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I had been working on the idea on the piano for quite a while. That’s what I was trying to say in ‘Rock the Casbah.’
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There’s no tenderness or humanity in fanaticism. I couldn’t get this out of my mind, so I was trying to say fanaticism is nowhere. And if you had a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label whiskey, you got 40 lashes. Somebody’d told me earlier that if you had a disco album in Tehran, you got 20 lashes. I started to wail about the muezzin and the sheiks and the oil in the desert. Strummer was further disheartened in 1991 when the song (along with “Killing An Arab” by The Cure) was being misinterpreted as anti-Arab anthems during Operation Desert Storm in Iraq. Founding member Mick Jones was told to leave the band in September 1983 and the band fell apart in October 1985. In their early years, when they were struggling, their music was sincere, but he felt they were becoming a joke. Previous Clash drummer Terry Chimes appeared in the song’s video in his place.Īfter “Rock The Casbah” became a hit, Joe Strummer considered leaving The Clash because he couldn’t justify singing rebellious songs when the band was rich and successful. He then wrote the rest of its lyrics about people being “lashed for owning a disco album in Iran” – something he was once told.īy the time “Rock The Casbah” was released, its original songwriter Headon had been kicked out of the band.
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He reportedly shouted in the studio, “Does everything have to be as long as raga?!” – to which Strummer responded by writing the opening lines to this song. But frontman Joe Strummer tossed Headon’s ‘very pornographic’ lyrics aside and began writing his own after the band’s manager complained that each song written thus far on Combat Rock was too long. The song’s music and original lyrics were written by drummer Topper Headon. It also performed well in the UK, peaking at #30. “Rock The Casbah” was the second single from Combat Rock and the band’s most successful in the US, reaching #8 in January 1983.