Rock & Roll Books

• Rock & Roll Books

  All the Townes Van Zandt, Texas Troubadours, Southern hip-hop, Zen punk, and Phil Spector, Warren Zevon, and Joe Strummer you can shake a bottle of sunblock at

• To Live's to Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt

  BY DOUG FREEMAN

• He's a Rebel: Phil Spector: Rock and Roll's Legendary Producer;
  Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector

  BY AUDRA SCHROEDER

• Texas Troubadours

  BY RAOUL HERNANDEZ

• Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life & Times of Doc Pomus

  BY SHAWN BADGLEY

• Shout, Sister, Shout! The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe

  BY MARGARET MOSER

• Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer, The Definitive Biography

  BY DAN OKO

• Babylon's Burning: From Punk to Grunge

  BY MARGARET MOSER

• I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon

  BY JIM CALIGIURI

• Nirvana: The Biography

  BY CHRISTOPHER GRAY

• Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music

  BY DAVID LYNCH

• Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries;
  My So-Called Punk: How Neo-Punk Stage-Dived Into the Mainstream;
  Punk Love

  BY DARCIE STEVENS

• Third Coast: Outkast, Timbaland, & How Hip Hop Became a Southern Thing;
  Pimps Up, Ho's Down: Hip Hop's Hold on Young Black Women;
  To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic

  BY GRAHAM REYNOLDS

• Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life

  BY CHRISTOPHER GRAY

• Modest Mouse: A Pretty Good Read

  BY MELANIE HAUPT

• You Don't Love Me Yet: a novel

  BY JAY TRACHTENBERG

• Inside the Music of Brian Wilson: The Songs, Sounds, and Influences of the Beach Boys' Founding Genius

  BY GREG BEETS

• Jimmy Page: Magus, Musician, Man, an unauthorized biography

  BY AUSTIN POWELL

• Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry

  BY JIM CALIGIURI

• The Rockabilly Legends: They Called It Rockabilly Long Before They Called It Rock and Roll

  BY GRAHAM REYNOLDS

Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer, The Definitive Biography

by Chris Salewicz

Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 619 pp., $30

"The job of being Joe Strummer, spokesman for the punk generation and frontman for the Clash, never sat easily with the former John Mellor," writes veteran UK journalist Chris Salewicz, a former contributor to famed music mag NME, who has also penned biographies of Bob Marley and Paul McCartney. Born in Turkey in 1952, Strummer was christened John Graham Mellor, the author clarifies early on, yet on the very first page of Salewicz's stab at looking behind the music, his response to Strummer's death in 2002 tells us he never forsook fandom: "Oh-fuckin-hell-Oh-fuckin-hell-Oh-fuckin-hell."

Touted as Strummer's authorized biography, Redemption Song delves into the troubled, fascinating life of a rock & roll genius, a man who deserves his place in the pop music pantheon alongside Buddy, Elvis, and Bono. It's worth pointing out, however, that Salewicz includes an overabundance of details about the three decades he personally spent hanging with the Clash frontman, describing gigs by Strummer's 101ers, the band he put together while first squatting in London. What's missing is more sociopolitical context reflecting how punk became a global force and a fuller account of how the Clash's music conquered hearts and minds worldwide. After 600-plus pages, invested readers will wish the author/narrator would get out of the way so the singer might better speak for himself.

Tellingly, the biographer does quote Strummer on the subject of biographies: "It's quite interesting to read two books about the same person because they both give you a completely different picture. … And you realize he was probably like neither." All told, despite sections about the rigors of touring, studio sessions, band politics, and Strummer's alcoholism – which, along with the musician's drug use, the author is maddeningly ambivalent toward – the book's subject remains a cipher.