Paul Nelson (January 21, 1936 — circa July 5, 2006) was anA&R executive, magazine editor, and music critic best known for writing forSing Out!,The Village Voice andRolling Stone.

Born inWarren, Minnesota, Nelson attendedSt. Olaf College before graduating fromUniversity of Minnesota, where he became acquainted withBob Dylan and co-founded a seminalfolk revival magazine,The Little Sandy Review. As a critic, he defended Dylan when he "went electric" at theNewport Folk Festival in 1965 and was instrumental in supporting the careers of Dylan,Clint Eastwood,Leonard Cohen,Elliott Murphy,Willie Nelson,Bruce Springsteen,Jackson Browne,Neil Young,Ramones,the Sex Pistols andWarren Zevon.

While employed by the A&R department ofMercury Records from 1970 to 1975, Nelson briefly served asDavid Bowie's publicist and championed such disparate artists asRod Stewart,Doug Sahm,New York Dolls,Blue Ash, and Reddy Teddy. He also compiledthe Velvet Underground's archival1969: The Velvet Underground Live and made unsuccessful bids on behalf of the label for Springsteen,the Modern Lovers andRichard and Linda Thompson.

As the record reviews editor ofRolling Stone from 1978 to 1983, Nelson researched long features about Eastwood, Zevon andRoss Macdonald (only an expurgated version of the Zevon piece would see print) while mentoring a new generation of critics, includingKurt Loder, Charles M. Young andMikal Gilmore. He frequently quarreled with publisherJann Wenner over content (due to Nelson's backing, prominent laudatory reviews ofthe Dead Boys,Joy Division, andPublic Image Ltd. were published) and length issues, precipitating his eventual resignation.

Although Nelson found transitory employment as acopy editor atThe Jewish Week, attempted to write two major pieces on Cohen andLucinda Williams forLA Weekly in 1993, and continued to sporadically contribute reviews toMusician andPeople until 1996, he largely recused himself from professional writing following his resignation fromRolling Stone, devoting most of his literary energies to an unfinishedscreenplay partially set duringWorld War II. A devoted lifelongcinephile with predilections forJohn Ford's oeuvre andfilm noir, Nelson was an early adoptee of thevideocassette recorder and enjoyed taping obscure exemplars ofclassic Hollywood cinema. Throughout much of this period, Nelson was employed as a clerk at Evergreen Video,^[1] a now-defunct specialty shop in theGreenwich Village neighborhood ofManhattan.

Nelson was found dead in his sublet apartment on theUpper East Side in July 2006. TheOffice of Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York ruled thatheart disease was the cause of his death.^[2] In a 2011 overview, Charlie Finch ofArtnet commented on Nelson's lifestyle choices: "Nelson didn't drink or do drugs: what he did do was eat ahamburger and veal picatta for dinner, always with twoCokes, even for breakfast, while smokingNat Sherman cigarettes, every day of his adult life."^[3]

Nelson was acquainted with the novelistJonathan Lethem (with whom he shared newfound interests inPhilip K. Dick's novels and the music ofChet Baker) in the mid-1980s; the character of Perkus Tooth in Lethem's 2009 novelChronic City is partially inspired by Nelson. In November 2011,Fantagraphics Books publishedEverything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson, byKevin Avery.^[4] Another book edited by Avery,Conversations With Clint: Paul Nelson's Lost Interviews with Clint Eastwood, 1979 - 1983, was published in December 2011 byContinuum Books, with a foreword by Lethem.^[5]

• "What Ever Happened to Rock Critic Paul Nelson? from RockCritics.com
• "The Underground Man: A Tribute to Paul Nelson, 1936 - 2006" from RockCritics.com