Dr John Williamson
- Research Associate (Music)
email: John.C.Williamson@glasgow.ac.uk
Biography
I joined the University as a research associate on the AHRC / ESRC funded Musicians' Union: A Social History project in April 2012, 23 years after finishing my undergraduate degree in 1989.
In between times I have worked in various combinations as a journalist (mainly for The Herald, Evening Times), concert promoter / festival organiser (New Music World, The 13th Note, Sound City, Ten Day Weekend) and band manager (most notably for bis between 1995-1999 and Belle and Sebastian between 2006-2012). I have been a director of numerous companies including New Music World, Sano Music, Ten Day Weekend and the Glasgow bar, Mono, and record shop, Monorail.
I was member of the judging panel for the Mercury Music Prize between 2004 and 2006 and chair of the judging panel for the first Scottish Album of the Year award in 2012.
Highlights of these include interviewing Glen Campbell, Nancy Sinatra and one of Girls Aloud; bis appearing on Top of the Pops, signing to the Beastie Boys' Grand Royal label and becoming genuinely big in Japan; watching Belle and Sebastian play the Hollywood Bowl with LA Philharmonic and headlining the Latitude festival in 2010. Low points are too numerous to mention but include spending £10 000 on releasing a poetry album which sold about 10 copies; being interminably lost in splitter vans in the grimmest parts of Germany and a traumatic full body search at Heathrow Airport on the way back from Amsterdam.
I returned to study in 2002 and completed (slowly) a PhD on Intellectual Property, Entrepreneurship and Rent-Seeking in the Music Industries. I also taught part-time at the Queen Margaret University (Media Studies / Print Journalism) University of Glasgow (Journalism, The Business of Popular Music, Popular Music Studies, Popular Music History) and full-time at University of the West of Scotland (journalism, International Music Industries, Rights and Creative Industries, Intellectual Property, Music Journalism). Since 2008, I have been an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow and a regular contributor to the M.Litt in Popular Music Studies.
I retired from the music business (for the time being) in 2012 having concluded that failure is far more interesting (and fun) than success and that studying it is far more rewarding than doing it. . .
Research Interests
popular music, popular music history, trade union history, copyright and intellectual property, entrepreneurship, music industries, popular music politics, cultural and creative industries.