Clutch have worn many hats over their three-decade-and-counting career. Hardcore firebrands in their early days, they traded in for spacey, groovy stoner rock in the mid-90s and have since added more blues twang and funk bounce to their sound in the decades since.
So we caught up with firebrand frontman Neil Fallon to find out which songs get his motor running - and have incidentally inspired a few classics along the way.
1. Fleetwood Mac - Rhiannon (Fleetwood Mac, 1975)
“I think the most formative music for anyone is the music their parents listen to. Fleetwood Mac’s second self-titled and Rumours were my dad’s go-tos, he would listen to them over and over. Particularly Rhiannon, he’d pick the needle up, put it back and start it again straight away, to the point where my mom was like, ‘Bill, enough!’
I’m sure he was thinking about Stevie Nicks, and 40 years later Clutch have the song Sucker For The Witch where you can draw a throughline from my dad listening to that to us putting out Psychic Warfare.”
![Fleetwood Mac - Rhiannon (Official Music Video) [HD] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/jQAK6sVovUk/maxresdefault.jpg)
2. Vangelis - Heaven and Hell Part 1 (Heaven And Hell, 1975)
“My parents had Vangelis Heaven And Hell on 8-track.I remember very distinctly listening to this when I was young enough I had a babysitter. I was super into fantasy novels and D&D, stuff like that so I was using it almost as a soundtrack to a Conan novel. Part 1 was playing in the background, I remember the babysitter walked in and was like, ‘Oh my god, you’re so weird.’ That was the last I ever saw of her, so it opened my eyes to the power of music!”
3. The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band – (Part One, 1967)
“Shifting Sands by The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band split my wig as a kid. My dad’s close friend was much more musically adventurous than my dad – he was pretty conservative with stuff like Bob Dylan, The Beatles and whatever – but this was straight up 60s California psychedelia writ large.
It’s a very weird story that’s worth looking into: this band who this older guy glommed onto and couldn’t sing or play a note of anything, but he had a shit tonne of money. It’s a terrifying album, especially for a child. I listened on headphones and there was a lot of stereo panning and nightmarish noises. Shifting Sands is one of their more traditional compositions, but it’s a beautiful song. It’s also dark – the hippie world had a dark underbelly.”
4. The Amazing Spider Man – Invasion Of The Dragon Men (Invasion of the Dragon Men, 1977)
“In the 70s, they used to have comic books attached to vinyl records you could listen to. It was like a gatefold. I had a double-one for my birthday, the first was Invasion Of The Dragon Men and the other was The Mark Of The Man Wolf.
I listened to it over and over again, similar to Vangelis and Conan, and you can draw a line with Clutch lyrics on Oregon where I’m saying, ‘Hail Draco, king of the Dragon Men’ which was directly lifted from this Amazing Spiderman comic. Even Mark… we kinda referenced with The Wolf Man Kindly Requests. These things sit in your subconscious for decades and percolate, and you don’t realise where they come from.”
5. Fugazi - Give Me The Cure (13 songs, 1989)
“When you become a teenager, you start developing your musical identity. It was only later on I realised how incredibly fortunate we were that Fugazi were a local band for us. I saw them more times than I can count and it left a huge mark on Clutch.
They’d play the weirdest places – a bingo hall, a community centre, a park – with no production, no merch – you could get popcorn and water, if you were lucky. But regardless of the venue they’d burn down the house every single time. Ian [MacKaye] would yell at the kids for moshing and we’d always be the dickheads moshing to stuff like Give Me The Cure.”
6. Public Enemy – Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos (It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, 1988)
“I’d heard hip-hop growing up on the radio or at parties, and I liked it but it was background music. But when I heard Public Enemy, it was like being hit by a freight train. It sounded like the future. Terminator X’s music was unlike anything I’d ever heard before, but when I heard Chuck D rapping it was so rhythmically complicated it really engaged me.
I didn’t grow up wanting to become a singer in a rock band – I didn’t even take vocal lessons until a few years ago – but when we started high school bands I was much more rhythmically inclined and gravitated to stuff like Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos.”
7. Trouble Funk – Drop The Bomb (Go-Go Crankin’, 1985)
"Go-Go Crankin’ was a compilation of ‘DC Go-Go bands. Anyone who’s seen us play will know sometimes Jean-Paul [Gaster, drums] and I will play cowbells and that’s just what that is. One of our most popular songs is DC Sound Attack and when we were writing that song Jean-Paul had that record framed on his wall and right there it says, ‘This is the DC sound attack’.
It worked perfectly with us talking about Washington D.C. in a political sense and we took some lyrics from there and in particular the line ‘Drop the bomb’ which was from Trouble Funk.”
8. Skip James – Devil Got My Woman (Roots of Robert Johnson, 1990)
“I picked up a cassette at a truck stop at like one in the morning called Roots Of Robert Johnson and the opening track was Devil Got My Woman by Skip James. I just wanted something to listen to because we were out in the sticks and the radio was playing nonsense. The song comes on and Jean-Paul sits straight up, ‘What the fuck is this?’ It was terrifying! Skip’s voice, his falsetto is so haunting and his playing is so impeccable.
I tried to learn that song and it’s so difficult. But to cut a long story short, that’s the song that morphed into Regulator. It’s the same guitar tuning, so in lieu of learning the difficult parts I was like, ‘Here’s an easier version!’”
9. The Pogues – Dirty Old Town (Rum Sodomy & The Lash, 1985)
“I heard Dirty Old Town while I was in high school, but never thought I’d see The Pogues as shortly after they put out Rum Sodomy & The Lash they took a long hiatus. I did get to see them later a couple times, but our late, great manager Jack Flanagan was a huge Pogues fan and there were many, many late nights and early mornings where we’d be blind drunk singing along to them.
We had a sound man once who came with us to see The Pogues in LA and he left like five songs in because he got beer spilled on him and was bitching about it. It’s like complaining about sand at the beach! We still play Dirty Old Town at the end of every set as a tribute to Jack.”
10. Tom Waits – Goin’ Out West (Bone Machine, 1992)
“Chuck D was a rhythmical revelation, Tom Waits was a lyrical revelation. A lot of the early Clutch stuff was a lot more dark, almost diary entry. But then I heard Bone Machine and I realised you can lie your pants off and tell a story, and it’s more fun for everyone. In Goin’ Out West Tom Waits says, ‘I know karate and Voodoo too.’ I know he doesn’t but when he sings it, it sure as shit sounds like he does.
I definitely jacked that attitude of taking the boast, impossible bravado because people like singing along. On our self-titled, the song The House That Peterbilt I took that, ‘I know you where you live’ for this intimidating mystery antagonist who thinks he’s a badass. I’m none of those things except when I’m singing that song!”
Clutch's UK tour starts in Bristol on December 15. The band headline Desertfest London in May 2026. For the full list of upcoming tour dates, visit their official website.
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