‘Rock the Casbah’ is a song by the English punk rock band The Clash, released in 1982 as the second single from their fifth album, Combat Rock. It reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US (their only top 10 single in that country) and, along with the track ‘Mustapha Dance’, it also reached number eight on the dance chart.
The music for ‘Rock the Casbah’ was composed 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. Joe 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 bathroom and wrote lyrics to match the song's melody.
Joe Strummer had been toying with the phrase "rock the casbah" prior to hearing Topper Headon's musical track that would form the basis of the song. This phrase had originated during a jam session with Strummer's violinist friend Tymon Dogg. Dogg began playing Eastern scales with his violin and Strummer started shouting "rock the casbah!" Not hearing Strummer properly, Dogg thought that Strummer had been shouting at him to "stop, you cadger!" The song gives a fabulist account of a ban on Western rock music by a Middle Eastern king. The lyrics describe the king's efforts to enforce and justify the ban, and the populace's protests against it by holding rock concerts in temples and squares ("rocking the casbah"). This culminates in the king ordering his military's fighter jets to bomb the protestors; however, after taking off, the pilots ignore his orders and instead play rock music on their cockpit radios, joining the protest and implying the loss of the king's power. The events depicted in the song are similar to an actual ban on Western music, including rock music, enforced in Iran since the Iranian Revolution.
The music video for ‘Rock the Casbah’ was filmed in Austin, Texas by director Don Letts on 8 and 9 June 1982. It intermixes footage of the Clash (with Terry Chimes on the drums) miming a performance of the song, with a storyline depicting two characters travelling together throughout Texas. The video depicts a Muslim hitchhiker (played by actor Titos Menchaca) and a Hasidic Jewish limo driver (Dennis Razze) befriending each other on the road and skanking together through the streets to a Clash concert at Austin's City Coliseum. Throughout the video, an armadillo appears at points. At one point they are seen eating hamburgers in front of a Burger King restaurant. At another point, the Muslim character is seen drinking a beer; Letts stated that all that imagery was "about breaking taboos."
The song was chosen by Armed Forces Radio to be the first song broadcast on the service covering the area during Operation Desert Storm. In one of the campfire scenes late in the 2007 documentary Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, a friend states that Strummer wept when he heard that the phrase "Rock the Casbah" was written on an American bomb that was to be detonated on Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War.
Labels – CBS, Epic
Songwriters – Topper Headon, Joe Strummer, Mick Jones
Producers – The Clash
SONG LYRICS
[Verse 1]Now the king told the boogie men
"You have to let that raga drop
The oil down the desert way
Has been shaken to the top"
The Sheikh, he drove his Cadillac
He went a-cruising down the ville
The Muezzin was a-standing on the radiator grille
[Chorus]
Sharif don't like it
Rocking the Casbah, rock the Casbah
Sharif don't like it
Rocking the Casbah, rock the Casbah
[Verse 2]
By order of the prophet
We ban that boogie sound
Degenerate the faithful
With that crazy Casbah sound
The Bedouin, they brought out
The electric kettle drum
The local guitar picker
Got his guitar-picking thumb
As soon as the Sharif
Cleared the square
They began to wail
[Chorus]
Sharif don't like it
Rocking the Casbah, rock the Casbah
Sharif don't like it
Rocking the Casbah, rock the Casbah
[Verse 3]
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
And the temple band took five
The crowd caught a whiff of that crazy Casbah jive
[Chorus]
Sharif don't like it
Rocking the Casbah, rock the Casbah
Sharif don't like it
Rocking the Casbah, rock the Casbah
[Verse 4]
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 Sharif was
Chauffeured outta there
The jet pilots tuned to
The cockpit radio blare
As soon as the Sharif was
Out of their hair
The jet pilots wailed
[Chorus]
Sharif don't like it
Rocking the Casbah, rock the Casbah
Sharif don't like it
Rocking the Casbah, rock the Casbah
[Outro]
(Sharif don't like it)
Thinks it's not kosher
(Rocking the Casbah
Rock the Casbah)
(Sharif don't like it)
Fundamentally can't take it
(Rocking the Casbah
Rock the Casbah)
(Sharif don't like it)
You know he really hates it
(Rocking the Casbah, rock the Casbah)
(Sharif don't like it)
Really, really hates it