Richard Williams

Who is Richard Williams?

Richard Williams is a British music and sports journalist.

As a writer, then deputy editor, of the weekly rock magazine Melody Maker, he became an influential commentator on the rise of new forms of rock music at the end of the 1960s. Williams and MM, as it was known, helped to promote and contextualise styles such as progressive rock and folk rock. In particular, Williams wrote several key articles around 1970 which first drew UK audiences' attention to the importance of a then-obscure band, The Velvet Underground. Melody Maker was then a magazine which still covered jazz and Williams wrote about the more progressive developments in this field also.

The magazine's serious approach to rock music and culture, under the editorship of Ray Coleman, secured MM a huge circulation by the close of the 1960s and the start of the 1970s. It left New Musical Express, a more pop-oriented weekly, in its wake as MM caught the mood of a new generation of rock followers at a time when the music had transcended its Top 40 roots to become a powerful symbol of social and cultural change. Williams was the most vocal and influential supporter of Bob Marley during the early seventies.