My Daddy Was a Bank Robber

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Lunch and dinner comprised sandwiches and Cokes grabbed from roadside diners in Minnesota and North Dakota; "impersonal chain restaurants," as Dad called them, were out of the question. My father regaled me with topographical and historical facts about each state we passed through. These were the kinds of details he loved—charming details, vacation details. Little Bighorn Battlefield, the Ulm Pishkun buffalo jump, the Continental Divide. We snapped grinning Polaroids of each other standing before billboards and scenic overlooks, and enlisted strangers to photograph the two of us together. In the photos, we appear incongruous, I in my tube top and cutoff jeans and Dad in his dress shirt, loafers, and highway-patrolman sunglasses. My father lit a cigarette and waved out the match in a crazy figure 8. "Oh, I don't know. I just thought I'd come over and visit my number-one daughter." It's a reggae song by a punk band. It runs well over 4 minutes without ever changing rhythm, tempo, dynamics, or melody. Its lyrics are meandering—even pointless at worst—with verses & refrains all but interchangeable, rendering any inherent structure meaningless. With all of these elements, the song feels long & repetitive, almost to the level of deadening.

Gray, Marcus (2005) [1995]. The Clash: Return of the Last Gang in Town (5th reviseded.). London: Helter Skelter. ISBN 1-905139-10-1. OCLC 60668626. Sometimes Dad came looking for me, ostensibly because he was worried. He'd complain about my poor judgment, just as he had in Minneapolis: "All I have to do is drive to the worst part of town and that's where I'll always find you." He was just lonely, though. He wanted me to hide with him in the beige fortress, but that was impossible. I was just starting out and his life was closing in. I hear it less as a set of interconnected verses than I do an unintended narrative. If we take the Clash at their word (& the Clash are nothing of not literalists), the old man at the bar can mean "the old man," as in, "My daddy," i.e., the Bankrobber. It makes sense that he never went to prison (he never hurt nobody) & his wisdom about "serving one machine" could be either the life that drove him to bank robbing or a metaphor for the society that gave him the job in the first place. Peterson, Tami. "The Uncut Crap - Over 56 Things You Never Knew About The Clash - NME 16 March 1991". londonsburning.org. Archived from the original on 17 July 2012. Ross from Leicester, United KingdomMikey Dread has died since then - hope he'd seen some royalties by then.

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Well, actually, I might not be home. I'm going out of town on business. Could you have a friend meet you?" Despite such ludicrous fingerpointing, The Clash weren’t intending the story to be taken so literally. They were, instead, pursuing a continuation of their formerly mastered themes of dead-end jobs and oppression, but this isn’t to say that the bank robber character never existed in the real world. The Uncut Crap - Over 56 Things You Never Knew About The Clash". NME. London: IPC Magazines. 3. 16 March 1991. ISSN 0028-6362. OCLC 4213418.

Needs, Kris (25 January 2005). Joe Strummer and the Legend of the Clash. London: Plexus. ISBN 0-85965-348-X. OCLC 53155325. Gruen, Bob; Salewicz, Chris (2004) [2001]. The Clash (3rded.). London: Omnibus. ISBN 1-903399-34-3. OCLC 69241279. Roberts, David (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19thed.). London: Guinness World Records. p.33. ISBN 1-904994-10-5. OCLC 64098209. I had no plans, except to travel to Iowa for Christmas. It would be my first trip to Mom's house in more than two years. There were good reasons for the pilgrimage: nostalgia for snow, a craving for homemade fudge and peanut brittle. Mostly, though, I missed my mother. I invited Dad along and, against my expectations, he accepted. I hoped to foster a cohesive, happy family, if only for Christmas. herein is the song's strange power: It's a song about classless society that itself is built like one. Verses & refrains are the peaks & valleys of popular music, with the verses almost always playing second-class citizens to the big & all-important refrains. But in "Bankrobber," it's not quite that simple. In this verse, the first verse is the refrain—or one of the refrains, since it's not even the only "verse" to repeated in full—thus leading to a breakdown, if you will, of the song's inherent class structure.

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Wait, did I say nothing rising to the surface? Spoke too soon. Because this song would be nothing without Joe Strummer singing his most passionate &—yes—beautiful performance. His conviction is the engine that runs this train, seeing through all aspects of sound, vision, & vibe. Bankrobber’ has now been solidified in history as one of The Clash’s most memorable non-album singles, but at the time, critics weren’t so sure. Some people were alienated by the band’s continued deviation from an original more punk-oriented sound following 1979’s London Calling, but over the decades, this more experimental era for the group has been widely revered.