The Generalist

It’s been ten years at least since Nick and I met face to face but, as with all true friends, it seemed like just yesterday. We’re at the Academy Hotel in Bloomsbury, Nick being over in the UK from Paris, his home for a couple of decades, to promote the new version of his book ‘The Dark Stuff’, his legendary collection of rock journalism.

First published by Penguin Books in 1994, a revised edition with additional material came out from Da Capo Press in the US in 2004 and now Faber are issuing another new edition with even more new essays: ‘Sly Stone’s Evil Ways’, ‘A Portrait of Serge Gainsbourg’, ‘Phil Spector’s Long Fall From Grace’ and a concluding piece ‘Self-destruction in Rock and Elsewhere.’

Inspired by the New Journalism in general and the legendary Lester Bangs in particular, and captivated by the raw power of Iggy Pop (who writes a brilliant foreword that begins ‘I read this nasty book with an unusual degree of interest …’) Nick was to revolutionise British rock journalism through his stand-out work for the NME in the 1970s and 80s.

He took us behind the masks and the pr and actually made you feel that you were in the room with some of the most talented and disturbed musicians in modern music. Rereading these encounters with the likes of Syd Barrett, the New York Dolls, Miles Davis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Neil Young and Brian Wilson, to name just a few, the thrill of his work is still intact. Younger readers discovering him for the first time in this new edition will recognise that he is the real deal.

Uniquely amongst rock scribes, Nick lived the life to its fullest, undertaking a Dantean journey which included his well-publicised battle with heroin addiction, which he has long conquered.

He is man of great passion and integrity as you will hear in this interview. Age has only enhanced his gravitas and given his words added depth. The passion still burns brightly and will find full flower in the major book he is now writing
on the 1970s, a decade he says he has ‘in his back pocket.’ Also forthcoming is his first novel which promises to further extend his unique talent.

Listen to this man and you’ll realise that modern rock journalism has become flaccid, tame and commercialised by comparison and that we need his spirited writings more than ever. “I am in the soul business,” he says and that fact shines though in everything he says and writes.

Files
Interview, MP3 size: 49.5mb, Length: 01:11:05

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We are sitting in Chris Salewicz’s basement, somewhere in South London, surrounded by precarious stacks of cds, sustained by tea and a toasted sardine sandwich, talking ‘bout Joe Strummer.

Chris was waiting for his 650pp uberbiography of Joe to come out when we talked – the result of some 3 1/2 years research and some 300 interviews. Chris had been a longtime buddy of Joe’s anyway, having met, interviewed and befriended him over many years. So the book, which the first flush of reviews suggest is a five-star job, is pierced by Chris’s love and respect for John Mellor, the real man behind the giant public persona of Joe Strummer.

What is great about Chris is his energy and humour which comes across so vividly in this interview and which makes him such a brilliant music journalist. Since his days at the punk and post-punk NME in the 1970s, he has written ‘copiously’ for mainstream papers and mags, published 14 books, including a major work on Bob Marley, and crafted the screenplay for ‘Third World Cop’, still one of the most successful films in the Caribbean ever.

He tells me: ‘”I’ve never known a band that cried as much as the Clash.” For this and a hundred other insights and revelations, sit back and enjoy the Strummer saga straight from the mouth of the man who knows.

Files
Interview Part 1, MP3 Size: 36.8MB, Length: 80:20

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Interview Part 2, MP3 Size: 13.4MB, Length: 29:23

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