David Stubbs

David Stubbs (born 13 September 1962 in London) is a British music journalist. He grew up in Leeds and was later a student at the University of Oxford where he was a close friend of Simon Reynolds. The two joined Melody Maker in 1986, where Stubbs remained for a dozen years. He combined his serious writing career with writing the humorous "Talk Talk Talk" section, which featured the character of Mr Agreeable who would insult sacred cows with barrages of swear words (asterisked out to comply with IPC Media regulations).

Stubbs has written, more seriously, for the now-defunct Vox magazine, for the NME (late 1990s and early 2000s), and as editor of The Wire, Uncut, The Guardian, The Times and the football magazines Goal and When Saturday Comes. He has also contributed to many of the themed special editions of Uncut. He has written about musicians such as Jimi Hendrix and Eminem in the Stories Behind Every Song series.

In 2009, his book on 20th century music was published, entitled Fear of Music: Why people get Rothko but don't get Stockhausen (Zero Books, Winchester: UK, 2009). The title may have been taken from the third studio album by Talking Heads, Fear of Music.

Publications

• Cleaning Out My Closet: Eminem : the Stories Behind Every Song, Thunder's Mouth Press, 2003
• Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don't Get Stockhausen, Zero Books, 2009
• Send Them Victorious: England's Path to Glory 2006-2010, Zero Books, 2010
• Future Days: Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany, Faber & Faber, 2014
• 1996 and the End of History, Repeater Books, 2016

External links

• Official website of David Stubbs/"Mr Agreeable"
• Profile at The Guardian