As music writer and critic for The Australian and The Weekend Australian, Iain Shedden [pictured below right] has more street cred than most music journos: he’s spent many years as a professional drummer, most notably with Australian rock band The Saints during the 1980s. He still performs and records with a number of Australian artists, as his writing commitments allow. Andrew McMillen spoke with Shedden ahead of his speaking engagements at One Movement For Music.

Andrew: Iain, what do you hope to get out of these panels as a music writer?  Are you there looking for stories, or are you just there to share your knowledge?

Iain: I’m never not looking for a story.  In terms of news, these conferences aren’t that valuable.  Generally speaking, the benefits for me are to meet people from the industry that I haven’t met before - who might have something to tell me that I don’t know - and to workshop with people.  I guess to sniff around for information and bits of gossip, but in terms of hard news, generally there’s not that much that I can use in that sense.  It’s all valuable.

It might not be any help to me while the conference is on but then a couple of months down the track there might be somebody who said something to me and I have his or her card.  I might think, “That would be the perfect person to talk to.”  That’s the value in it for me, plus if I’m doing these panels then you get to talk to budding musicians or budding journalists for that matter.  That’s always rewarding, passing on your experience to other people.

How did you come to be a music writer as well as a musician?

I will have to give you a very condensed version.  I started at the local paper in Scotland when I was 17, as a cub reporter.  I started having an interest in music right about that time, too.  I worked in a local paper for about four years and I started writing about music then.

Then my band got signed.  I moved to London and starting doing that for a  while.  Of course, I joined The Saints and they came over to the U.K. about ‘81 or something.  I spent a lot of time touring with them in the ’80s, touring everywhere in fact.

I decided to move here in about 1992, thinking I could pick up another gig.  The Saints had gone their separate ways, really.  I couldn’t find another gig.  In the ’80s it was pretty easy to pick up a gig here.  You could tour for months on end and you could make a lot of money, too.  In the ’90s, when I got here, it kind of dried up.  I had to find something else.

I was lucky I had journalism to fall back on.  I got a couple of shifts here, sub-editing, and then they gave me the music job, which was a gig I was really interested in.  So I was very fortunate, really, to be able to get back into journalism at this level, after being away from it for about fifteen years.

Since I have been in bands all that time, I was reasonably qualified to do it, I think.  Being a musician certainly helped my writing, without a doubt.  I still play a bit, so I’m very lucky that I can combine the two things, still, even through journalism takes up most of my time now.

At this stage of your career, what does music writing mean to you?  Do you still enjoy telling stories?

Yeah, if I didn’t enjoy it I wouldn’t do it.  I have a terrific job, really.  I think I have the best job on the newspaper.  I get to write about something I’m passionate about.  I get to hang out with musicians, which I’ve been doing for about thirty years anyway.  I love it.  I love music, I love new music, and I love playing, and I love writing about it.  It’s all good, really.

I still work, of course.  I get a hard time from a lot of people around here who think all I do is hang out at the bar every night, but of course, there are a lot of hours involved.  I’m out a lot at night.  I’ve got a young family, too, so that’s time demanding, trying to combine gigs with all that as well, a lot of weekends away, a lot of festivals.  I can’t complain at all.  I’m in a very good position.  I enjoy what I do and there’s not many people who can say that, really.

At this stage in my career, I’m looking to guys like yourself, and Noel Mengel [of The Courier-Mail, pictured left], and Christie Eliezer as kind of the prototypes for the big, established music writers in this country.

It will be interesting to see if not just the music industry is changing, but the media is changing quite significantly, as well.  I’m interested to see just how music journalism pans out in the coming few years.

I’m quite lucky as well at The Australian, that there is an increasing online presence for music on The Australian’s website.  I’m getting to do stuff to camera.  We’ve got a studio downstairs where we can bring Josh Pyke or whoever enters the room, plug the guitar in, and do something to camera, do the interviews to camera.  All that is changing the face of it a bit, certainly as far as The Australian is concerned.

I don’t think print journalism is going to go away in a hurry, as people were predicting.  Newspapers have been around for a long time and I certainly think music is going to remain a very important part of that.  It’s not going to be the only avenue.  That’s a good thing.