The song inspired by The Clash’s run-in with a SWAT team
The Clash are a band who found themselves frequently at the forefront of anti-establishment behaviour and were, therefore, a known entity to the police. But while you might expect the extent of their dealings with London’s Metropolitan police force to be confined to noise complaints, the odd drug offence and perhaps a riot or two, the band were once raided by a SWAT team.
First thing’s first, there isn’t technically a SWAT team in the UK. London’s version of the gun-carrying tactical response team is called the Specialist Firearms Command, Trojan or SC&O19, and far less well known than it’s US counterpart, owing in large part to the comparatively puny numbers of gun offences this side of the Atlantic ocean.
If there was a moment to typify this, it came when members of The Clash were raided by the force for their use of an air rifle. The meeting of two opposing forces would inspire the title of the 1978 song ‘Guns on the Roof’, which would appear on the band’s Give ‘Em Enough Rope album of the same year. The experience certainly shook up the group members and was described by their road manager Johnny Green as “fucking heavy.”
The story started as a bit of lighthearted fun. In March of 1978, a group of friends associated with The Clash drummer Topper Headn showed up at the quartet’s rehearsal space in a bid to sell him an air rifle. The group took Headon, bassists Paul Simonon and the group’s roadie, Robin Crocker, up to the roof of the building to take a few shots of the toy gun.
Against the wishes of any animal lover, the group soon turned their crosshairs away from cans and bottles and onto a nearby grouping of pigeons, assuming the flock to be one of the thousands that constantly fly in and around London’s streets. This would be the group’s first mistake — the pigeons were, in fact, very expensive racing pigeons and carried a heavy penalty.
A rail worker had also seen the group on the roof and had assumed them to be a clan of gun-toting anarchists taking shots at the nearby Euston station — one of the capital’s major terminals. The police were called, and the Specialist Firearms Command swooped in to deal with the disturbance; Green remembered that they were: “really quite serious. These guys who broke into rehearsals with guns really meant business. There was a helicopter circling overhead, policemen shouting down… it was fucking heavy.”
While Green found the ordeal a little worrying, Paul Simonon was less concerned: “They’d called out the whole police force. There’s a helicopter above us, eight police vans and the Sweeney (Flying Squad) with guns. All we had as an air rifle.” The group saw the funny side of things and named the track they were working on at the time ‘Guns on the Roof’ as a reminder of the day, despite it having far more to do with international terrorism than pigeon-killing.
The charges of attempted manslaughter were naturally dropped after a lack of evidence, however the group were fined £30 each and ordered to pay the owner fo the deceased pigeons £700. The event’s lasting legacy, however, would be the song it was cheekily named after.
Listen to ‘Guns on the Roof’ below.
