Marc Spitz, Veteran Music Journalist and Author, Dead at 47

Marc Spitz, a music journalist, playwright and author, has died at the age of 47. Rolling Stone has confirmed the author’s death, though a cause was not immediately available.

Spitz wrote for publications including Spin, the New York Times, Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone and was the author of several music books including 2001’s We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk (co-written with Brendan Mullen and a “West Coast counterpart” to Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s iconic Please Kill Me), 2007’s Nobody Likes You: Inside the Turbulent Life, Times, and Music of Green Day, 2009’s Bowie: A Biography and 2011’s Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue.

“Marc Spitz was a great journalist & a generous, incisive man who would hate this part. Best person I ever got mugged with. He will be missed,” author Sloane Crosley tweeted.

Spitz was also a novelist – the semi-autobiographical How Soon Is Never? about a rock journalist’s attempts to reunite the Smiths as well as 2006’s Too Much, Too Late – and the playwright behind nearly a dozen “off-off-Broadway plays,” including his debut Retail Sluts.

Born in Far Rockaway, New York and a graduate of Bennington College, Spitz spent the majority of his early career at Spin, writing cover stories dedicated to artists like Axl Rose, the Strokes and the White Stripes after joining that publication in 1997.

“No one sat in the back of a New York City bar wearing all black and judging people better than Marc Spitz did. I will miss him terribly,” Jake Fogelnest tweeted.

In 2013, Spitz published his memoir, Poseur: A Memoir of Downtown New York City in the ’90s. His most recent work was 2014’s Twee: A History; he was writing a book called Loud Pictures, “a cultural history of rock n’ roll cinema,” at the time of his death. Most recently, he served as a weekly culture writer for Salon.