HEAR THIS: Jimmy Cliff “The Guns of Brixton”

With Your Hands On Your Head—Or On The Trigger Of Your Gun?

If there were a proper Reggae Hall of Fame, Jimmy Cliff would be amongst the first inductees. As it is, he’s a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer who’s inspired everybody from Bob Dylan to the Neville Brothers. Now in his 60s, the man who auditioned Bob Marley for Leslie Kong and went on to portray Ivan, the original StarBwoy, in Perry Henzel’s film The Harder They Come still has a few tricks left up his sleeve. On Cliff’s new EP, Sacred Fire, he linked up with Rancid’s Tim Armstrong to remake a classic by The Clash in a stripped-down acoustic stylee. In an eerily appropriate twist of fate, the late Joe Strummer sings lyrics that are replete with references to Jimmy Cliff’s cinematic debut.

“I still feel like I really haven’t reached the limits of my creativity,” Jimmy Cliff told Stereogum. “I have this new song called ‘One More’ that I’ve been performing. The song says I’ve got one more bullet in my gun / I can’t run till the deal is done / I’ve got one more shot at the goal / straight from my soul and I’m in control. There is a fire that has been burning inside of me — a kind of sacred fire — that I feel like I’ve kept secret all of these years. All of this fire has yet to come out. It’s happening now.” Squeeze off…

2 Responses

  1. yeah says:

    wasnt joe’s lyrics. paul simonon, the bassist for the clash. wrote this song

  2. yeah says:

    also, tim armstrong ruins everything he touches. just look what hes done to the aggrolites and the street dogs. that he shared the stage with the ramones is fucking blashphemy. now he’s trying to take jimmy cliff. what a shame.

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