He’s dead, but, man, does he keep the pulp press pumping! I couldn’t be talking about anyone else but Elvis Presley, who would’ve been 72 today. Last year, print was very kind to the King, turning out Jerry Schilling’s excellent Me and a Guy Named Elvis (see our interview with the author) and Ken Burke and Dan Griffin’s satisfying The Blue Moon Boys: The Story of Elvis Presley’s Band. Thus far into 2007, all is strangely quiet on the Elvis front, and an Amazon search indicates that we can expect only paperback editions of hardcover releases this spring (e.g., Charles L. Ponce de Leon’s Fortunate Son: The Life of Elvis Presley and Bobbie Ann Mason’s Elvis Presley).

That said, we can start salivating for a big, long-delayed posthumous biography of a man many consider the King of the Conscious Punks, that is, Joe Strummer. I first heard about Chris Salewicz’s Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer (Faber & Faber, May) in mid-2003, shortly after Strummer’s shocking cardiac death in December 2002. For a good year, I stalked, via e-mail, a game (and fittingly mohawk-wearing) publicity director, who kindly told me the author needed more time. Now it seems that a galley is on the way, and I can’t wait to report on a book I’ve long pined for, as have myriad other fans who want to see Strummer up there with the best in the rock pantheon. With some luck, it will stand up to Pat Gilbert’s definitive treatment of Strummer’s band, Passion Is a Fashion: The Real Story of the Clash.