Thursday 25 June 2009

Steven Wells - A Small Tribute



It was with great sadness that I read today of the death of Steven Wells. If John Peel was the soundtrack to my musical education, then Swells was the written equivalent.

What poor style I have today is an anaemic, mewling, cat-weakly-vomming-up-a-hair-ball copy of Swells’ purple prose. He was nearly always right about what he wrote and even when he was wrong, he was funny. Laugh out loud funny.

His long term feuds were legendary, especially his lifelong hatred of Sonic Youth and Belle and Sebastian. Whichever magazine he was writing for, whatever the topic, he would always work in a gratuitous insult for no other reason than to piss any passing fans off.

In his last column for the Philadelphia Weekly, written from his sick bed, he still manages to get in one last pop at The Smiths.

I’ll miss him a lot.

1 comment:

Keith Knight said...

Amen to that, although I thought that he was nearly always WRONG about what he wrote - but I didn't like him any the less for it. One of the greats and a hugely underrated writer.