31 Facts About Joel Selvin

Joel Selvin has published articles in Rolling Stone, the Los Angeles Times, Billboard, and Melody Maker, and has written liner notes for dozens of recorded albums.

Joel Selvin has appeared in documentaries about the music scene and has occasionally taken the stage himself as a rock and roll singer.

Joel Selvin has stated that he failed to graduate with his Berkeley High School class of 1967.

Joel Selvin moved to San Francisco and was hired as a copy boy at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Joel Selvin soon wangled a backstage pass for a show at The Fillmore and submitted his first piece to the Chronicle's Sunday Datebook in 1969.

Joel Selvin left the Chronicle for a brief, unsuccessful effort in undergraduate studies at the University of California, Riverside where he wrote for the school paper.

In 1972, Selvin was hired as an assistant to Chronicle music critic John L Wasserman, and began to write for both the daily and the Sunday newspaper issues, filing reviews of local shows with rock and roll as well as rhythm and blues performances.

When Wasserman died in 1979, Joel Selvin picked up the reins of the Chronicle's pop music coverage.

Joel Selvin cannibalized melodies from some of his earlier songs to give the new ones their strongest moments.

In 1994, Joel Selvin began managing other pop music staff writers, directing and overseeing their assignments, and editing their contributions, all while continuing to contribute his own reports.

Joel Selvin reviewed music for the Chronicle for more than three decades.

Wyman and his colleagues regularly printed a section entitled "Joel Selvin Watch" which listed small and large mistakes made by Joel Selvin in his Chronicle column.

Wyman once wrote that the rule at "Joel Selvin Watch" was to ignore one or two errors, but publish if there were three or more in any one Joel Selvin piece.

On May 26,2009, the Great American Music Hall hosted a retirement party for Selvin featuring appearances by "Big Al" Anderson, Booker T Jones, Charlie Musselwhite, John Handy, Bonnie Raitt, Al Jardine, Bud E Luv, Prairie Prince, Chris Isaak and Scott Matthews.

In January 2014, Joel Selvin was given the Marquee Award for lifetime achievement at the annual San Francisco nightlife awards, the Niteys.

In 1990, Selvin published Ricky Nelson: Idol for a Generation, a biography of Ricky Nelson which was nominated by Broadcast Music, Inc for the Ralph J Gleason Music Book award.

In 2001, Joel Selvin helped Paul Grushkin in authoring for Hard Rock Cafe, a book describing highlights of the restaurant and nightclub chain's extensive collection of rock and roll memorabilia.

In March 2011, Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock, which Joel Selvin co-wrote with Sammy Hagar, hit No 1 on the New York Times best-seller lists.

Joel Selvin co-authored the autobiography of tattoo artist Ed Hardy, Wear Your Dreams: My Life In Tattoos, for Thomas Dunne in June 2013.

Joel Selvin's Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues, published in April 2014 by Counterpoint Press, was called "a masterpiece of research, writing and investigative literature about one of the most influential and little-known songwriters in rock history" by the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.

Joel Selvin's Fare Thee Well: The Final Chapter in the Grateful Dead's Long, Strange Trip is a controversial insiders tell-all account of the twenty years of in-fighting after the death of bandleader Jerry Garcia that preceded the emotional reunion of the "core four" surviving members in historic concerts in California and Chicago in July 2016.

Joel Selvin was one of the early members of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock and roll band composed solely of published writers.

Joel Selvin sang as part of the "Critics Chorus" on one cut of the band's recording Stranger Than Fiction, and again joined the chorus for a performance in Bangor, Maine, in May 1998 where reviewer Kev Quigley noted Joel Selvin's 30-second jumping, screaming vocal solo within the band's profanity-filled version of "Louie Louie".

Joel Selvin wrote one of the chapters of the band's book Mid-life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America with Three Chords and an Attitude, published in 1994.

Joel Selvin has been interviewed several times on camera for documentaries about the music scene.

In 2003, Joel Selvin served as a consultant and appeared on screen in the TV movie Get Up, Stand Up: The Story of Pop and Protest, covering the subject of the music world's activity in politics.

Joel Selvin was interviewed for a Public Broadcasting Service documentary called Summer of Love which was completed in 2007.

Joel Selvin has taught classes at San Francisco State University and has lectured at Mills College, Blue Bear School of Music, and at the University of California, Berkeley Journalism Colloquium.

Joel Selvin has taken part in museum events regarding rock and roll memorabilia.

On June 16,2001, Joel Selvin gave an opening address entitled "What a Long Strange Trip It's Been: Setting the Tone for the Weekend" at the "Monterey Pop Revisited" symposium, a conference assembled in honor of a Monterey, California museum exhibition of memorabilia from the Monterey Pop Festival.

Joel Selvin was married to musician Keta Bill, with whom he had a daughter, Carla.