Don't Slap The Messenger

A friend has just send me this link to a rather amusing blog from the Guardian. It's about musical hack attacks, about a long tradition of rock stars abusing the writers who have the temerity to say something that threatens the PR consensus. In the middle of it, there's a rather distorted version of my 'incident' with Paul Weller. It seems that I'm in good company.

I think I may have riffed on this subject before, but it's a fertile area. Queen fans have threatened to kill me. A local band, essentially lacking in charm and talent, has written a song about yours truly. There was the unpleasant moment at the Odyssey when Noel and Liam shouted and threw stuff as I stood in the pit. And when it fell on myself to break the news to NME readers that Pop Will Eat Itself had released a particularly poor record, the band was outraged. It culminated in aggressive scenes in the toilets on the Underworld in Camden, when they accused me of only liking "spudpicker music".

My old editor knew the score. "You're not writing this to be mates with the bands," he would bellow. And he was right.