The University of Leeds

Faculty Member, Music

Lecturer, Popular Music Studies

About

Dr Simon Warner has been a journalist, critic, broadcaster and academic. He spent time as a live rock reviewer for The Guardian, has served as a regular judge in the US Association of Alternative Newsweeklies' annual Music Criticism award and is a member of the BRITs Voting Academy.

In 1990 he embarked on the world’s first MA in Popular Music Studies at the Institute of Popular Music, Liverpool University. Four years on he became Senior Lecturer in Popular Music Studies at Bretton Hall College, before joining Leeds University on merger in 2001 as Senior Teaching Fellow.

He was awarded a PhD by the University of Leeds and appointed Lecturer in 2010. The Director of PopuLUs, the Centre for the Study of the World's Popular Musics, from 2004-2008, he is also a founding member of Leeds University Popular Cultures Research Network and the European Beat Studies Network, launched in October 2010 - see: http://ebsn.eu

He has taught courses on the rock press, popular music and politics, the US counterculture in the Sixties, punk and the Beat Generation. He has a particular interest in the way musical and literary themes have inter-connected since the 1950s.


WHO ARE YOU? BBC TV's 'THE ONE SHOW' COMES TO LEEDS

The Who's seminal album 'Live at Leeds' was the focus of a feature on BBC 1's 'The One Show' on June 16th, 2011, as part of the programme's 'The Sound of the Suburbs' thread.

The 1970 in-concert recording propelled the band from major players into global stars and the album also gave Leeds University's Refectory, the home of Students' Union gigs, a massive boost.

Simon Warner was among the expert voices employed on the segment as the Who's achievement was placed in the spotlight.

Says Warner: 'I was a little too young to be there in person but, the following year, I did attend my first ever live concert when the Who came to Manchester Odeon. So I did manage to experience some of the Who's legendary power as a teenager not long after!'


WARNER ADDRESSES POPULAR CULTURES RESEARCH NETWORK, UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS

Leeds Humanities Research Institute, February 23rd, 2011 at 3.30pm

‘Versions of Cody: Jack Kerouac, Tom Waits and the song “On the Road"'

Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel On the Road became a key guide to that restless post-war generation who sought adventure and revelation though travel, spiritual exploration and the excitements of jazz, sex and drugs. Less well known is Kerouac’s lyric/song ‘On the Road’ and the versions recorded by the author himself and the US singer-songwriter Tom Waits, whose admiration for the Beat Generation writers has been long-standing. ‘They were like father figures for me,’ Waits remarks.

In this presentation, Warner explores the complex history of the piece in its various incarnations and the convoluted relationship between text and song, performance and recording.


KEROUAC & WAITS IN SPOTLIGHT AT KEELE EVENT

Bruce Centre Seminar, David Bruce Centre for American Studies, University of Keele, UK

Seminar Room, Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010 at 2.30pm

‘Versions of Cody: Jack Kerouac, Tom Waits and the song “On the Road”’

Presented by Simon Warner, University of Leeds

Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel On the Road became a key guide to that restless post-war generation who sought adventure and revelation though travel, spiritual exploration and the excitements of jazz, sex and drugs. Less well known is Kerouac’s lyric/song ‘On the Road’ and the versions recorded by the author himself and the US singer-songwriter Tom Waits, whose admiration for the Beat Generation writers has been long-standing. ‘They were like father figures for me,’ Waits remarks.

In this presentation, Warner explores the complex history of the piece in its various incarnations and the convoluted relationship between text and song, performance and recording.


NOTE: The David K. E. Bruce Centre for American Studies was founded in 1969 to further and encourage research in matters relating to the United States. It is named for the distinguished American diplomat who was then nearing the end of his eight years as US ambassador in London. The Centre is funded by an endowment which provides financial assistance to active researchers both within and outside of Keele University, supports seminars, conferences, colloquia, occasional lectures and small exhibits, and encourages postgraduate study by means of scholarships and research grants.


RADIO 4 SHOW CELEBRATES BRITISH BEAT POET

On April 4th, 2010, Warner presented a celebration of a great British Beat and jazz poet on BBC Radio 4 to commemorate a special anniversary.

'The Poetry Olympian: Michael Horovitz at 75' reflected on more than half a century's activity of this tireless publisher, performer and promoter, a key figure in the oral verse revival of the Sixties and a continuing evangelist for poetry performance in the UK.

Horovitz participated in the remarkable International Poetry Incarnation with Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti in 1965 when 7,000 people filled the Albert Hall in London to hear poets from Britain, the US and Europe read.

He also launched the innovative arts and poetry magazine 'New Departures', which introduced new work by Kerouac, Burroughs and Beckett, and took jazz poetry on the road as 'Live New Departures' in the 1960s.

In 1980, he unveiled the Poetry Olympics, a celebration of music and poetry on stage with a stress on talents both established and emerging and with a strong multi-cultural dimension.

In the programme, Warner was joined by poets Pete Brown and Roger McGough, musical versifier John Hegley and Damon Albarn, whose Gorillaz include a Horovitz poem on their latest CD.


GUARDIAN REVIEWS, 1992-1995

A selection of Warner's live rock reviews for The Guardian can be found under the Papers section of this website.


RECENT EVENTS

i) Paper: On January 12th, 2010, Warner gave a talk entitled 'Mapping the Beat: Rock, Literature and the British Counterculture' as part of the Contextual Lecture Series,  Britain in the Late 1950s and 1960s, at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London.

This paper explored the relationship between British rock artists - the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Cream and others - and the Beat Generation writers, both US and UK-based.

It considered the ways that poets like Michael Horovitz and Pete Brown and writer/publisher Barry Miles helped to make connections between American Beats Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs and a rising community of popular musicians.

iii) Seminar: On June 26th, 2009, Warner co-organised a day seminar which considered that key, post-punk movement, new wave. 'New Wave, New Views: Re-visiting the Post-Punk moment', held at the University of Leeds, included contributions from rock aesthetician Theodore Gracyk, leading popular music biographer Clinton Heylin and three members of the Gang of Four, the band who formed at the university in the late 1970s. For more details, including the programme, biographies and abstracts, visit: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/music/newwave

See also: 'Gang show revived: Band's red carpet return'
http://simonwarner.wordpress.com/2009/06/28/gang-show-revived-bands-red-carpet-return/


WEB LINKS

Blog: 'Words of Warner' - http://simonwarner.wordpress.com
Music: http://www.myspace.com/simonrichardwarner
Rock's Backpages blog: http://www.rocksbackpagesblogs.com/author/simonwarner/

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