Alan Neilson

Alan Neilson was born in North Yorkshire at the end of the 1960's. He spent the first decade of his life moving from Yorkshire, to Germany, to Liverpool, to Dorset, and finally to Birmingham where his family remained.

Neilson studied Live Art, Composition and Screen-writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, completing four full-length screen-plays there. After graduation Neilson was quickly picked up by a production company based at Shepperton Studios, where he worked on a screenplay for television. Due to legal disputes, the project had to be shelved and was sadly never completed.

Soon after Neilson began working on his first novel; "Touching Wood". It was completed and published in early 2012. He is working on Parts 2 and 3 of the series: "Touching Ground" and "Touched".

In 2019, having worked as a music journalist for over 10 years, Neilson's latest book "Stabbing Myself In the Ears" was published. It is a collection of interviews with artists, live reviews and album/single reviews, as well as essays about the music business including "How Justin Currie Ruined My Life".

Here is a sample of Neilson's sharp wit and honesty: "I am generally hard to please and dislike the mainstream to the point of stabbing myself in the ears when asked to listen to it"; "Newton-John… well she was Kylie before Kylie - even if you don’t like her, you can’t hate her"; "so cheesy you almost have to grate it into your CD player to play it"; "He has a constant puzzled look on his face as he sings – an expression mirrored by the audience"; "the problem is that with no stage presence, no discernible melodies, no skill as a vocalist or guitar player, all that is left to impress is the lyrics, and they contain a constant barrage of cynicism, negativity and gloom"; "has a great confidence and is at ease with the crowd despite its overwhelming disinterest"; "Liam Gallagher stole his whole act and public persona from Ian McCulloch, but without Ian’s wit, charm and sense of humour, and great voice"; "the music just crawls off the stage and disappears under a sea of statuesque figures"; "A small mosh-pit of one begins and ends for the first chorus; it is a indication of things to come I think"; "If his job is to ignite the audience into a frenzy, he fails dismally – if his job is for the audience to wish his set would finish and to get Holly on, then congratulations"; and "If this can make me, a grown man weepy and nostalgic, then it will move anyone".

Inspiration:

'David Copperfield' by Charles Dickens

'War and Peace' by Tolstoy

'The Time Machine' by H.G. Wells

'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley

'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' by Douglas Adams

'Slaughterhouse-Five' by Kurt Vonnegut

'Catch-22' by Joseph Heller

'A Confederacy of Dunces' by John Kennedy Toole

'On The Road' by Jack Kerouac

'The Idiot' by Fyodor M Dostoyevsky