Music writer and professional drummer. An appreciation

IAIN Shedden, the music writer and drummer who toured the world with landmark punk band the Saints and other groups, was widely respected in the industry, firstly because he was a talented writer, reporter and critic, and secondly because he’d seen the music industry — warts and all — from behind the curtain. As he recalled in 2004: “I have an understanding of (musicians) and I can talk about it from the inside ... I might get a nuance in a story that someone else might not because maybe other writers haven’t spent 12 years staying up all night.”

He tracked the local music scene like few others, and also interviewed some of the world’s biggest acts, often multiple times, from David Bowie to Iggy Pop to Lou Reed, Jeff Buckley, Patti Smith, Tom Waits and Elvis Costello.

One of the highlights of his career was an interview with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. “He is such a legend and I’m such a fan,” Shedden recalled in 2004. “I’ll always remember Keith sitting there with a cigarette and a vodka martini.”

Shedden was a drummer and journalist from the age of 17. He started his first band, The Jolt, with two friends while working as a junior reporter on his home town paper in Lanark during the birth of the punk scene in Britain in the late 70s.

Signed to Polydor, the band moved to London, made an album and toured both on their own and with bands like The Jam, Generation X and The Saints. The Jolt split up in 1979, and Shedden joined another London band, the Small Hours, which featured the Saints’ original bass player Kym Bradshaw. Then in 1981 Chris Bailey, by then a close friend, asked him to join the new line-up of the Saints, and he spent the next eight or nine years touring the world and recording with them.

Shedden moved to Sydney in 1992, hoping to pick up another gig. When nothing substantial materialised he returned to journalism after a 15-year-break, all the while continuing to perform regularly with various bands.

Shedden joined The Australian in 1993. He worked as a sub-editor before taking over as music writer.

From such a long career, it’s impossible to single out any one story, but some recent pieces stand out. His profile on a still-grieving Nick Cave, published on the cover of Review earlier this year, was a masterpiece of compassion and subtlety. Then in July, following the death of Arnhem Land musician Dr G Yunupingu, he wrote a beautiful tribute to “one of the great Australian music success stories of the 21st century.”

An astute authority on all things music, Shedden brought a deep level of knowledge and contacts to the job, as well as a flair for writing that made all his stories such a joy to read.

Shedden was also a gentle, tender presence in the newsroom, always quick to laugh and generous in his encouragement to younger reporters.

In addition to journalism, Shedden remained a passionate drummer, later going on to work with acts such as Reg Mombassa’s Dog Trumpet.

In March 1998, he wrote a story for The Australian in which he reflected on the heady years when he toured Australia with the Saints in the early 1980s.

“Touring the fleapits of northern Europe through rain and snow has its charms: the cultures change even if the weather doesn’t,” he wrote. “But playing in a country, sometimes for up to three months, where each day was as hot and sunny as the last, was, to this particularly pale Scot, too good an opportunity to pass up. What else were you supposed to do all day?”

ASHLEIGH WILSON