones no doubt also saw the writing on the wall as he clearly no longer saw eye to eye with the others creatively. He lasted until the end of the Combat Rock tour, after which he was also dismissed. The ongoing disagreements had taken their toll and were clearly not going away.
Rock the Casbah was a live staple from its introduction in 1982 through to the band’s final breakup in 1985. Live performances of this song often took a different direction, since by this time the band had given up on taking a keyboard player on tour. This meant the piano part couldn’t be played live, and the song took on a heavier, more all-out rock feel in a live setting.
Joe Strummer was so proud of the song that it was one of the few Clash songs that he performed live with his post-Clash solo band, The Mescaleros (who did indeed have a keyboard player!).
Combat Rock was the final album released by the classic line-up of The Clash, and without question their most successful.
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