The bands that influenced The Clash
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Credit: Alamy
How rap infiltrated The Clash song ‘The Magnificent Seven’
The Clash were always moving with the times and integrating new subcultures into their sound. They were open to allowing new experiences to mould them and took the rap scene of New York City to their heart before experimenting with hip-hop on ‘The Magnificent Seven’.
When The Clash toured new countries, they immersed themselves in the local scenes, and the United States was an eye-opening experience for the group. Although their origin was in the realm of punk, The Clash didn’t want to stay in that lane forever, and Joe Strummer was hesitant to make the same album twice.
“When we visited places,” Mick Jones once recalled. “We were affected by that… And for me, New York City was really happening at that moment.” The guitarist took to the streets, playing tunes from a boom box nestling on his shoulder. Joe looked at the graffiti artists and I was taking in things like breakdancing and rap.”
The Clash spent twelve months in New York after moving there in 1981, and they couldn’t have timed it better. It was a refreshing environment, and the thriving hip-hop scene got the group’s creative juices flowing.
Director and musician Don Letts, who later became Mick Jones’ bandmate in Big Audio Dynamite, chronicled The Clash’s time in the Big Apple in the film, The Clash: Westway to the World. Speaking about that special time to Goldmine in 2013, he recalled: “The time the Clash were there, people got to remember, the summer of ’81 to the summer of ’82, that the whole hip-hop thing’s exploding, as well, breaking out of the Bronx and Harlem, and for a brief moment in time there was this kind of punky, hip-hop party in the same way we had a kind of punky, reggae party in London.”
He continued: “And that was kind of a cool thing to see — how we were turning each other on through understanding our differences. That was beautiful thing to see.”
Similarly to what they’d previously done with reggae, The Clash were not willing to simply be spectators of the hip-hop scene, and they turned their hand to it triumphantly on ‘The Magnificent Seven’. It was built around a bass loop created by Norman Watt-Roy, and Strummer then recorded his vocal take on the spot.
New York was an extraordinary place at that time as different cultures meshed and exchanged ideas. Six months prior, Blondie had released their experimental rap track ‘Rapture’, which like The Clash’s creation, was inspired by the city’s bloc parties.
Although ‘The Magnificent Seven’ wasn’t a chart success in America, it was a hit with hip-hop fans in New York and was a staple fixture on the WBLS playlist. For Strummer, receiving affirmation from rap aficionados was more important than going platinum, and it meant everything to him for the city to substantially embrace The Clash.
