1979 · Behind the Songs
Reggae, Brixton and a bassist at the microphone.
London Calling, released in December 1979, is usually remembered as Joe Strummer and Mick Jones’s grand statement — but one of its most distinctive tracks belongs to neither of them. “The Guns of Brixton” was written and sung by bassist Paul Simonon, the first Clash song composed and sung by him. It is also the band’s first song written purely as reggae, a nod to the Caribbean culture of the South London neighborhood the band called home.
The song was cut at Wessex Studios in London during the London Calling sessions, produced by Guy Stevens, and reportedly finished in one or two takes. Legend has it that Simonon sang his lead vocal while staring down a CBS executive who had wandered into the studio. The lyric nods to the 1972 film The Harder They Come: Simonon, raised around Brixton’s reggae sound systems, borrowed the spirit of the film’s outlaw hero Ivanhoe Martin for a song about a neighborhood bracing for a fight.
The track was never released as a single in its original form; a remix, “Return to Brixton,” finally reached No. 57 in the UK in 1990. Its afterlife has been long: Beats International built the UK No. 1 “Dub Be Good to Me” around its bassline in 1990, Cypress Hill sampled it on 2004’s “What’s Your Number?,” and Jimmy Cliff — whose film inspired it — covered it himself, on his Sacred Fire EP in 2011 and Rebirth in 2012. Even Brix Smith Start took her stage name from the song’s title.
In the studio, Simonon sang and played bass while Jones added lead guitar, Strummer rhythm guitar, Topper Headon drums and Mickey Gallagher organ. A fragment of the song even resurfaces at the end of “Broadway” on Sandinista!, sung by the young Maria Gallagher with her father Mick on keyboards. It remains the moment the quietest Clash member stepped forward — and proved the band’s range stretched far beyond punk.