Drawing on Strummer’s lyrics, interviews and bootleg recordings, as well as interviews with friends and contemporaries like Billy Bragg, The punk rock politics of Joe Strummer reveals the wide-ranging political influence of one of the twentieth century’s iconic rock’n’roll rebels.

Joe Strummer was one of the twentieth century’s iconic rock’n’roll rebels and radicals. He was political not just in his views and lyrics but in how he lived his day-to-day life. With Strummer as frontman, spokesman and chief lyricist, The Clash played a major role in politicising a generation, not least at the Rock Against Racism gig in 1978. The punk rock politics of Joe Strummer examines Strummer’s beliefs, asking where they came from and how they developed over his lifetime. It also analyses their credibility, influence and impact. The book explores Strummer’s fight against alienation, exploitation and oppression (from inequality and environmentalism to anti-militarism and anti-imperialism) and his support for multiculturalism and humanism.

Strummer believed that rock’n’roll music was a cultural front in the struggle for social justice and equality. Following his cue, the book reads music and culture as a means to translate hard political messages and ideologies into more accessible forms for audiences not engaged in party politics. Drawing on Strummer’s lyrics, interviews and bootleg recordings, as well as interviews with friends and contemporaries like Billy Bragg, The punk rock politics of Joe Strummer reveals Strummer’s wide-ranging political influence during his punk heyday and since his death in 2002.