Robert Forster

So are you appearing at the Writers Festival as a writer, or as a musician? It all mixed now: there's the book and there's the music. It's all a great big soup

Your collection The Ten Rules of Rock & Roll emerged at a high water mark in music writing: around the same time there was Craig Mathieson's excellent Playlisted and Craig Shuftan's Hey! Nietzsche! Leave Them Kids Alone... Yes, I think that's a very fair point. I don't know what brought the turnaround - maybe it's just a difference attitude of the publishing world.

Well, the mere act of The Monthly - being a fairly high-brow, literary-leaning periodical - hiring a pop music critic was an interesting move, leaving aside the pedigree of the man they hired... And I think part of why perhaps it works with The Monthly is that I don't have to do some sort of discourse about what's coming up or some contiunual commentary on the current pop scene. That was never brief, and it's not something I could do anyway. And I think The Monthly realised that was not needed, and something else was – and that's where I came in. And also music these days, that's not enough: I've reviewed books, I've reviewed live concerts. I think [music journalism] is broader than it was in 1975, where it would have just been on music itself. It's always relevant, but what I choose to write about is quite random.

So it's whatever catches your interest at the time? Yes. And I think I'm very lucky that I have that brief.

Is there a follow up to [2008 album] The Evangelist on the horizon? I'm working on it, and I'm working towards having an album with songs I really love. I'm far closer to the end than the beginning. 

Also, I need to take you to task on rock and roll rule #2 ["The second-to-last song on an album is always the weakest"] - what about The Queen Is Dead? ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out' is the second-to-last track, and arguably the Smiths' greatest song. Gee, I think with that record… well, that's a classic – and on a classic album the weakest track is the weakest of a stupendous bunch of songs.

It's not weaker than ‘Never Had No-one Ever', surely? No, you're right: that is the weakest song on that album. [laughs] Well, I guess that just shows the original mind and contrariness of Morrissey! Andrew P Street

The Ten Rules of Rock and Roll is out through Black Ink.