The Clash – The Clash album review

Released on 8 April, 1977, The Clash talks about people in boring jobs, with annoying bosses, in a world going to shit and divided by race. No wonder it's so timeless…

the clash album

You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.

The holy trinity of punk were so perfectly formed that it’s hard to imagine the scene without any one of them. The Pistols: searing and sneering, nihilistic and iconic (the artwork, the clothes). The Damned: the court jesters. Daft, tough, Tiswas-anarchic, a British Stooges/MC5. And The Clash: the guttersnipes and street punks, the voice you could relate to, and without whom it’s hard to imagine The Jam, Stiff Little Fingers, Sham 69 or Generation X, let alone Green Day, Rancid, or maybe even U2.

The Clash articulated the frustrations of working class kids in a way that the chin-stroking protest pop of previous generations couldn’t hope to, in a way that was more inclusive than the fury of the Pistols or the Damned’s goth theatre. (And, yeah genius, we know the irony: Joe Strummer went to a private boarding school and his father was a top diplomat. Hate to break it to you but David Bowie wasn’t really a spaceman, Tom Waits wasn’t a hobo and Ice-T didn’t really kill cops.)

The Clash was hurriedly-written and recorded and it’s a messy and thrilling snapshot of two creative forces gelling for the first time. From their vocals (Strummer’s yobbish bark balanced by Jones’s boyish sensitivity) to their lyrics (famously, Strummer changed Jones’s track I’m So Bored With You to I’m So Bored With The USA), and even their guitar-playing (Joe’s choppy rhythm guitar versus Mick’s slightly weedy-but-melodic lead), the album is a true Strummer/Jones production. Both men were classic rock’n’roll dreamers. To find themselves in the right time and right place with the perfect partners must have been a buzz and, amid the anger and the outrage, the album captures that rock’n’roll woah perfectly.

Mostly The Clash talks about people in boring jobs, with annoying bosses, in a world going to shit. A London burning with boredom, where everyone sits around watching television. Where the TV is full of American cop shows, because killers in America work seven days a week. Where you get hassled in the street by cops and pressured to take a shit job down the Job Centre. Where ‘hate and war’ has replaced ‘peace and love’ and the world is full of cheats and junkies.

Sounds joyless? It’s only half the picture – a bit like describing Trainspotting as a movie about heroin addicts in Edinburgh. The Clash is full of defiance and dark humour and plenty of cheap thrills. Short adrenaline bursts like 48 Hours and Protex Blue (a stupidly laddish ode to the top condom brand of the time: ‘I don’t think it’ll fit my PD drill’) add levity to darker tracks like Deny and Cheat, while Janie Jones, Career Opportunities, London’s Burning and Garageland do all the heavy lifting – full of righteous anger, great one liners and gleeful humour. (Garageland, the witty riposte to Charles Shaar Murray’s earlier line that The Clash were a garage band “who should be left in the garage with the engine running”, isn’t bitter or spiteful but a warm salute to everyone who’s ever been in a dodgy band with ‘five guitar players, one microphone’ and an old bag of a neighbour who calls the police.)

Slap-bang in the middle of each side are two tracks about race that would define their career: White Riot and Police And Thieves. Junior Murvin’s Police And Thieves single was released in the UK in July 1976, the perfect soundtrack to that year’s Notting Hill carnival riot and tailor-made for the Roxy, the punk club where Don Letts DJ’d, playing reggae and dub records (there just weren’t enough punk records to play all night and reggae’s outsider status meant it fitted perfectly). The Clash gave the song steel toe-capped boots and a knuckleduster to create punk-reggae, cementing a relationship between the two genres that continues to this day.

If Police And Thieves embraced multi-racial Britain, both musically and philosophically, White Riot was a little more singular. A two-chord rallying cry – rock music with all the blues stripped out of it (the album version is twice as fast and three times more furious than the laughably rinky-dink 7” version that came out just a month before in March 1977) – White Riot suggests that white people could learn a lot from west London’s black community, that if they too stood up against authority they could take over, instead of taking orders: ‘All the power in the hands/Of the people rich enough to buy it/While we walk the streets/Too chicken to even try it’.

Strummer’s lyric clearly admires the section of the black community that ‘don’t mind throwing a brick’ – the rioters pushed into confrontations by aggressive policing and refusing to take it anymore. Where White Riot becomes problematic is in the fact that its sentiments echo that of many far right groups. The National Front had similar views: that Britain was run by bankers (read ‘jews’) and white people should fight back and reclaim their country. Punk rock was a musical white riot – mostly white bands singing music (mostly) stripped of black influence – and a far-right and fuckwitted element of the Oi! movement made much mileage out of this.

If The Clash never really disavowed White Riot, they also never recorded anything like it again.

Police And Thieves showed where The Clash could go – not just deeper into reggae, but also into other musical styles – while White Riot was forever held against them as a reminder of where they came from by a punk audience who wanted their music to get more brutal, not more musical. It was a dichotomy that haunted the band throughout their career.

It split the audience and ultimately split the band too.

The Clash Albums Ranked From Worst To Best – The Ultimate Guide

Scott Rowley
Content Director, Music

Scott is the Content Director of Music at Future plc, responsible for the editorial strategy of online and print brands like Louder, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer, Prog, Guitarist, Guitar World, Guitar Player, Total Guitar etc. He was Editor in Chief of Classic Rock magazine for 10 years and Editor of Total Guitar for 4 years and has contributed to The Big Issue, Esquire and more. Scott wrote chapters for two of legendary sleeve designer Storm Thorgerson's books (For The Love Of Vinyl, 2009, and Gathering Storm, 2015). He regularly appears on Classic Rock’s podcast, The 20 Million Club, and was the writer/researcher on 2017’s Mick Ronson documentary Beside Bowie

Read more
REM posing for a photograph in 1987
“All you have to do is turn on the TV and you’re inundated by complete lies from people who are supposed to be running this country”: How distortion, chaos and a world gone mad shaped R.E.M.’s game-changing album Document album
The Smiths in 1985
“We feel that music should be used in order to make serious statements”: how The Smiths turned from a good band into a great one on Meat Is Murder
Talking Heads: Remain In Light cover art
"After a lifetime listening to hard rock and heavy metal I discovered Talking Heads and realised how good music could really be": Talking Heads open up new worlds on Remain In Light
Manic Street Preachers - Critical Thinking cover art
"Fuelled by despair as usual but also simplicity, the songs are rock throughout": Manic Street Preachers show that rage never sleeps on Critical Thinking
The Darkness press shot
"Not just one of the best British rock albums of all time, but one of the best debut albums ever made": That time The Darkness added a riot of colour to a grey musical landscape
The Pogues posing for a photograph in 1985
“There certainly was a fair amount of hard drinking. But there was a degree of professionalism, if hard to recognise at times”: How The Pogues made a folk-punk classic in Rum, Sodomy & The Lash
Latest in
Adrian Smith performing with Iron Maiden in 2024
Adrian Smith names his favourite Iron Maiden song, even though it’s “awkward” to play
Robert Smith, Lauren Mayberry, Bono
How your purchase of albums by The Cure, U2, Chvrches and more on Record Store Day can help benefit children living in war zones worldwide
Cradle Of Filth performing in 2021 and Ed Sheeran in 2024
Cradle Of Filth’s singer claims Ed Sheeran tried to turn a Toys R Us into a live music venue
The Beatles in 1962
"The quality is unreal. How is this even possible to have?" Record shop owner finds 1962 Beatles' audition tape that a British label famously decided wasn't good enough to earn Lennon and McCartney's band a record deal
The Mars Volta
“My totalitarian rule might not be cool, but at least we’ve made interesting records. At least we polarise people”: It took The Mars Volta three years and several arguments to make Noctourniquet
/news/the-darkness-i-hate-myself
"When the storm clouds clear, the band’s innate pop sensibilities shine as brightly as ever": In a world of bread-and-butter rock bands, The Darkness remain the toast of the town
Latest in Review
/news/the-darkness-i-hate-myself
"When the storm clouds clear, the band’s innate pop sensibilities shine as brightly as ever": In a world of bread-and-butter rock bands, The Darkness remain the toast of the town
Sex Pistols at the RAH
"Open the dance floor, you’ll never get to do it again." Forget John Lydon's bitter and boring "karaoke" jibes, with Frank Carter up front, the Sex Pistols sound like the world's greatest punk band once more
Arch Enemy posing in an alleyway
Arch Enemy promised they'd throw out the rule book for Blood Dynasty. They didn't go quite that far, but this is the boldest album of the Alissa White-Gluz era - and it kicks ass
The Darkness press shot
"Not just one of the best British rock albums of all time, but one of the best debut albums ever made": That time The Darkness added a riot of colour to a grey musical landscape
Roger Waters - The Dark Side of the Moon Redux Deluxe Box Set
“The live recording sees the piece come to life… amid the sepulchral gloom there are moments of real beauty”: Roger Waters' Super Deluxe Box Set of his Dark Side Of The Moon Redux
Cradle Of Filth Press Shot 2025
Twiddly Iron Maiden harmonies, thrash riffs, horror, rapping (kind of) and sexy goth allure: The Screaming Of The Valkyries is peak Cradle Of Filth