CareerHe was a high-profile writer during the glory days of British punk and wrote articles on all the major punk acts. Savage wrote and published a
fanzine called London's Outrage in 1976, and in 1977 began working as a journalist for
Sounds. Sounds was, at that time, one of the
UK's three major music papers, along with the
New Musical Express and
Melody Maker. Savage interviewed punk,
New Wave and
electronic music artists for Sounds until 1979, when he moved to Melody Maker, and then in 1980 to the newly founded pop culture magazine
The Face.
Throughout the 1980s, Savage wrote for
The Observer and the
New Statesman, providing
high-brow commentary on
popular culture.
In 1991, Savage designed a record sleeve for the (then little-known) Welsh rock band
Manic Street Preachers. The single was called "
Feminine Is Beautiful".
England's Dreaming, published by
Faber and Faber in 1991, was lauded as the definitive history of punk music, and remains the single most comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon. It was used as the basis for a television programme, "Punk and the Pistols", shown on
BBC2 in 1995, and an updated edition in 2001 featured a new introduction which made mention of the Pistols' 1996 reunion and the release of the 2000 Pistols documentary film,
The Filth and The Fury. A companion piece, The England's Dreaming Tapes, was published in 2009.
Savage continues to write on punk and other genres in a variety of publications, most notably
Mojo magazine and
The Observer Music Monthly. He wrote the introduction to Mitch Ikeda's Forever Delayed (2002), an official photobook of the Manic Street Preachers.
Savage has appeared in the documentaries
Live Forever and
NewOrderStory.
Several compilation CDs based on his tracklistings have also been released, including England's Dreaming (2004) and Meridian 1970 (2005), the latter of which puts forward the argument that 1970 was a high-point for popular music, contrary to critical opinion. His most recent compilation has been Queer Noises 1961-1978 (2006), a compilation of largely overlooked pop songs from that period that carried overt or coded gay messages.
Jon Savage's latest book, Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture, was published in 2007. It is a history of the concept of teenagers, which begins in the 1870s and ends in 1945. Teenage aims to tell the story of youth culture's prehistory, and dates the advent of today's form of "teenagers" to 1945.
WorksThe Kinks: The Official Biography Publisher: (Faber and Faber, 1984,
ISBN 9780571133796)
England's Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock (Faber and Faber, 1991,
ISBN 9780571139750)
Picture Post Idols Publisher: London, Collins & Brown, 1992
ISBN 9781855850835The Faber Book of Pop (edited with
Hanif Kureishi) (Faber and Faber, 1995,
ISBN 9780571179800)
Time Travel: From the Sex Pistols to Nirvana - Pop, Media and Sexuality, 1977-96 Publisher: London, Chatto & Windus, 1996
ISBN 9780701163600Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture Publisher: Viking Books, 2007
ISBN 9780670038374Joy Division documentary film, screenwriter, 2008
The England's Dreaming Tapes (
Faber and Faber, 2009)
Music compilations
England's Dreaming (
Trikont 2004)
Meridian 1970 (Forever Heavenly 2005)
Queer Noises - From the Closet to the Charts (Trikont 2006)
The Shadows Of Love - Intense Tamla 1966-1968 (Commercial Marketing 2006)
Dreams come true - Classic wave electro 1982-87 (Domino Records 2008)
Teenage - the invention of youth 1911-1945 (Trikont 2009)