The Magnificent Seven (song)

Infobox Single
Name = The Magnificent Seven

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Artist = The Clash
from Album = Sandinista!
B-side = "The Magnificent Dance"
Released = Start date|1981|4 (U.K.)
Format = 7" single
Recorded = 1980 at Electric Lady Studios, New York
Genre = Post-punk
Rap rock
Reggae rock
Length = 5:33
Label = CBS
Writer = The Clash
Producer = The Clash
Certification =
Last single = "Hitsville UK"
(1981)
This single = "The Magnificent Seven"
(1981)
Next single = "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.

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. [cite web |url=http://www.monthlyreview.org/0603ambrosio.htm |title=Monthly Review June 2003 Antonino D’Ambrosio |accessdate=2007-11-24 |last=D’Ambrosio |first=Antonino D’Ambrosio |year=2003 |month=06 |work=‘Let Fury Have the Hour’: The Passionate Politics of Joe Strummer |publisher=Montly Review |quote=Strummer and Jones quickly recognized the power of rap music that was just emerging from New York City’s underground in the late seventies. “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.”
With typical Clash inventiveness, they became one of the first white groups to incorporate rap into their music. As a tribute to the path-breaking Sugar Hill Gang, the Clash recorded The Magnificent Seven, one of their best-known and most important singles. ] 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 bass loop played by Norman Watt-Roy of 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.

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 (WBLS's in particular, known as "Dirty Harry", after the film of same name), and can be found on various Clash bootlegs, including "Clash on Broadway" Disc 4.

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 great 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, better my station / Get my baby some sophistication / Seen the ad, 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 a fridge or a fridge in a car? / Cowboys rule 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" is the dance remix of "The Magnificent Seven". 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." [cite web |url=http://www.punknews.org/review/973 |title=Punknews.org | The Clash - Super Black Market Clash |accessdate=2007-11-27 |publisher=Punknews.org |quote=Nearing the end of the album now (finally?), we head to "The Magnificent Dance", which is a remix, of course, of the great song "The Magnificent Seven" (which also shares its name with a great Western flick). This remix is also credited to Pepe Unidos. They definitely capitalized on the funky groove of the original, adding in some very cool drumming. ]

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.

Charts

Notes

References

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