There are two kinds of music journalist: the ones who write about music because they want to communicate their love of music, and the ones who write about music because they are brilliant writers, extraordinary personalities and they have to write about something. Steven Wells, who has died of cancer aged 49, aka Seething Wells, Susan Williams, Swells, aka my writing partner for several years at NME and in comedy, was definitely the latter.
He was also, arguably, the last great British rock writer, in the tradition of Julie Burchill (whom he admired), a tsunami of excitement, wit, outrage and intelligence and, on occasion, actual genius. Steven understood that music writing is more than just giving points to albums, or even listening to albums; that music journalists should be as exciting, if not more exciting, than the people they are writing about; a point he proved hundreds of times, devastating the careers of people he felt - he knew - had no right to claim our hearts, minds and ears.
Steven was born in Swindon, Wiltshire (to his chagrin, on the same day as Bono), but moved north in 1968 with his family to Bradford, where he worked in a factory and as a bus conductor after leaving school. He did not talk a lot about his background, but he was easily enraged when people tried to wind him up by claiming that he was, in fact, an old Etonian. He began his career in Yorkshire as a "ranting poet", with more than twice the wit of any of his contemporaries, and he joined the NME in 1983 as the pseudonymous Susan Williams, and was a freelance journalist for the paper for more than 25 years.
Constrained by his ideological position, he avoided working, unlike most of us, for Fleet Street or for anyone who might have made him rich and famous. It was only after his marriage to Katharine and a move to the US a few years ago that he was able to break out of the world of rock journalism and became a slightly more measured writer, for both the Guardian and the Philadelphia Weekly - more measured, that is, in the way that an unexploded hydrogen bomb is more measured than one that is going off.
But before that, he had spent most of his career officially writing about music. From the awful Morrissey to indie kings Belle and Sebastian, from emo to Bono (who once sent Swells an axe, asking to "bury the hatchet"), if you weren't the spirit of punk, or pop, incarnate, if you weren't the Sex Pistols or Kylie Minogue or Pansy Division, you were worthless. Especially if you were Belle and Sebastian, whom Steven described as "self-loving, knock-kneed, passive aggressive, dressed-up-in-kiddy-clothes, mock-pop-creepiness-peddling, smug, underachieving, real-pop-hating no-talents celebrating their own inadequacy with music so white it's translucent". He invented the word "saddo". He had to; there weren't enough words to castigate the enemy so he needed to invent new ones.
Steven was unique in the way that he combined passion and humour in equal measure. Most writers who are passionate seem to be utterly humourless, and most funny writers seem unable to take the world seriously; Swells managed both, often in the same sentence. He could argue you into a trembling corner while simultaneously making you cry with laughter. When Armando Iannucci, the BBC comedy producer, hired Steven and me to write for On the Hour (1991-92) and The Day Today (1994), he must have recognised a fierce intelligence as well as a very funny writer. And comedy obsessives still mourn the loss of all scripts for The Lighthouse Keeper, a deeply surreal sketch show that we wrote with another admirer of Swells's work, Chris Morris.
Swells's integrity saw us part company as a writing partnership when he went on to direct funny, terrifying videos for rock bands. In 1992, he had formed GobTV, a music video directing partnership, with Nick Small. The Wildhearts, Manic Street Preachers and Skunk Anansie were among the bands they made videos for and the GobTV style - in-yer-face visuals and quick edits, but with an underlying political agenda and humour - is still evident in music videos today.
In 1999 he founded the Attack! Books publishing house. His debut novel, Tits-Out Teenage Terror Totty - a fierce satire on the media - soon followed. His illustrated history Punk: The Stories Behind the Songs was published in 2004.
Defining Steven's legacy is hard; his energy, intelligence and wit were a huge influence on me, certainly. His generosity to people he liked - other writers, bands, friends - belied his (self-created) image as a rude, aggressive ranter. As a freelance journalist and a Socialist Workers party member, Swells was always on the side of the underdog, which, at the NME in the 1980s, took the form of some very confused, lost and talented young men and women.
And in an era when most "personality" writers spend their time expostulating on the contents of their iPods or their memories of 1970s sweets, Wells continued, up to the end, to write about politics, religion, popular culture and the whole mess of the world in a way that would be the envy of any Spectator columnist or leftwing stand-up comedian. In the Guardian earlier this year, for example, he wrote: "The posh's only real sporting activity is laying social landmines for grubby little grammar school types who lurk in the shrubbery of the upper-class garden party." Some things never changed.
In the end Swells's attitude, like the punk rock that had helped form him, will be his best memorial. He stuck to his ideals - happy to appear on, say, clip shows as a talking head or on Loose Ends, the Radio 4 magazine show, he would always end up being banned from them (I think he was banned from Loose Ends twice) because he was incapable of saying the right thing, or not saying the honest thing. Most people who look at his work came away impressed by the clarity of his view of the world. Some of us come away changed for ever.
Diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2006, he documented his experiences of the disease and of the Philadephia health system in a two cover stories for the Philadelphia Weekly. The first begins: "I'm writing these notes in the ER, blitzed off my tits on Vicodin and synthetic heroin." Having being in remission for a short time, he was diagnosed with enteropathy-associated T-cell lymphoma in January this year.
He is survived by Katharine.
• Steven Wells, journalist, music critic and author, born 10 May 1960; died 24 June 2009
