Rock ‘n’ roll lost its link with teen culture after bands started playing clubs like the Fillmore instead of civic auditoriums in the late 1960s. By the time punk became post-punk, a kid had to have an ID to rock out on a Saturday night. Clubs sold booze and thus banned teens from being part of the new “adult rock” milieu. However, a young 1980s newspaper rock critic used his platform to protest the loss of teen spirit in the heart of rock ‘n’ roll by calling for a “new wave youth connection.” It all started one night inside the Paradise rock club in the Boston summer of 1980.

Singer Feargal Sharkey of the Undertones stalks the stage. The Beatle-banged vocalist, prone to Iggy-esque, shirtless performances, bobs back and forth, dives to a crouch, springs up and swings his arms up and down to the beat. The band’s rhythm section fuels the perpeptual motion like a train coming down the tracks.

But as the band launches into their debut single, “Teenage Kicks,” a young Boston Globe rock critic, Jim Sullivan, looks around the room and realizes:  

 The vibrant song brought a roar of approval from the crowd, but something was wrong with the picture. The only teenagers in the house were performing on stage.

The memory stuck with Sullivan. Within two years he was the Globe’s leading advocate for Boston’s rising alt-rock scene. He used his platform to support causes such as allowing teens into rock clubs and supporting gay rights. Sullivan is a great case study in how 1980s newspaper rock critics impacted their hometown music scenes.

The Boston Scene  

The Boston rock scene influenced the global alt-rock movement, according to former Boston Phoenix music writer Brett Milano in “An Ode to Boston’s Rockin’ History,”

By the early ’80s, rock ’n’ roll was a full-fledged Boston industry. If a band played a hot new song at the Rat or the Channel, a local label like Ace of Hearts or Modern Method might release it. You could hear it on WBCN or WFNX, read about it in Boston Rock magazine, dance to it at Spit on Lansdowne Street, and buy it at Newbury Comics – where the register might be manned by Aimee Mann herself, a Berklee dropout whose own band, ’Til Tuesday, was gaining momentum.

Milano lays out the essential ingredients of a healthy music scene, including local alt-weeklies like the Phoenix and music magazines like Boston Rock. These periodicals coalesce fans around concerts, hometown band recordings, and other events. However, in addition to local weeklies and magazines, daily newspapers can shape music scenes if they have a rock critic attuned – and embedded – in the downtown musical milieu.  

And Jim Sullivan was such a critic. According to music critic j. poet in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Globe, 

[Sullivan] grew up reading interviews and reviews in magazines like Creem and Crawdaddy …

… he began to write about music for the college newspaper, The Maine Campus. Soon after, the local paper, The Bangor Daily News, asked him to contribute interviews and reviews and he was off and running. He moved on to The Boston Globe …

Sullivan was covering pop music for the Globe by 1979. He wrote about influential artists like Richard Lloyd attracted to Boston’s wide open scene:

Pop Activism

Another important but underrecognized artist Jim Sullivan wrote about was the groundbreaking Tom Robinson Band. A gay activist, Robinson combined a commanding stage persona with socially motivating lyrics. Sullivan wrote:

With the likely exception of the Clash, no rock ‘n’ roll group outside of the Tom Robinson Band is playing aggressive, uncompromising music that has an equally uncompromising and explicit political edge to it. … Most of the group’s material is lyrically centered around liberal political causes the band believes in …

Yet, there is an inherent difficulty in merging political activism with the traditional role of a pop star … The music has to sustain the message or else the message appears heavy-handed. Robinson understands this principle, and when he’s singing about oppression or equal rights, this band is cooking along in the frenzied but controlled manner of Elvis Costello’s attractions.[ii]

Sullivan supported Robinson’s gay activism, still a risky proposition for musicians and critics in the late-1970s:

Despite the chic bisexual rumors surrounding Elton John, Mick Jagger, and David Bowie, Robinson is rock’s only admitted and outspoken gay performer.

Midway through Friday’s concert, Robinson sang “Glad to Be Gay,” a bittersweet song that contrasts a pub singalong chorus with brutal tales of gay oppression … It went over well as both gay and straight members of the audience sang along.[iii]

A Stinging, Cathartic release

But Sullivan communicated the aesthetic as well as the social meanings of alt-rock. This can be seen in his 1983 review of Husker Du’s debut album Everything Falls Apart:

Husker Du’s a fast and furious Minneapolis-based trio whose style of music and clatter falls somewhere amidst the early Ramones, the best of Black Flag, and occasionally Mission of Burma. That is to say, there’s lightning speed, a load of directed rage, and – lurking just under the guitar noise and galloping rhythms, a stinging, cathartic release.[iv]

A concise encapsulation of a band’s essence. Here’s the entire review:

Conclusion: Sullivan’s Example  

Jim Sullivan showed that a rock critic for a prominent corporate newspaper could develop ties with their hometown music scene. This belies the common notion that critics at major dailies have to focus on mainstream music in order to serve a general readership. Furthermore, Sullivan’s example counters the perception that rock criticism is driven solely by music magazines while newspapers only play a peripheral role.

Instead, 1980s newspaper rock critics like Sullivan played an essential role in catalyzing the music scenes that produced alternative rock. Moreover, local rock critics participate in the scenes they cover. They get to know musicians, club owners and fans. In doing so, these critics see the problems and the possibilities inherent to the scene.     

For instance, Sullivan remembered that 1980s concert by the Undertones and what it said about the importance of teen audiences at rock ‘n’ roll shows:

Rock ‘n’ roll never was intended as elitist entertainment, and at its musical core, of course, it isn’t. Yet in Boston and many other cities, a large slice of rock’n’roll is inaccessible to a sizable audience. While popular mainstream rock ‘n’ roll is played at larger halls … much of the more adventurous new wave music is played in clubs. Clubs mean liquor, and in Massachusetts, liquor means the customer must prove a minimum age of 20. The under-20 crowd, therefore, is routinely deprived of seeing and hearing good bands.[v]

The New Wave youth connection makes obvious sense. The 1976 new wave music swept England and it remains firmly established today. From the onset, bands such as The Jam and Generation X brought back the stripped down, but revved-up drive of seminal mid-60s teen bands such as The Who and The Rolling Stones. But the concerns were modern and the twists were fresh. The music was played by and for young people who were frustrated by the norms of both society and rock music. [vi]

Sullivan had a stake in his hometown music scene. He used his platform to spur debate. Just one of the many ways he contributed to Boston’s awesome rock scene in the 1980s. 

After leaving the Globe, Sullivan continued to be a leading pop music critic and wrote for numerous publications. He authored Volumes 1 and 2 of Backstage & Beyond: 45 Years of Classic Rock Chats and Rants. A new eBook of the Backstage & Beyond volumes plus 11 new chapters is due out July 1.

Today, Sullivan writes for WBUR-FM, a public radio station owned by Boston University. He also writes for the prominent online music magazine Rock ‘n’ Roll Globe.

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To learn more about the impact of newspaper music critics on their hometown scenes, check out my book, The Life and Writings of Ralph J. Gleason, available from Bloomsbury Publications.

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[i] Jim Sullivan, “Wazmo Nariz New Wave Fun,” Boston Globe, Feb. 2, 1979: 26.

[ii] Jim Sullivan, TRB Delivers a Message,” Boston Globe, May 29, 1979: 33.

[iii] Jim Sullivan, TRB Delivers a Message,” Boston Globe, May 29, 1979: 33.

[iv] Jim Sullivan, “Husker Du Everything Falls Apart,” Boston Globe, May 26, 1983: 91.

[v] Jim Sullivan, “Clubs are Catching on to the Youth Connection,” Boston Globe, Jan. 1, 1982: 38.

[vi] Jim Sullivan, “Clubs are Catching on to the Youth Connection,” Boston Globe, Jan. 1, 1982: 38.