Rock's Backpages Library Rock's Backpages

Toby Creswell

Toby Creswell

Having just put down a copy of On the Road, Toby Creswell happened upon John Mendelsohn's reviews of the early Led Zeppelin and Harvest. He realised that the novel was indeed over and for the next 32 years has tried to match that higher plane. His first review, sent anonymously to Australian Rolling Stone, was printed and he continued to freelance for the magazine for seven years. His work was also published in RAM, the Syydney Morning Herald, Time, The Age, Roadrunner, Spin, Billboard and a variety of other places. In 1980 Toby formed the Surfside 6 and issued two excellent 45s on the Phantom label, but the group was not to be. In 1985 he became Music Editor of the Australian edition of Rolling Stone and two years later was in a partnership which took over the franchise. He edited the local edition until leaving to form a new magazine - juice - in 1992 as editorial director of Terraplane. Other magazines followed - the teen title BigHit, the grunge Esky, the long-winded HQ. Terraplane/ terraplanet was destined to crash in the dot com mania of the recent past.

Toby has written a biography of Australian singer Jimmy Barnes (Too Much Ain't Enough, Random House) and more recently co-authored (with Martin Fabinyi) a history of Australian rock & roll - The Real Thing (Random House) and an oral history of Australian pop music based on the ABC TV series Love Is In the Air (ABC Books). He has also written extensively for television and last year devised The National Karaoke Challenge for SBS TV. He lives in Sydney with his girlfriend Samantha Trenoweth, an author and journalist, and their daughter Alice.

List of articles in the library by artist

Jeff Buckley: Grace under Fire

Interview by Toby Creswell, Juice, February 1996

"THE RECORD IS FANTASTIC, you and I know that. The band is really great and, let's face it, all the women want to get into ...

Bob Dylan: Chronicles: Volume One

Book Review by Toby Creswell, Sydney Morning Herald, November 2004

THERE'S NO WAY that Bob Dylan, after all this time, is going to spill the beans on his life. The high priest of protest makes ...

Bob Dylan: Gates of Eden Revisited: A Conversation with Bob Dylan

Interview by Toby Creswell, Rolling Stone (Australia), January 1986

IT DOESN'T REALLY matter now whether Bob Dylan is a fundamentalist Christian, anymore than it mattered whether he was going to the Synagogue when he ...

Fleetwood Mac: Going Their Own Way: Fleetwood Mac Finds a New Life Without Lindsey Buckingham

Report and Interview by Toby Creswell, Rolling Stone (Australia), June 1990

"IT WAS FRIGHTENING, because you don't know if it's going to work," says Stevie Nicks, recalling Lindsey Buckingham's departure from Fleetwood Mac in 1987. The ...

Go-Betweens, The, Grant McLennan: Goodbye Fireboy: Grant McLennan 1958 - 2006

Obituary by Toby Creswell, Rock's Backpages, May 2006

GRANT MCLENNAN, who died in his sleep on MAY 6, 2006, was one of the outstanding songwriters of his generation. He was acknowledged an artist ...

INXS, Michael Hutchence: Michael Hutchence 1960-1997

Obituary by Toby Creswell, Rolling Stone (Australia), December 1997

Whether it was an old head injury, the wrong medication or the loneliness that caused his untimely death, Michael Hutchence was an international superstar, an ...

Nirvana: Smells Like a Sellout: Nirvana and the Death of Alternative Rock

Essay by Toby Creswell, Rock's Backpages, September 2011

NOWADAYS EVERYBODY ascribes the collapse of the recording industry to illegal downloading. But as Bob Dylan recently observed, "Remember when that Napster guy came up ...

Triffids, The: The Triffids' David McComb

Interview by Toby Creswell, Juice, 1994

THE DAVID MCCOMB who left Perth with his band the Triffids was still a very young man. Even at those first gigs in the East, ...

back to LIBRARY

COPYRIGHT NOTICE