Were The Clash’s best songs all covers?
No, absolutely not. Nope. Incorrect. Wrong answer. Do not pass Go, do not collect £200, you are The Weakest Link, goodbye. That’s the short, unimaginative range of answers to the question posed by the headline. After all, ‘Guns of Brixton’, ‘Complete Control’, ‘London Calling’, ‘Janie Jones’ and ‘(White Man In) Hammersmith Palais’ are all original songs, and that only scratches the surface of the amazing songs The Clash were responsible for.
However, that’s only a knee-jerk response. Once you look a little deeper, you see something quite remarkable, which is that the covers The Clash were responsible for actually give their original songs a run for their money. This might sound absurd on the surface, as they are a punk rock band so life-affirmingly great, their reputation goes straight from that to being considered one of the greatest rock bands to have lived. However, let’s go through their repertoire.
Their most famous cover is an effort so associated with Joe Strummer and co that many fairweather fans don’t realise it’s a cover. However, no matter how iconic ‘I Fought the Law‘ is, and no matter how many times it shows up in films and TV shows, that doesn’t change the fact that the song was already 20 years old when the band recorded it in 1979. Having been written by The Crickets’ Sonny Curtis, and popularised by The Bobby Fuller Four.
Taking a 1950s rock ‘n’ roll standard and punking it up worked so well with ‘I Fought the Law’ that the band decided to use it a second time on their 1979 masterpiece London Calling. This time, they decided to revamp Vince Taylor’s ‘Brand New Cadillac’. The band called the song “one of the first British rock ‘n’ roll records”, and gave it a noirish coat of punk rock paint that basically beat The Cramps to the punch the year before their debut album.
Why were The Clash so good at covers?
However, The Clash were much more than a one-trick pony when it came to their covers. In fact, if you look at what ‘The Last Gang In Town’ were doing with their covers even closer, you’ll see another pattern forming. The rest of their most famous covers like ‘Police and Thieves’, ‘Armagideon Time’ and ‘Wrong ‘Em Boyo’ don’t come from a rock ‘n’ roll tradition at all. In fact, they’re all reggae and ska classics from Junior Mirvin, Willie Williams and The Rulers, respectively.
‘Police and Thieves’, in particular, was a key part of the band’s early live show and a fixture of their debut album. More than that, it’s a sign of two things that set The Clash up as a once-in-a-generation act. Firstly, it’s a sign of the band’s skill as musicians, something that went very much against the grain of the London punk scene they cut their teeth in. They were no two-bit sneer jockeys with three half-learned chords to their name, but a real-life rock band who could blow unsuspecting minds when playing live.
The second sign is of the band’s ambition. While most punk bands carried themselves with the vaguest idea of anarchy and rebellion, The Clash actually stood for something, and pinned their colours to the mast with their music. By covering reggae and ska songs and taking the likes of The Beat and Mikey Dread on tour, The Clash took a stand against racism at a time when, in terms of vote share, the National Front were the fourth largest political party in Britain.
So no, Clash’s covers aren’t their best songs. However, they show just how special a band they were, as much, if not more, for their original songs. All hail The Clash. For the sake of the country, let’s see their like again soon.
