Sylvie Simmons is a London-born music journalist, named as a "principal player" in Paul Gorman's book on the history of the rock music press In Their Own Write (Sanctuary Publishing, 2001). A widely regarded writer and rock historian, she is one of very few women to be included among the predominantly male rock elite. She is also the author of a number of books, including biography and cult fiction.
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In 1977 Simmons decamped to Los Angeles and became US correspondent for Sounds, one of the three major UK rock music weeklies of the period. She wrote a weekly column, 'Hollywood Highs', and interviewed a wide range of artists, including Rod Stewart, Mick Jagger, Johnny Rotten, Steely Dan, Adam Ant, Black Sabbath, The Clash and Michael Jackson.
During the '80s, when Los Angeles witnessed an upsurge in heavy metal and glam rock, Simmons wrote what are regarded as the definitive features on the movement, being the first journalist to bring then-unknown acts like Guns N' Roses and Mötley Crüe to international attention. (She would go on to co-author the first book on Mötley Crüe with rock writer Malcolm Dome, Lude, Crude And Rude, 1994, out of print).
When Sounds editor Geoff Barton founded UK heavy metal magazine Kerrang!, he asked Simmons to be its L.A correspondent. She did so, under the pseudonym Laura Canyon, while continuing to write under her own name for Sounds (her photograph in Sounds showed her as a brunette, and in Kerrang! as a blonde). At this time she also wrote a weekly music column for the Knight-Ridder newspaper syndicate and a monthly column for the Japanese magazine Music Life, was a co-host of the syndicated US rock radio show London Wavelength, wrote for a number of European publications and was a regular and well-regarded contributor to cult US magazine Creem.
She moved back to North London in 1984, where, with the exception of three years spent living in France and her frequent travels in the United States she continues to live.
Subsequently her work has appeared, and is still featured, in a number of major publications including among many others Q magazine, The Guardian, The Times, The Radio Times, The Independent, Rolling Stone, Harp, Blender, San Francisco Chronicle, and chiefly, MOJO magazine, for which she has written since its first issue and is Contributing Editor and Americana columnist (Simmons curated a compilation of Americana music, "Rough Guide To Americana", on the World Music Network, in 2001)
She has also compiled and/or authored a number of liner notes for artists ranging from David Bowie to Emmylou Harris, Leonard Cohen to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The best-known is the widely-regarded book she wrote, at the request of Johnny Cash and Rick Rubin, for a Johnny Cash box set "Unearthed" (American Recordings, 2003). This turned out to be Cash's first posthumous release, and their interview - conducted over a one-week period at Cash's home less than six weeks before he died - the last major interview Cash would give.
In addition she is the author of several acclaimed books. These include the biographies of Neil Young, the inaugural release in MOJO Magazine's MOJO Heroes book series,[1] and the highly acclaimed Serge Gainsbourg: A Fistful Of Gitanes (J. G. Ballard chose it as his book of the year) which has been translated from the English original into five languages (various publishers, including Da Capo, ISBN 0-306-81183-9 Helter Skelter and Mondadori/Random House).
In 2004 Simmons' first book of fiction was published, Too Weird For Ziggy, (Black Cat, ISBN 0-8021-4156-0) a collection of rock-related, interlinked short stories about the strangeness of celebrity, for which the US publishing house Grove/Atlantic resurrected its Black Cat imprint (previously home to William S. Burroughs and Henry Miller). The book bore testimonials from Sharon Osbourne, Marianne Faithfull, Slash of Guns 'N Roses, Lemmy of Motörhead and Tori Amos, and was widely praised.
Another Simmons story, "I Hate His Fingers", appeared in the 2007 collection London Noir, edited by Cathi Unsworth, Serpent's Tail, ISBN 1-85242-930-5.
Her non-fiction work, including critiques and essays, has appeared in many books, among them Girls Will Be Boys by Liz Evans (1997), the various editions of The MOJO Collection: The Greatest Albums Of All Time (Canongate, 2001) and Creem: America's Only Rock & Roll Magazine (Harper Collins, 2007).
Simmons has made frequent appearances as an interviewee on the radio, on TV and in film and DVD documentaries. The most recent includes The Seven Ages of Rock (BBC2, 2007; VH1 2008) and the feature film and dvd Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of Smile (director David Leaf, 2004). She is a featured speaker at worldwide festivals and conferences, including SpitLit, London; Serge Gainsbourg Een Hommage, Amsterdam; Litquake, San Francisco; South by Southwest, Austin; and Porchlight, the American storytelling series, where Simmons is sometimes known to end her slot with a ukulele performance.