Samuel J. Fell is an Australian journalist, writer, and critic. He’s written for Rolling Stone, Sydney Morning Herald, Rhythms, and more. His new book is Full Coverage: A History Of Rock Journalism In Australia.
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
So it was initially a case, as I suspect it’s been with many in this game, of being in the right place at the right time, and it being not what I knew (which was goddamn nothing at that point) but who I knew. I was 19 and studying Broadcast Journalism at a local TAFE (like a community college)… one of the teachers, among many other things, ran a music website (this was in 1999, so it was quite ahead of its time) and he ambled into class one morning and said he had space for a live review on the site, and had anyone been to a gig recently. I put up my hand, having seen Sepultura a couple of nights previously, he commissioned it on the spot, I wrote it that night and he paid me $40. I was hooked, and came to regularly review live shows for the site over the next couple of years as I finished ‘studying’. Up until this point, despite the fact I’d been reading a bit of music media, I’d never really thought that someone could be, ya know, paid to write about music; the concept of a rock journalist didn’t exist, to my mind. Anyway, once I discovered it could possibly be a thing…
This teacher also ran a print magazine called Rhythms, an incredibly well-regarded mag specialising in roots music / Americana. After I left TAFE, in between sitting around drinking too much beer going to a million gigs and traveling (as most in their early 20s are wont to do), I’d hook up with him and came to be a regular at Rhythms—in the early years transcribing his interviews, answering phones, organising the subscriber database, doing the monthly mailout—before finally being invited to write for the magazine; I became a regular contributor, I was assistant editor for a period through the 2010s, and today am a senior contributor, having been associated with the magazine for literally half my life.