Redemption Song

Based on exclusive access to Joe Strummer’s friends, relatives, and fellow musicians, this biography penetrates the soul of a rock and roll icon.

The Clash was—and still is—one of the most important groups of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Indebted to rockabilly, reggae, Memphis soul, cowboy justice, and ‘60s protest, the overtly political band railed against war, racism, and a dead-end economy, and in the process imparted a conscience to punk.

Joe Strummer was the Clash’s front man, a rock-and-roll hero seen by many as the personification of outlaw integrity and street cool. The political heart of the Clash, Strummer synthesized gritty toughness and poetic sensitivity in a manner that still resonates with listeners, and his untimely death in December 2002 shook the world.

Chris Salewicz was a friend to Strummer for close to three decades and has covered the Clash’s career and the entire punk movement from its inception. He uses this vantage point to write Redemption Song—the definitive biography of Strummer, placing him in a long line of protest singers that includes Woody Guthrie, John Lennon, and Bob Marley, and charting his enormous success, his bleak years in the wilderness after the Clash’s bitter breakup, and his triumphant return to stardom at the end of his life.

“Definitively captures the man’s humanity—his complex, volatile and vulnerable soul.” —Jon Savage, author of England’s Dreaming

Includes photographs