By Carl Begai
Music journalists / writers are often pegged within the industry as frustrated musicians that didn’t have the chops or couldn’t take the heat. Not entirely accurate, but you need only to glance through a malicious self-serving review or half-hearted article to find the guilty-as-charged. Author / journalist Joel Gausten is far from being one of the disenchanted, boasting instead a successful catalogue of books and a long and colourful music career that shows signs of picking up even more steam. To date he has written books on Black Sabbath, Prong, Killing Joke, The Undead and The Misfits, and a tome on Satanism. His punk / metal credits include an extended stint with The Undead, The Misfits, Pigface, Electric Frankenstein, and a work-in-progress under the name Effectionhate. In all, an impressive little empire that shows every sign of continued growth, largely because the brain behind it is bolted in place and his vision is crystal clear.
“I’ve always been very, very interested in writing,” Gausten says, beginning a two part interview on his escapades. “It’s something I’ve always loved and it really started for me in grade school. As a young kid I has some speech problems, so I always found it more effective to write in terms of plain old communication. I guess it was about Grade 5 where I really started to discover music, and I was into what I guess you could call the popular hard rock music of the day. Gun N’ Roses was just starting to get noticed, stuff like that, so I actually published my own ‘zine (laughs). It didn’t really have anything in it; it was just regurgitating stuff from real magazines, and I sold it in my school through the student council and raised 13 bucks at a quarter each (laughs). That’s when I realized ‘Hmm, there might be something to this.’ That was my first big success.”
Continue reading JOEL GAUSTEN – A Matter Of Fate: Side 1