SMALL FACES: With Cindy Wilson back in...

SMALL FACES: With Cindy Wilson back in the fold after an album away, the B-52’s are writing songs for a new album, with recording set to begin toward the end of the summer. . . .

“Down by the Old Main Stream,” the debut album by Golden Smog--sort of a Minneapolis Wilburys, featuring pseudonymous members of Soul Asylum, Wilco, the Jayhawks and Run Westy Run--is due Sept. 19. . . . PolyGram is readying Eric Clapton’s “Crossroads 2,” featuring a blues-oriented set of all-live material from the ‘70s and early ‘80s, and a Joe Cocker boxed set. The Clapton is due in October, the Cocker in November.

AND ONE MORE THING: In his first print interview in more than eight years, Charles Manson tells the alternative music magazine Seconds about his notorious connections with the Beach Boys, Neil Young (who he says gave him a motorcycle) and even Elvis Presley.

“I lived in Elvis Presley’s house [in Los Angeles],” says Manson in the interview, which hits newsstands next week. “He ran me out of the yard--I got mad at him, I was going to throw some rocks at him ‘cause I thought he was an idiot, an egotistical . . . punk.”*