People just liked Iain Shedden
Remembering a legendary Australian music journalist
“People just liked Iain Shedden.”
I have just been scrolling up and down Iain Shedden’s Facebook timeline — and this simple sentence, written by one of his friends from Sheddy’s hometown in Scotland, seems to sum up the many hundreds of messages posted on the days after his sudden and tragically premature death in October.
It’s easy to emote in this era of social media, but look through page after page of reminiscences, photos of Iain behind his drum kit, or after a gig; tributes to a kind, funny gentle man, and you get an inkling of the depth of feeling his death prompted among his friends and colleagues. Pretty much anyone who ever met him, really.
I had the privilege to work with Iain atThe Australian for 13 years, initially when he was subbing sports and features, then as music writer, after the editors thankfully came to their senses and gave him the job that it was blindingly obvious he could do better than anyone else on the paper — or, as our colleague Stephen Romei put it (without exaggeration), in the world.
Iain brought a musician’s knowledge and sensibility to his job. He knew the industry inside out, the demands and pleasures of creativity, the mental stress of live performance and the physical stresses of touring. His interview subjects quickly came to recognise that this would not be the usual relationship of sage to supplicant. Rather, it was a meeting of equals. And, as anyone will tell you who has read his interview with Nick Cave, Cave’s first after the death of his 15-year-old son Arthur, people would open up to Sheddy, talk from their hearts. People just liked Iain Shedden.
So it’s no insult to the many other fine music writers to say that Sheddy’s work broke out of the genre and became something bigger, more important. Sure, his knowledge and enthusiasm for music and musicians shone out of every sentence he wrote, but he could elevate an interview, a feature or a magazine cover story into something special: intense, moving, strange. And he did funny as well as anyone I’ve worked with.
He was a musician, writer and family man — and the third was the most important facet of his life. He met his wife Christine Nestel on the subs’ desk at the Aus and their deep bond was an ornament for the rest of us to admire, one of those really great love stories that made those around them feel good about the world. He was rightly proud of their children Molly and Conor and they were proud right back. As with music and writing, he was a natural husband and father.
Chris announced recently on her Facebook feed that Out of the Shadows, a short film she’d made about albinism in Fiji, had won Best Short Documentary an international film festival in New York. How proud he would have been. How sad he’s not here to celebrate with the rest of us.
People just liked Iain Shedden. It is a wonderful gift to have — and nobody I’ve met deserved it more.
Iain Shedden, January 6, 1957 — October 16, 2017
Jonathan Este is associate editor of The Conversation UK, and their editor of Media, Arts + Culture.
Tom Jellett is a freelance illustrator. You can see more of his work at: www.tomjellett.com.
