The Magnificent Seven (song)

This article is about the hip hop song by The Clash. For the theme to the 1960 western film, see The Magnificent Seven#Score.
"The Magnificent Seven"
Single by The Clash
from the album Sandinista!
B-side "The Magnificent Dance"
Released 10 April 1981 (U.K.)
Format 7" single
Recorded April 1980 at Electric Lady Studios, New York
Genre
Length 5:33
Label CBS
Writer(s) The Clash
Producer(s) The Clash
The Clash singles chronology
"Hitsville U.K."
(1981)		 "The Magnificent Seven"
(1981)		 "This Is Radio Clash"
(1981)

"The Magnificent Seven" is a song and single by the English punk rock band The Clash. It was the third single from their fourth album Sandinista!. It reached number 34 on the UK Singles Chart.[1]

The song was inspired by raps by old school hip hop acts from New York City, like the Sugarhill Gang and Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five.[2] Rap was still a new and emerging music genre at the time and the band, especially Mick Jones, was very impressed with it, so much so that Jones took to carrying a boombox around and got the nickname "Whack Attack". The song was recorded in April 1980 at Electric Lady Studios in New York City, built around a funky bass loop played by Norman Watt-Roy, The Blockheads. Joe Strummer wrote the words on the spot, a technique that was also used to create Sandinista!'s other rap track, "Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice)". "The Magnificent Seven" represents the first attempt by a rock band to write and perform original rap music, and one of the earliest examples of hip hop records with political and social content. It is the first major white rap record, predating the recording of Blondie's "Rapture" by six months.

“ When we came to the U.S., Mick stumbled upon a music shop in Brooklyn that carried the music of Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five, the Sugar Hill Gang...these groups were radically changing music and they changed everything for us. ”
— Joe Strummer[2]

Though it failed to chart in America, the song was an underground hit and received heavy play on underground and college radio. Also popular were various dance re-mixes, both official B-side, ("The Magnificent Dance"), and original DJ remixes such as WBLS's remix known as "Dirty Harry", after the film of same name, which can be found on various Clash's bootlegs, including Clash on Broadway Disc 4: The Outtakes.

The single was reissued in 1981 with "Stop the World" as its B-side and with different sleeve art.

Lyrics

Thematically, "The Magnificent Seven" is somewhat similar to the punkier "Career Opportunities", in that it takes the drudgery of the working life as its starting point. Unlike "Career Opportunities", however, in stream of consciousness fashion it also deals with consumerism, popular media, historical figures, and addresses these subjects with exuberance and humor. The first verses of "The Magnificent Seven" follow a nameless worker (narrated in the second person) as he wakes up and goes to work, not for personal advancement but to buy his girlfriend consumer goods:

Working for a rise to better my station / Take my baby to sophistication / She's seen the ads, she thinks it's nice / Better work hard, I seen the price

The nameless worker then goes off for a cheeseburger lunch-break, and the lyrics devolve into a blur of fleeting images from television, movies and advertising:

Italian mobster shoots a lobster / Seafood restaurant gets out of hand / A car in the fridge or a fridge in the car? / Like cowboys do in TV land!

Finally, the song takes historical figures, including Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Richard Nixon and Socrates, and places them in modern America, before asking sarcastically whether "Plato the Greek" or Rin Tin Tin is more famous to the masses.

An exclaimed "newsflash" near the end of the song, "Vacuum Cleaner Sucks Up Budgie!", was in fact a headline in the News of the World newspaper at the time of the song's mixing in England, according to Joe Strummer.

The Magnificent Dance

"The Magnificent Dance", released on 12 April 1981 by CBS in 12-inch single format,[1] is the dance remix of "The Magnificent Seven". The maxi single was released in the UK featuring an edited version of "The Magnificent Seven" on side-A, and in the U.S., where it was backed with the extended version of "The Cool Out".[1] It is credited to "Pepe Unidos", a pseudonym for Strummer, Paul Simonon and manager Bernie Rhodes. "Pepe Unidos" also produced "The Cool Out", a remix of "The Call Up". This dance version "definitely capitalized on the funky groove of the original, adding in some very cool drumming."[3]

In 2015, Pitchfork Media included the song on their "Early 80's Disco" playlist, saying "if they were bored with the USA in 1977, four years on, they were also bored with both punk and rock. Instead, they became infatuated with NYC street culture, from early hip-hop to post-disco. This dubbed-out disco remix of the lead track off of Sandinista! was a club hit and the record Larry Levan would use to fine tune the sound system at the Paradise Garage."[4]

Cover versions

The song was played by The Max Weinberg 7 on Late Night with Conan O'Brien on its first show since the Writer's Strike. An instrumental version of the song was used with sampled vocals from Basement Jaxx's "Romeo" by 2 Many DJs to create the track "The Magnificent Romeo".[5]

Personnel

Charts

Year Chart Peak
position
1981-04-251981 UK Singles Chart[6] 34
1981-05-301981 Belgium (Ultratop 50 Flanders)[7] 18
1981-07-181981 Dutch Single Chart[8] 21
1982-??-??1982 US Billboard Club Play Singles[9] 21

References

Sources

Books
  • Gilbert, Pat (2005) [2004]. Passion Is a Fashion: The Real Story of The Clash (4th ed.). London: Aurum Press. ISBN 1-84513-113-4. OCLC 61177239. 
  • Gray, Marcus (2005) [1995]. The Clash: Return of the Last Gang in Town (5th revised ed.). London: Helter Skelter. ISBN 1-905139-10-1. OCLC 60668626. 
  • Green, Johnny; Garry Barker (2003) [1997]. A Riot of Our Own: Night and Day with The Clash (3rd ed.). London: Orion. ISBN 0-7528-5843-2. OCLC 52990890. 
  • Gruen, Bob; Chris Salewicz (2004) [2001]. The Clash (3rd ed.). London: Omnibus. ISBN 1-903399-34-3. OCLC 69241279. 
  • Needs, Kris (2005-01-25). Joe Strummer and the Legend of the Clash. London: Plexus. ISBN 0-85965-348-X. OCLC 53155325. 
  • Topping, Keith (2004) [2003]. The Complete Clash (2nd ed.). Richmond: Reynolds & Hearn. ISBN 1-903111-70-6. OCLC 63129186. 
Journals and magazines
Web

External links

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