Samuel J. Fell Interview
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.