Safe European Home

either -they had a bad experience and the song is to be taken at face value

• they are poking fun at brits tendency to be insular and 'whine' when they are on holiday in some sunny paradise
• they are demonstrating the frustrating divide between blacks and whites

or all of the above!!

This song is about the harsh reception that Strummer and Jones had on their song writing trip to Jamacia, and they wrote this song also to talk about the painful reality that white people get to go on vaction in the poor global south while non-whites in the global south can only go north in search of work. " why i never tell that natty dread drinks at the sheraton hotel" is talking about the segregation of tourist areas in jamacia-no locals allowed in unless they are working. (plus they could never afford to drink there anyway)

yeah it IS about when strummer and jones went to jamaica expecting it to be all chillin out smokin weed in the sun and they found that everyone wanted to rob them and didnt want them there. they were doing a radio show with mickey dread i think, or maybe that was later...anyway its definatly about their bad experiences in jamaica.

This is a great song — besides the fact that I can't hear the first ten seconds and not wish for a mosh pit, I love it because it's sarcastic and cynical and enraging and inspiring . Yes, it's definitely about racism and boorish closed-minded tourism — an "insular" mindset, if you want to call it that, like @philtheanarchist did. I think he and @boozm are the only ones who got it right, and the comments saying it's about how [they had a bad time because everyone wanted to take their money] not only miss the point, but reflect a blind-by-choice attitude at best, or flat-out racism at worst. I was reminded of this song when I was thinking about donald trump's fucking Muslim ban — another move to enforce his racist rhetoric, calculated to capitalize on the fury he's been selling to the half of a country who was already scared, and now he's got them whipped into a frenzy of finger-pointing and bullshit that pretty much translates to "keep 'em down where they belong!" And anyone who says he's just "trying to keep us safe" is just covering their ears and stabbing their own fingers into their eyes and refusing to see that this is the road to fascism.

And the only way to fight the man who would be king is to keep your eyes open so you can SEE injustice and DO something against it — not just walk by and say it's ok, or snap your fingers and say it's "a good song" about a bad trip.

The whole point of The Clash was political — they wrote songs about what made them angry — they called out injustice where they saw injustice — and to say that this song is about how "Joe an Mick dint have no fun in Jamaica" is just demonstrating ignorance as to what the whole movement was about and it misses the whole point of a powerful song from a band that inspired musicians and fans on every continent, changed rock & roll, blew up protest songs completely, and whose sounds and ideas formed a legacy that continues to influence generations of rockers in their time and to this day.

wheeeeeeeeeeeere'd you go?

I love the drum hit in the beginning and from there it's just pure fucking RAWK

aww paul and topper weren't too pleased that they didnt get to go =[

What a song to open an album with!

They recycled the "Rudy Can't Fail" line for one of the songs on London Calling

Nice

I think this song is about Strummer/The Clash's visit to Jamaica...well, from the lyrics it sounds like that EX: "natty dread", "every white face is an invitation to robbery" meaning whites are robbed because they think they're rich, "they got the weed" everyone knows they like to smoke the reefer over there, "rudy rudy rudy can't fail" rudy means rude boys...rude boys are in Jamaica

so I'm assuming Strummer/The Clash had a bad experience over there