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, inspiration and/or composition:
“For a painter, the Mecca of the world, for study, for inspiration and for living is here on this star called Paris. Just look at it, no wonder so many artists have come here and called it home. Brother, if you can’t paint in Paris, you’d better give up and marry the boss’s daughter.”
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“Although this garrulity of advising is born with us, I confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than of didactics. So much fate, so much irresistible dictation from temperament and unknown inspiration enter into it, that we doubt we can say anything out of our own experience whereby to help each other.”
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“Since body and soul are radically different from one another and belong to different worlds, the destruction of the body cannot mean the destruction of the soul, any more than a musical composition can be destroyed when the instrument is destroyed.”
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