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"Rock the Casbah", one of the most popular songs by The Clash, was released on their 1982 album Combat Rock. It is one of their few songs to become a top 10 hit, reaching #8 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The song was inspired by the banning of rock music in Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini. The song gives a fictitious account of the ban being defied by the population who proceed to "rock the casbah", causing the King to order jet fighters to bomb the revellers. The pilots ignore the orders, and instead play rock music on their cockpit radios. The song does not mention Iran, nor does it give the specifics of any Islamic nation, and in fact it uses arabic terms more than Iranian, mentioning casbah, sharif, bedouin, and sheikh. It is one of the more light-hearted songs by the Clash, particularly as they were well-established as a political band. Political undertones are often read into the song.
"Rock the Casbah" originated when the band's manager, after hearing them record an inordiantely long track for the album, asked them facetiously "does everything have to be as long as this raga?" (referring to the Indian musical style known for its length). Joe Strummer later wrote the opening lines to the song: "The King he told the boogie-men 'you have to let that raga drop'." The rest of the lyrics soon followed.
The song is one of the few in which drummer Topper Headon played a substantial role in the writing of the music beyond the percussion tracks. The instrumental opening was a tune he had written on the piano some time earlier, and had toyed with during rehearsals before being incorporated into the song.
The Clash made low-budget music videos for several of their songs, and the one for "Rock the Casbah" may be their most memorable. It depicts an Arab and an Orthodox Jew dancing together through the streets, often followed by an armadillo, interspersed with the band performing in front of an oil well. The humourous tone of the video fits the song, although it is easy to read the antics of the Arab and Jew as a desire for better relations between Israelis and Arabs.
It has been reported that "Rock the Casbah" was an unoffical anthem for the American army during the first Gulf War (the line about dropping "bombs between the minarets" being particularly relevant). This has been seen as highly ironic by some, given the Clash's well established left-wing politics and anti-war stance, and as appropriate by others, as the song is an attack on hypocritical Arab leaders who ban Western influences for their subjects, but are happy to reap the benefits of such influences for themselves.
Despite, or perhaps because of, its popularity with soldiers during the Gulf War, "Rock the Casbah" was one of the songs deemed inappropriate by Clear Channel Communications following the September 11, 2001 attacks.
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