Carol Clerk RIP

Carol Clerk was a fearless music writer from Belfast who served at Melody Maker for something like 20 years. She was tenacious on the news desk and she wrote about rock and roll with undimmed affection - The Damned, The Pogues and Hawkwind were all the subject of Carol books.

She was essentially friendly, but she wasn't at all soft. And she worked through some fierce times. I remember her at the Oporto Bar in Holborn where the Maker gang used to meet in the Eighties. It was a daunting place to visit, but Carol was a welcoming voice. Ten years later and she had moved down to the south bank and the new nexus was the Stamford Arms. Again, she was there, doing the dutiful.

In Belfast terms, she was a fan of the various punk bands and The Defects in particular. She also wrote a lovely piece for the local punk history, 'It Makes You Want To Spit'. Coming so soon after the loss of Swells and Gill Smith, it's been a terrible season for veteran music scribes.