The Alternative Number Ones: Big Audio Dynamite II’s “Rush”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it's for members only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

An extremely British, deeply amelodic voice honks out bittersweet but contented lines about the fruits of a chaotic life. Behind that voice, there's a big, shuffling drumbeat and a guitar that does some catchy things. But wait, no, that stuff went away. Now it's someone playing a piano. Except now the piano is gone, and it's a different shuffling drumbeat, bigger this time. Now there's a weird echo-wriggle organ that sounds just like the one that's on the song that they sometimes play on the other radio station, the one about the teenage wasteland.

But wait! Oh shit! Now everything is coming back, all at once! The British guy just keeps on bleating at me, as if he hasn't noticed all the weird things that have been happening behind him. Sometimes, the radio plays a different version of the song where all that stuff goes away and now we're listening to something that sounds like one of the skits from the De La Soul album, and then the song suddenly comes veering back in out of nowhere. They don't play that version very often, so it's special when they do.

The song seems like it should be called "Situation No Win," but no, it's "Rush," which is confusing because there's also a band called Rush. This band isn't Rush, though. Sometimes, the DJ says that the name is Big Audio Dynamite, which is cool, especially when you figure out that the initials spell "BAD." Sometimes, though, the DJ says it's Big Audio Dynamite II. Sometimes, they make jokes about the difference between Big Audio Dynamites I and II. Was any of this normal? I truly did not know, but I was into it.

I was 11 years old, and Big Audio Dynamite II's "Rush" was all over the radio. I'd just started switching over to the alternative station sometimes, usually looking for something that sounded more dangerous than whatever was on the hard rock station. "Rush" didn't sound dangerous, but it was a blast -- a sunny dance jam on a station where lots of the songs were weird and slow and sad. And "Rush" was always on.

Before working on this column, I'd never heard at least a few of the songs that I've written about. A handful of them are tracks that I never heard on the radio in my early alt-rock years. Maybe that's a testament to those songs' staying power or lack thereof, or maybe it just shows how regional and specific those stations could be in a pre-Clear Channel world. DC's WHFS, my local modern rock station, didn't play plenty of songs that became big national modern rock hits -- or, if they did, then I just don't remember. But HFS definitely played the motherfuck out of "Rush," and I was always happy to hear it.

Big Audio Dynamite -- either version -- are not among the '80s and '90s alternative rock bands that have become legendary. The Clash, Mick Jones' first band, was on that list pretty much from jump street, and people still talk about them all the time, but people don't talk about BAD. "Rush" is not a song that I encounter in the wild these days. In 1991, however, BAD were up there with C+C Music Factory and Metallica, at least for me.

That combination -- saturation followed by absence -- can lead to instant nostalgia. I can't hear "Rush" without suddenly turning into my 11-year-old self, which is why I wrote the opening paragraphs of this column like that. "Rush" is the kind of song that an 11-year-old can love, but I don't think you have to transform into your own inner 11-year-old to love the track. It just helps.

Mick Jones' post-Clash genre-mash experiment Big Audio Dynamite was basically a vanity project, a way for punk veteran to messily move forward in a strange new world. But Big Audio Dynamite lasted longer than the Clash did, at least in part because Jones didn't really have to continue getting along with anyone else. It was a band, but it was his band. So when everyone left that band, he just started another one with a slightly altered name.

We've already been over the Big Audio Dynamite origin story in this column. In 1988, BAD's pretty-blah "Just Play Music!" knocked off Siouxsie And The Banshees' "Peek-A-Boo" to become the second chart-topper in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock charts. In its early years, the Modern Rock chart was dominated by aging British punk and goth bands, and BAD, with their Clash pedigree, fit the bill.

Shortly afterward, Big Audio Dynamite broke up, so Jones put together a different lineup and named it, possibly cheekily, Big Audio Dynamite II. (I love the idea that one band can be the sequel to another. We should do that more often. Somebody go start the Beatles II.) Soon afterward, this new BAD returned to the #1 spot -- interestingly enough, by knocking off another Siouxsie And The Banshees song. Huh. Weird coincidence.

For Big Audio Dynamite II, Mick Jones brought in three new musicians with no connection to the previous version. Drummer Chris Kavanagh had been in Sigue Sigue Sputnik, and none of the other band members had done anything of note. In 1990, BAD II released their... debut album? I don't know what to call Kool-Aid, but the record doesn't have much of a place in the BAD canon, if such a thing can be said to exist. Kool-Aid is a shaggy odds-and-ends thing that was only available in the UK, where it didn't sell. But Kool-Aid is still noteworthy because it opens with "Change Of Atmosphere," the track that was later edited down to become "Rush."

"Rush" is about the Clash, right? Has to be. In 1991, the Clash weren't that far in the rearview mirror, and people were still bummed that they'd broken up. Some of those people probably blamed Jones, even if the Clash made their worst album after they'd already kicked him out. Joe Strummer was the Clash's most romantic figure, while Mick Jones was the guy with the bad teeth who sang the most nakedly pop-leaning songs. That's an exaggeration; I'm just trying to figure out the kind of public perception that might lead Jones to write "Rush." Maybe he was just annoyed at the Clash, still.

The first thing that you hear on "Rush" is Mick Jones' voice -- an interesting choice, considering the actual quality of that voice. He's here to tell us that he's happy with how things shook out: "If I had my time again/ I'd do it all the same/ And not change a single thing/ Even when I was to blame." He caused heartache, became a man, and somehow stayed thin while the other guys got fat. (That must be a Clash burn.) On paper, the lyrics -- about a no-win situation and having to get yourself right outta here -- are about being in a bad place, but Jones just sounds overjoyed and exhilarated.

Music probably had something to do with that. Big Audio Dynamite I were early on lots of the things -- samples, programmed drums, ideas from dance, rap, and dancehall -- that would become way more prevalent in the years ahead. They weren't always good at that stuff, but they were early, and they had energy. Big Audio Dynamite II took shape while those ideas swept across UK culture. Like some other OG punks, Jones was able to catch the vibe of those early rave days and ride it.

Much like Paul's Boutique or It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, "Rush" is a relic of the last moments when producers could go absolutely bucknuts with samples, not worrying about whether they'd get sued. Mick Jones might've had a full band behind them in BAD II, but he worked with a couple of producers -- Oliver "Olimax" Maxwell and Jones' cousin Andre Shapps, who went by DJ Shapps -- to put together a backing track made almost entirely of samples.

The "Rush" sample that everyone notices is the synth line from the Who's "Baba O'Riley," and Jones must've known that everyone would know it. The Clash played stadiums with the Who, so maybe it was a nod of respect. The main breakbeat is taken from the intro to "Sweet Pea," a 1966 single from the bubblegum king Tommy Roe. Lots of rap groups used that "Sweet Pea" sample: Gang Starr, Cypress Hill, De La Soul. I bet Mick Jones was listening to a lot of De La Soul. There's also a breakbeat taken from a version of the Allen Toussaint song "Get Out Of My Life, Woman" that a fairly obscure soul group called the Wilmer Dukes released in 1969.

What do you call the thing that happens in the middle of "Rush"? It's not a bridge. It's not even really a breakdown. It's more of a total deviation -- a bit like the dubbed-out middle section of "Whole Lotta Love," except made to sound like De La Soul. That bit is mostly built from a sample of "Here Comes The Judge," a funky novelty record that aging vaudeville comedian Pigmeat Markham released in 1968. Someone also scratches in a Big Bank Hank line from the Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight." The "Rush" single edit, which usually played on the radio, took out that middle section. I liked both versions. There's real guitar and real keyboard on "Rush," and that's really Mick Jones' ridiculous voice, but most of the sounds on the record come from other records. I think that's awesome.

People weren't shy about sampling in the early dance-rock moment, but Big Audio Dynamite II were crazy about it. They brought the same freewheeling short-attention-span giddiness to the form that people like the Dust Brothers and Prince Paul did. Mick Jones didn't have those guys' sense of vision or funk, and BAD II's 1991 album The Globe suffers mightily when you hold it up against something like 3 Feet High And Rising. But when everything came together for BAD II, you might end up with something as joyously catchy as "Rush."

"Rush" is a galaxy-brain song. You can only make a song like that if you truly believe, somewhere deep in your soul, that punk and pop and rap and acid house are all fundamentally the same thing and that you can pull from whatever and whenever to write a song. Mick Jones even sneaks in a joke about his voice. He hits a rancid note, made even more rancid by a wobbly-tape effect, and then we hear the sampled voice of Peter Sellers saying, "Mmm, I wish I could sing like that. Not everyone can sing like that." Come on! That's great! I love the idea that Mick Jones, even after being one of the two main guys in the Clash, could hear music like an 11-year-old. Maybe that's why I liked "Rush" so much when I was 11. Maybe it's why I like "Rush" so much now.

"Rush" is just fun. It's slapdash silliness with big hooks and nasty breakbeats and a loopily out-of-time punk-turned-raver daffiness. I didn't understand anything about the song's context when I was a kid, and it didn't stop me from liking the song. The thing just moved. I'd hear that intro and get a dopamine rush. Not everything on WHFS made sense to me, but "Rush" did. I could sing along by maybe the third time I heard it. I could envision a day when I might pay some old friend handsomely. I could jump around to it. That's an underrated quality for any song.

I didn't have cable as a kid, so I never saw the "Rush" video back in the day. I don't know what I would've thought of it. It's just Mick Jones and the boys playing around in a giant globe somewhere, but Jones looks very silly -- floppy hat, Hammerpants, ponytail, some of the worst teeth you have ever seen in your life. He was still only in his mid-thirties, but he looks like he's having the world's most chill midlife crisis. Jones doesn't pull that look off, but I appreciate the fact that he tries.

"Rush" was a legit hit, something that Mick Jones hadn't had in the US since his Clash days. Billboard named "Rush" the biggest Modern Rock single of the year, and 1991 wasn't exactly short on iconic alt-rock hits. "Rush" also crossed over to the Hot 100, peaking at #32. No version of Big Audio Dynamite had been on the Hot 100 before that. In the UK, a funny thing happened with "Rush." The Clash's 1982 song "Should I Stay Or Should I Go," one of the ones that had Jones singing lead, showed up in a Levis commercial that lots of people liked. CBS re-released the song as a single, with "Rush" on the B-side, and it went all the way to #1. That kind of thing happens all the time in the UK. What a weird country. So "Rush" is sort of a #1 hit in the UK, but not really. ("Rush" also went to #1 in Australia, but I don't know if it was packaged with "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" over there.)

Big Audio Dynamite II followed "Rush" with a song that actually sampled the yelps from "Should I Stay Or Should I Go," which is fun. "The Globe" also has lots of other samples, and it's got some British guy rapping clumsily about going to a rave. I love that! On the Modern Rock chart, "The Globe" peaked at #3. (It's an 8.) "The Globe" also became the second and final Big Audio Dynamite single to make the Hot 100, where it peaked at #72. The very inconsistent Globe album went gold, and BAD II went on tour with U2, another veteran act that released a dance-rock experiment in 1991. But we'll get to that.

After The Globe, Big Audio Dynamite II added two more members, including "Rush" co-producer Andre Shapps, and changed their name again. For their 1994 album Higher Power, they became just plain Big Audio. Even more confusing! Higher Power found a much less receptive climate, and it didn't have the loony excitement of "Rush" working for it. Lead single "Looking For A Song" peaked at #24, and then no version of Big Audio Dynamite ever made the Modern Rock chart again.

The band went back to calling themselves Big Audio Dynamite and released one more album, 1995's F-Punk, which had a cute pun of a title but which did not make a ripple. Their label rejected the album that BAD wanted to release in 1999, and the band broke up. Nick Hawkins, the BAD II member who played guitar on "Rush," died of a heart attack in 2005. He was 40. Mick Jones started a new band called Carbon/Silicon with a former Sigue Sigue Sputnik member, but not the former Sigue Sigue Sputnik member who played drums in BAD II. They've got a couple of albums. I have to assume that the Clash would've eventually reunited if Joe Strummer hadn't died in 2002, but he did, so they didn't.

In the '00s, Mick Jones produced the first two albums from hyped-up British rockers the Libertines, as well as the debut from Pete Doherty's Libertines side project Babyshambles. Jones and his former Clash bandmate Paul Simonon guested on "Plastic Beach," a 2010 track from Gorillaz, a band that'll eventually appear in this column. They toured with Gorillaz, too.

In 2011, the original Big Audio Dynamite lineup got back together and played festivals like Coachella and Lollapalooza. They played "Rush," even though that was a BAD II song and thus technically a cover. The reunion didn't last. Mick Jones is still around. He guested on an Avalanches track in 2020. Today is Jones' birthday, actually. He's 69. "Rush" probably doesn't play the biggest role in his legacy, but that song will always have a place in my heart.

GRADE: 9/10

BONUS BEATS: For some reason, a "Rush" remix appeared on the soundtrack to the 1993 Mike Myers vehicle So I Married An Axe Murderer. I can't find the scene, but here's the New York City Club Mix that was on the soundtrack album: