Songs About Critics (1 of ??)

Now here's a thing that puzzled me for a while...

The Soft Boys recorded a song titled "The Lonesome Death of Ian Penman" (which I've only just realised is an extension of Robyn Hitchcock's Dylan fandom - "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll") (and which I seem to remember was once findable out there, but doesn't appear to be anymore).

But then I came across what looks to be the very first NME interview with The Soft Boys by one Ian Penman. And (despite the headline) the July 1978 mini-feature appears to be thoroughly positive.  

So I wonder what IP did to piss them off? 

I just remembered where I first read about this song (only ever recorded as a demo for Radar Records, played live just once). It was an enormously long 1988 interview with Robyn Hitchcock in  Forced Exposure (as discussed at the other place, one of those American zines that venerated RH as some kind of visionary seer). 

Interviewer Nigel Cross asks whatever happened to "The Lonesome Death of Ian Penman" and Hitchcock explains: 

"Well, it was recorded -- there's probably a quarter-inch version of it knocking around. We never used it -- I think, to avoid libel, we phased out the vocal. Ian Penman was one of the people who put the knife into The Soft Boys' back. And I've never forgiven any of those people. I don't forgive easily. If they're still alive and I've finally made it when I'm ninety-three, they've got it coming. When N.M.E. finally comes to my door on its knees for a front cover feature, I shall say, "Only if you get Ian Penman out of whatever institution he's in, have him cleaned out and sent 'round to apologise for his crimes publicly!" I can understand people not liking Can Of Bees. But it was defenceless. The Soft Boys were an easy target. We didn't have any allies -- any support. We didn't have a record deal. We financed the stuff ourselves. We had a small coterie of hard-core fans. And the whole thing was demolished. I thought it was peculiarly cruel to pick on an act that was suffering from having been the flavour-of-the-month. My bitterness knows no bounds."

Hmmm, so did Ian, in fact, "build them up just to knock them down"? Is there some later vindictive review of a live concert or an album?

Building them up and knocking them down was a sin-drome that rock papers were always accused of, , usually by fans who didn't understand how music magazines work at all. 

In fact

A/ usually it's completely different journalists at the paper who do the building up and the knocking down. The builders and the demolishers are completely separate. There isn't some kind of decree from above that everyone on the paper obeys, a policy towards a particular band. 

B/ it's also actually possible - and perfectly legitimate - for a critic to change their mind, especially if the promise once detected in an emerging act vaporizes by the time the first album comes out.