Saddened to hear about the death of Helen Fitzgerald, a former colleague at Melody Maker.
Startled too - it felt like only a few days earlier she'd been posting pictures on Facebook of herself on holiday. Unexpected, then, but apparently peaceful.
Helen Fitzgerald in the Melody Maker office on High Holborn - opposite Shaftesbury Theatre. Pic by Mick Mercer.
We only overlapped at MM for a brief while. It's through her that I first met My Bloody Valentine - she introduced me at a gig to this amiable bunch of longhairs. I can't remember if they had played earlier on that bill or not.
See, Helen was the very first journo to champion MBV, long before anyone else saw any potential there. Below is Helen's feature on the Valentines from October 11th 1986. At this point, Bilinda Jayne Butcher hadn't yet joined and "glide guitar" was a year or more away.
Before becoming a staff writer at the Maker, Helen had been one of the sensible-named writers at Sounds.
She also wrote for a sort of semi-professional fanzine called Masterbag. And before that, in Dublin, she contributed to the zine VOX.
Here's one of her Masterbag features.
