Song of the Day 12/4: The Clash, “Should I Stay or Should I Go”

H/t puck. I don’t have to be asked twice to play the Clash.

Mick Jones didn’t write this song on 1982’s “Combat Rock” about emigration*, but it’s not quite clear what he did write it about. Speculation has always centered on his tempestuous relationship with singer/actress Ellen Foley (it’s her voice on Meat Loaf’s “Paradise By the Dashboard Light,” though it’s someone else in the video, and she featured in the first season of “Night Court” in the role then assumed by Markie Post). Others suspect it presaged Jones’ sacking by the band in 1983.

You would never guess by how often it’s played on classic rock radio that this double-A side single (“Straight to Hell” was on the flip) failed to make the Top 40 in the USA when it was released in 1982. It didn’t make the top 10 in the UK, either, until Jones allowed Levi’s jeans to use it in a 1991 advert, at which point it shot to No. 1 upon its re-release.

The Spanish background vocals are by Joe Strummer and band pal Joe Ely, the Texas singer/guitarist. Their translation of the English lyrics was aided by recording engineer Eddie Garcia’s mom, whom they called on the phone for help.

Ely tells another funny story about the record:

[T]here’s a place in the song where Mick says, “Split.” Me and Strummer had been yelling out the Spanish background lyrics and we had snuck up behind him as he was recording. We were behind a curtain, jumped out at him in the middle of singing, and scared the shit out of him. He looks over and gives us the dirtiest look and says, “Split!” They kept that in the final version.

One of several live versions in circulation:

And, just to make everybody feel old, here’s Mick playing his biggest hit solo at London’s Rock and Roll Public Library in 2009. Hey, they were the only band that mattered at the time.

*As commenters have noted, the decision to stay or go is constricted, and not merely by money — most countries are much harder to get accepted into than the USA. You could choke a possum on the stack of paperwork I have to submit to the French government for a long-stay visa.

If your Spanish is as good as the song’s, you could always investigate Merida, in Mexico’s Yucatan, where this blog’s longtime commenter Dave moved a couple of years back. The city has a large (10,000+) American expat community, and the cost of living there is about half what it is in Wilmington, Delaware.