1991 The Clash: Should I Stay Or Should I Go

There's a neat symmetry at work here between this and the Iron Maiden single to the point I kind of wish that the one had directly followed the other. I wrote (then) about my teenage love of heavy metal and that was true enough but before that conversion I had an intense flirtation with all things punk rock. Well, as intense as it could have been for a twelve year old - being too young to appreciate the Sex Pistols in their pomp, I was nevertheless fully aware that something was going on somewhere that was upsetting an awful lot of people. Punk did not move in my media circles - my idea of rebellion in music was John Travolta's leather jacket in 'Grease' until a move to the 'big school' in 1979 brought me into contact with people far more worldly wise than myself and through them I was exposed to Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Clash et al for the first time. And I loved it.

Punk proper of course was over by 1979, any of the main players still standing had refined their sound into something more palatable to the mainstream whilst the second front were lumped together as something called 'new wave', a genre which, to be honest, sounded fine to me back then too. In 1979 though The Clash released their 'London Calling' album. I bought the lead off title single and I got the album for Christmas. Pivotal? Yes indeed - I loved it then and I loved it now; hardly punk, but a four sided primer of everything good about rock and roll music played by a garage band with attitude to burn.

Even through the metal years I never let go of The Clash. Every album was bought religiously and their every move was followed. I was gutted when Mick Jones was sacked, outraged when Strummer simply replaced him with two journeymen to carry on business as usual and then gutted and slightly let down when they finally called it a day. After all that you'd think I'd be as pleased to see them at number one as much as I was pleased to see Iron Maiden a few weeks earlier. But I wasn't. And for a lot of reasons.

For a start, 'Bring Your Daughter' was a new single from a band still very much a going concern - 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go' was a re-issue of a 1982 single that only reached number 17 first time round. In a throwback to one of the more depressing campaigns of the eighties, and following the path of faux nostalgia blazed by 'The Joker', a fresh set of legs were grafted onto the dead horse of 'Should I Stay' via its use in a Levi's jeans commercial, a fact that by itself should be enough to stop traffic. The appending of the Levi's tag to The Clash logo on the cover and the advert link of the pool eight ball in a way that suggest The Clash always styled themselves that way should have caused a multiple pile up.

Just who was scratching whose back here? Time was I used to believe that there was no such thing as a 'bad' picture of The Clash (surely one of the most photogenic bands in popular music), but if that is the case then this is the exception that proves the rule. Or to be more precise, it's the context that makes it so bad. An Athena poster pose of studious cool, rebellion and guitars topped off by a cigarette at a jaunty James Dean angle whilst in the background the band en-bloc whips up a storm on stage.

Depressing enough in its own rock and roll cliché without the implication that it can all be bought from TopShop for the price of a pair of jeans (I can't tell what brand Mick is in fact wearing there). Taken as a package, it annoys. It annoys in its reduction of The Clash to a marketing commodity, it annoys in its acquiescence to a media that once would not have dared go near them and it annoys in its compliance to a stereotypical rock and roll image minted in an America they once claimed to have been so bored with. But these are not the only reasons I'm not keen on this.

"It was just a good rocking song, our attempt at writing a classic" explained Mick Jones, and true enough 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go' aims for a cock of the walk strut of attitude; amongst the bold and innovative multiculturalism of parent album 'Combat Rock' it stood out as a throwback to the past they were otherwise hurtling away from. It wasn't needed either - The Clash's own back catalogue was already stuffed full with unselfconscious homages to this elusive 'authenticity' that didn't rely on a dumb as fuck half speed, stop start riff rip off of Chuck Berry's 'School Days' or a jolly, sham Sham 69 musical chairs double speed middle eight to deliver a 'classic'.

Rare I suppose to see a band falling on their arse through not believing their own hype, but in chasing it's own unspecified heroes around a blank map of Americana, 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go' winds up as that famous headless chicken, constantly running into a brick wall in its struggle to get anywhere. Strummer's Spanish vocal counterlines add some forced flavour, but they add no dimension to the flat plain that the song inhabits - even U2's 'Desire', an attempt at the same exercise, had a sense of gutsy urgency about it.

To keep the Berry references, 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go' is The Clash's 'My Ding A Ling', the runt of an otherwise flawless litter that by its inexplicable popularity has tarnished the brand by virtually becoming the brand. Fair enough, it always sounded written specifically to generate crossover appeal, and the fact it took ten years before that appeal registered isn't really relevant - safe and smug, it's remains a poor Clash song. I didn't like it then and I don't like it now, and galling too that a disagreement over a last minute lyric change to the original caused Strummer and Jones to fall out and hasten the end of the band.