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[from a RS article]
"I just wanted to write music that could touch people," he says. "A songwriter -- you play a few chords and sing a melody that's been done a thousand times, and now you're a singer-songwriter. I think it takes a little more than that to do something that matters. And I wish I could write a song where all the parts work. When you hear a song like that, it's like finding a new friend. Maybe you've been fucking alone and looking for someone, and when you find them, it's like everything seems better. I feel like sometimes great artists -- it won't politically affect anything, but it can make a crack in the ceiling and you can see a bit of light. You don't know what's gonna come, but you try. I think eighty-five percent of the fun is just going for it. And not going for it for your own gratification, but making personal sacrifices to do it right." Suddenly self-conscious about having waxed philosophical, he looks me in the eyes and laughs. "Or not."
Topper has no memory of his original lyrics, though former Clash co-manager Kosmo Vinyl told us it was a filthy ode to Headon’s girlfriend. "He had really pornographic lyrics for it if I remember correctly," Vinyl says. "Very, very pornographic lyrics."
Strummer decided to take the song in a different direction. His inspiration came from the Clash’s other manager, Bernie Rhodes, who asked the band, "Does everything have to be as long as a raga?" after a particularly long take of the track "Sean Flynn."
"I got back to the hotel that night and wrote on a typewriter, 'The King told the boogie men You gotta get that raga drop,' " Strummer said shortly before he died in 2002. "I looked at it and for some reason I started to think about what someone had told me earlier, that you get lashed for owning a disco album in
you can even stream audio of Topper playing the different parts of the song on a piano, which is pretty cool.
