Punk Rock Warlord ― The Life and Work of Joe Strummer

Punk Rock Warlord explores the relevance of Joe Strummer within the continuing legacies of both punk rock and progressive politics. It is aimed at scholars and general readers interested in The Clash, punk culture, and the intersections between pop music and politics, on both sides of the Atlantic. Contributors to the collection represent a wide range of disciplines, including history, sociology, musicology, and literature; their work examines all phases of Strummera€?s career, from his early days as a€?Woodya€? the busker to the whirlwind years as front man for The Clash, to the a€?wilderness yearsa€? and Strummera€?s final days with the Mescaleros. Punk Rock Warlord offers an engaging survey of its subject, while at the same time challenging some of the historical narratives that have been constructed around Strummer the Punk Icon. The essays in Punk Rock Warlord address issues including John Graham Mellora€?s self-fashioning as a€?Joe Strummer, rock revolutionarya€?; critical and media constructions of punk; and the singera€?s complicated and changing relationship to feminism and anti-racist politics. These diverse essays nevertheless cohere around the claim that Strummera€?s look, style, and musical repertoire are so rooted in both English and American cultures that he cannot finally be extricated from either.

Barry J. Faulk is a Professor in the English Department at Florida State University, and the author of Music Hall and Modernity (2004) and British Rock Modernism (Ashgate, 2010). He has published numerous articles on British literature and cultural studies. Brady Harrison is Professor of English at the University of Montana. He is the author of Agent of Empire: William Walker and the Imperial Self in American Literature (2004) and editor of All Our Stories Are Here: Critical Perspectives on Montana Literature (2009). He has published stories, essays, and articles in books and journals in the US, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, France, and Australia.