{"id":2450093,"date":"2019-10-20T12:07:30","date_gmt":"2019-10-20T18:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=901445"},"modified":"2019-10-20T12:07:30","modified_gmt":"2019-10-20T18:07:30","slug":"nick-tosches-music-journalist-and-novelist-dead-at-69","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/music-news\/nick-tosches-music-journalist-and-novelist-dead-at-69\/","title":{"rendered":"Nick Tosches, Music Journalist and Novelist, Dead at 69"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nick Tosches, the novelist and music journalist who penned acclaimed books about subjects ranging from Jerry Lee Lewis and Hall & Oates to Sonny Liston and country music, has died at the age of 69.<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/em> confirmed<\/a> Tosches died Sunday at his Manhattan home. No cause of death was announced, but a friend told the Times that Tosches had been ill.<\/p>\n

In a Rolling Stone<\/a><\/em> review of The Nick Tosches Reader<\/em><\/a> \u2013 and an overview of the \u201cNoise Boys\u201d music critics that include Tosches, Lester Bangs and Richard Meltzer \u2013 Robert Christgau called Tosches, \u201ca master crime reporter whose manner yokes Homer, Hemingway, and some \u201960s tit magazine I\u2019m not literate enough to ID, author of a comical, biblical Jerry Lee Lewis bio that trumps Albert Goldman coming and Peter Guralnick going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tosches began his career as a music journalist in the early Seventies for magazines like Creem<\/em>, Fusion<\/em>, Circus<\/em> and Rolling Stone<\/em>; his album reviews for Rolling Stone<\/em><\/a> included Lou Reed\u2019s Transformer<\/a><\/em> (\u201cA real cocktease, this album\u201d) and his now-infamous write-up of Black Sabbath\u2019s Paranoid<\/em>, which didn\u2019t address the album at all and instead focused on Satanism, the Manson murders and confused Black Sabbath for fellow metal band Black Widow. (According to legend, Tosches never listened to Paranoid<\/em> prior to writing the review.)<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou owe it to yourself as a person concerned with contemporary society or merely with the artistic underground of the youth movement in general to be aware of the \u201cheavy\u201d sounds of bubble-gum Satanism and if you see them live sometimes they undress a hippie girl,\u201d Tosches told Rolling Stone<\/em> readers.<\/p>\n

After graduating high school, Tosches, who wrote short stories as a teenager, entered the publishing world in 1969 at the age of 19. \u201cPoetry, book reviews, anything,\u201d Tosches told the New York Times<\/em><\/a> in 1992, \u201cpublished mostly in magazines. I remember writing things for like $20. What\u2019s $20 today? It\u2019s not even a carton of cigarettes. When I decided to become a writer full time, I was working at a place called \u2013 this is true \u2013 the Lovable Underwear Company.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tosches\u2019 first music book was 1977\u2019s Country: The Twisted Roots Rock n\u2019 Roll<\/em>, which he followed with 1982\u2019s Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story<\/em>, the latter hailed by Rolling Stone<\/em> as \u201cthe best rock and roll biography ever written.\u201d Tosches also penned an authorized Hall & Oates biography, Dangerous Dances<\/em>, in 1984 before making his debut as a novelist with 1988\u2019s Cut Number<\/em>s.<\/p>\n

Over the course of his career, Tosches penned seven novels and wrote biographies about Dean Martin, Sonny Liston, Mafia member Michele Sindona and Black Sox scandal gangster Arnold Rothstein. His last novel was 2015\u2019s Under Tiberius<\/em>.<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nick Tosches, the novelist and music journalist who penned acclaimed books about subjects ranging from Jerry Lee Lewis and Hall & Oates to Sonny Liston and country music, has died at the age of 69. The New York Times confirmed Tosches died Sunday at his Manhattan home. No cause of death was announced, but a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2450093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-23 08:18:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2450093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2450093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2450093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2450093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}