Happily as time marches on we learn that selling out can be just a temporary thing . . .
The Clash trajectory from 1977 - 1985 is pretty much a textbook on selling out. I.E. we won't to this, we won't do that, we will keep doing this, we will keep doing that . . . Whoops! We are gonna play stadiums, we are gonna record content-free hit singles, we are gonna alienate and ostracize our initial audience, we are gonna kick every motherfucker outta tha band but me . . .
Now some call that selling out and some call it going from innocence to the first level of experience. Some say that they're the exact same thing and that only the innocent or hopelessly naive worry about selling out in the first place. Had the Clash not made such a huge issue of it in the beginning the story would matter much less. As it is, Strummer moved from a position of strident integrity to flaccid compromise to something deeper than either, which is a move to a second level of experience and beyond.
No aspersions on Strummer as a man to recognize that the Clash betrayed its original conception of itself - through the Clash betraying itself, Strummer probably managed to progress into a realm where who is the "best band in the world" no longer mattered so much as recognizing that there was life beyond the competitive sphere of rock and roll. Certainly that is a kind of growth and heroism, probably more than a certain bunch of utterly sold out 60 year old adolescents we all know and love can manage to muster.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79iZy_DqoyI