For every generation, there’s a music journalist who does more than tell you what you should think is cool. Someone who embraces the whole of pop culture, warts and all, celebrating and cajoling in equal measure. Lester Bangs, Hunter S Thompson, maybe even Cameron Crowe. Ok, not the last. For me, it was Steven Wells, who died yesterday in hospital in Philadelphia.
Swells, as he was known at the time, wrote for the NME during my formative years; he was the only voice among a multitude of yes men who considered his job to be to both provoke and inform. He realized that there is no way you can explain what makes a song, or an album, good or bad – you can only write about your reaction to it. He considered intellectual elitism to be the greatest sin possible for a fan or a band to commit; he railed against the Smiths, against Sonic Youth for overcomplicating a simple art form, for trying to create overly cerebral music out of an art form that should inspire a physical reaction.
He regarded all forms of music in an equal light – for instance, he loved Daphne and Celeste. One of his bugbears was people thinking their ‘their music’ (read, whiney indie tunes) was superior to chart music; that it had more purity, was better for being less marketed, and all that sort of nonsense. He never seemed to tire of pointing out the hypocrisy of those who don’t think that marketing pervades all of the music industry, and not just the part that caters to the fictional Teenage Girl. As if what teenage girls like is somehow less artistically relevant than want a twenty something white guy has on his iPod? This is the attitude he constantly fought, that ridiculousness and preposterous entertainment in and of itself was somehow a dirty thing.
He was fearless in his writing, never shirking from calling out crypto racists, homophobes or Radiohead fans, all of whom he dispised. Above all, he was hilarious. He was rude, offensive, often wrong, always challenging, but above all, he was very, very funny. I’ve spent all morning reading back over some of the articles he wrote for the NME, and I can only commend them to your attention.
Goodbye, Swells, you kept me entertained.
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