Clinton Walker

Hailed by Sydney’s Sun-Herald as “our best chronicler of Australian grass-roots culture,” Clinton Walker was born in Bendigo in rural Victoria in 1957. He is an art school drop-out and recovering rock critic, and the author of nine books, including Inner City Sound, his 1981 debut on the Australian punk uprising; Highway to Hell: The Life and Death of AC/DC Legend Bon Scott (1994); Football Life (1998); Golden Miles: Sex, Speed and the Australian Muscle Car (2005); The Wizard of Oz: Speed, Modernism and the Last Ride of Norman ‘Wizard’ Smith (2012); and History is Made at Night (2012), an extended essay on the endangered Australian live music circuit published in Currency House’s prestigious Platform Papers series. His seminal history of Aboriginal country music, Buried Country, was reissued in a revised and updated edition by Verse Chorus Press in 2015, and is finally receiving the kind of acclaim it has always merited.

Walker was the presenter of ABC-TV's late-night live music show Studio 22 and co-writer of their hit 2001 Oz-rockumentary series Long Way to the Top; he also wrote the documentary film version of Buried Country for SBS-TV. In addition, he produced soundtrack CDs for all three shows, and for the expanded current edition of Inner City Sound. Walker also co-produced the 2013 anthology of 70s Australian country-rock and singer-songwriters, Silver Roads, and in 2015 a reworked Buried Country double-CD soundtrack.

Walker is currently working on a companion book to Buried Country, a graphic history of black women in Australian music with the title Deadly Woman Blues, which Verse Chorus Press will publish in 2016.

Keep up with all Clinton's activities by visiting his website