Day After Day #293: Know Your Rights

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Know Your Rights (1982)

It's Election Day here in the good ol' US of A, wrapping up (sort of) one of the most contentious presidential campaigns since well, the last one. I'm not going to get political, but I am going to let the Clash do it. 

The year is 1982 and things are rocky with the Clash. Coming off 1980's triple album Sandinista! in early 1981, singer-guitarist Joe Strummer and bassist Paul Simonon felt the Clash was getting boring and decided to bring back original manager Bernie Rhodes. Guitarist Mick Jones disagreed with the move and was drifting apart from his bandmates, while drummer Topper Headon was full on into a heroin and cocaine addiction.

Working on their fifth album, the Clash recorded 18 songs, enough for a double album, but they were debating whether that would be too much after just releasing a triple album and double before that in London Calling. Jones wanted a double album with longer mixes, while the rest of the band preferred a single album with shorter songs. Strummer and Jones worked with producer Glyn Johns to edit the album, called Combat Rock, down from 77 minutes to 46, dropping six songs.

The opening track and lead single of the album was "Know Your Rights" and it featured Strummer as a civil servant announcing three rights for poor people. The song kicks off with "This is a public service announcement...with guitar!"

"Know your rights/All three of 'em/Number one/You have the right not to be killed/Murder is a crime/Unless it was done/By a policeman/Or an aristocrat/Oh, know your rights."

Musically, the track is reminiscent of the band's earlier, more strident sound.

"And number two/You have the right to food money/Providing of course you/Don't mind a little/Investigation, humiliation/And if you cross your fingers/Rehabilitation."

The song didn't chart in the U.S., but it hit #43 on the U.K. Singles Chart.

"Number three/You have the right to free speech/As long as you're not/Dumb enough to actually try it/Know your rights/These are your rights/Oh, know your rights/These are your rights/All three of 'em, ha."

While "Know Your Rights" didn't click as a single, its followup more than made up for it. The music for "Rock the Casbah" was written by Headon, based on a piano he'd been working on. Strummer reworked the lyrics and the song, accompanied by a Don Letts-directed video, became a huge hit for the Clash, getting to #8 on the Billboard Hot 100. By the time the band made the video, songwriter Headon had been replaced by Terry Chimes because his heroin addiction had gotten out of control.

Strummer ends the song in character, admonishing the poor for wanting more rights. "And it has been suggested/In some quarters that this is not enough/Well, get off the streets/Get off the streets!"

A lot of critics and punk fans wrote Combat Rock off as too commercial, especially when "Should I Stay or Should I Go" became a hit as well. The album went to #2 in the U.K. and #7 in the U.S. and eventually went multiplatinum. Combat Rock also featured "Straight to Hell," a haunting song inspired by Apocalypse Now about the children fathered by American soldiers to Vietnamese mothers and then abandoned after the Vietnam War ended. It served as the main sample in M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes." 

The Clash ended up opening for the Who's on the latter's "Schlitz Rocks America" "farewell tour," which was an interesting choice for such an antiestablishment band. After headlining the New Wave day of the US Festival in front of 150,000 people in May 1983, the Clash never played with Jones again. Strummer and Simonon dismissed him that September and replaced him with two new guitarists. After releasing the decidedly substandard Cut the Crap in 1985, the band broke up. Jones formed Big Audio Dynamite and released several albums.

"Know Your Rights" remains an iconic statement from the Clash.