The Magnificent Seven (song)
Encyclopedia
"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. 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 remix
es 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.
) as he wakes up and goes to work, not for personal advancement but to buy his girlfriend consumer goods:
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:
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.
format, is the dance remix of "The Magnificent Seven". The maxi single was released in the UK featuring the extended versions of "The Magnificent Seven" on side-A, and in the U.S., where it was backed with the extended version of "The Cool Out". 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."
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".
"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. 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 remix
es 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.
) as he wakes up and goes to work, not for personal advancement but to buy his girlfriend consumer goods:
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:
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.
format, is the dance remix of "The Magnificent Seven". The maxi single was released in the UK featuring the extended versions of "The Magnificent Seven" on side-A, and in the U.S., where it was backed with the extended version of "The Cool Out". 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."
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".
"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. 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 remix
es 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.
) as he wakes up and goes to work, not for personal advancement but to buy his girlfriend consumer goods:
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:
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.
format, is the dance remix of "The Magnificent Seven". The maxi single was released in the UK featuring the extended versions of "The Magnificent Seven" on side-A, and in the U.S., where it was backed with the extended version of "The Cool Out". 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."
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".
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
band The Clash
The Clash
The Clash were an English punk rock band that formed in 1976 as part of the original wave of British punk. Along with punk, their music incorporated elements of reggae, ska, dub, funk, rap, dance, and rockabilly...
. It was the third single from their fourth album Sandinista!
Sandinista!
Sandinista! is the fourth studio album by the English punk rock band the Clash. It was released on 12 December 1980 as a triple album containing 36 tracks, with 6 songs on each side...
. It reached number 34 on the UK Singles Chart
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...
.
The song was inspired by raps by old school hip hop
Old school hip hop
Old school hip hop describes the earliest commercially recorded hip hop music , and the music in the period preceding it from which it was directly descended . Old school hip hop is said to end around 1983 or 1984 with the emergence of Run–D.M.C., the first new school hip hop group...
acts from New York City, like the Sugarhill Gang
The Sugarhill Gang
The Sugarhill Gang is an American hip hop group, known mostly for their 1979 hit, "Rapper's Delight", the first hip hop single to become a Top 40 hit. The song uses the instrumental track from the classic hit "Good Times" by Chic as its foundation....
and Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five. Rap was still a new and emerging music genre at the time and the band, especially Mick Jones
Mick Jones (The Clash)
Michael Geoffrey "Mick" Jones is the former lead guitarist, secondary vocalist and co-founder for the British punk rock band The Clash until his dismissal in 1983. He went on to form the band Big Audio Dynamite with Don Letts before line-up changes led to the formation of Big Audio Dynamite II and...
, 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
Electric Lady Studios
Electric Lady Studios, at 52 West 8th Street, in New York City's Greenwich Village, is a recording studio originally built by Jimi Hendrix and designed by John Storyk in 1970...
in New York City, built around a bass loop played by Norman Watt-Roy
Norman Watt-Roy
Norman Watt-Roy is the bassist for The Blockheads, previously known as Ian Dury & the Blockheads.In November 1954 the Watt-Roy family, including Norman, his older brother Garth and his sister, moved to England...
of the Blockheads
Ian Dury
Ian Robins Dury was an English rock and roll singer, lyricist, bandleader and actor who initially rose to fame during the late 1970s, during the punk and New Wave era of rock music...
. Joe Strummer
Joe Strummer
John Graham Mellor , best remembered by his stage name Joe Strummer, was the co-founder, lyricist, rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist of the British punk rock band The Clash. His musical experience included his membership in The 101ers, Latino Rockabilly War, The Mescaleros and The Pogues, in...
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
Blondie (band)
Blondie is an American rock band, founded by singer Deborah Harry and guitarist Chris Stein. The band was a pioneer in the early American New Wave and punk scenes of the mid-1970s...
"Rapture
Rapture (song)
"Rapture" is a single by the American new wave band Blondie. It was released in January 1981 and was the second and final song to be released from the band's 1980 top 10 album Autoamerican, the first being "The Tide Is High", which had topped the chart in the US and UK. "Rapture" went on to reach...
" 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 remix
Remix
A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. This term is also used for any alterations of media other than song ....
es such as WBLS
WBLS
WBLS is an urban adult contemporary FM radio station in New York City, operating on 107.5 MHz. WBLS is owned by Inner City Broadcasting Corporation along with sister station WLIB...
's remix known as "Dirty Harry", after the film
Dirty Harry
Dirty Harry is a 1971 American crime thriller produced and directed by Don Siegel, the first in the Dirty Harry series. Clint Eastwood plays the title role, in his first outing as San Francisco Police Department Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan....
of same name, which can be found on various Clash's bootlegs
Bootleg recording
A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging...
, 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 great exuberance and humor. The first verses of "The Magnificent Seven" follow a nameless worker (narrated in the second personSecond-person narrative
The second-person narrative is a narrative mode in which the protagonist or another main character is referred to by employment of second-person personal pronouns and other kinds of addressing forms, for example the English second-person pronoun "you"....
) 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
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , pronounced . 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement...
, Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
and Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
, and places them in modern America, before asking sarcastically whether "Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
the Greek" or Rin Tin Tin
Rin Tin Tin
Rin Tin Tin was the name given to a dog adopted from a WWI battlefield that went on to star in twenty-three Hollywood films. The name was subsequently given to several related German Shepherd dogs featured in fictional stories on film, radio and television.-Origins:The first of the line Rin 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
News of the World
The News of the World was a national red top newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world, and at closure still had one of the highest English language circulations...
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 single12-inch single
The 12-inch single is a type of gramophone record that has wider groove spacing compared to other types of records. This allows for louder levels to be cut on the disc by the cutting engineer, which in turn gives a wider dynamic range, and thus better sound quality...
format, is the dance remix of "The Magnificent Seven". The maxi single was released in the UK featuring the extended versions of "The Magnificent Seven" on side-A, and in the U.S., where it was backed with the extended version of "The Cool Out". It is credited to "Pepe Unidos", a pseudonym for Strummer, Paul Simonon
Paul Simonon
Paul Gustave Simonon is an English musician and artist best known as the bass guitarist for punk rock band The Clash. Recent work includes his involvement in the album The Good, the Bad & the Queen with Damon Albarn, Simon Tong and Tony Allen, released in January 2007...
and manager Bernie Rhodes
Bernie Rhodes
Bernard Rhodes is the former manager of English punk rock band The Clash. He previously worked with Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren and once claimed to have "invented punk".-Management:...
. "Pepe Unidos" also produced "The Cool Out", a remix of "The Call Up
The Call Up
"The Call Up" is a song by English punk rock group The Clash. It was released as the first single from the band's fourth album, Sandinista!...
". This dance version "definitely capitalized on the funky groove of the original, adding in some very cool drumming."
Cover versions
The song was played by The Max Weinberg 7 on Late Night With Conan O'BrienLate Night with Conan O'Brien
Late Night with Conan O'Brien is an American late-night talk show hosted by Conan O'Brien that aired 2,725 episodes on NBC between 1993 and 2009. The show featured varied comedic material, celebrity interviews, and musical and comedy performances. Late Night aired weeknights at 12:37 am...
on its first show since the Writer's Strike
2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike
The 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, more commonly referred to as simply the Writers' Strike, was a strike by the Writers Guild of America, East and the Writers Guild of America, West ....
. An instrumental version of the song was used with sampled vocals from Basement Jaxx's
Basement Jaxx
Basement Jaxx are a British electronic dance music duo from London, England consisting of Felix Buxton born 1971 and Simon Ratcliffe born 1 December 1969. They first rose to popularity in the late 1990s...
"Romeo" by 2 Many DJs to create the track "The Magnificent Romeo".
Charts
|
"The Magnificent Seven" is a song and single by the English punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
band The Clash
The Clash
The Clash were an English punk rock band that formed in 1976 as part of the original wave of British punk. Along with punk, their music incorporated elements of reggae, ska, dub, funk, rap, dance, and rockabilly...
. It was the third single from their fourth album Sandinista!
Sandinista!
Sandinista! is the fourth studio album by the English punk rock band the Clash. It was released on 12 December 1980 as a triple album containing 36 tracks, with 6 songs on each side...
. It reached number 34 on the UK Singles Chart
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...
.
The song was inspired by raps by old school hip hop
Old school hip hop
Old school hip hop describes the earliest commercially recorded hip hop music , and the music in the period preceding it from which it was directly descended . Old school hip hop is said to end around 1983 or 1984 with the emergence of Run–D.M.C., the first new school hip hop group...
acts from New York City, like the Sugarhill Gang
The Sugarhill Gang
The Sugarhill Gang is an American hip hop group, known mostly for their 1979 hit, "Rapper's Delight", the first hip hop single to become a Top 40 hit. The song uses the instrumental track from the classic hit "Good Times" by Chic as its foundation....
and Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five. Rap was still a new and emerging music genre at the time and the band, especially Mick Jones
Mick Jones (The Clash)
Michael Geoffrey "Mick" Jones is the former lead guitarist, secondary vocalist and co-founder for the British punk rock band The Clash until his dismissal in 1983. He went on to form the band Big Audio Dynamite with Don Letts before line-up changes led to the formation of Big Audio Dynamite II and...
, 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
Electric Lady Studios
Electric Lady Studios, at 52 West 8th Street, in New York City's Greenwich Village, is a recording studio originally built by Jimi Hendrix and designed by John Storyk in 1970...
in New York City, built around a bass loop played by Norman Watt-Roy
Norman Watt-Roy
Norman Watt-Roy is the bassist for The Blockheads, previously known as Ian Dury & the Blockheads.In November 1954 the Watt-Roy family, including Norman, his older brother Garth and his sister, moved to England...
of the Blockheads
Ian Dury
Ian Robins Dury was an English rock and roll singer, lyricist, bandleader and actor who initially rose to fame during the late 1970s, during the punk and New Wave era of rock music...
. Joe Strummer
Joe Strummer
John Graham Mellor , best remembered by his stage name Joe Strummer, was the co-founder, lyricist, rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist of the British punk rock band The Clash. His musical experience included his membership in The 101ers, Latino Rockabilly War, The Mescaleros and The Pogues, in...
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
Blondie (band)
Blondie is an American rock band, founded by singer Deborah Harry and guitarist Chris Stein. The band was a pioneer in the early American New Wave and punk scenes of the mid-1970s...
"Rapture
Rapture (song)
"Rapture" is a single by the American new wave band Blondie. It was released in January 1981 and was the second and final song to be released from the band's 1980 top 10 album Autoamerican, the first being "The Tide Is High", which had topped the chart in the US and UK. "Rapture" went on to reach...
" 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 remix
Remix
A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. This term is also used for any alterations of media other than song ....
es such as WBLS
WBLS
WBLS is an urban adult contemporary FM radio station in New York City, operating on 107.5 MHz. WBLS is owned by Inner City Broadcasting Corporation along with sister station WLIB...
's remix known as "Dirty Harry", after the film
Dirty Harry
Dirty Harry is a 1971 American crime thriller produced and directed by Don Siegel, the first in the Dirty Harry series. Clint Eastwood plays the title role, in his first outing as San Francisco Police Department Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan....
of same name, which can be found on various Clash's bootlegs
Bootleg recording
A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging...
, 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 great exuberance and humor. The first verses of "The Magnificent Seven" follow a nameless worker (narrated in the second personSecond-person narrative
The second-person narrative is a narrative mode in which the protagonist or another main character is referred to by employment of second-person personal pronouns and other kinds of addressing forms, for example the English second-person pronoun "you"....
) 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
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , pronounced . 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement...
, Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
and Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
, and places them in modern America, before asking sarcastically whether "Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
the Greek" or Rin Tin Tin
Rin Tin Tin
Rin Tin Tin was the name given to a dog adopted from a WWI battlefield that went on to star in twenty-three Hollywood films. The name was subsequently given to several related German Shepherd dogs featured in fictional stories on film, radio and television.-Origins:The first of the line Rin 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
News of the World
The News of the World was a national red top newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world, and at closure still had one of the highest English language circulations...
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 single12-inch single
The 12-inch single is a type of gramophone record that has wider groove spacing compared to other types of records. This allows for louder levels to be cut on the disc by the cutting engineer, which in turn gives a wider dynamic range, and thus better sound quality...
format, is the dance remix of "The Magnificent Seven". The maxi single was released in the UK featuring the extended versions of "The Magnificent Seven" on side-A, and in the U.S., where it was backed with the extended version of "The Cool Out". It is credited to "Pepe Unidos", a pseudonym for Strummer, Paul Simonon
Paul Simonon
Paul Gustave Simonon is an English musician and artist best known as the bass guitarist for punk rock band The Clash. Recent work includes his involvement in the album The Good, the Bad & the Queen with Damon Albarn, Simon Tong and Tony Allen, released in January 2007...
and manager Bernie Rhodes
Bernie Rhodes
Bernard Rhodes is the former manager of English punk rock band The Clash. He previously worked with Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren and once claimed to have "invented punk".-Management:...
. "Pepe Unidos" also produced "The Cool Out", a remix of "The Call Up
The Call Up
"The Call Up" is a song by English punk rock group The Clash. It was released as the first single from the band's fourth album, Sandinista!...
". This dance version "definitely capitalized on the funky groove of the original, adding in some very cool drumming."
Cover versions
The song was played by The Max Weinberg 7 on Late Night With Conan O'BrienLate Night with Conan O'Brien
Late Night with Conan O'Brien is an American late-night talk show hosted by Conan O'Brien that aired 2,725 episodes on NBC between 1993 and 2009. The show featured varied comedic material, celebrity interviews, and musical and comedy performances. Late Night aired weeknights at 12:37 am...
on its first show since the Writer's Strike
2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike
The 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, more commonly referred to as simply the Writers' Strike, was a strike by the Writers Guild of America, East and the Writers Guild of America, West ....
. An instrumental version of the song was used with sampled vocals from Basement Jaxx's
Basement Jaxx
Basement Jaxx are a British electronic dance music duo from London, England consisting of Felix Buxton born 1971 and Simon Ratcliffe born 1 December 1969. They first rose to popularity in the late 1990s...
"Romeo" by 2 Many DJs to create the track "The Magnificent Romeo".
Charts
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"The Magnificent Seven" is a song and single by the English punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
band The Clash
The Clash
The Clash were an English punk rock band that formed in 1976 as part of the original wave of British punk. Along with punk, their music incorporated elements of reggae, ska, dub, funk, rap, dance, and rockabilly...
. It was the third single from their fourth album Sandinista!
Sandinista!
Sandinista! is the fourth studio album by the English punk rock band the Clash. It was released on 12 December 1980 as a triple album containing 36 tracks, with 6 songs on each side...
. It reached number 34 on the UK Singles Chart
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...
.
The song was inspired by raps by old school hip hop
Old school hip hop
Old school hip hop describes the earliest commercially recorded hip hop music , and the music in the period preceding it from which it was directly descended . Old school hip hop is said to end around 1983 or 1984 with the emergence of Run–D.M.C., the first new school hip hop group...
acts from New York City, like the Sugarhill Gang
The Sugarhill Gang
The Sugarhill Gang is an American hip hop group, known mostly for their 1979 hit, "Rapper's Delight", the first hip hop single to become a Top 40 hit. The song uses the instrumental track from the classic hit "Good Times" by Chic as its foundation....
and Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five. Rap was still a new and emerging music genre at the time and the band, especially Mick Jones
Mick Jones (The Clash)
Michael Geoffrey "Mick" Jones is the former lead guitarist, secondary vocalist and co-founder for the British punk rock band The Clash until his dismissal in 1983. He went on to form the band Big Audio Dynamite with Don Letts before line-up changes led to the formation of Big Audio Dynamite II and...
, 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
Electric Lady Studios
Electric Lady Studios, at 52 West 8th Street, in New York City's Greenwich Village, is a recording studio originally built by Jimi Hendrix and designed by John Storyk in 1970...
in New York City, built around a bass loop played by Norman Watt-Roy
Norman Watt-Roy
Norman Watt-Roy is the bassist for The Blockheads, previously known as Ian Dury & the Blockheads.In November 1954 the Watt-Roy family, including Norman, his older brother Garth and his sister, moved to England...
of the Blockheads
Ian Dury
Ian Robins Dury was an English rock and roll singer, lyricist, bandleader and actor who initially rose to fame during the late 1970s, during the punk and New Wave era of rock music...
. Joe Strummer
Joe Strummer
John Graham Mellor , best remembered by his stage name Joe Strummer, was the co-founder, lyricist, rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist of the British punk rock band The Clash. His musical experience included his membership in The 101ers, Latino Rockabilly War, The Mescaleros and The Pogues, in...
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
Blondie (band)
Blondie is an American rock band, founded by singer Deborah Harry and guitarist Chris Stein. The band was a pioneer in the early American New Wave and punk scenes of the mid-1970s...
"Rapture
Rapture (song)
"Rapture" is a single by the American new wave band Blondie. It was released in January 1981 and was the second and final song to be released from the band's 1980 top 10 album Autoamerican, the first being "The Tide Is High", which had topped the chart in the US and UK. "Rapture" went on to reach...
" 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 remix
Remix
A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. This term is also used for any alterations of media other than song ....
es such as WBLS
WBLS
WBLS is an urban adult contemporary FM radio station in New York City, operating on 107.5 MHz. WBLS is owned by Inner City Broadcasting Corporation along with sister station WLIB...
's remix known as "Dirty Harry", after the film
Dirty Harry
Dirty Harry is a 1971 American crime thriller produced and directed by Don Siegel, the first in the Dirty Harry series. Clint Eastwood plays the title role, in his first outing as San Francisco Police Department Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan....
of same name, which can be found on various Clash's bootlegs
Bootleg recording
A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging...
, 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 great exuberance and humor. The first verses of "The Magnificent Seven" follow a nameless worker (narrated in the second personSecond-person narrative
The second-person narrative is a narrative mode in which the protagonist or another main character is referred to by employment of second-person personal pronouns and other kinds of addressing forms, for example the English second-person pronoun "you"....
) 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
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , pronounced . 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement...
, Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
and Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
, and places them in modern America, before asking sarcastically whether "Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
the Greek" or Rin Tin Tin
Rin Tin Tin
Rin Tin Tin was the name given to a dog adopted from a WWI battlefield that went on to star in twenty-three Hollywood films. The name was subsequently given to several related German Shepherd dogs featured in fictional stories on film, radio and television.-Origins:The first of the line Rin 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
News of the World
The News of the World was a national red top newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world, and at closure still had one of the highest English language circulations...
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 single12-inch single
The 12-inch single is a type of gramophone record that has wider groove spacing compared to other types of records. This allows for louder levels to be cut on the disc by the cutting engineer, which in turn gives a wider dynamic range, and thus better sound quality...
format, is the dance remix of "The Magnificent Seven". The maxi single was released in the UK featuring the extended versions of "The Magnificent Seven" on side-A, and in the U.S., where it was backed with the extended version of "The Cool Out". It is credited to "Pepe Unidos", a pseudonym for Strummer, Paul Simonon
Paul Simonon
Paul Gustave Simonon is an English musician and artist best known as the bass guitarist for punk rock band The Clash. Recent work includes his involvement in the album The Good, the Bad & the Queen with Damon Albarn, Simon Tong and Tony Allen, released in January 2007...
and manager Bernie Rhodes
Bernie Rhodes
Bernard Rhodes is the former manager of English punk rock band The Clash. He previously worked with Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren and once claimed to have "invented punk".-Management:...
. "Pepe Unidos" also produced "The Cool Out", a remix of "The Call Up
The Call Up
"The Call Up" is a song by English punk rock group The Clash. It was released as the first single from the band's fourth album, Sandinista!...
". This dance version "definitely capitalized on the funky groove of the original, adding in some very cool drumming."
Cover versions
The song was played by The Max Weinberg 7 on Late Night With Conan O'BrienLate Night with Conan O'Brien
Late Night with Conan O'Brien is an American late-night talk show hosted by Conan O'Brien that aired 2,725 episodes on NBC between 1993 and 2009. The show featured varied comedic material, celebrity interviews, and musical and comedy performances. Late Night aired weeknights at 12:37 am...
on its first show since the Writer's Strike
2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike
The 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, more commonly referred to as simply the Writers' Strike, was a strike by the Writers Guild of America, East and the Writers Guild of America, West ....
. An instrumental version of the song was used with sampled vocals from Basement Jaxx's
Basement Jaxx
Basement Jaxx are a British electronic dance music duo from London, England consisting of Felix Buxton born 1971 and Simon Ratcliffe born 1 December 1969. They first rose to popularity in the late 1990s...
"Romeo" by 2 Many DJs to create the track "The Magnificent Romeo".
Charts
|