The Magnificent Seven (song)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Magnificent Seven"

Single by The Clash
from the album Sandinista!
B-side(s)	"The Magnificent DAnce"
Released	April 1981 (U.K.)
Format	7" single
Recorded	1980
Genre	Rap
Length	5:33
Label	CBS Records
Writer(s)	The Clash
Producer(s)	The Clash
Chart positions
#34 (UK)
The Clash singles chronology
"Hitsville UK" (1980)	"The Magnificent Seven" (1981)	"This is Radio Clash" (1981)

The Magnificent Seven is a song and single by influential British rock band The Clash it was the third single from their forth album Sandinista!. It reached number 34 in the UK singles chart.

Magnificent Seven was inspired by rap acts like The Sugarhill Gang and Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, rap was still a new and emerging music genre at the time and the band, especially Mick Jones was very impressed with it, so much so he took to carrying a beatbox around and got the nick-name 'Whack Attack'. A rap song itself it was recorded in April 1980 in at Electric Lady studio in New York, built around a bass loop recorded by Norman Watt-Roy of Ian Dury & The Blockheads, Joe Strummer wrote the words on the spot, the same technique was also used to record Sandinista!'s other rap track Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice). This was the first time any rock band had tried rap music and is essentially the first major white rap record (Blondie's Rapture would not be recorded for six months).

Though it failed to chart in America the song was an underground hit and was played often on underground/pirate radios even more played was the song's remixes, both official remix The Magnificent Dance and original remixes WBLS' in particular, known as Dirty Harry after the film of same name became well known and can be found on various Clash bootlegs including Clash on Broadway Disc 4.

[edit] Lyrics and meaning

Thematically The Magnificent Seven is similar to Career Opportunities, concerning the drudgery of the working life with the first verses following a nameless worker as he wakes up and goes to work, not for personal advancement but to buy his girlfriend consumer good

working for a rise, better my station, get my baby some sophistication, seen the add she thinks it's nice better work hard I seen the price

The nameless worker then goes off for a cheeseburger lunch-break where the lyrics enter semi-gobbledygook as Strummer tells the bizarre stories in the paper

Italian Mobster shoots a lobster - seafood restaurant gets out of hand, a car in a fridge or a fridge in a car? Cowboys rule in TV land

Finally the song takes historical figures Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Richard Nixon and Socrates and places them in modern America before asking if more people would recognize Plato or Rin Tin Tin, a question that is most likely rhetorical.

Some of the song's lyrics have become very popular among Clash fans quoted often and becoming in-jokes, particularly 'fucking long innit?' 'CHEESEBOIGER!' (cheeseburger) and 'vacuum cleaner sucks up budgie!'.

[edit] Trivia

Vacum Cleaner Sucks Up Budgie was a headline in The News Of The World newspaper at the time of the song's recording, according to author Joe Strummer. He saw it while mixing the album back in England and added it on the end of the song, the budgie survived the ordeal.
The single's b-side The Magnificent Dance is credited to Pepe Unidos, a pseudonym for Strummer, Paul Simonon and manager Bernie Rhodes. Unidos also produced remixes of The Call Up.