Paul Slade

I've been a journalist here in London since 1982. During that time, I've written for The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Guardian, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Telegraph, The Independent on Sunday, The Sunday Times, Mojo, Fortean Times, The Idler, Time Out, fRoots and a host of other publications. In 2005, I started making occasional documentaries for BBC Radio 4, covering subjects like a forgotten radio hoax of 1926 and the craze for "dirty blues" lyrics in pre-war America.

Like any hack who's been working for that length of time, I've accumulated a fair number of pet projects over the years. These are subjects which I've become passionately interested in myself but which, for one reason or another, I've never managed to sell as a commercial proposition. It doesn't help matters that I've recently developed a taste for writing longer essays - running anywhere up to 50,000 words in length - which is a form very few modern magazines are prepared to consider.

Hence my PlanetSlade website. There you'll find my guide to some of the world's most fascinating Murder Ballads, a series of Secret London's forgotten mysteries and, in the section I've cunningly titled Miscellany, anything else I damn well feel like including. My aim is to combine the old-fashioned virtues of traditional journalism - proper research, clear writing and a habit of checking my facts - with the global distribution and ease of access which only the internet can provide.

Pearl Bryan's tale is the first book-length piece PlanetSlade has produced, which is why I decided to add a Kindle edition here. As with all the songs I've covered, my aim is to weave together the true crime story behind the ballad with an account of the song's own changing life down the decades.

So, why the fascination with murder ballads? First and foremost, I think it's because they're essentially a form of journalism. Most of the songs you'll find discussed on PlanetSlade were written very soon after the real-life crimes they describe, and sold in the streets within hours of the killer's capture or execution. Cheerfully vulgar, revelling in gore, and always with an eye on the main chance, these songs were tabloid newspapers set to music, carrying news of all the latest 'orrible murders to an insatiable public.

Then there's the fact that murder ballads never stop mutating, morphing to suit local place names as they cross and re-cross the Atlantic, and changing with the times to fascinate each generation's biggest musical stars. Victims are bludgeoned, stabbed or shot in every verse and killers are often hanged, but the songs themselves never die.

For all this mutability, the core facts of the story in each song are surprisingly persistent, and give us just enough information to follow a trail through the clippings library to the real individuals whose short lives and brutal deaths have become an indelible part of popular culture. No-one's going to care how you or I met our ends 100 years from now, but they'll still be singing Billy Lyons' tale and recalling his fatal encounter with that bad man Stagger Lee.

"Great work, Paul. I loved reading that." - Kristin Hersh, Throwing Muses, on PlanetSlade's Pretty Polly essay.

"Full of the stuff I'm also interested in." - Rennie Sparks, The Handsome Family, on PlanetSlade's Murder Ballads coverage.

"Compulsive stuff." - Ian Anderson, editor of fRoots magazine, on PlanetSlade's Tom Dooley essay.

"A fantastic website." - Dave Henderson, Mojo, on PlanetSlade's Murder Ballads coverage.