May 14 – Joe & Mick’s ‘Combat’-ive Personalities Clashed Well

Selling out or getting the message across better? Either way, The Clash hit it big with their fifth album, Combat Rock, released this day in 1982. The band which had become the critic’s favorite got their first taste of real North American success with an album that was partly recorded in, and largely written about America.

Not that their take on it was all positive mind you. “Rock the Casbah” reflected the hypocrisy and xenophobia on both sides of the ocean, with the American culture infiltrating the Middle East despite mutual mistrust. “Straight to Hell”, regarded now by fans as one of their best songs, is about kids American troops fathered in Vietnam then left behind. (“Sean Flynn” was also a Vietnam-themed song, Flynn being a journalist – son of Errol Flynn, no less – who disappeared on assignment covering the war.)

If nothing else, the Clash were hyper-productive at the time. Following in the footsteps of London Calling, a double album, and Sandanista, a triple, it meant the band had churned out six LPs worth of material in less than three years. And, to top that off, some members of the band wanted Combat Rock to be a double as well.

Manager Bernie Rhodes, rehired by Strummer for the album, and CBS talked him out of that and thus some instrumental solos, long song introductions and a few entire songs got jettisoned to cut the record down to a single disc. While compact and tight, the only real unifying theme on it was a sense of anger at the way the world was heading. Musically, it was all over the road; years later allmusic would note that it seemed like Mick Jones wanted them to become the next The Who (whom they actually opened for to promote this album) while Joe Strummer wanted them to become a “black” band, focused on reggae, rap and funk. Whatever the motives, it worked. Rolling Stone gave it a 4-star rating, saying “rock’s last angry band” were “snarling enraged, yet still musically ambitious” with a collection of “12 tight tracks.” Of course, the band was somewhat angry with each other.

Drummer Topper Headon wrote the music for what would be the band’s biggest commercial hit – “Rock the Casbah” – and then was kicked out of the band during the recording by Joe Strummer because of his drug abuse. Mick Jones was furious at the release as he wanted it to be a double album and had mixed it before Strummer decided to cull it to a single album and brought in Glyn Jones (a producer known for work with the likes of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils and Steve Miller ) to smooth out the sound a little. However, if you’re an angry punk band, strife may help. Combat Rock was the band’s biggest-seller, going into the top 10 and selling 2X platinum in the U.S. CMJ report that it was the fifth most-played album on American college radio in 1982, and it gave them their biggest mainstream hit singles: the aforementioned “Rock the Casbah”, a surprisingly socio-politically smart tune disguised as a novelty, and “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” a Mick Jones song (which may or may not have been written about his girlfriend Ellen Foley, or his relationship with the band itself) which would later on go on to be their only #1 hit in their native Britain. And while only a marginal chart hit, the in-your-face “Know Your Rights” (with lines like you “have the right not to be killed/murder is a crime/unless it’s done by a policeman or aristocrat”) soon found its way into the canon of the best-loved Clash songs.

Allmusic later would grade Combat Rock at 3.5-stars (less than the first three they put out, the same as Sandanista but far better than their finale Cut the Crap) they found it a bit too uneven, some songs sounding too “arena rock” but rejected notions it was The Clash selling out. “If this is the Clash’s ‘sellout effort’, it’s a very strange way to sell out.” Which is probably the mark of a great band – rather than hitting it big by selling out, they hit it big by being patient enough for fans to come around to their own sound.