Martin Aston has ratcheted up 39 years writing about music and other subjects without beats or melody, including contributing to MOJO since its inception in 1994. After starting at Melody Maker, he’s written for other specialist music mags (including Q, NME and Music Week), newspapers (The Guardian, Independent and Times), overseas titles (the UK correspondent for Dutch monthly OOR, the New Zealand Herald, the College Music Journal in the US, and for Spin and Details), the broadcast bible Radio Times and the odd website (BBC Online, The Vinyl Factory). His detours into books comprise biographies of Pulp, Björk, the record label 4AD and a hundred-year history of the LGBTQ+ pioneers of popular music. They say don’t meet your heroes, but interviewing the likes of David Bowie, Tom Verlaine, Patti Smith, John Waters, Little Richard, Dame Judi Dench, Rik Mayall and Pavlov’s Dog has brought considerable joy, and only one interviewee (hi, Evan Dando) has walked out, so he thinks journalism could be a career worth pursuing.
