‘Bankrobber’: The Clash song based on the life of Mick Jones’ father
The Clash quickly gained their notoriety as the only band that mattered through a searing sense of self-worth. The group were never interested in creating work that didn’t represent their values or their life. It would spawn some of their greatest hits, with ‘White Riot’ and ‘Guns of Brixton’ standing out as pivotal moments for the group artistically directly drawn from their own lives.
It was also what pushed the band out of the ferocity of punk’s three-chord drive and into the realms of reggae and dub. The move away from the stabbing riffs of their self-titled debut album into the bouncing rhythm of their magnum opus London Calling, two years later would be fuelled by the group’s connection to London’s thriving multicultralism.
Spending time with West Indian culture, Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon would take the music they were being introduced into the band’s framework and provide a textural tone that would enthral audiences as an accurate representation of the city they were in. Another such song born from this heady concoction was the 1980 release ‘Bankrobber’.
The track was released in 1980 as part of a long line of singles to be released that year. But the band’s major record label, CBS, hated the tune, calling it “all of David Bowie’s records played backwards.” However, the ska tune found favour with audiences, and they propelled it to become one of The Clash’s highest-charting releases. With Mikey Dread, a Jamaican producer and singer, behind the mixing desk, the track bobs along with an intoxicating rhythm.
Bubbling with reggae influences and a dub undercurrent, the track is one of the band’s fiercest moments on record and acts as the perfect distillation of what made them great. A song about London’s subculture, probed by the intrigue of politics and pulled together in the crucible of punk rock.
Perhaps the most interesting note on the track, however, is the fact that the story of a boy whose father is a bank robber isn’t just plucked from the kitchen sink dramas that surrounded the band but from the life of Mick Jones. Critics instantly pointed out that Strummer, who wrote the lyrics and whose father was a diplomat, was being inauthentic without realising Jones’ connection to the track.
“‘Bankrobber is an interesting one. I think my dad was a bank robber’s assistant,” Jones told Daniel Rachel, author of The Art of Noise: Conversations with Great Songwriters. “There was talk of him driving getaway cars. He was a cab driver, but he drove for other people. Joe wrote the words.”
While it may seem like a strong admission, Jones did provide a pinch of salt: “The songs are like folk songs. They’ve become like traditional songs. A lot of it was based on truth. We made it so everybody could relate to it. It wasn’t exactly the truth. For instance, in ‘Lost in the Supermarket’ I didn’t have a hedge in the suburb. I lived in a council flat. A lot of the time it got mythologised.”
Myth or not, the story of Jones’ father as a bank robber has been immortalised within the iconography of The Clash forevermore.
