"I Fought the Law" is a song written by Sonny Curtis of the Crickets and popularized by a cover by the Bobby Fuller Four, becoming a top-ten hit for the band in 1966.
Joe B. Mauldin and Jerry Allison continued their positions on the stand-up bass and drums, respectively, while Earl Sinks filled the role for vocals.
[citation needed] Milwaukee's Paul Stefen and the Royal Lancers covered the song in 1962; it provided them with a local hit, but it did not make the national charts.
Just six months after the song made its first appearance on the Billboard Top 100 chart, Fuller was found dead from asphyxiation in his mother's car in a parking lot near his Los Angeles apartment.
Singer Joe Strummer and guitarist Mick Jones flew to San Francisco to record overdubs in September–October at the Automatt studio.
[13] Their version first appeared on the EP The Cost of Living in May 1979 in the UK, and later that year was made part of the American edition of the Clash's eponymous album.
A live recording of the song, performed at the Lyceum Theatre, West End, London, on December 28, 1978, features as the last piece of the 1980 film Rude Boy directed by Jack Hazan and David Mingay.
Jones told Uncut magazine in 2015, "Yeah, we went into the toilets and banged on the pipes with hammers to make it sound like a chain gang.