Ed Mitchell
March 21, 1970 - November 4, 2022
CLASSIC ROCK CONTRIBUTOR and former Editor of The Blues magazine Ed Mitchell has died aged 52. He had been suffering from cancer.
Ed grew up in Gourock, west Scotland. As a schoolboy he was obsessed by guitar playing and his favourite band at the time was Madness. In adulthood his tastes expanded into country, blues and rock’n’roll. He loved The Who, The Beatles, The Jam, Bruce Springsteen and Mötley Crüe, and had encyclopaedic knowledge of guitar players such as Roy Buchanan, Danny Gatton and Duane Allman. But when Madness originally split the same week that he started his first job in October 1986, he joked that it marked the point where his childhood ended.
The job was at McCormack’s, a famous Glaswegian guitar shop, where he installed a full-length mirror. “He’d encourage punters to pose with the guitars before buying,” says Henry Yates, who started writing for Total Guitar around the same time as Mitchell.
“His playful take on rock’n’roll flowed into his writing style, which was funny and enthusiastic. As a music journalist, Ed couldn’t have been po-faced if he’d tried. I’ve never known anyone who was so passionate about so many different genres.”
The years in McCormack’s shop were the perfect grounding for the role of Reviews Editor on Total Guitar, where he was employed by future Classic Rock Editor-in-Chief, Scott Rowley. Soon Ed was writing features, interviews, album reviews, how-tos. His guitar-modding column ‘Ed’s Shed’ appeared in print on both sides of the Atlantic, in both Total Guitar and Guitar World. He also wrote for Classic Rock and Guitarist. Between them, the websites Louder, MusicRadar and Guitar World host more than 400 of his articles – and that’s just the ones that made it online.
In 2012 he became Editor of The Blues, a sister title to Classic Rock, designed to cover the resurgent blues scene headed up by the likes of Joe Bonamassa, as well as bring serious appreciation to the original bluesmen.
Emma Johnston was Deputy Editor. “Ed was one of the funniest, quickest-witted people I’ve known,” she says, “with a fantastically dark, razor-sharp sense of humour and a complete inability to suffer fools gladly or silently. He was fiercely loyal to his friends, as well as a brilliant writer and an encyclopaedia of music.”
“As an editor he was a brilliant whirlwind of inspired chaos,” adds Yates, “seemingly pulling off every issue at the last minute like a monthly great escape – probably why the issues he helmed felt so energetic and exciting to read.”
Ed was a great musician, too. He would play with Stephen Lawson, Editor of Total Guitar. “His wife Julie christened us The Boo Hoo Brothers when she heard us practising my melancholic country-folk songs in their house,” says Steve. “His playing was a mix of no-frills Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn-style groove and McCartney-esque melody. He had so much feel and taste. Actually, he had more than that, he had soul.”
The Blues was closed by its owners TeamRock in June 2016, then facing the financial troubles that would bankrupt it by the year’s end. Ed was already dogged by health problems, and went freelance, continuing to write for Classic Rock and Guitarist.
He remained in good humour right until the end. “I’ve been in and out of more hospitals than Jimmy Savile,” he jokingly emailed us. “I had a stroke and then treatment for the cancer in my spine. It’s been a right laugh!
“I survived working for TeamRock,” he joked. “Cancer isn’t that bad.” SR