I started out as a music journalist in 1985 and spent the following ten years freelancing for Melody Maker. It was an amazing time, interviewing people I’d idolised and whose music I’d played to death for years: Joe Strummer, John Lydon, Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, Neneh Cherry. I went on the road with the Pixies, and Kim Deal told me why Black Francis was putting on weight (“He’s just discovered getting stoned, so he’s always eating chocolate.”). My first trip to New York, in 1987, was to interview Salt-n-Pepa about a strange new music called hip-hop. I headed to New York with U2, Zurich with Simple Minds, Ljubljana with Laibach. In 1992, I went to Siberia with Nitzer Ebb and ended up going back to live there, but that’s a different, very long story. I spent way more time than is healthy for anybody in the company of Shaun Ryder, and interviewed both Liza Minnelli and Peter Cushing (who kept calling me ‘Dear Boy’ and asking if I needed the toilet).
Alongside MM, I wrote for Time Out and Top and worked at MTV. For the Daily Telegraph, I interviewed Meat Loaf, Jamiroquai and Beck, and was driven around north London blindfolded before being taken to a squat-studio in a tower block to meet pirate radio DJs. Living in Siberia, I wrote a feature about Russian rock in the era of perestroika and glasnost that made the Telegraph, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the New York Times.
In 1995, I was deputy editor on ikon, a stylish but sadly short-lived culture and sport monthly magazine for whom I went to Germany with Björk and Goldie, utterly failing to detect any signs of their incipient romance. I also wrote for music-industry title Music Week, was the London correspondent for its German equivalent, Musik Woche, and was full-time editor of a UK-based south-east Asian business mag, Music News Asia.
For Q magazine, I went to San Francisco with Paul Oakenfold and New York City with Beck (again). At the Guardian, I wrote G2 and Guardian Guide front-cover interviews with New Order, Slipknot and Cerys Matthews, among others, hung out in The Osbournes’ house and went to the Caribbean with Shaggy. I still occasionally write about music for the Guardian – a link to hundreds of live reviews and features can be found here.
I worked on the proto-Internet that was Teletext, and for style magazines such as Wonderland and Man About Town talked to Pharrell, Dizzee Rascal and Brian Wilson (and Katie Price). For 18 months, I compiled and wrote the reissues section in Classic Pop, thus once again critiquing the same artists as when I first started out. Today, I review gigs and contribute to the Life of a Song column in the Financial Times (I’d put up a link but, you know, paywall), and I make sporadic BBC TV appearances.
It’s been a trip and a half… and, nearly 40 years on, I still feel lucky to have made a passable living from writing about music. It’s a fantastic job.
I started out as a music journalist in 1985 and spent the following ten years freelancing for Melody Maker. It was an amazing time, interviewing people I’d idolised and whose music I’d played to death for years: Joe Strummer, John Lydon, Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, Neneh Cherry. I went on the road with the Pixies, and Kim Deal told me why Black Francis was putting on weight (“He’s just discovered getting stoned, so he’s always eating chocolate.”). My first trip to New York, in 1987, was to interview Salt-n-Pepa about a strange new music called hip-hop. I headed to New York with U2, Zurich with Simple Minds, Ljubljana with Laibach. In 1992, I went to Siberia with Nitzer Ebb and ended up going back to live there, but that’s a different, very long story. I spent way more time than is healthy for anybody in the company of Shaun Ryder, and interviewed both Liza Minnelli and Peter Cushing (who kept calling me ‘Dear Boy’ and asking whether I needed the toilet).
Alongside MM, I wrote for Time Out and Top and worked at MTV. For the Daily Telegraph, I interviewed Meat Loaf, Jamiroquai and Beck, and was driven around north London blindfolded before being taken to an squat-studio in a tower block to meet pirate radio DJs. Living in Siberia, I wrote a feature about Russian rock in the era of perestroika and glasnost that made the Telegraph, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the New York Times.
In 1995, I was deputy editor on ikon, a stylish but sadly short-lived culture and sport monthly magazine for whom I went to Germany with Björk and Goldie, utterly failing to detect any signs of their incipient romance. I also wrote for music-industry title Music Week, was London correspondent for its German equivalent, Musik Woche, and was full-time editor of a UK-based south-east Asian business mag, Music News Asia.
For Q magazine, I went to San Francisco with Paul Oakenfold and New York City with Beck (again). At the Guardian, I wrote G2 and Guardian Guide front-cover interviews with New Order, Slipknot and Cerys Matthews, among others, hung out in The Osbournes’ house and went to the Caribbean with Shaggy. I still write about music for the Guardian – a link to hundreds of live reviews and features can be found here.
I worked on the proto-Internet that was Teletext, and for style magazines such as Wonderland and Man About Town, talked to Pharrell, Dizzee Rascal and Brian Wilson (and Katie Price). For 18 months, I compiled and wrote the reissues review section in Classic Pop, thus finding myself critiquing the same artists as when I first started out. Today, I review gigs and contribute to the Life of a Song column in the Financial Times (I’d put up a link but, you know, paywall), and I make sporadic BBC TV appearances.
It’s been a trip and a half… and, nearly 40 years on, I still feel lucky to have made a passable living from writing about music. It’s a fantastic job.