Inspiration and Composition
The song is short and intense, drawing influence from the Ramones' style of three chords played very fast. Mick Jones counts off "1-2-3-4" at the start of the album version (in the single version, it instead begins with the sound of a police siren).
Lyrically, the song is about class economics and race and thus proved controversial: some people thought it was advocating a kind of race war. Rather, lyricist Joe Strummer was trying to appeal to white youths to find a worthy cause to riot, as he felt blacks in the UK already had. It contains a positive message in the lines "Are you taking over / Or are you taking orders? / Are you going backwards / Or are you going forwards?"
The song was written after Joe Strummer and bassist Paul Simonon were involved in the riots at the Notting Hill Carnival of 1976.
Read more about this topic: White Riot
Famous quotes containing the words inspiration and/or composition:
“Poets should be lawgivers; that is, the boldest lyric inspiration should not chide and insult, but should announce and lead, the civil code, and the day’s work. But now the two things seem irreconcilably parted.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The composition of a tragedy requires testicles.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)