Skip to main content
Music journalist John Graham, a steadfast presence in Portland culture and Willamette Week’s pages in the late ’90s and early ’00s, died in April in San Francisco. He was 52 years old. Not many details have surfaced, at least not that I’ve heard, but it doesn’t really matter. We’ve lost a singular intelligence and talent who dedicated himself to the service of independent culture.
I met John when I joined WW’s staff in 1999, and for years we worked shoulder-to-shoulder, running the paper’s music department. Heady times. Willamette Week produced thick issues packed with ads, operating with palpable swagger. The city was amid one of its cyclical self-celebrations, MAX and urban growth boundary and Pearl District all showcased as breakthrough expansions in an ever-upward trajectory. The music scene was exploding, engine of a bohemian upswing that would make Portland a national darling, et cetera—you know this part.
John Graham wasn’t necessarily sold on any of it. He made distinctions. If something, be it a band or a building or a trend or an idea, stood up to real scrutiny, great. If John found it to be bullshit, you would hear about why. He was immune to hype and trendiness. A man of many dimensions, above all John possessed—what’s that old-time word?—integrity.
He could also be hilarious, charming and raucous good company right alongside all that. I can see his skeptically cocked brow even now, his skater-boy haircut topping the face of a thin-white-duke-style natural aristocrat. John wore punk convictions on his literal sleeve (or lack thereof), but took himself less seriously than he took aesthetics and ethics. Meanwhile, he worked like a stevedore. In a given week, he would churn out thousands of words, combing a huge tranche of promo CDs and CD-Rs and even cassettes to create the Music listings, backbone of our section, now an archival map of a vanished scene. And then he’d pop off a diamond-cut, high-concept piece about a band he truly loved, his prose crackling with humor and invention, enthusiastically telling the world to check it out. Because that, in the end, was the real job.
John and I weren’t in touch much after he left Portland. I’m under the impression he pretty much kept calling it like he saw it, championing creativity and authenticity. I do know for sure that the world is dumber without him in it. He would hate that.