From Garahge to Garidge: The Appropriation of Garage Rock in the Clash's “Garageland” (1977)

In the song “Garageland” from their debut album, the Clash use the concept of garage rock to define a working‐class, urban community devoted to music and radical politics. This paper explores the relationships between this song and 1960s garage rock, in particular their shared traits of masculinity, whiteness, and the rhetoric of worthlessness. I argue that “Garageland,” through music and lyrics, self‐consciously adopts the values of garage rock, while abandoning the sound of the earlier genre. Thus, it marks the separation of the ideals of garage rock from its original musical style, a separation with consequence for later genres.