The Clash Songs - Drug-Stabbing Time Lyrics

The Clash - Drug-Stabbing Time

The Clash - Drug-Stabbing Time Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Give 'Em Enough Rope
Released: 1978

Drug-Stabbing Time Lyrics

Drug stabbing time
Well I got working on the Ford line
A paying off the big fine
Drug stabbin' time

Drug stabbin' time
Is from nine to nine
Nobody wants a user
Nobody needs a loser
So kick him out that door
An' don't answer it no more

Drug stabbin' time
It's a Greenwich Mean Time
Your friends all hate each other you think
You've got another
But who's at the door?
Don't answer it no more

Drug stabbin' time
In a bedroom crime
There's a tape recording on a telephone line
An' it's ringin' from the floor
So don't answer it no more

Now I was lying in my room
It was raining drugs all afternoon
I hear this car pull up outside
Comes to a stop like, skreeee

Someone's in a hurry
'N someone better worry
'Cos these four guys all had on their feet
A pair of black shoes shining and neat
I thinks

Black shoes on
No that's bad news
Here they come charging up the stairs alright
Sonny just tell us where

Drug stabbin' time
Don't ask me mate
Working on the ford line
Paying off the big fine
Drug stabbin' time

Writer/s: JOE STRUMMER, MICK JONES, PAUL SIMONON, TOPPER HEADON
Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Drug-Stabbing Time

"Drug-Stabbing Time" was first demoed at the Clash's rehearsal space, Rehearsal Rehearsals, in January 1978 and so was one of the first songs written for second album Give 'Em Enough Rope.

The lyrics written by singer Joe Strummer are fiercely anti-drugs, and describe in great detail the paranoia they can induce - not just from usage, but from the fear of getting caught, as the subject of the song does in an elaborate police sting ("I hear this car pull up outside, Comes to a stop like, skreeee", "Blackshoes on, No that's bad news, Here they come charging up the stairs alright, Sonny just tell us where").

It's quite possible that Strummer had seen early rushes of the film Rude Boy, a film about a fictional roadie for The Clash and featuring lots of live Clash footage from 1977-79, where a subplot involves a drug bust. Or it's possible he was talking from personal experience - what makes the anti-drugs message ("Nobody wants a user, nobody needs a loser") hugely ironic is that members of the group, mainly guitarist Mick Jones, were heavily involved in drug usage at the time. Critic Marcus Gray noted that this fact serves "to rob it of much comedy value."

The song was debuted live on the On Parole tour in June 1978, and remained in the live set into 1979, which is better than most of the Give 'Em Enough Rope non-single tracks. The song was dropped after the Pearl Harbour tour, although it was revived for one last performance in Monterey in September 1979.