The Clash – Spanish Bombs (Chords)
Is there a cooler ukulele player ever than Joe Strummer? Not that I can think of. And The Clash are certainly the greatest punk band of all time. So with the 40th anniversary of London Calling coming up, I thought I’d write up my favourite from the record.
I’ve gone with a capo on the 4th fret for the chords. It’s higher than I’d usually like but it makes the chords simple and means you can combine the chords and the intro riff very easily. If you want to play just the riff it goes like this in the intro:
And slightly differently in the middle of the song when the intro is reprised:
Suggested Strumming Pattern
I use this as the main pattern:
d – d – d u d u
Intro: Main strum once on F. Then halving the pattern so you do d-d- on Dsus2 and dudu on F. Then main strum once for everything else.
Verse: Similar to the intro except here you’re halving the strum from Dm-Am and doing it once for everything else. Here’s how that sounds:
Chorus, Bridge and Outro: You can just carry on with the strum as you have been halving all the bars for Dm-Am. Or you can follow the guitar and do this once for each Dm and Am:
x x d –
Which sounds like this:
Twiddly Bits
The third verse has a neat lead line which you can play on uke (without a capo) like this.
Links
Buy it on Amazon
The Clash – Should I Stay or Should I Go (Chords)
The Clash – Straight to Hell / MIA – Paper Planes
