Barney Hoskyns
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Barney Hoskyns (born 1959) is a British music critic and editor of the online music journalism archive Rock's Backpages.
[edit] Career
Hoskyns graduated from Oxford with a First Class degree in English. He began writing about music for Melody Maker and New Musical Express, quitting his job as staff writer at NME to research a book about soul music. The result was Say It One Time For The Brokenhearted: Country Soul In The American South (UK: Fontana, 1987; Bloomsbury reissue 1998).
Hoskyns has written regularly on pop culture and the arts for British Vogue, where for five years he was a Contributing Editor, and for The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Observer and Arena magazine. He has also contributed to Harper's Bazaar, Interview magazine, Spin magazine and Rolling Stone, as well as to Amazon.com and CDNOW.
Between 1993 and 1999, Hoskyns worked as Associate Editor and then U.S. Editor of Mojo magazine. Faber (UK) and Simon & Schuster (US) published his Glam! Bowie, Bolan & The Glitter Rock Revolution in 1998, tying in with Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine. Haynes provided an introduction. 1999 saw the publication of the bestselling The Mullet: Hairstyle Of The Gods, written with Mark Larson and published by Bloomsbury.
In 2000 Hoskyns became Senior Editor of CDNOW in London, leaving to co-found the music site Rock's Backpages, an online library of rock journalism. Barney edited The Sound and the Fury: A Rock’s Backpages Reader (Bloomsbury, 2003) and Ozzy Osbourne: A Rock’s Backpages Reader (Omnibus, 2004). Hoskyns’ Hotel California: Singer-Songwriters & Cocaine Cowboys In The L.A. Canyons (UK: 4th Estate/Harper Collins; US: Wiley), was published in 2005. A BBC documentary based on the book is scheduled for transmission in early 2007. 2006 saw the publication of his study of Led Zeppelin IV in Rodale’s Rock Of Ages series, together with a US reissue of Across The Great Divide (Hal Leonard Books). He is currently working on a biography of Tom Waits.
He is a regular broadcaster and pundit on both radio and television, appearing on the Top Ten series (CHANNEL 4), the I Love The 80s/90s series (BBC 2), Walk On By (BBC 2), Behind The Music (VH1) and Classic Albums (BBC2). He was the consultant on the acclaimed 2005 series Soul Deep (BBC 2).
Hoskyns’ other books include Montgomery Clift: Beautiful Loser (UK: Bloomsbury/ US: Grove, 1992), Across The Great Divide: The Band & America (UK: Viking; US: Hyperion, 1993) and the novel The Lonely Planet Boy: A Pop Romance (UK/US: Serpent’s Tail, 1995). Waiting For The Sun: Strange Days, Weird Scenes & The Sound Of Los Angeles (UK: Viking/US: St. Martin’s Press, 1996) was nominated for a Ralph J. Gleason award in the U.S.
