Nick Tosches
| Nick Tosches | |
|---|---|
| Born | Nicholas P. Tosches October 17, 1949 Newark, New Jersey, United States |
| Occupation | Biographer, essayist, journalist, novelist, poet |
| Nationality | American |
| Website | |
| nicktosches |
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Nick Tosches (/ˈtɑːʃəs/; born October 17 or 23, 1949) is an American journalist, novelist, biographer, and poet. His 1982 biography of Jerry Lee Lewis, Hellfire, was praised by Rolling Stone magazine as "the best rock and roll biography ever written."
Tosches was born in Newark, New Jersey. His surname originated from Albanian settlers in Italy, known as Arbëreshë; his grandfather emigrated from the village of Casalvecchio di Puglia to New York City in the late nineteenth century.
According to his own account, Tosches "barely finished high school". He had a variety of jobs, including working as a porter for his family's business in New Jersey, as a paste-up artist for the Lovable underwear company in New York City, And later, in the early 1970s, as a snake hunter for the Miami Serpentarium, in Florida. A fan of early rock and roll and "oddball" records, he also began writing for rock music magazines, including Creem, Fusion, and Rolling Stone. He has been described as "the best example of a good rock journalist who set out to transcend his genre and succeeded," and as someone who "along with Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer and a handful of other noble notables from the era... elevated rock writing to a new plateau." He was fired by Rolling Stone for collaborating with Meltzer in filing record reviews under each other's byline.
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