GAVIN MARTIN
Music journalist 19612022
IN the summer of 1977, the teenage Gavin Martin instigated a riot of his own when he and his friend Dave McCullough founded Alternative Ulster, a fanzine whose title posited an identity beyond the grisly troubles besetting Northern Ireland. It gave its name to the debut single by Stiff Little Fingers (originally intended as a flexidisc for the ’zine), who became one act – alongside The Undertones,
Boomtown Rats, U2 and more – that would furnish the island of Ireland with a new, self-confident identity, of which Gavin himself was a part.
Among his wide musical interests, Pop Hibernia remained a perennial favourite.
Gavin was a precocious talent. At 13 he had a letter published in NME, and with Alternative Ulster as his calling card was soon freelancing for the paper before joining the staff in 1980. Through the ’80s and much of the ’90s he remained one of NME’s mainstays, fierce in both enthusiasm and criticism. Among a welter of memorable features was his interview with Marvin Gaye shortly before the singer’s death; an on-tour profile of Depeche Mode fearlessly describing Dave Gahan’s drugsodden lifestyle; and an interview with the late Brian Jones, conducted through a psychic. Gavin’s obsession with Van Morrison led the irascible singer to describe him as “a monkey on my back”, though he later relented.