Susan Compo
A surfing teen in Orange County, California, Susan Compo was betrayed by her writer’s nature when friends selected the Beach Boys’ 'In My Room' as her song. Glam and then punk rock further complicated matters, and she published a fanzine, Blank Generation, straight outta quintessentially suburban Tustin. A fleeting turn in the documentary DOA found Susan bubbling like a homecoming queen about the merits of the Sex Pistols’ Tulsa appearance.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Susan moved back and forth between LA and London, writing about music for Spin, Mojo and other magazines, as well as exploring its echoes in her fiction. She also furthered her passion for soccer - Duncan Campbell decried she "almost counts as an honorary Englishwoman as she is probably the only woman novelist in LA fully conversant with English soccer." She wrote for Match of the Day and later FourFourTwo magazine. Other pieces about various oddball subjects have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Independent (UK) and assorted travel and lifestyle publications.
Praise for Compo's fiction has come from Timothy Leary, Hubert Selby, Jr., Alex Cox, Henry Rollins and Pamela Des Barres but her personal favourite occurred when she read with Charles Bukowski in Long Beach, California. "I like you," he offered. "You’re a pretty girl with a dirty mind." Her books touch on the marginal line between fact and fiction. The first collection, Life After Death and Other Stories, featured a tale about a Cure fan that eventually prompted Robert Smith to fret over his fictional fate while reading the story in bed. She has taught writing - both fiction and non - at the University of Southern California and California Institute of the Arts, and is the author of WARREN OATES: A WILD LIFE (University of Kentucky). When asked if she wrote gonzo, she replied, "Never intentionally."
Books:
Life After Death and Other Stories (1990)
Malingering (1993)
Pretty Things (2001)
Warren Oates: A Wild Life (2009)
Contact: sueline@earthlink.net
17 articles
List of articles in the library
The Sex Pistols: Sex Pistols: Few Waves Made During Tour Of U.S.
Report by Susan Compo, Santa Ana Register, January 1978
IT'S NOT SURPRISING that Britain's punk rockers, the Sex Pistols, found San Francisco "boring". The city that was to be the last stop on the ...
The Sex Pistols Shoot To The Top
Report by Susan Compo, Santa Ana Register, 12 June 1978
WHEN 'GOD SAVE THE QUEEN', a song by British punk-rockers the Sex Pistols, hit the top of the English charts several months ago, it was ...
Happy Mondays: Mondays, Bloody Mondays
Interview by Susan Compo, Siren, 1991
As the Happy Mondays prepare to release a live album to counteract/complement the Baby Big Head bootleg, what’s a girl with a book of post-punk ...
Lydia Lunch, Rowland S. Howard: To Thrill A Mockingbird: Lydia Lunch and Rowland Howard
Interview by Susan Compo, Siren, 1992
Lydia Lunch, currently doing the rounds with a collaborative Rowland S. Howard, is really in action Stateside, standing in opposition to the Ku Klux Klan. ...
Rowland S. Howard: Soul On Ice: Immortalizing Rowland S. Howard
Interview by Susan Compo, Option, May 1992
THE DAY I interview Rowland S. Howard, a simpatico friend of mine hears Howard and Lydia Lunch's 'Some Velvet Morning' emanating, inexplicably, from the vacant ...
Pale Saints: The Choir Invisible: Bringing Pale Saints into Focus
Interview by Susan Compo, Option, Fall 1992
THE PALEST SAINT, not unlike the prettiest star, has to be Saint Gerard Majella, an 18th Century Italian anchorite who, before his death at age ...
Interview by Susan Compo, Spin, November 1993
After nearly 15 years as the pope of mope, the Cure's Robert Smith longs to let his hair down, watch some soccer, and read a ...
Utah Saints: Circa Now! Latter Day Techno Kids, Utah Saints
Report and Interview by Susan Compo, Option, Fall 1993
FOR A COUPLE of English guys, choosing the state of Utah as the basis for their band’s name probably had as much exotic cachet as ...
Review by Susan Compo, MOJO, July 1994
The Undertones/Hypnotised/Positive Touch/The Sin Of Pride /The Peel Sessions Album ...
Blue Oyster Cult: Cult Classic
Review by Susan Compo, MOJO, August 1994
NERDY menace dogs this murky compilation, which sounds like it's coming from an eight-track player in a gas guzrler stuck beneath a muddy stream. ...
Review by Susan Compo, MOJO, August 1994
JULIAN COPE is even more twisted than his infamous mikestand. ...
Retrospective by Susan Compo, MOJO, October 1994
AS NORMAN MAILER ONCE SAID, "All blondes are natural blondes." Look it up in any book of pop quotes and you'll probably find a picture ...
Review by Susan Compo, MOJO, October 1994
AS NORMAN MAILER ONCE SAID, "ALL blondes are natural blondes." Look it up in any book of pop quotes and you'll probably find a picture ...
The Cramps: World of the Interiors
Interview by Susan Compo, MOJO, 1995
Parakeets, serial killer art and "flame-jobs" at the local boneyard. Yep, it’s the return of The Cramps. ...
Siouxsie & The Banshees: The Rapture
Review by Susan Compo, MOJO, February 1995
A FEW SPEED BUMPS DOWN THE TIMELINE OF rock, past the new wave of new wave and the return of baggy, and it seems the ...
Patti Smith: Early Work 1970-1979 (Plexus)
Book Review by Susan Compo, MOJO, March 1995
ROCK'S MOST evocative lines from the 1970s involved religion: "I am an anti-Christ/I am an anarchist". . . "Jesus died for somebody's sins/But not mine." ...
David Bowie: White Noise/White Sands: The Bowie Who Fell to Earth
Book Excerpt by Susan Compo, 'Earthbound' (Jawbone), October 2017
"AFTER SEEING THE extraordinary landscape of the White Sands," Nic Roeg noted, "it prompted me to think of this: strangers always see something that is ...
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