The Clash – Should I Stay or Should I Go (Chords)

Quick word of advice: If you’re in a situation where staying is trouble, bad as that may be, if leaving is double the amount of trouble then it’s clearly better to stay. No need for a song and dance about it.

I’ve been enjoying the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s new all-punk album (Ever Such) Pretty Girls recently. And it’s inspired me to do some UK punk and new wave this week. (Related fact: UOGB’s Kitty Lux used to be in a punk band called Severed Head and the Neck Fuckers.)

To play along with the UOGB you can use the same chords but with a capo on the first fret for the version on Pretty Girls. Or on the second fret for the live version on Anarchy in the Ukulele.

Suggested Strumming

In the intro, verse and break the chords are broken up into sections of three (e.g. D-G-D). On those, do this for the first chord:

– u d u

This for the middle chord:

d u d u

And just one down strum for the last chord.

The one exception is the A chord where you combine all the strums on the A to give you:

– u d u d u d u d

In the choruses double up the speed of your strumming to use this strum:

d – d u – u d –

Once for the first and second chord in each batch and twice for the third. Again, combine the strums together for the A chord.

Twiddley Bit

The bass riff works well on the ukulele and is played on the lead uke in the UOGB version.

Here’s a tab for low-G tuning that also includes the guitar noises in the intro:

A video posted by @ukulelehunt on Mar 21, 2016 at 12:37pm PDT

Links

Buy the Clash version
Buy the UOGB version
More punk tabs and chords