Rock the Casbah - Remastered

Clash drummer Topper Headon wrote the music and the original lyrics. In an interview, singer Joe Strummer claimed that "the real genius of 'Rock The Casbah' is Topper. He banged down the drum track. Then ran over to the piano and then the bass." The sad irony about the song is that Headon wrote it musically, but had been fired from the group because of drug problems by the time the song became an enormous hit in the US. Indeed, in the music video for the song, its original Clash drummer Terry Chimes at the kit (he had returned to replace Headon temporarily).

Joe Strummer decided to take Headon's lyrics in a different direction. According to former Clash co-manager Kosmo Vinyl, Headon's original words were a filthy ode to his girlfriend. Vinyl recalled to Rolling Stone: "He had really pornographic lyrics for it if I remember correctly. Very, very pornographic lyrics." The first line of Strummer's re-written lyrics had a specific genesis: manager Bernie Rhodes was frustrated in the early Combat Rock sessions with every track ending up being really long (stuff like "Straight To Hell" and "Sean Flynn") and in one session shouted, "Does everything have to be as long as raga?!" Strummer told Rolling Stone shortly before he died in 2002: "I got back to the hotel that night and wrote on a typewriter, 'The King told the boogie men You gotta get that raga drop.' I looked at it and for some reason I started to think about what someone had told me earlier, that you get lashed for owning a disco album in Iran." This served as inspiration for the rest of the lyrics, about the people defying the Arab ruler (Shareef)'s ban on disco music and "Rocking the Casbah."

This was The Clash's biggest United States hit, and along with "Train In Vain," one of only two that reached the Top 40. They had several Top 40 hits in England.