Published: 09 September 2010
by JOSH LOEB

WRITING about music is like dancing about architecture, Frank Zappa once said – or didn’t, according Charles Shaar Murray.

“That remark is a trope,” the veteran rock journo insists. “And I actually think dancing about architecture is an incredibly good idea and could make a fabulous ballet.”

Murray, who interviewed the mustachioed rock maestro several times, has been writing about music for his entire working life. He got his break as a teenager in 1970, when he helped produce the notorious school kids issue of satirical magazine Oz, which was targeted by the Obscene Publications Squad, leading to a high-  profile trial.

“The first time I ever handed some copy to [Oz editor] Richard Neville, he made a few amendments and then wrote ‘bold, unjustified’ at the bottom,” he says. “I thought, that’s a bit brusque, Richard. Then  I realised they were instructions to the copy setter.” 

The Oz trial was one of the last obscenity trials in the UK – “a long, drawn out, ludicrously expensive Old Bailey binge,” says Murray. 

Although Neville and his colleagues were eventually acquitted of “conspiracy to corrupt public morals”, the trial effectively finished Oz, which ceased publication in 1973. 

But the experience of writing for the “rag mag” kick-started Murray’s career; he went on to became NME’s star writer and inter­viewed pop music icons including Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Paul McCartney and Bob Marley.

Now, 40 years on from the Oz Trial, Murray is set to teach an eight-week masterclass in “journal­ism as creative writing” at The Rooms Above – a venue near his home in West Hampstead. 

The course – designed for both budding journalists and more experienced writers – was inspired by George Orwell’s tubthumping essay “Why I Write”.  

“Journalism is both a craft and an art,” he says. “In Orwell’s essay he said he wanted to elevate political writing into an art, whereas before it had basically been considered a function. I interviewed Ray Davies once and I was trying to quiz him about politics. He said: ‘What I believe in is anarchy with order.’ At the time I thought: ‘Typical rock star flip dualism ersatz paradox.’ But the more I thought about it, the more I realised he was right, because anarchy isn’t chaos, anarchy is the absence of external government, and order is a discipline – not necessarily one that is imposed externally but self-discipline, the discipline that you bring to your craft. 

“I want to try and guide people to be freer in terms of how they approach what they are doing and also more disciplined in how they execute it and carry it out. Being able to write clearly, concisely, artic­ulately and enter­tain­ingly is a life skill whether it becomes a profession or not. If nothing else it will mean you can write really cool letters.” 

• Journalism as Creative Writing, hosted by Storm Books, is at The Rooms Above, 174 Mill Lane, NW6, for eight Tuesdays from September 28, priced £195.
Email anna@ stormbooks.biz or call 020 7916 2308.