Charles Shaar Murray

Charles Shaar Murray is an award-winning author, journalist, musician and cultural infidel: ‘the rock critic’s rock critic’ (Q Magazine), ‘front-line cultural warrior’ and ‘original gunslinger’ (Independent on Sunday). He first appeared in print in 1970 in the notorious ‘Schoolkids’ issue of OZ magazine. By 1972¸he was working for NME, subsequently becoming Associate Editor. Crosstown Traffic, his acclaimed study of Jimi Hendrix, won the prestigious Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award in 1990: a decade later, Boogie Man was shortlisted for the same award. The first two decades of ‘his journalism, criticism and vulgar abuse’, to use his own description, were collected in Shots from the Hip. In 2010 he received a Record Of The Day for his contributions to music journalism and a novel, The Hellhound Sample, appeared in 2011. He is currently at work on a ‘somewhat unconventional’ book about The Clash.