| Combat Rock | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by The Clash | ||||||||||
| Released | 14 May 1982 | |||||||||
| Recorded | September 1981 at Ear Studios, London; November 1981 – January 1982 at Electric Lady Studios, New York City; April 1982 at Wessex Studios, London | |||||||||
| Genre | Punk rock, dance-punk, new wave | |||||||||
| Length | 46:21 | |||||||||
| Label | CBS, Epic | |||||||||
| Producer | The Clash | |||||||||
| The Clash chronology | ||||||||||
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Combat Rock is the fifth studio album by the English punk rock band The Clash. It was released on 14 May 1982 through Epic Records. [1][2] Although the album includes different styles of music, it is considerably less experimental than their previous album Sandinista!. In the United Kingdom the album charted at #2, spending 23 weeks in the UK charts. The album reached #7 in the United States, spending 61 weeks on the chart. The album has been certified 2x platinum.
Contents |
Combat Rock was originally planned as a double album with the working title Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg, but the idea was scrapped after internal wrangling within the group. Mick Jones had mixed the first version, but the other members were dissatisfied and mixing/producing duties were handed to Glyn Johns, at which point the album became a single LP. The original mixes were later bootlegged.
Pennie Smith shot the cover photo for Combat Rock on a deserted railway line outside Bangkok while the band was on their "Far East" tour in 1982.
Following along the same note as Sandinista!, Combat Rock's catalogue number 'FMLN2' is the abbreviation for the El Salvador political party 'Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional' or FMLN.
In January 2000 the album, along with the rest of The Clash's catalogue, was remastered and re-released.
According to author Marcus Gray, the song "Red Angel Dragnet" was inspired by the January 1982 shooting death of Frank Melvin, a New York member of the Guardian Angels.[3][4] The song contains extensive quotes from the 1976 movie Taxi Driver's main character Travis Bickle, delivered by Kosmo Vinyl. Bickle sports a mohawk in the later part of the film and that hairstyle was adopted by Joe Strummer during the album promotion.
The song, "Ghetto Defendant", features beat poet Allen Ginsberg, who performed the song on stage with the band during the New York shows on their tour in support of the album. At the end of the song he can be heard reciting the Heart Sutra, a popular Buddhist mantra. Original U.S. pressings of the album had the full length track "Inoculated City" lasting 2:43. This version contained an unauthorized audio sample from a U.S. television commercial for a toilet bowl cleaner called "2000 Flushes". After the maker of the product complained of copyright infringement the audio sample was removed reducing the track length to 2:11. Approximately 100,000 copies of the first version were pressed with custom designed record labels. The majority of copies sold had the edited track and were re-issued on the standard dark blue Epic Records label. The full length "Inoculated City" also appeared on the B-side of the US "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" single. Early US CD copies of the album had the edited track. When the album was released as a remastered CD in 2000 the full length track was restored, though no mention of this was included on the CD packaging.
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | [5] |
| Alternative Press | [6] |
| Blender | [7] |
| Punknews.org | [8] |
| Q | [9] |
| Robert Christgau | B+[10] |
| Rolling Stone | [11] |
The album received positive reviews from critics, and reached the number two on the UK Albums Chart, the number seven on the Billboard Pop albums, and the top ten on many charts in other countries.[12][13][14][15] The United States Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified Combat Rock as a Gold album on November 1982, Platinum in January 1983, and Multi-Platinum in June 1995.[16]
In 1999, Q magazine rated Combat Rock three stars out of five, and described the album as "...their biggest seller, but the beginning of the end."[9] In 2000, Alternative Press rated the album three stars out of five, and wrote that "The penultimate Clash album...employing lessons learned in the previous three years....their most commercially rewarded release....containing [their] most poignant song 'Straight To Hell'."[6] The College Music Journal ranked Combat Rock at number five on its 2004 list of the Top 20 Most-Played Albums of 1982.[17]
Combat Rock was apparently one of the all-time favorite albums of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain.
All songs written and composed by The Clash except where noted. All songs copyright (The Clash) Nineden Ltd..
| Side one | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Lead vocals | Length | ||||||
| 1. | "Know Your Rights" (Strummer/Jones) | Joe Strummer | 3:39 | ||||||
| 2. | "Car Jamming" | Joe Strummer | 3:58 | ||||||
| 3. | "Should I Stay or Should I Go" | Mick Jones | 3:06 | ||||||
| 4. | "Rock the Casbah" | Joe Strummer | 3:44 | ||||||
| 5. | "Red Angel Dragnet" | Paul Simonon/Kosmo Vinyl | 3:48 | ||||||
| 6. | "Straight to Hell" | Joe Strummer | 5:30 | ||||||
| Side two | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Lead vocals | Length | ||||||
| 1. | "Overpowered by Funk" | Joe Strummer/Futura 2000 | 4:55 | ||||||
| 2. | "Atom Tan" | Mick Jones/Joe Strummer | 2:32 | ||||||
| 3. | "Sean Flynn" | Joe Strummer | 4:30 | ||||||
| 4. | "Ghetto Defendant" | Joe Strummer/Allen Ginsberg | 4:45 | ||||||
| 5. | "Inoculated City" (some copies of the album have an edited version lasting 2:11) | Mick Jones/Joe Strummer | 2:43 | ||||||
| 6. | "Death is a Star" | Joe Strummer | 3:08 | ||||||
| Year | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|
| 1982 | Norwegian Albums Chart.[14] | 7 |
| 1982 | Swedish Albums Chart[15] | 9 |
| 1982 | UK Albums Chart[12] | 2 |
| 1983 | Billboard Pop albums[13] | 7 |
| Certifier | Date | Certification | Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| RIAA (U.S.)[16] | 8 November 1982 | Gold | 500,000 |
| RIAA (U.S.)[16] | 10 January 1983 | Platinum | 1,000,000 |
| RIAA (U.S.)[16] | 6 June 1995 | 2x Platinum | 2,000,000 |