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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).

The Clash - The Equaliser

The Clash - The Equaliser Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Sandinista!
Released: 1980

The Equaliser Lyrics

No! Gang boss no!
We don't want the whip!

As you get weaker - it will get harder
So don't be like him
Keep your bones of effort and strength
Don't sell them to him

We don't want no gang boss
We want to equalize
To my fathers fathers fathers father
Work was no joy
When his son had grown of age
You got to work now boy
Never ceasing for many years
Want to follow that boy?

Till half and half is equalized
Put down the tools
See the car see the house
See the fabulous jewels
See the world you have built it with shoulders of iron
See the world but it is not yours say the stealers of Zion

Geneva
Wall Street
Who makes them so fat?
Well well me an' you better think about that
In overdrive whooo

Till humanize is equalize
Put down the tools
Every face on every side
Throw down the tools
Stay at home
Don't check with Rome paint strike on the door
It's one to one the fight is on so don't go to war

We don't need no gang boss
We have to equalize

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

The Equaliser

"The Equaliser" is a song often ignored by The Clash, and its writers appear to be slightly ashamed of it - singer Joe Strummer confessed in a 1999 interview with Q magazine that this and other examples (such as the ludicrous Rock Against the Rich tour in 1988, beset by protests from the Socialist Worker newspaper and claims of hypocrisy as to what constituted "the rich" in the first place) that sometimes his social idealist beliefs would blind him and he would become obsessed with the unobtainable.

The Clash - If Music Could Talk

The Clash - If Music Could Talk Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Sandinista!
Released: 1980

If Music Could Talk Lyrics

Make sure!
Taking cover in the bunker tonight
Waiting for Bo Diddley's headlights
I feel alright
Gotta Fender Stratosphere
I can do anything tonight
It's in neon lights an' global rights
Frank? He's on the phone
There ain't no German girl outside
But who cares when its warm inside?
With music
Special mystery of music tragically
Exchanging slaves for majesties
Modern waves of tragedy
Packing a two piece colt pair of shoots
A shiny grey Mexican suit
The blue eyed traffic can sashay by
'Cause tonight the sailor boys have hit Shanghai
The kick-out traffic goes creaking by
I smash my glass and shout shanghai
My drummer friend comes shooting by
He said Errol Flynn will never die
Oh no! Who am I to question why?
And are you lonesome tonight
And do ya need a country cowboy
Who's just thin and tight in those
Br' bus depot jeans
With a squirt resistant stud stud
Hey stoner

Get over there in the spliff bunker one
Because London Bridge was sold somehow
But it was too old anyhow
When Uncle Sam has broken down
We'll make him down in old Japan
Say ye'

Well there ain't no better blend
Than Joe Ely and his Texas Men
Where the wind blows
I ain't seen none like that scenery
You can see from a bus if you pay the price

Wave my arms around
Flag one of those taxi's maybe
I saw a girl somewhere somehow
Forever sticks in my mind somehow
I've just got three lines
And a pair of two's
Like a lucky roll of dice that you
You cast

If Music Could Talk!
Which means
Whatever your mind can bring
Like the apple fell off the tree
Pah! Fell right on his head
Yeah many years ago

There was a man who said
I am a shaman
A voodoo shaman
Got in trouble so he's going out
Mixing up and Haiti! Oh!
And the crickets
Buddy Holly said it was
Br' br' yee'

If music could talk you know

I feel kinda lonely
Standing out on the floor
Of Electric Ladyland

'cause this is a good question Samson
Are you partly Arabic?

Chi man! Whatcho all about

I don't want to I can't hope to
Say it all in one go
Occasionally once or twice
A day I feel alive enough to say
Let's hear what the drummer man's
Got to say about
He said is it Errol Flynn's birthday or not?
Sept twelfth until October
If they pack two piece
Colt pair of shoots
We got the shiny grey Mexican suits
I'm just wasting a great big
Corporation and the entire fund
The girders of Wall Street
And the temples of money
And the high priests
Of the expense account
And I'm wasting the whole thing
I come down in Yamaha-ha
They make the best pianos-time to step-up

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

If Music Could Talk

The backing track to "If Music Could Talk" is in fact another one of the songs on the Sandinista! album: "Shepherd's Delight," which was recorded at Pluto Studios two months previously with producer Mikey Dread. The band decided to revisit the track, and singer Joe Strummer added a stream-of-consciousness set of lyrics about New York city, including a plethora of references to Joe Ely , Errol Flynn, singer Bo Diddley (whom The Clash had toured with in 1979), Buddy Holly, Jim Morrison and Elvis Presley's song "Are You Lonesome Tonight?"

There are also personal references to The Clash themselves, including the Electric Lady studios they had worked, lighting engineer Warren "Stoner" Steadman, and his own "spliffbunker," which was a nest-type contraption Strummer built in whichever studio the band were recording in out of flight cases where he would sit and write songs in peace whilst recording took place elsewhere in the studio.

Production tricks abound on this song, as they do throughout the album. In this case, Joe Strummer double-tracked his vocals, putting one track in the left channel and another in the right to create an all-encompassing sound. Gary Barnacle, session musician and longtime friend of the band, added jazzy saxophone interludes when the song was recorded in Wessex studios in August 1980.

As it's possible to tell from the backing track complexity, this never featured in The Clash's live set, probably because the band just wouldn't be able to do it justice in concert.

The Clash - Something About England

The Clash - Something About England Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Sandinista!
Released: 1980

Something About England Lyrics

They say immigrants steal the hubcaps
Of the respected gentlemen
They say it would be wine an' roses
If England were for Englishmen again

Well I saw a dirty overcoat
At the foot of the pillar of the road
Propped inside was an old man
Whom time would not erode
When the night was snapped by sirens
Those blue lights circled fast
The dance hall called for an' ambulance
The bars all closed up fast

My silence gazing at the ceiling
While roaming the single room
I thought the old man could help me
If he could explain the gloom
You really think it's all new
You really think about it too
The old man scoffed as he spoke to me
I'll tell you a thing or two

I missed the fourteen-eighteen war
But not the sorrow afterwards
With my father dead and my mother ran off
My brothers took the pay of hoods
The twenties turned the north was dead
The hunger strike came marching south
At the garden party not a word was said
The ladies lifted cake to their mouths

The next war began and my ship sailed
With battle orders writ in bed
In five long years of bullets and shells
We left ten million dead
The few returned to old Piccadilly
We limped around Lester Square
The world was busy rebuilding itself
The architects could not care

But how could we know when I was young
All the changes that were to come?
All the photos in the wallets on the battlefield
And now the terror of the scientific sun
There was masters an' servants an' servants an' dogs
They taught you how to touch your cap
But through strikes an' famine an' war an' peace
England never closed this gap

So leave me now the moon is up
But remember all the tales I tell
The memories that you have dredged up
Are on letters forwarded from hell

The streets were by now deserted
The gangs had trudged off home
The lights clicked off in the bedsits
An' old England was all alone

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

Something About England

"Something About England" is one of many crazy musical variations on the Sandinista! album, with The Clash experimenting with Music Hall, one of British music's oldest genres, stretching back to Victorian and Edwardian times. The campy vaudeville elements sound an odd contrast to Punk music, but Sex Pistols singer Johnny Rotten was very open about how much Music Hall "comedy of the absurd" elements he incorporated into his stage persona.

The lyrics are structured as a conversation between the narrator, guitarist Mick Jones, and a wistful old tramp, singer Joe Strummer. The first verse is a putdown of lazy racism - higher social classes blaming immigration for a society's ills ("They say immigrants steal the hubcaps of the respected gentlemen, they say it would be wine an' roses if England were for Englishmen again").

Joe Strummer's lyrics in the character of a wistful tramp are some of the most political and social commentary in The Clash's back catalogue, bemoaning how two world wars and the industrial revolution still couldn't break down the class system which causes such disharmony in England ("But through strikes an' famine an' war an' peace England never closed this gap"). Though musically the song is nothing like old Punk-Rock Clash, the lyrics stick right to the core values of Punk of anti-establishment and protest against social ills.

Musically "Something About England" is very complex, with Jones playing piano for the whole song, drummer Topper Headon playing a delicate 'quotation-mark' percussion beat and a horn section comprising of session musician Gary Barnacle, Gary's father Bill (a noted jazz musician) and military bandsman David Yates). Because of this complexity (and the worry that the first verse may be misinterpreted by certain sections of the audience), the song was never performed live.

The Clash - The Street Parade

The Clash - The Street Parade Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Sandinista!
Released: 1980

The Street Parade Lyrics

When I was waiting for your phone call
The one that never came
Like a man about to burst
I was dying of thirst

Though I will never fade
Or get lost in this daze
Though I will disappear
Into The Street Parade

It's not too hard to cry
In these crying times
I'll take a broken heart
And take it home in parts
But I will never fade

I was in this place
By the first church of the city
I saw tears on the face
The face of a visionary

Though I will disappear
To join the street parade
Disappear and fade
Into the street parade

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

The Street Parade

"The Street Parade" was, despite only being a largely unappreciated track, one that was highly rated by The Clash. It featured in most of their 1981 concerts, and was the uncredited final bonus track on the Clash on Broadway compilation - rumored to be uncredited as the band were determined to get the song on the compilation even though the record label were happy with the tracks already picked from Sandinista!.

The lyrics could be viewed as a hint towards Joe Strummer's struggles with depression later in the 1980s, after The Clash had broken up. Even though at the time of the song's writing, it seems he was struggling with identity and being detached from the real life he was trying to represent in songs with The Clash by the trappings of fame ("It's not too hard to cry, In these crying times"). The idea of losing himself in a crowd is clearly an appealing one, wanting to escape into a situation where no-one recognizes him ("Though I will disappear, To join the street parade, Disappear and fade, Into the street parade").

The recording of this song is much like most songs on the Sandinista! album, with many extra instruments adding to the sound - in this case, a floating horn section and snatches of Caribbean marimbas.