on was the quality and commercial potential of "This Is England", a song into which Rhodes allowed the musicians significant creative input. Rhodes suddenly ended the recordings and took the master tapes from the studio, after which he added further synthesizer parts. Although Jones's use of synthesizers and samplers was one of the main reasons behind his dismissal, those instruments brought him critical and public acclaim with his next band Big Audio Dynamite. When asked at the time for his opinion on the debut BAD album, Strummer described it as one of the "worst pieces of shit I have ever heard." In 1986, Strummer said that he had liked a few of the tunes but "really I hated it... I didn't hear [the album as a whole] until it was in the shops." Strummer ultimately lost control of Cut the Crap to Rhodes, and became so disillusioned that at one point he asked Jones to rejoin the band, but was refused. Simonon does not appear on any of the final recordings; the basslines were performed by Norman Watt-Roy, former member of Ian Dury and the Blockheads, who was not credited on the sleeve. Howard's exclusion from the album has been lamented by many critics. Knowles described him as an "astonishingly powerful and prodigious" drummer, and said that replacing him with electronic percussion was "like replacing a Maserati with a Matchbox". Regretting the decision, Strummer later vowed to never use a drum machine again. Music and lyrics The consensus among critics is that the album's production choices distract from otherwise strong songwriting by Strummer and Rhodes. Strummer's vocals are placed low in the mix, sometimes buried underneath electronic drums, synthetic keyboards and studio effects. The sound has often been described as muddy and cluttered due to multi-layered guitar tracks and backing vocals. Many of the guitar overdubs have been considered unnecessary, given that Sheppard and White were both using Gibson Les Pauls and as such their sounds were tonally similar, and there was not significant variation in either their chord progressions or riffs. Rhodes may have felt the need to fill each channel on the 24-track mixing desk. Author Gary Jucha summed up the album as having been produced by a manager whose musical ambitions were overstretched by a lack of experience. The over-laid vocals in the choruses, which give the football chant feel, were harshly viewed by critics at the