JOHNSTONE, Nick 1970-

PERSONAL:

Born June 11, 1970; married; wife's name, Anna.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Guardian/Observer, 119 Farringdon Rd., London EC1R 3ER, England.

CAREER:

Journalist and author. Writer for the Guardian and Observer newspapers, London, England.

WRITINGS:

Radiohead: An Illustrated Biography, Omnibus Press (London, England), 1997.

Patti Smith: A Biography, Omnibus Press (London, England), 1997.

Melody Maker History of Twentieth-Century Popular Music, Bloomsbury (London, England), 1999.

Abel Ferrara: The King of New York, Omnibus Press (London, England), 1999.

Sean Penn: A Biography, Omnibus Press (London, England), 2000.

A Head Full of Blue (autobiography), Bloomsbury (London, England), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS:

Nick Johnstone is a writer for the Guardian and Observer newspapers in England and author of numerous biographies of musicians and actors. He has been especially noticed for his 2002 autobiography, A Head Full of Blue. Johnstone grew up in Surrey, England, in a fairly typical middle-class family. When he was ten, his family moved to Buckinghamshire. He hated school and was depressed much of the time. At fourteen, he got drunk for the first time, which led to ten years of heavy drinking. By his late teens, Johnstone's depression had reached the point where the only outlet (besides alcohol) was self-mutilation. He began cutting himself at the age of eighteen and continued for the next four years. Johnstone wrote about his cutting in a column for the Observer. "Nothing made the pain go away like the soft, calculated sweep of a razor blade across my skin," he recalled. "Between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, I cut my arms. It was a miraculous antidote to a long-term clinical depression that refused to lift. It worked better than anything else: the prescriptions for anti-depressants that my GP kept throwing at me, the psychiatrist he referred me to, the recreational drugs I took with my friends, the merry-go-round of alcohol abuse. On a quest to fix myself, I tried it all. And nothing healed me the way cutting did."

At the age of twenty-four, Johnstone stopped drinking. He gives Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) some of the credit for his newfound sobriety, although as an atheist he found some of the Christian-oriented sayings a bit troubling, and he felt there was a general lack of friendliness at AA. However, he credits much of his ability to stay sober to exercising, taking anti-depressant medication, and seeing a hypnotherapist. He taught himself self-hypnosis, which he used in place of alcohol. "Today the scars are still there," he remarked in his Observer article. "I haven't cut myself in ten years. I am proud of conquering my addiction to cutting. Just as I am proud of conquering my addiction to alcohol. I attribute stopping cutting to eighteen months of counseling. I was taught to express myself, to identify feelings, moods. To get angry, to speak my mind, to vent. To articulate. I learned about emotions, coping, surviving."

In a Guardian article from December, 2003, Johnstone wrote, "This will be my ninth sober Christmas. It is the first I have looked forward to since I stopped drinking. It is about time. For too long, I have dreaded the festive season as a time when I have felt like a steak tartare tossed into shark-infested waters. Like any recovering alcoholic, one of the biggest lessons of my sobriety has been learning to have fun without a one hundred degree proof bloodstream. For the first few years, I was the cliched uptight, shy, stiff, tongue-tied, wet blanket in the corner, a picture of chemical deprivation checking my watch every thirty seconds to see if I was any closer to escaping whatever bash I was trapped at. Slowly, things have become easier."

Julie Burchill, writing in the Guardian, was not impressed by Johnstone's autobiographical work, however. "Writers have always had problems," she wrote. "That's probably a lot of the reason they become writers.… [So] they shoot their bolt in a 'memoir' and sit back smugly to listen to the oohs and aahs of the paying public.… A junkie proper may burgle you to feed his habit—but a recovery-junkie will bore you to within an inch of your life in order to feed his." Other critics were much more kind. Mark Stangate, for instance, commented in the Glasgow Herald: "Even though we know where this is going, Johnstone makes the journey entertaining. He's an instantly likeable guide. And a damn fine writer." London Times writer James Hopkin called A Head Full of Blue "a breathless and often brutal account of his talent for intoxication," and John Sutherland wrote in the Sunday Times, "A Head Full of Blues makes painful reading. There was no joy in Johnstone's drinking. He cut his arms with razors, abused his girlfriends … and permanently ruined his stomach." Sutherland added, "At thirty, with most of his life before him, Johnstone was clean and sober. Let's hope he makes it."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Johnstone, Nick, A Head Full of Blue, Bloomsbury (London, England), 2002.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 1, 2000, Mike Tribby, review of Melody Maker History of Twentieth-Century Popular Music, p. 1186.

Evening Post (Wellington, New Zealand), May 17, 2002, Ruth Nichol, review of A Head Full of Blue, p. 7.

Guardian (Manchester, England), October 29, 1999, review of Melody Maker History of Twentieth-Century Popular Music; March 23, 2002, Julie Burchill, review of A Head Full of Blue; December 9, 2003, Nick Johnstone, "Blue Notes."

Herald (Glasgow, Scotland), February 23, 2002, Mark Stangate, review of A Head Full of Blue, p. 13.

Library Journal, March 15, 2000, Heather McCormack, review of Melody Maker History of Twentieth-Century Popular Music, p. 87.

Observer (London, England), February 9, 2003, Oliver Robinson, review of A Head Full of Blue, p. 18; February 23, 2003, Nick Johnstone, "Sharp Practice."

Sunday Times (London, England), March 3, 2002, John Sutherland, review of A Head Full of Blue, p. 41.

Times (London, England), February 22, 2002, James Hopkin, review of A Head Full of Blue, p. 17.*