RIP Steven Wells

[Sadken]

Yeah, RIP, I was very sad when I heard this news.

 

[clandestino]

Charlie Brooker on Swells:


This week Charlie was saddened to read of the death of former NME writer Steven "Swells" Wells: "I disagreed with 85% of what he wrote, but I always wished I could hurl sentences together like him – he tossed words around like a demented cartoon chef. He seemed hilarious and furious, music journalism's very own Sadowitz. Never met or spoke to him; now I wish I had. RIP."

 

[Sadken]

Aisylene just gave a status update backing Brooker for PM.

 

[maomao]

Always got pissed off if he was reviewing/interviewing a band I actually liked because I knew there wouldn't be enough in there about the music. Always loved reading him write about people I didn't like though.

 

[josef1878]

Was it Swells who took took the stage after Black Flag (i think!) and declared...."I've seen better dogs on the street than that American bastard who has just been on the stage!"

 

[bluestreak]

i just found out through another website that steven wells died whilst i was at glastonbury. fuck sake, the glastonbury free paper wanked over some dead peado, gave the nod to some hippy wacko and mentioned in passing that farah fawcett popped, but did they mention this? did they aresholes. i wanted to be swells when i was younger. his style of writing in the nme seemed to me to be everything that music journalism should be. self-aware, honest, amusing, uncompromising, intelligent (except when self-consciously stupid), political, and fucking funny.

RIP swells. *raises glass, chucks drink over vacuous indie knobstick*

 

[dweller]

RIP Swells,
I used to really enjoy his very individual NME writing style .
Yes he wound me up sometimes.
But he enjoyed slagging things off to the bitter limit and knew how to get under your skin.

 

[Streathamite]

RIP Steven Wells. Even when you made me scream with rage, you made me laugh. A rarity like me - a witty, human trot

 

[Larje]

i just found out through another website that steven wells died whilst i was at glastonbury.

Me too, it wasn't until Wednesday when I got back from Glasto that I heard. I knew the old kanker had been hitting him hard but it still came as a bit of a shock to hear he'd lost his fight.

In the early 90's when I first started getting into music and reading the NME he always stood out the most (and their were some great auter writers around then: Dudfield, Maconie, Ellen, Quantick). I quickly started aping the way he spoke, agreeing with most of his politics (the SWP thankfully passed me by) and trusting his judgement on music. I was always a massive pop fan but he got me into Napalm Death and hating hairgripcore.

So RIP Swells, a hero to most but he meant even more to me.

 

[Fedayn]

hating hairgripcore

 

[rekil]

Sad news. I thought he'd more or less recovered. I used to write to him around 2001/2002. He responded just about instantly to any emails and was always funny. I was chuffed when he asked to use my description of Bono in one of his pieces and we banged out a 20 verse poem about Morrissey one morning.

 

[butchersapron]

Blimey Carol Clerk has died as well - totally missed that. Really enjoyed her writing too. RIP Carol.

 

[trevhagl]

oh for fucks sake - can people just stop fucking dying now

eta: R.I.P

hang on a minute, Thatcher hasn't yet

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

Blimey Carol Clerk has died as well - totally missed that. Really enjoyed her writing too. RIP Carol.

Oh bloody hell. She came and sat round our camp fire one year at Reading in the early 90s. A mental, but lovely, woman. RIP.

 

[BettyBlue]

Ahhh, what a shame, i really rated him back in the day.

RIP Swells/Seething Wells



Sorry to hear about your old man as well Trev. RIP Trev's pa

 

[butchersapron]

Unseen Swells: The sacred cows in need of a good bricking

he missed us going up as well.

In fact, so prolific was the man that we didn't always have time to run all of his great ideas and blogposts. Looking back at the ones that got away, it seemed a crying shame to leave them lying around on our hard drives. Which is why, in tribute to rock's rantiest writer, we're marking the first anniversary of his death with five previously unpublished blogposts – one for each day this week

 

[butchersapron]

Yes,

Bob Dylan

Dylan actually died of shame in 1964, shortly after he stopped pissing on warmongers' graves and became a sort of reverse-anachronistic John Cooper Clarke clone without the jokes.

Jacques Brel

Brel is what mime artists would sound like if they were allowed to sing.

 

[Fedayn]

Judging by that picture he was Chris Bambery's long lost twin brother.

 

[butchersapron]

I DID have shit hair and in hindsight my embracing of ‘twee’ was embarrassing,

Tell it like it was

 

[rosa]

Unseen Swells: The sacred cows in need of a good bricking

he missed us going up as well.

Cheers for that link, i was about to post that they should put together a book of his writing til i read at the end that that's exactly what they're going to do. The rant about Bob Dylan was classic Swells: stream-of-consciousness, bordering on incoherence but actually almost poetic in its genius.

 

[Idris2002]

 

[butchersapron]

He was right. Fantastic album.

 

[butchersapron]

They shoulduld have let him loose on clapton.

 

[Idris2002]

So did this book of his writing ever come out?

 

[Idris2002]

So did this book of his writing ever come out?

I asked Quantick this on twitter a couple of years ago. They tried, but just couldn't make it work, he said.

 

[hitmouse]

I suppose it must've been one of the last columns he did, but I remember enjoying his brutal demolition job on Mischief Brew:

Blog: Why is right-on music so wrong?

Steven Wells: With so many righteous bands looking, smelling and sounding like a disgrace, it's difficult to reconcile loving their politics with hating their music

www.theguardian.com

Eggheads with too much time on their hands often like to debate the question: "Is it OK to like Wagner even though he was a dirty Nazi?" I'd like to turn that question on its head and ask: "What is the correct position to adopt regarding bands with splendid politics but absolutely rotten music?"

...There's a band here in Philly called Mischief Brew who are undoubtedly fantastic human beings because they sing about how Jesus was a commie and how Nazis and capitalists are bastards. But they sound like Death Cab for Cutie being pulled on a giant shit chariot by a pack of worm-ridden, three-legged dogs wearing disgustingly stained dung-coloured dog dungarees and the obligatory red-coloured bandanas around their necks. And stupid hand-knitted Tibetan-style hippy twat-hats with earflaps. So tell me, why do so many righteous and right-on bands look and sound like a dung baguette?

And I like Mischief Brew. Or liked, cos he's dead as well now, RIP.

 

[Idris2002]

I suppose it must've been one of the last columns he did, but I remember enjoying his brutal demolition job on Mischief Brew:

Blog: Why is right-on music so wrong?

Steven Wells: With so many righteous bands looking, smelling and sounding like a disgrace, it's difficult to reconcile loving their politics with hating their music

www.theguardian.com

And I like Mischief Brew. Or liked, cos he's dead as well now, RIP.

Genuine LOL at "giant shit chariot". And it's a genuine shame there's no Collected Works of Swells.

He saw things we couldn't even imagine. Stuart Murdoch on fire off the shoulder of Orion, etc.

 

[hitmouse]

Genuine LOL at "giant shit chariot". And it's a genuine shame there's no Collected Works of Swells.

He saw things we couldn't even imagine. Stuart Murdoch on fire off the shoulder of Orion, etc.

I feel like in some roundabout way, Swells must've played some role in me getting as heavily into twee as I did. The allure of the taboo, or something.

 

[Idris2002]

I feel like in some roundabout way, Swells must've played some role in me getting as heavily into twee as I did. The allure of the taboo, or something.

He didn't like twee. Not one bit:

Los Campesinos! First Against Wall In TWAT! (The War Against Twee) | The Quietus

"Dad, it’s some old English cunt!" screams my six-year-old daughter Tracey Trotsky Spinoza Jones. "It’s three in the fucking morning," I grunt, grabbing the phone. "It’s only six months since the 14-legged abortion that is Los Campesinos! released their first abomination," roars Quietus editor...

thequietus.com

Great wee read that one, he kept it going right to the end.

 

[hitmouse]

He didn't like twee. Not one bit:

Los Campesinos! First Against Wall In TWAT! (The War Against Twee) | The Quietus

"Dad, it’s some old English cunt!" screams my six-year-old daughter Tracey Trotsky Spinoza Jones. "It’s three in the fucking morning," I grunt, grabbing the phone. "It’s only six months since the 14-legged abortion that is Los Campesinos! released their first abomination," roars Quietus editor...

thequietus.com

Great wee read that one, he kept it going right to the end.

Interesting that he liked the Television Personalities, who I've always thought were wank (based on not having listened to them that much, but I suppose strongly-held and possibly totally unfair opinions are very much the Swells way). I also like that the sidebar suggests an obituary titled "Swells Dies. Caps Lock Buttons Sigh In Relief".
What it Swells who coined Bellend Sebastian, or was that one just inevitable?