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Rating:
On the return of the magnificent Saturday, the car's tape prepared for the occasion days before plays the Clash: "London Calling," "The Magnificent Seven," "Straight to Hell," "I’m Not DowN," "Janie Jones," "Know Your Rights," "Tommy Gun" - Delirium! How can a band make its way through numerous musical styles without any problems?
The word goes to the Clash, the supergroup of Joe Strummer, voice and guitar, Mick Jones, voice and guitar, Paul Simonon, voice and bass destructor, and Topper Headon, drums. One of the best bands the goddess Music has created: capacity, creativity, inventiveness, energy, ideas, avant-garde. After their successful self-titled debut, released in two versions, raw and unripe as a result of Punk fury with the fight anthems "White Riot," "London's Burning," and the first hint of reggae influences ("Police and Thieves"), the Clash ended 1978 with "Give ‘Em Enough Rope," considered by many a transitional album, but in my opinion a great leap forward, as indeed the subsequent albums will be until "Sandinista!," because "Combat Rock" will be slightly a small step back. A homogeneous album in its 36 minutes, which adds some classics to the English band's success tracklist.
It opens with "Safe European Home," and continues relentlessly without a moment of peace with "English Civil War," the story of Johnny's return home in an apocalyptic civil war backdrop, and then the famous "Tommy Gun," that is, what drives a man to shoot, opened and interspersed by Headon's continuous drum rolls. Next comes the fun rock and roll of "Julie’s In the Drug Squad," the sad discovery of a spy within the highs of a group of young friends. The first side closes with the description of the chaos among the gangs of London and its surroundings, brawls, fights, beatings that the "Last Gang of Town" people so love. If punk characterized the first tracks of the album, now a style close to more classic rock, simple, with small, rare, and truly inspired solos by Jones, emerges, which has in its lyrics the overwhelming force of life lived amid gang fights, shootings, notorious suburbs, violence. But what is punk in the end? An attitude of living one's vital condition, not exactly a musical genre... The Clash borrow the riff from the Who (the only 60s band respected in the punk world) of "I can’t explain" for "Guns on the Roof" (great Jones in the final solo!), this time weapons in the foreground, made to shoot, instill terror, and take away freedom. You have to turn up the volume to savor the charge of "Drug-Stabbing Time" (complete with sax!), with Headon's drums starring in the last 2 minutes. "Stay Free" (sung by Mick) and "Cheapskate" are stories of misery, precarious conditions, fear of bosses who follow you, tough years in prison, pastimes among friends. The album closes with the jewel "All Young Punks," the birth of a band, friendship, and the optimism of living punk (All you young punks laugh it up ‘cause there ain't much to cry for, all you sissies live it up now ‘cause there ain't much to die for), without the underlying nihilism of the Sex Pistols ("no future"), but with the awareness that even in a not-so-happy condition, by fighting, you can achieve everything. Perhaps the masterpiece of the entire album, remarkable in the music and intertwining of Joe and Mick.
Give ‘em Enough Rope with its colorful and militant cover on the back, an altogether fun, easy and young album, harnesses the use of rock, the classic one, is perfected and refined to reach a technique that will lead the band the following year to compose the double and evergreen "London Calling" and in '80 the mammoth and diverse triple "Sandinista!," mixing various genres, which perhaps have nothing to do with each other but only with the Clash will manage to have an underlying logic together. Great, perhaps the greatest!
Tracklist Lyrics and Samples
01 Safe European Home (03:50)
Well, I just got back an' I wish I never leave now
(where'd ya go?)
Who dat Martian arrival at the airport yeah?
(where'd ya go?)
How many local dollars for a local anaesthetic?
(where'd ya go?)
The Johnny on the corner wasn't very sympathetic
(where'd ya go?)
''[Chorus:]''
I went to the place where every white face is an invitation to robbery
Sitting here in my safe European home
Don't wanna go back there again.
Wasn't lucky an' wouldn't it be loverly?
(where'd ya go?)
Send us all cards, an' have a laying in on a Sunday
(where'd ya go?)
I was there for two weeks, so how come I never tell now
(where'd ya go?)
That Natty Dread drinks at the Sheraton Hotel now
(where'd ya go?)
''[Chorus]''
They got the sun, an' they got the palm trees
(where'd ya go?)
They got the weed, an' they got the taxes
(where'd ya go?)
Whoa, The Harder They Come, an' the home of ol' bluebeat
(where'd ya go?)
I'd stay an' be a tourist but I can't take the gunplay
(where'd ya go?)
''[Chorus]''
Rudie come
From Jamaica
Cos Rudie can't fail
Cos Rudie come
From Jamaica
Rudie can't fail
Rudie come
From Jamaica
Cos Rudie can't fail
Cos Rudie come
From Jamaica
Rudie can't fail
Rudie, Rudie, Rudie, Rudie, Rudie
Rudie can't fail
Rudie, Rudie, Rudie, Rudie, Rudie
Rudie can't fail
Cos Rudie's went there
And Rudie's lived there
And Rudie come back, come back now
And Rudie, Rudie, Rudie, Rudie, Rudie
Come back, come on
now oh now
Rudie, Rudie, Rudie, Rudie, Rudie
Rudie can't fail
Rudie, Rudie, Rudie, Rudie
Rudie, you can't fail!
Rudie come on and Rudie come
And Rudie can't fail
Explosive!
(Rudie come on, Rudie, Rudie... Rudie can't fail...)
You're day at home
You try the fog train
(Rudie, Rudie, Rudie, Rudie.....)
(You're day at home, You try the fog train)
Rudie come back
And Rudie did
No else wants to be this way
02 English Civil War (02:35)
When Johnny comes marching home again
Hurah, Tudah
He's coming by bus or underground
Hurah, Tudah
A woman's eye will shed a tear
To see his face so beaten in fear
An' it was just around the corner in the English Civil War
It was still at the stage of clubs and fists
Hurah, Tudah
When that well-known face got beaten to bits
Hurah, Tudah
Your face was blue in the light of the screen
As we watched the speech of an animal scream
The new party army was marching right over our heads
Alright
There you are, ha ha, I told you so
Tudah, Hyurah
Says everybody that we know
Hurah, Tudah
But who hid a radio under the stairs
An' who got caught out on their unawares
New party army came marching right up the stairs
When Johnny comes marching home again
Hurah, Tudah
Nobody understands it can happen again
Hurah, Tudah
The sun is shining an' the kids are shouting loud
But you gotta know it's shining through a crack in the cloud
And the shadows keep on falling
When Johnny comes marching home
Alright
Johnny
Oka.......ay
Johnny
All the towns go
O.... O.
O. O...........
04 Julie's Been Working for the Drug Squad (03:03)
It's Lucy in the sky and all kinds of apple pie
She giggle[s] at the screen cos it looks so green
There's carpets on the pavement
And feathers in her eye
But sooner or later, her new friends will realise
That Julie's been working for the Drug Squad
Julie's been working for the Drug Squad
She can't even look you in the eye
(Well) Well it seemed like a dream; too good to be true
Stash it in the bank while the tablets grow high
In their Millions
And everybody's high (Hi, man...)
But there's someone looking down
From that mountain side
Cos Julie's been working for the Drug Squad
Cos julie's been working for the Drug Squad
Gumbo!
[And it's] Ten years for you
Nineteen for you
And you can get out in twentyfive
That is if you're still alive
Oh oh, Alive
Oh yeah, Alive
Oh oh, Alive
Oh!
And then there came the night of the greatest ever raid
They arrested every drug that had ever been made
They took eightytwo laws
Through eightytwo doors
And they didn't halt the pull
Till the cells were all full
Cos Julie's been working for the Drug Squad
Julie's been working for the Drug Squad
They put him in a cell, they said 'you wait here'
You got the time to count all of your hair
You got fifteen years
[That]'s a mighty long time
You could have been a physicist
But now your name is on the mailbag list
Julie's been working for the Drug Squad
Julie's been working for the Drug Squad
Gumbo!
Ten years for you
Nineteen for you
And you can get out in twentyfive
That is if you're still...
Alive
Oh oh, Alive
You're still
I said you're still
05 Last Gang in Town (05:14)
Everybody's looking for last gang in town
You better watch out for they're all comin' around
The sport of today is exciting
The in crowd are into infighting
When some punk sees some rock-olla
It's rock and roll all over
In every street and every station
Kids fight like different nations
And it's brawn against brain
And it's knife against chain
But it's all young blood
Flowing down the drain
The Crops hit the Stiffs
An' the Spikes whipped the Quiffs
They're all looking 'round
For the last gang in town
Meanwhile down in black town
Those old soul rebels are hangin' around
An' when some punk come alooking for sound
Rastaferi goes to ground
The white heart flipped his pocket dipped
'Cos a black sharp knife never slips
And they never say to one another
That tomorrow we might kill our brothers
Down from the edge of London
The rockabily rebels came
From another edge of London
Skinhead gangs call out their name
But not the Zydeco kids
From the high rise
Though they can't be recognized
When you hear a cajun fiddle
Then you're nearly in the middle
Of the last gang in town
09 Cheapskates (03:25)
I have been a washer up
An' he has been a scrubber up
An' I seen him a picking up
Dog ends in the rain
An' he has never read a book
Though I told him to take a look
He lifted his poolhall cue
For another game
But it ain't no modern miracle
That we found the golden rule
What you can't buy you gotta steal
An' what you say can't steal you better leave
I don't like to hang about
In this lonely room
'Cos london is for going out
And trying to hear a tune
But people come pouncing up to me
And say what are you doing here
You're supposed to be a star
Not a cheapskate bleeding queer
Like a load of rats from a sinking ship
You slag us down to save your hip
But you don't give me the benfit
Of your doubt
'Cos I'll bite it off and spit it out
We're cheapskates anything'll do
We're cheapskates what are we supposed to do?
An' we can rock
Hey hey let's roll
An' we can walk
An' do the stroll
Just because we're in a group
You think we're stinking rich
'N we all got model girls
Shedding every stitch
'N You think the cocaine's flowing
Like a river up our noses
'N every sea will part for us
Like the red one did for Moses
Well I hope you make it one day
Just like you always said you would some day
And I'll get out my money and make a bet
That I'll be seein' you down the launderette
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Other reviews
By Beat_Ramone
'Give 'Em Enough Rope' is more than a mere collection of songs; it's a distillation of social and political critique in music.
This 'Give 'Em Enough Rope', underrated by many, especially for its position as a 'transition', is a splendid album full of emotions.
By Taxirider
This was punk ’77. The kind of rebellion that never really happened.
Thank you, dear Clash. Thank you for this cornerstone with which I built my sonic home.
