Clinton Walker is an Australian writer, best known for his works on popular music. He is known for his books Highway to Hell (1994; a biography of Bon Scott), Buried Country (2000; also a film and soundtrack album), History is Made at Night (2012), and others. He has also written on other subjects, in books such as Football Life (1998) and Golden Miles (2005), and has worked extensively as a journalist and in television.

Early life

Born in Bendigo, Victoria, in 1957, Walker dropped out of art school in Brisbane in the late 70s to start a punk fanzine with Andrew McMillan and to write for student newspapers.

Career

Walker's sixth book, Buried Country, a history of Aboriginal country music, was published in 2000. "Like many of Walker’s projects", Martin Jones wrote in Rhythms, "Buried Country was at least a decade ahead of its time". At a time when Aboriginal music still wasn't established or accepted as a fixture on the broader Australian music scene, Walker had long been one of its few media champions, and Buried Country was hailed as a pioneering and monumental work of music historiography. A new updated edition of the book was released in 2015 along with a rebooted version of the CD called Buried Country 1.5, and as a result of their even greater success than the first time around, a touring live stageshow adaptation premiered in 2016 and played the festival circuit for a few years. In 2018, Australian singer-songwriter Darren Hanlon, in conjunction with Mississippi Records in the US, produced a vinyl iteration of the Buried Country compilation that included even more new rare tracks. In 2012, Walker published History is Made at Night, a polemic on the endangered Australian live music circuit. In 2018 Walker published two books. Early in the year a new edition of his 1996 title Stranded was published, and then later in the year with the all-new Suburban Songbook. Suburban Songbook: Writing Hits in post-war/pre-Countdown Australia is a critical history of the early evolution of rock/pop songwriting in Australia,

Deadly Woman Blues controversy

Deadly Woman Blues, a history of black women in Australian music, was released in 2018 by a division of academic publisher UNSW Press, Each of 99 biographical entries was accompanied by a hand-drawn illustration by Walker. The book immediately garnered a few glowing reviews. There was an angry backlash from four of the artists who expressed their displeasure at being included without being spoken to, and citing factual inaccuracies. This led to social media outrage in which Walker was criticized as a racist, misogynist, colonialist privileged white male. The book was withdrawn from sale, with the publisher promising to pulp any unsold copies and never to reprint it. Walker admitted to mistakes and apologised, saying "I didn't try to obscure what I was doing, I didn't take all the appropriate steps. I've been involved in underclass music forever, and in some ways, this is no different, but in other ways, it is very different".

Works

Discography (as producer)

Videography (as writer)