Rock's Backpages Library Rock's Backpages

Simon Warner

Simon Warner
SIMON WARNER is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster who teaches popular music at the University of Leeds. A live rock reviewer with The Guardian from 1992-95, he was featured columnist for the webzine Pop Matters, penning the 'Anglo Visions' column from 2001-2006 and makes frequent contributions to BBC radio and online. He published Rockspeak: The Language of Rock and Pop in 1996 and contributed a chapter on the ways in which Woodstock was reported to the essay collection Remembering Woodstock (2004). He has, in addition, penned a number of entries for the US encyclopedia Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Popular Musicians since 1990 (2004). His interests focus on rock journalism – his reviews and interviews have appeared in various websites including Rock's Backpages, Music Journalist and Rock Critics – and the associations between popular music and literature, particularly the ways in which the Beat Generation writers – Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs and others – shaped subsequent rock culture. His self-edited collection Howl for Now (2005) and his article in Centre of the Creative Universe: Liverpool and the Avant Garde (2007) reflect these concerns. His latest co-edited volume – Summer of Love: The Beatles, Art and Culture in the Sixties – appeared in late 2008 and a book on the relationship between the Beats and rock musicians, Text and Drugs and Rock'n'Roll: The Beats and Rock from Kerouac and Ginsberg to Dylan and Cobain, has been commissioned by Continuum of New York.


Books


Rockspeak: The Language of Rock and Pop (Blandford, 1996)
Howl for Now: A Celebration of Allen Ginsberg’s epic protest poem (Route, 2005), editor
Summer of Love: The Beatles, Art and Culture in the Sixties (WVT, 2008), co-edited with Joerg Helbig


websites:

University of Leeds

Simon Warner's Rock's Backpages blog

List of articles in the library by artist

Beck: Manchester University

Live Review by Simon Warner, Guardian, The, November 1994

IS THIS the age of the neurotic self-obsessive? Sold out signs at Beck's debut UK gig suggest that his curious blend of twitchy unease and ...

Destiny's Child: Survivor (Columbia)

Review by Simon Warner, PopMatters, May 2001

POP HISTORY IS as slippery as a Tom Parker, as mysterious as a Brian Epstein, as mercurial as a Malcolm McLaren. Like its great managerial ...

Lady GaGa: Transvision Vamp: Lady GaGa

Comment by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, January 2010

THE POWER OF Lady GaGa has been one of the most scintillating features of 2009: three number one UK singles, a sprawling debut album and ...

Pulp: Metropolitan University, Leeds

Live Review by Simon Warner, Guardian, The, April 1994

IN A MORE just world it would now be time to set aside the macho posturings of the rock burn-out and the dead-ends of the ...

Rare Earth: The Best of Rare Earth (Motown)

Review by Simon Warner, PopMatters, February 2001

MOTOWN'S GOLDEN decade – over 100 US Top Ten hits in the Sixties – was as steady and profitable as the Detroit auto plant conveyor ...

Joe Strummer, Clash, The: Less Rotten Than Reasonable: Joe Strummer and My Punk Damascus

Memoir by Simon Warner, PopMatters, December 2002

ALTHOUGH I saw Joe Strummer in action many times, I only met him once and, embarrassingly, confused him with someone else. ...

List of genre pieces

Birthdays of the Cool?

Essay by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, December 2002

Simon Warner on Dazed & Confused at 10 – and The Wire at 20! ...

On Lloyd Cole Knew My Father

Review by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, February 2003

"WHAT WOULD entice social misfits from provincial hellholes like, say, Northampton, Wigan and Exmouth to join the world of sex, drugs, travel and free records ...

Out of His Pen: The Words of Richard Williams

Interview by Simon Warner, rockcritics.com, September 2002

IN U.S. CULTURE, the rock critic is valued, even venerated. From Lester Bangs to Dave Marsh, from Ben Fong-Torres to Greil Marcus, the voices that ...

Pop and the Press

Book Review by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, November 2002

Simon Warner peruses a fresh academic take on rock journalism ...

Rock's Future Pages

Overview by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, March 2003

Why new music titles keep coming despite uncertain times. ...

back to LIBRARY

COPYRIGHT NOTICE