“White Riot” by The Clash

"White Riot" was the Clash's opening shot: their first single in 1977, a two-minute sprint that also landed on their self-titled debut. Joe Strummer and Mick Jones wrote it and bark it together over Paul Simonon's bass, and it's a song about class struggle and race. Not everybody heard it that way: some took it as a call for race war, and the controversy stuck to it.

There are two takes worth knowing. The single, cut at CBS Studio 3 on Whitfield Street in London once the band had signed to CBS, opens with a wailing police siren, and Mickey Foote gets the production credit. The album went with a rougher demo made in 1976 at Beaconsfield Studios in Buckinghamshire with Julien Temple, and it starts with Jones counting the band in.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.