

I don’t see that myself at all I’ve never felt that way”ġ7.40 On being bullied at school, and learning how to avoid that kind of attentionġ9.20 Everett went to university to study maths and philosophy because he didn’t want to disappoint his parentsĢ0.20.00 Everett’s ideal job now is to be a staff writer at a “decent publication” such as The GuardianĢ3.10 Music entered Everett’s life at age 17, when some friends started listening to punkĢ2.40 The moment where it all clicked was hearing ‘ Denis’ by Blondie for the first time.


#Photox led download#
Nick Cave described one of his live performances as “more entertaining than Nina Simone,” while Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs called him “the coolest man in England.” The Gossip’s members say he’s the most important music critic of their generation.Įverett True on Twitter: download | iTunes | Stitcher | Libsyn | YouTubeĢ.40 Everett and his family are about to emigrate back to the UK at the end of June, having lived in Brisbane for seven yearsģ.20 His recently-submitted PhD is titled The Slow Death of Everett True: The changing role of popular music critics in web 2.0 environmentsĥ.10 “It’s pretty amazing that rock criticism is still around, in many respects”ĥ.50 He felt that moving to Australia and working in the field of arts criticism was “like stepping back in time”Ħ.50 “Music criticism still isn’t valued very highly here ”ħ.40 Previously, Everett lived in Melbourne between 19 and wrote for The Ageĩ.20 Everett didn’t have any writing work lined up when he arrived in Melbourne, or in Brisbane a few years laterġ0.05 When Everett was 15 or 16, he would visit the local library and read about six books a dayġ1.50 Everett failed English in high school, partly because no-one taught him how to write essaysġ3.10 “I only learned how to write when I started editing people”ġ3.40 Everett’s parents were both teachers toward the end of their careers previously, his father worked at Marconi Electronics, and his mother looked after the six children until she was into her 40sġ5.40 Of the six children in his family, Everett was the fourth, and “felt invisible” in the hierarchyġ6.50 “When most people first meet me, they think I’m an extrovert. He is the author of several books on rock music featuring Nirvana, Ramones, The White Stripes and others, and was a key writer covering the rise of Nirvana and the Seattle scene in the early 1990s. He has written for more rock publications than most people can name. You’ll hear his children running around and playing nearby, as we talk about how he failed English in high school, the Blondie song that first endeared him to pop music, the origins of his pen names, his tumultuous relationship with alcohol, and the time when he pushed Kurt Cobain in a wheelchair in front of tens of thousands of people at Reading Festival in 1992.Įverett True is a former editor of Melody Maker, VOX, Careless Talk Costs Lives and Plan B in the U.K. More recently, while living in Brisbane, he has been a PhD student at Queensland University of Technology, and when I met him at his home in the western suburb of The Gap in early June he had just submitted his PhD thesis. Over the years, we became friends and colleagues, supporting each others’ work as freelancers and forming an unlikely bond.īesides his work as a prominent music critic, True is an accomplished author, having written books on Nirvana, Ramones and The White Stripes. As an arrogant, opinionated young writer myself, it took some time for me to see past True’s brash, abrasive style of writing and view him as a real person with real feelings. He moved to Brisbane in 2008 and immediately made a name for himself by deriding popular bands such as Silverchair, The Vines and Savage Garden as “ musical abominations” in a memorable article for The Guardian.Īt the time, these comments caused significant waves among the Australian music writing fraternity. Everett True is a freelance music critic and author.īorn in England, True was involved with several key British music magazines throughout the 1990s and 2000s, including NME, Melody Maker and Plan B.
