Richard Williams

Richard Williams (born 13 March 1947) is a British music and sports journalist.
As a writer, then deputy editor, of the weekly music newspaper Melody Maker (MM), he became an influential commentator on the rise of new forms of rock music at the end of the 1960s. Williams and MM, as it was known, helped promote and contextualise the progressive in pop music. In particular, Williams wrote several key articles around 1970 that increased UK attention to the (then disintegrating) Velvet Underground. Melody Maker still covered jazz and Williams wrote about the more progressive developments in this field also....
Williams moved on to new challenges in the early 1970s. Beginning in May 1970 he contributed to The Times and continued to write for that paper until October 1989. He also wrote regularly for Radio Times. He left journalism to join Island Records' A&R department in 1973, becoming department head. For two years, he signed and developed artists including Pete Wingfield, Stone Delight, Bryn Haworth and John Cale.
The first presenter of the BBC rock show The Old Grey Whistle Test (launched in 1971) while still a member of the MM team, and shortly thereafter its producer, Williams later became editor of the new London listings guide Time Out and returned to MM as editor from 1978 to 1980. After a period as features editor at The Sunday Times, he became editor of the Independent On Sunday's Sunday Review.
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== Links to Peel ==
Of the writers who joined Melody Maker during its boom years of the early 1970s, Richard Williams stood out for the wide range of his music tastes, which enabled him to contribute articles to the paper on different music genres ranging from classic and current pop and soul to contemporary and avant-garde jazz. Perhaps because of his jazz background, he didn't seem quite so keen on the progressive rock which was featured in MM and rival papers at the time - something he shared with Peel. He was one of the few journalists to review the John Peel's Archive Things LP and while praising it, also spoke well of Night Ride:
"Connoisseurs of good radio will remember that Peel's old Wednesday Night Ride was probably the best programme ever to appear on BBC. In It Peel was given complete freedom to presents poets, musicians, and — most Importantly — material from the BBC archives, dug up by Peel and researched by David Luddy. The result was vastly more adventurous and far more rewarding than Top Gear, because it took us into new, unfamiliar realms of music which, like travel, truly broadened the mind."(p.17).
Williams was also a supporter of acts Peel favoured, like Bob Marley & The Wailers and Roxy Music, and championed new music emerging from Germany and elsewhere in Europe. During his time at Island Records he encountered Peel on at least one occasion. As the DJ recounted in a 1974 Sounds column Peel met "bon viveur and TV personality Richard Williams" together with "A Writer From Another Paper" at a gig by the Winkies and afterwards went on to Dingwall's where they enjoyed "a scratch band brought together...by a lady conga player". Williams told Peel that he would write down the names of the musicians, so that JP could call him later and then write about them in his column, but the DJ was unable to get through to RW at Island. The pair also attended together an early UK media showcase for the Jackson 5.
Much later, Richard Williams was Peel's editor when the DJ was contributing a column to the Independent On Sunday, but apparently WIlliams was unhappy with the rambling style Peel favoured and the column didn't last for long. Nonetheless, Richard Williams retained an affection for Peel, and when the DJ died in 2004 he wrote a tribute in the Guardian.
== See Also ==
*Burnin Red Ivanhoe
*Egg
*Keith Tippett
*21 February 1971
*16 May 1971
*26 October 1971
*09 May 1972
*23 March 1999
*Sounds
== External links ==
*Wikipedia
*thebluemoment.com A blog about music by Richard Williams