The Clash - Three Card Trick
The Clash - Three Card Trick


The Clash - Three Card Trick Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Cut The Crap
Released: 1985

Three Card Trick Lyrics


Patriots of the wasteland torching two hundred years
Dragging my spirit back into the dungeon again
Bring back crucification cry the moral death's head legion
Using steel nails manufactured by the slaves in Asia

You won't fall for that law and order is a baton in the rib
You won't fall for that just like your mummy and your daddy did

Blood inside a fountain pen wrote you out of life again
Who knows any better than to kick and scratch under English weather
From a chain gang to the mill.
The mill that sits on top of the hill
The fog drowned towns arr gonna have to fade
The wrong side of the a scissor blade

You won't fall for that law and order is a baton in the rib
You won't fall for that just like your mummy and your daddy did
I'll eat my hat I'm gonna be sick
They own the pack while we play the Three Card Trick

Don't you remember the place
Where we hid the ace?
Yeah not thick but slick
Now we all gotta play the three card trick

Writer/s: BERNARD RHODES, JOE STRUMMER
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Three Card Trick
  • "Three Card Trick" was, along with "This Is England" generally cited as one of the better songs on the Cut the Crap debacle, mainly because both songs actually sound like The Clash, using a Reggae rhythm and revisiting classic Clash themes of oppression, breakdown of society ("Patriots of the wasteland torching two hundred years, dragging my spirit back into the dungeon again") and protest ("You won't fall for that law and order is a baton in the rib, you won't fall for that just like your mummy and your daddy did"). In this case, singer Joe Strummer's lyrics relate to two core actions occurring at the time: many of the steel mills closing due to foreign imports ("Using steel nails manufactured by the slaves in Asia") and the Miners Strikes of 1984.
  • This is the only post-Mick Jones Clash song to remain in their live set right until their final festival performances in summer 1985, having been introduced on the Out of Control tour in early 1984.