The Clash - Should I Stay or Should I Go

What this video is

Released in 1982 as a double A-side single alongside 'Straight to Hell,' 'Should I Stay or Should I Go' emerged during The Clash's Combat Rock era — a moment of maximum commercial tension for a band ideologically committed to anti-commercialism. The video's live-at-Shea-Stadium format implicitly documents the paradox of British punk's biggest act opening for arena-rock institution The Who before 60,000 spectators.…

Why it matters

A canonical artifact of the post-punk-to-mainstream-rock pipeline, this video documents the rare convergence of UK punk credibility with American stadium-rock scale. Its documentary aesthetic, eschewing constructed narrative in favour of raw performance capture, established a visual grammar that…

The director

Don Letts (born 10 January 1956, London) is a British filmmaker, DJ, and musician. He rose to prominence as the DJ at London's first punk club, The Roxy (1977), where he introduced reggae and dub to the punk scene. He directed his debut film, The Punk Rock…