The Clash Songs - The Crooked Beat Lyrics

The Clash - The Crooked Beat

The Clash - The Crooked Beat Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Sandinista!
Released: 1980

The Crooked Beat Lyrics

Start the car lets make a midnight run
Across the river to South London
To dance to the latest hi-fi sound
Of bass, guitar and drum
Seeking out a rhythm that can take the pressure off
Stepping in and out of that crooked crooked beat

Take a piece of cloth, a coin for thirst
For the sweat will start to run
With a cymbal splash, a word of truth
And a rocking bass and drum
Seeking out a rhythm that can take the pressure on
Stepping in and out of that crooked crooked beat

So one by one they come on down
From the tower blocks of my home town
Stepping with the rhythm of the rockers beat
Drowning out the pressure of The Crooked Beat
Seeking out a rhythm that can take the tension on
Stepping in and out of that crooked crooked beat

It has crooked past this crooked street
Where cars patrol this crooked beat
Badges flash and sirens wail
They'll be taking one and all to jail

Prance! Prance! You want a law to dance?

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

The Crooked Beat

"The Crooked Beat" is often viewed as bassist Paul Simonon's followup to his popular song on the London Calling album, "The Guns Of Brixton." The songs share a South London location in the lyrics and also Simonon's monotone vocals. Both songs were written fully by him.

This was one of the very last songs recorded for the Sandinista! album, at Wessex in September 1980. It is rumoured to have been written and recorded quickly in order to both fill space on the huge triple-album, and give Paul Simonon some royalties. Indeed, the track is actually two versions of the same song - the original is then followed back to back by a dub remix by Mikey Dread, the Clash's producer at the time, featuring authentic Trenchtown patois vocals from Dread and an echo-saturated production.

The lyrics are inspired by the popular nursery rhyme "There Was A Crooked Man."

The song was one of the many more obscure tracks on Sandinista! never to be played live by The Clash, probably because "The Guns of Brixton" was used live as Simonon's signature song (he would swap instruments with singer Joe Strummer, who would play bass while Simonon sang lead vocals).