Swells RIP
There's a lot of people out there who think they're good enough to be a rock critic. 'I can write a bit and I totally like loads of bands! I'm always talking about music!' And so, 99% of music writers are the dullest people on Earth. It suits, because rock musicians are just as boring. They tangle up in some beige heap, all trying to cop a feel of each other. However, all the best people churning out words into the music press void weren't too fussed either way... they'd pretty much write about anything but music in their work. One of my favourite music writers who ever lived, criminally underrated too, is Steven Wells (aka Swells)... or should that say was? Because the mighty Swells passed away to cap unofficial ER Death Day following Sky Saxon and Farrah Fawcett to the dirt.
Wells left school with minimal qualifications and jobbed it in dead-end jobs before getting lost in the punk scene, fronting the socialist Leeds art-punk band The Mekons. Later, he started to do the circuit as a punk poet and stand-up as "Seething Wells", "Swells" or "Susan Williams".
The latter guise saw him stealing into the pages of the NME, presumably as they were so thrilled that they could get a record collector type girl in the mag. They didn't know what they were getting into. Soon, the fey indie was being met with Black Flag, Extreme Noise Terror, Napalm Death and the Butthole Surfers. And Daphne and Celeste.
Swells was incredibly irritating to read at times, tearing strips off your favourite bands and winding up all who crossed him for kicks. See, that's what he liked doing best. He'd turn up at the NME offices in clothes that stank up the place and shove it in the face of the fringes that took the whole thing so very, very seriously. He kicked off an article about NME darlings, The Manic Street Preachers with "Let's stop pretending to be excited about a band who are obviously just dragging their bone-weary carcasses through the motions, shall we?" Even hardened MSP nuts had to have a snort of laughter at that. [read it here]
There's more to Swells schtick though. In the '90s he wrote for comedy shows On the Hour and The Day Today. He started the Attack! Books publishing house and flung out a debut novel called 'Tits Out Teenage Terror Totty'.
He could drive you spare. He could make you laugh your guts up through your nostrils. He was never, ever boring. The world of journalism... of which he invariably didn't consider himself to be part of... has a huge hole in it which may never be filled again. His words were an adrenaline rush for everyone concerned, including him.
He died after losing his battle with lymphatic cancer. [Mof Gimmers]
Absolute 90s legend who made me read the NME magazine for many more years than was perhaps necessary. RIP ya smelly bastard.
Posted by: Phil Istine | 06/26/2009 at 06:02 PM