Mick Mercer

 ( 1957 Births ) 

Mercer ran one of the first punk fanzines, Panache, from 1976 to 1992. In 1978, he began writing for British music paper Record Mirror, then freelanced for ZigZag magazine, later becoming its editor until the magazine folded in 1986. During the 1980s, he wrote regularly for the British music weekly Melody Maker, and edited Siren magazine in the 1990s. He has written five books on gothic music, in addition to numerous self-published material.

Mercer's Music to Die For compendium (2009) was described by The Quietus as having "a far greater stylistic variety than the casual observer might imagine", and as being "stuffed full of the best and most artistic music the world has to offer".

In 2023, some of Mick Mercer's photographs were exhibited as a part of "The Batcave Exhibition" at the Museum of Youth Culture on Berwick Street in Soho. The journalist's important - predominantly goth-based - photo archive may be sampled at this page on the Redbubble website: [3]

• Mercer, Mick (1988). Gothic Rock Black Book. Omnibus Press.
• Mercer, Mick (1991). Gothic Rock: All You Ever Wanted to Know...but Were Too Gormless to Ask. Pegasus Publishing.
• Mercer, Mick (1997). Hex Files: The Goth Bible. Overlook Press; First American edition.
• Mercer, Mick (2002). 21st Century Goth. Reynolds & Hearn.
• Mercer, Mick (2009). Music to Die For. Cherry Red Books.

• Gothic Rock, (double CD)
• Gothic Rock 2, September 1995 (double CD)
• Gothic Rock 3: Black on Black, (double CD)
• Hex Files—The Goth Bible Vol. 1, 1997 (double CD)
• Hex Files—The Goth Bible Vol. 2, (double CD)
• Hex Files—The Goth Bible Vol. 3, 1998 (double CD)

• Official website
• current writing
• Interview on Morbidoutlook.com