In December, producer Mickey Foote—Strummer's old sound-man from the
101'ers and producer of
The Clash and "
White Riot"—increased the speed of the tape for the finished master of the song, after manager
Bernie Rhodes decided the song sounded "a bit flat". This technique, known as "
varispeeding", rendered the song one
semitone higher in pitch. Strummer and Jones were in
Jamaica at the time, and when they heard the finished result, they fired Foote. With the exception of the 2000 re-issue of the US version of
The Clash, the original version of the song (at the proper speed) has been used on every re-release since.
Paul Simonon told
Uncut magazine in 2015 that the recording sessions on the song were strained due to an argument he had been having with
Mick Jones: "I seem to remember that, when we did 'Clash City Rockers', him and me had had a row. I was in one corner of the studio and Mick was in the other. He had to tell
Joe what the chords were so he could come over and tell me. The guy who was recording it didn’t know what was going on cos of this weird communication breakdown." ==Track listing==