Jon Savage

Jon Savage (born 1953), real name Jonathon Sage, is a Cambridge-educated writer, broadcaster and music journalist, best known for his award winning history of the Sex Pistols and punk music, "England's Dreaming," published in 1991.

He was a high-profile writer during the glory days of British punk and wrote articles on all the major punk acts. Savage wrote and published a fanzine called "London's Outrage" in 1976, and in 1977 began working as a journalist for Sounds. "Sounds" was, at that time, one of the UK's three major music papers, along with the New Musical Express and Melody Maker. Savage interviewed punk, New Wave and electronic music artists for "Sounds" until 1979, when he moved to "Melody Maker", and then in 1980 to the newly founded pop culture magazine "The Face".

Throughout the 1980s, Savage wrote for "The Observer" and the "New Statesman", providing high-brow commentary on popular culture.

In 1991, Savage designed a record sleeve for the, then little-known, Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers. The single was called "Feminine Is Beautiful".

"England's Dreaming", published by Faber in 1991, was lauded as the definitive history of punk music, and remains the single most comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon. cite web|title=Smash the State|url=http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,310016,00.html|year=1992 |work=Entertainment Weekly] It was used as the basis for a television programme, "Punk and the Pistols", shown on BBC2 in 1995, and an updated edition in 2001 featured a new introduction which made mention of the Pistols' 1996 reunion and the release of the 2000 Pistols documentary film, "The Filth and The Fury".

Savage continues to write on punk and other genres in a variety of publications, most notably "Mojo" magazine and the Observer Music Monthly. He wrote the introduction to Mitch Ikeda's "Forever Delayed" (2002), an official photobook of the Manic Street Preachers.

Savage has appeared in the documentaries "" and "NewOrderStory".

Several compilation CDs based on his tracklistings have also been released, including "England's Dreaming" (2004) and "Meridian 1970" (2005), the latter of which puts forward the argument that 1970 was a high-point for popular music, contrary to critical opinion. His most recent compilation has been "Queer Noises 1961-1978" (2006), a compilation of largely overlooked pop songs from that period that carried overt or coded gay messages.

Jon Savage's latest book, "Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture", was published in 2007. It's a history of the concept of teenagers, which begins in the 1870s and ends in 1945. "Teenage" aims to tell the story of youth culture's prehistory, and dates the advent of today's form of "teenagers" to 1945. cite web|title=The Kids Are—Yawn—Alright|url=http://nymag.com/arts/books/reviews/30624/|year=2007 |work=New York Magazine]

Works

*"England's Dreaming Sex Pistols and Punk Rock" Publisher: London, Faber & Faber Ltd, 1991 ISBN 9780571139750
*"Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture" Publisher: Viking Books, 2007 ISBN 9780670038374
*"Joy Division" documentary film, screenwriter, 2008 cite web|title=Unseen pleasures|url=http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/observermusic/2008/03/unseen_pleasures.html|year=2008 |work=guardian.co.uk]

Music compilations

*"Queer Noises - From the Closet to the Charts" (Trikont [http://www.trikont.com/ Trikont] ) [http://www.newint.org/columns/media/music/2006/12/01/queer/ "Queer Noises" review]

* "Dreams come true -classic wave electro 1982-8799-" (Domino Records 2008)

References

External links

* [http://www.3ammagazine.com/litarchives/2002_jun/interview_jon_savage.html 2002 interview]
* [http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/juvenilia-and-other-delinquencies-an-interview-with-jon-savage/ 2007 interview]
* [http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/lea/77472.htm England's Dreaming Archive Papers held at Liverpool John Moores University]