Paul Gorman
Paul Gorman was born the youngest of six in north west London. He has written for a wide variety of publications from the Evening Standard, the Daily Telegraph and the Radio Times to Heat and Mojo. In the early '90s Gorman was based in LA running the west coast bureau of film trade magazine Screen International. He later became contributing editor at Music Week and Music Business International, for whom he travelled to music business symposia from Hong Kong, Singapore, Tel Aviv and Johannesburg to LA, New York, Sydney, Melbourne and Manchester. He also interviewed and wrote features on the gamut of recording artistes from David Bowie, Ronan Keating, Peter Andre, Shane MaGowan and the Sex Pistols, to Cher, Bjork, Cornershop, and Elvis Costello.
Gorman, who has been described by leading music critic Simon Reynolds as "suspiciously dapper and small-faced", has spent a day at Enya’s charming Gothic pile outside Dublin, taken herbal tea in Chatham with Billy Childish, asked to display his underwear to the Spice Girls (in their first ever interview), shadowed U2’s manager Paul McGuinness for an absinthe-soaked spell on the eastern European leg of their Popmart tour and been offered outside by Steven "Seething" Wells for suggesting that "hating" the BPI might be a waste of energy.
Gorman has three entries in Brian Eno’s diary A Year with Swollen Appendices, has driven El Vez’s two-tone ’56 Bel Air while under the influence and had his hair cut next to Tom Waits. Dave Rimmer, another leading music critic, once said of Gorman: "Nobody’s ever heard of him."
Gorman has published the following books:
o The Look: Adventures In Pop & Rock Fashion (Sanctuary 2001)
o In Their Own Write: Adventures In The Music Press (Sanctuary 2001)
o Goldie: Nine Lives (Hodder & Stoughton 2002)
He is currently working on the following books:
o Let’s Make This Precious: The Definitive Story Of Dexy’s Midnight Runners (Virgin, to be published November 2003).
o And Another Thing... [working title] by Boy George (Century, to be published March 2004).
Gorman is also acting as creative consultant on the reformation of Dexy’s Midnight Runners this summer. He lives in Maida Vale, west London, and his interests include gardening, cycling, tattoos, working out and the development of "punk moroccan" interior design.
List of articles in the library by artist
Antony & the Johnsons: Antony & The Johnsons: Islington Academy, London
Live Review by Paul Gorman, MOJO, January 2005
The extraordinary NYC androgyne - whose in-concert performances make Lou Reed cry - receives a stiffer-lipped but no less rapturous London reception. ...
Lester Bangs: Remembering Lester
Book Excerpt by Paul Gorman, In Their Own Write: Adventures in the Music Press, November 2001
"Everybody's a rock critic." – Lester Bangs ...
Björk: Post-Post: Bjork goes Homogenic
Interview by Paul Gorman, Music Week, 1997
"I LOVE MY job sometimes," cackles Bjork down the line from Miami. ...
Report and Interview by Paul Gorman, Music Week, 1995
THE CRITICAL AND commercial disappointment which has greeted David Bowie's output since the crossover success of 1983's Let's Dance would have forced a less adventurous ...
David Bowie: Happy Birthday, David Bowie!
Report and Interview by Paul Gorman, Music Week, January 1997
THERE'S NOTHING the media loves more than an anniversary and David Bowie's 50th birthday on January 8 offered ample opportunity for career retrospectives and dissections ...
Boy George: Straight: An Introduction
Book Excerpt by Paul Gorman, Century Books, 2005
GEORGE ISN'T GOOD in the mornings. He strides out of his room, straight back, arms paddling by his side, in black. He catches your eye. ...
Report and Interview by Paul Gorman, Music Week, 1995
HE’S BACK IN BLACK...again. And, as ever, he means business. Johnny Cash, the original rock'n'roll spectre lets loose the leashes with new album Unchained, covering ...
Catatonia: Welsh Pioneers Come Into Their Own
Report and Interview by Paul Gorman, Music Week, 1996
THESE DAYS, when it seems you can't throw a stick in the music industry without hitting a Welsh act, Catatonia are in the unusual position ...
Report and Interview by Paul Gorman, Music Week, 1995
CHER'S NEW ALBUM It's A Man's World may well have the most apt, albeit ironically stated, title of the year. For her first project for ...
Billy Childish: And In His Spare Time… Billy Childish
Report and Interview by Paul Gorman, MOJO, June 1995
JAMES BROWN CAN stick his tag as "the hardest working man in showbiz". When it comes to the most productive performer in punk, painting and ...
El Vez: Greetings From Graciasland: El Vez
Report and Interview by Paul Gorman, MOJO, May 1995
TAKE A LIBERAL DOSE of Chicano consciousness and apply it to fully-realised musical pastiche, and what do you have? El Vez, the Mexican Elvis, no ...
Report and Interview by Paul Gorman, Music Week, 1996
ENSCONCED INSIDE her specially built Aigle Studio in the swish Dublin suburb of Dalkey, Enya pauses to explain why she chose this particular location, with ...
Serge Gainsbourg: Old Cabbage Head Is Back: Serge Gainsbourg
Retrospective by Paul Gorman, MOJO, August 1996
"I WOULD LIKE to fuck 'er." With these six words, slurred in the heaviest of French accents, Serge Gainsbourg sealed his reputation as the scourge ...
Nick Heyward, Terry Hall: Godfathers of Britpop? Terry Hall and Nick Heyward
Report and Interview by Paul Gorman, Music Week, 1995
FOR ARTISTS WHO came to prominence during the early '80s boom in British music, the dramatic rise in popularity of the clutch of homegrown acts ...
Steve Marriott, Humble Pie: Very ‘Eavy: Remembering Steve Marriott and 'Umble Pie
Retrospective by Paul Gorman, Rock's Backpages, December 2003
IT SEEMS inconceivable now, but Humble Pie were once very, very big, albeit for a short while. In recent years – post-Loaded, post-Britpop, post-lad, post-PC ...
Iggy Pop: Doggie Style: Iggy Pop
Interview by Paul Gorman, Music Week, January 1996
IT’S BEEN SAID before but bears repeating once Iggy Pop is witnessed at the close quarters of his cramped bedroom in London’s Halcyon Hotel: If ...
Finley Quaye: Well-Connected Hopeful
Report and Interview by Paul Gorman, Music Week, 1996
HE'S JUST TURNED 23, he's talented and he's handsome. He claims that Tricky's his nephew, Iggy Pop visits him in the studio and A Guy ...
Spice Girls, The: Taking On The Britboys: Spice Girls
Report and Interview by Paul Gorman, Music Week, April 1996
JUST WHEN BOYS with guitars threaten to rule pop life - Damon's all over Smash Hits, Ash are big in Big! and Liam can't move ...
Johnny Thunders: Born To Lose: A Film About Johnny Thunders
Report by Paul Gorman, MOJO, 1998
NINETEEN YEARS in gestation, Born To Lose – which matches the addled life and times of its subject Johnny Thunders by being simultaneously intriguing and ...
Jah Wobble: Ex-Punk Turned Musical Innovator
Report and Interview by Paul Gorman, Music Week, 1994
AS HE POINTED out on the song 'Becoming Closer To God' last year, Jah Wobble is "far more than a long-lost anagram" these days. ...
List of genre pieces
In Their Own Write: Adventures in the Music Press
Book Excerpt by Paul Gorman, Sanctuary Press, November 2001
Introduction ...
Retrospective by Paul Gorman, MOJO, October 2002
FOR MANY A PUNK CHANCER, CRED comes with claims of attending the Sex Pistols' brace of gigs at Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall in the ...
Holy Toledo: The Hines Farm Blues Club
Retrospective by Paul Gorman, MOJO, May 2000
Midnight movers, Ohio players, Gypsy Angels and Atomic Pirates gathered at the Hines Farm juke joint. Paul Gorman pays a visit. ...
In His Own Right: Ian MacDonald
Interview by Paul Gorman, unpublished, March 2001
I INTERVIEWED Ian MacDonald for my music press history In Their Own Write in March 2001. As charming, tolerant and insightful as the first-class prose ...
Report and Interview by Paul Gorman, MOJO, 1995
Home Taping Is Saving Music From The Shaggs to... Bruce Forsyth? Joe Foster’s Rev-Ola label, born of "frenzied tape-swapping," is home to all manner ...
Book Excerpt by Paul Gorman, Sanctuary Press,, 2001
Paul Gorman's In Their Own Write: Adventures in the Music Press (Sanctuary Press) is an oral history of rock journalism in Britain and America – ...
LA's Glam Revival And The Glitzy Return of Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco
Report and Interview by Paul Gorman, MOJO, March 2000
Something strange is happening on the streets of Los Angeles. Glam-metal kids, 17 years out of date, are back walking the streets. Ambivalent Bowie-esque sexuality ...
Guide by Paul Gorman, MOJO, May 2004
MOD'S FASTIDIOUS nature dictates that the path between purism and pedantry is oft-trod. Were the Birds arty r&b enthusiasts, more allied to the scruffy Stones ...
Publish and be Damned: The Decline and Fall of the UK Music Press
Overview by Paul Gorman, slantmagazine.com, Summer 2002
WHAT’S UP WITH the music press? The once proud sector of the British media, created from the unholy union of the 60s underground and the ...
Strange New Ways To Kill A Rock Critic
Overview by Paul Gorman, MOJO, September 1994
PREHENSILE Monkey-Tailed Skink? Screeching Weasel? PopDefect? Anus The Menace? ...
Report by Paul Gorman, MOJO, 2003
THE UNEARTHING IN central London of a series of stunning images of rock icons from the early ‘70s has sparked a search for a mystery ...
The Million-Pound Mod: John Stephen
Obituary by Paul Gorman, unpublished, February 2004
JOHN STEPHEN - who died on February 1 aged 69 - was the "£1m Mod" who was a vital element in the look of the ...
Turning the Stone: The Adventures of Jann Wenner and Cameron Crowe in the sick, slick '70s
Book Excerpt by Paul Gorman, In Their Own Write, November 2001
In our second excerpt from In Their Own Write: Adventures in the Music Press (published this week by Sanctuary), Paul Gorman goes back to the ...
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