From The Clash’s 1982 album Combat Rock, the track “Rock The Casbah” became a top 10 hit, rising to #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. Written by Topper Headon, recorded in both London and New York City, and produced by The Clash with a mix by Glyn Johns (Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, The Who), it is fascinating listening to the tune broken down to isolated tracks. The parts prove themselves to be quite unique, from the bizarre guitar track to the intricate middle-eastern “casbah” influenced percussion.
VOCAL only (Joe Strummer):
KEYBOARDS only (Topper Headon):
glad i came across your site, im hoping to have fun practicing with some of my favorite songs
thanks
jimmy
The music for Rock the Casbah was written by Topper Headon. The drummer. He had been playing around with the bass and piano riffs for some time. Then sometime the recording of the album Combat Rock, Topper found himself the only one awake, besides the engineer. So Topper recorded his bass and piano riff arrangement, doing the count in his head. Then he recorded his drum track. But it was only about a half a songs worth of music. So (I forget exactly what they did) the engineer did some recording trick+tape splicing thing to double-up the different sections and make it a full songs length. When Joe woke up, Joe came up with lyrics+vocals and mick stuck some guitars on…which were supposedly taken off by Glynn Johns at some later date when they were fighting with each other. I forget what else. Read this ia a great Clash book (the only one with all the members agreeing to be a part of it…”Passion is a Fasion” It even covers Jo’s unxpected death, which of course, no one was expecting to happen! RIP Joe Strummer!
Editor note: Thanks for visiting and this info–we’ll have to change our description. Good information on The Clash is hard to find–many conflicting stories!