Songfacts®:

• This song is an unfortunate victim of The Clash's retrospective attempts to completely ignore the period after Mick Jones was fired in 1983, and as such was (and still is) very hard to actually track down. For years it was only available as the B-side to the "This Is England" single (along with "Do It Now"), but whereas "Do It Now" at least made it onto the re-released CD version of Cut the Crap, "Sex Mad Roar" still remained unreleased on CD until it was finally included in the Singles Box, a box set including CD versions of every single The Clash ever released.
• Weirdly for a song so hard to track down, "Sex Mad Roar" is generally agreed as one of the best post-Mick Jones tracks The Clash recorded, with the song using a Rockabilly style, complete with a walking bassline and staccato drums. It also helps that the song was one of just two Cut the Crap tracks to be recorded by the whole band in the studio, alongside the other "This Is England" B-side, "Do It Now." Subsequently, it doesn't suffer from the problem of over-aggressive synths and lightweight drum machine patterns like the other tracks on the album - although it still isn't mixed very well; the gang vocals for example in the choruses are too loud compared to the rest of the mix.
• This was a live fixture for The Clash throughout 1984, although at this point it was played under the title of "Sex Mad War." One has to wonder why it wasn't included on the actual Cut the Crap record - too good, perhaps?