Famously Misinterpreted Songs and What They’re Really About

“Rock the Casbah” by The Clash

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Unlike “London Calling,” which wasn’t political, “Rock the Casbah” absolutely was. In 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini banned all music in Iran. Frontman Joe Strummer explained, “Somebody’d told me earlier that if you had a disco album in Tehran, you got 20 lashes. And if you had a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label whiskey, you got 40 lashes. I couldn’t get this out of my mind, so I was trying to say fanaticism is nowhere. There’s no tenderness or humanity in fanaticism. That’s what I was trying to say in ‘Rock the Casbah.’”

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