Remote Control (The Clash Song)
"Remote Control" is a song by The Clash, featured on their debut album, and is written against oppression and conformity.
The song was written by Mick Jones after the disastrous Anarchy Tour and contains pointed observations about the civic hall bureaucrats who had cancelled concerts, the police, big business and especially record companies. The song mentions a 'meeting in Mayfair' which probably refers to one held by EMI's shareholders on 7 December 1976, which effectively withdrew all support for the Anarchy Tour. Also alluded to in the song are the 'old-boy' peerage networks and hapless politicians.
The band virtually disowned the song, following their record label CBS's decision to release the song as a single without consulting the band. The band had already told Melody Maker magazine that their next single would be "Janie Jones", and were irate that CBS had undermined them and made a decision to release "Remote Control" instead without the band's permission. To the band, the song became a symbol of everything they were fighting against. The incident was referred to in the first lines of a later song, "Complete Control", which is on the 1979 US release of the album:
- - They said, 'Release "Remote Control", but we didn't want it on the label... -
The B-side is a mono live version of "London's Burning".
Read more about Remote Control (The Clash Song): Personnel
Famous quotes containing the words remote, control and/or clash:
“The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“The poets were not alone in sanctioning myths, for long before the poets the states and the lawmakers had sanctioned them as a useful expedient.... They needed to control the people by superstitious fears, and these cannot be aroused without myths and marvels.”
—Strabo (c. 58 B.C.–c. 24 A.D., Greek geographer. Geographia, bk. 1, sct. 2, subsct. 8.
“Saint, do you weep? I hear amid the thunder
The Fenian horses; armour torn asunder;
Laughter and cries. The armies clash and shock,
And now the daylight-darkening ravens flock.
Cease, cease, O mournful, laughing Fenian horn!”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)