Combat Rock is an angry, brilliant album.
The very beginning of this song hints at British Imperialism, specifically how Britain was still regarded as some great power while it’s ‘steel mills’ were rusting under Thatcher. I agree that this song is mainly about kids fathered by GIs during the Vietnam war wanting to go ‘home’ to the states. The US is the hell that the song talks about, not a kingdom nor a republic, but a ‘junkiedom’. It’s also about the difficulty finding asylum in the US.
Alphabet City is in New York, it was a pretty rough area in the 80s, there was a lot of drug dealing. The refernce to the volatile Molotov seems to suggest some of the racial tensions in NY back then.
The song makes a lot more sense when you listen to the rest of the songs on the album, a lot of stuff about cultural imperialism, war and drugs.
@J_R You're right overall, but the U.S. is NOT the hell referenced in the song, not by a long shot. Strummer meant the biblical hell, but used in the common phrase of telling someone to go to hell. That's basically how the victims in the songs are thought of, as just some sad lot.
@J_R You're right overall, but the U.S. is NOT the hell referenced in the song, not by a long shot. Strummer meant the biblical hell, but used in the common phrase of telling someone to go to hell. That's basically how the victims in the songs are thought of, as just some sad lot.
Combat Rock is an angry, brilliant album. The very beginning of this song hints at British Imperialism, specifically how Britain was still regarded as some great power while it’s ‘steel mills’ were rusting under Thatcher. I agree that this song is mainly about kids fathered by GIs during the Vietnam war wanting to go ‘home’ to the states. The US is the hell that the song talks about, not a kingdom nor a republic, but a ‘junkiedom’. It’s also about the difficulty finding asylum in the US. Alphabet City is in New York, it was a pretty rough area in the 80s, there was a lot of drug dealing. The refernce to the volatile Molotov seems to suggest some of the racial tensions in NY back then. The song makes a lot more sense when you listen to the rest of the songs on the album, a lot of stuff about cultural imperialism, war and drugs.
@J_R You're right overall, but the U.S. is NOT the hell referenced in the song, not by a long shot. Strummer meant the biblical hell, but used in the common phrase of telling someone to go to hell. That's basically how the victims in the songs are thought of, as just some sad lot.
@J_R You're right overall, but the U.S. is NOT the hell referenced in the song, not by a long shot. Strummer meant the biblical hell, but used in the common phrase of telling someone to go to hell. That's basically how the victims in the songs are thought of, as just some sad lot.