Mark Mordue
Mark Mordue is a writer, journalist, and editor. His work has been published in Interview, Madison, Speak, The Nation, and Salon in the United States, as well as Rolling Stone, Vogue, GQ, The Australian, and the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia. Mordue is the winner of a 1992 Human Rights Media Award, the 2010 Pascall Prize for Critical Writing, and from 1992 to 1997 he was the founding editor of Australia’s leading pop culture magazine, Australian Style. His first book, a collection of integrated travel stories entitled Dastgah: Diary of a Headtrip, was published in Australia in 2001 and the USA in 2004. His poetry collection Darlinghurst Funeral Rites appeared in 2017, while Boy On Fire – his acclaimed biography of "the young Nick Cave" – was published by Allen & Unwin in 2021.
The free verse and loose thoughts of Mr. Mordue
36 articles
List of articles in the library
Elvis Costello: Rebirth of a Punk Hero
Profile by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 27 November 1987
Mark Mordue profiles Elvis Costello, now in his post-punk phase and about to tour Australia next week. ...
Henry Rollins: The Bright Stuff
Interview by Mark Mordue, Juice, April 1993
As American as Apple Pie, saluting the flag, street violence, psychopaths, racism, guns, incest, overdoses, police brutality, urban decay and spiritual horror. Mark Mordue goes ...
Live Review by Mark Mordue, Melody Maker, 4 February 1995
OH YEAH, smash it up, baby, smash it up. This is Courtney Love's night, history standing on her great long legs, a f**k-you attitude. ...
Gil Scott-Heron: A Frail Godfather
Profile and Interview by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 1 March 1995
GIL SCOTT-HERON greets me genially. He's slightly spidery in his dangled movements, surprisingly slight and aged. At 45 the man oft referred to as The ...
Paul Kelly (Australia): Paul Kelly: Poet of the Common Man
Report and Interview by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 12 January 1996
PAUL KELLY'S back in town. I meet him at a King's Cross hotel where his daughter, Madeleine, is turning her slice of cheese into a ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 18 September 1998
JARVIS COCKER wanders through London's Tower Books and Records like a spy in a foreign country. Close by, music fans are harvesting the racks of ...
Report and Interview by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 24 December 1998
KENNETH BRANAGH at a You Am I gig?! I had to look twice. It turned out to be an ostrich-like version, but that's New York ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Mordue, Madison, November 1999
IT COULD BE the definition of what an artist does when he sets out to make something. ...
The Dirty Three: Metro Theatre, Sydney (5 November, 2001)
Live Review by Mark Mordue, Drum Media, 23 April 2002
SOMETIMES I COULD just run into a river and drown. ...
Morrissey: Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Live Review by Mark Mordue, 12Gauge.com, October 2002
CURIOUS CREATURE. Half denying us yet wanting our love, chilling us with the dark edges of sadness yet exalting us to ecstasy if not joy; ...
Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, 2004
DID YA COME from outer space? Did ya kill that bird in the coop? Ooh there be a guitar like old Barney Kessel and something ...
M. Ward: M Ward: Newtown, Sydney
Live Review by Mark Mordue, Drum Media, December 2004
SO YOU ASK what magic is? And the roof above you has lights like long red teardrops hanging from it, splashing down stars into the ...
Overview by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 28 December 2004
I'VE STARTED writing this story a hundred different ways and every time I think I might be getting somewhere I end up stumbling across some ...
Smog: A River Ain't Too Much To Love (Drag City)
Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, May 2005
THERE'S SOME kind of desert here, some grand landscape hinged between dusk and dawn that Bill Callahan evokes. ...
David Pajo: Pajo: Pajo (Drag City)
Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, June 2005
I DIDN'T KNOW what I felt about this record by David Christian Pajo. Then I hated it. ...
Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, January 2006
IT HARDLY seems to begin or end. Just continue. With Aerial, Kate Bush's first CD in 12 years, we could be anywhere between her first ...
Rosanne Cash: Black Cadillac (Capitol)
Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, January 2006
YOU CAN'T EXPECT these things. So let me start in another place to explain. ...
Daniel Lanois: The Basement, Sydney
Live Review by Mark Mordue, Drum Media, 14 April 2006
DANIEL LANOIS is a strange kettle of fish. You wouldn't call his voice magic, but there's a lot going on in his mind and how ...
Bob Dylan: Dylan on Dylan edited by Jonathan Cott
Book Review by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 24 June 2006
LATELY I've begun to think that Bob Dylan does not exist. That the boy who made him up might still be dreaming. And we are ...
Bob Dylan: Modern Times (Columbia)
Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, September 2006
THIS RECORD came in a wooden box. When I opened it, the hinges creaked. Inside there was an old phonograph and a dusty 78, cracked. ...
Jarvis Cocker: The Jarvis Cocker Record (Rough Trade)
Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, November 2006
CAN HIPS BE witty? Jarvis Branson Cocker proved it last year as part of the stellar ensemble for Came So Far for Beauty, the Leonard ...
M. Ward: M Ward: Post-War (Merge)
Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, Summer 2006
STRANGE TITLE: makes you wonder what he means. Though the words to M Ward's cover of Daniel Johnston's 'To Go Home' may get to the ...
Lou Reed: Another Brick in the Wall: An interview with Lou Reed about Berlin
Interview by Mark Mordue, unpublished, Fall 2006
This story appeared in various edited versions in Rolling Stone Australia, December-January 2006-07, New York magazine, USA December 11, 2006, and The Word, UK February ...
Essay by Mark Mordue, markmordue.com, 5 May 2008
WHEN I THINK ABOUT rock 'n' roll and my life trying to write about it, my trying to get inside rock 'n' roll through words ...
Joan As Policewoman: Goodbye and Hello: Joan as Policewoman
Profile and Interview by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 9 August 2008
BIRDS ARE SHRIEKING through the trees all over Rushcutter's Bay. It is as if something violent and tuneful is going on at once as we ...
Nick Cave: A Rake's Progress: Nick Cave's Death of Bunny Munro
Book Review by Mark Mordue, The Australian Literary Review, August 2009
IS BUNNY MUNRO Nick Cave's version of Willy Loman with a hard on? In The Death of Bunny Munro the Australian rock 'n' roll singer ...
Rowland S. Howard: Oxford Art Factory, Sydney
Live Review by Mark Mordue, Rock's Backpages, 26 October 2009
WHAT COST? When the former Birthday Party guitarist Rowland S. Howard walks into his song 'Pop Crimes', the title track to his new solo album, ...
John Cale: Cold, Black Style: The John Cale Interview
Interview by Mark Mordue, Rock's Backpages, January 2010
N.B. An edited version of this story appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald Spectrum on January 2, 2010. ...
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Dirty Three, Grinderman: Howl: An interview with Warren Ellis
Interview by Mark Mordue, The Sun-Herald, 10 January 2010
WHEN THE American author Mark Twain visited a Victorian gold mining town back in 1885, he was inspired to write: "It was as if the ...
Book Review by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 10 April 2010
ART can set us free. Art is holy. Art is love. ...
Hank Williams: On The Lost Highway: Hank Williams
Retrospective by Mark Mordue, The Australian, 22 October 2011
DAMNED cold. An ice storm over Nashville has closed down flights across the state of Tennessee. ...
Miles Davis: Me and Miles Davis, in a silent way
Essay by Mark Mordue, The Australian, 31 December 2011
I DON'T WANT to tell you where. It seems too private. Not that I have all that much to tell, only what I saw. Midafternoon, ...
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Push the Sky Away
Review by Mark Mordue, The Monthly, February 2013
WE DON'T OFTEN go on journeys with musicians any more. Not over the length of an album. From iTunes to Spotify, we live in an ...
Nick Cave: One More Time With Feeling, Skeleton Tree and the power and language of grief
Interview by Mark Mordue, The Guardian, 19 September 2016
The subject matter is heavy – the death of a child – but the results are divine in an album that emerges from struggle to ...
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds: Ghosteen
Review by Mark Mordue, The Electrified Journalist, 6 October 2019
NOTE: I wrote these notes upon a first listening to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' Ghosteen. I tried to evolve the words into something ...
Nick Cave: The Journalist and the Singer
Book Excerpt by Mark Mordue, 'Boy On Fire' (Allen & Unwin), February 2021
THE FIRST TIME I ever spoke to Nick Cave was in a phone interview to promote his second solo album, The Firstborn Is Dead (1985), ...
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