“Rock the Casbah” by The Clash, arranged with tab for fingerstyle guitar by Daryl Shawn.
“Rock the Casbah” is a song by the English punk rock band The Clash, released in 1982. The song was released as the third single from their fifth album, Combat Rock. It reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US (their second and last top 40 and only top 10 single in the United States) and, along with the track “Mustapha Dance”, it also reached number eight on the dance chart. It is the band’s highest charting single worldwide.
“Rock the Casbah” was musically written by the band’s drummer Topper Headon, based on a piano part that he had been toying with. Finding himself in the studio without his three bandmates, Headon progressively taped the drum, piano and bass parts; recording the bulk of the song’s musical instrumentation himself.
This origin makes “Rock the Casbah” different from the majority of Clash songs, which tended to originate with music written by the Strummer-Jones songwriting partnership.
Upon entering the studio to hear Headon’s recording, the other Clash members were impressed with his creation, stating that they felt the musical track was essentially complete. From this point, relatively minor overdubs were added, such as guitars and percussion.
However, Joe Strummer was not impressed by the page of suggested lyrics that Headon gave him. According to Clash guitar technician Digby Cleaver, they were “a soppy set of lyrics about how much he missed his girlfriend”. “Strummer just took one look at these words and said, ‘How incredibly interesting!’, screwed the piece of paper into a ball and chucked it backwards over his head.
Strummer had been developing a set of lyrical ideas that he was looking to match with an appropriate tune. Before hearing Headon’s music, Strummer had already come up with the phrases “rock the casbah” and “you’ll have to let that raga drop” as lyrical ideas that he was considering for future songs. After hearing Headon’s music, Strummer went into the studio’s toilets and wrote lyrics to match the song’s melody.
The version of the song on Combat Rock, as well as many other Clash compilations, features an electronic sound effect beginning at the 1:52 minute point of the song. This noise is a monophonic version of the song “Dixie”. The sound effect source was generated by the alarm from a digital wristwatch that Mick Jones owned, and was intentionally added to the recording by Jones.
Lyrics:
Now the king told the boogie men
You have to let that raga drop
The oil down the desert way
Has been shakin’ to the top
The Sheik he drove his Cadillac
He went a’ cruisin’ down the ville
The muezzin was a’ standing
On the radiator grille
[Chorus:]
The Shareef don’t like it
Rock the Casbah
Rock the Casbah
The Shareef don’t like it
Rock the Casbah
Rock the Casbah
By order of the prophet
We ban that boogie sound
Degenerate the faithful
With that crazy Casbah sound
But the Bedouin they brought out
The electric camel drum
The local guitar picker
Got his guitar picking thumb
As soon as the Shareef
Had cleared the square
They began to wail
[Chorus:]
Now over at the temple
Oh! They really pack ’em in
The in crowd say it’s cool
To dig this chanting thing
But as the wind changed direction
The temple band took five
The crowd caught a wiff
Of that crazy Casbah jive
[Chorus:]
The king called up his jet fighters
He said you better earn your pay
Drop your bombs between the minarets
Down the Casbah way
As soon as the Shareef was
Chauffeured outta there
The jet pilots tuned to
The cockpit radio blare
As soon as the Shareef was
Outta their hair
The jet pilots wailed
[Chorus:]
He thinks it’s not kosher
Fundamentally he can’t take it.
You know he really hates it.
Really really hates it!
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