Reception
The only person who played ‘White Riot’ on the radio was John Peel — and he's gone on holiday. You play our record against any of the other stuff and it just knocks spots off them left, right and centre. They must be cunts for not playing it.
—Joe Strummer"White Riot" is considered a classic in The Clash canon, although as the band matured, Mick Jones would at times refuse to play it, considering it crude and musically inept. Over two decades later, Joe Strummer would perform it with his band the Mescaleros. The B-side of the single was "1977", a non-album track. This song was along similar lines to "White Riot", suggesting that the music of Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones was no longer relevant.
In March 2005, Q magazine placed "White Riot" at number 34 in its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks.
The song was featured in the soundtrack for the game Tony Hawk's Underground. It is played when Derby County Football Club run out at Pride Park Stadium and when Swansea City emerge at the Liberty Stadium.
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Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)