Rock journalist Paul Williams dies at 64

The founder of leading 60′s rock magazine Crawdaddy!, Paul Williams died on Wednesday (27 March) at the age of 64.

Williams founded the magazine in 1966, as a 17 year old student at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania. Acknowledged as the first national US magazine of ‘serious’ rock criticism, he remained with the magazine until 1968, before reclaiming it in 1993 until the publication’s end in 2003.

He also wrote more than 25 books, and was respected as a leading authority on the work of musicians including Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson and Neil Young. He also was an expert on the work of his friend and science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, served as the executor of his literary estate, and ran the Philip K. Dick Society from 1983 to 1992.

He passed away at his home in California from complications related to a bicycle accident in 1995, which resulted in a traumatic brain injury and early onset dementia.