Rock the Casbah

Headon composed the music from a piano part he had been toying with. Alone in the studio, he taped the drums, piano and bass himself, and the others felt the track was essentially complete. Strummer was unmoved by the lyrics Headon offered, but he already had the phrases rock the casbah and you'll have to let that raga drop. The first came from a jam with the violinist Tymon Dogg, who thought Strummer was shouting at him to stop, you cadger. A remark by Bernie Rhodes about the band's long songs added another line. Strummer wrote the words in the studio's toilets to fit Headon's melody.

The lyric imagines a king banning rock music, and Dave Simpson of the Guardian wrote that Strummer was inspired by Iran's ban on pop music after its Islamic revolution. The album version carries an electronic sound effect from 1:52, a monophonic version of Dixie made by a digital wristwatch alarm that Jones owned and added deliberately.

Single

Released on 11 June 1982, the single used a remix by Jones and Bob Clearmountain. It reached number 8 on the Hot 100, the Clash's only US top 10 single. Don Letts directed the video in Austin, Texas, on 8 and 9 June 1982. The Armed Forces Radio network chose it as the first song broadcast on its service during Operation Desert Storm. The Algerian singer Rachid Taha covered it in Algerian Arabic on his 2004 album Tekitoi. Vulture ranked it tenth of the Clash's 139 songs.