Neil Taylor was an English music journalist. He was born in Sutton Coldfield

Sutton Coldfield

Sutton Coldfield is a suburb of Birmingham, in the West Midlands of England. Sutton is located about from central Birmingham but has borders with Erdington and Kingstanding. Sutton is in the northeast of Birmingham, with a population of 105,000 recorded in the 2001 census...

, West Midlands, and worked for music magazine the NME

NME

The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...

from approximately 1983 to 1987. Taylor is most closely associated with the "Indie

Indie pop

Indie pop is a genre of alternative rock music that originated in the United Kingdom in the mid 1980s, with its roots in the Scottish post-punk bands on the Postcard Records label in the early '80s, such as Orange Juice, Josef K and Aztec Camera, and the dominant UK independent band of the mid...

" rock of that period. His early work on such bands as The Jesus & Mary Chain, the Wedding Present

The Wedding Present

The Wedding Present are a British indie rock group based in Leeds, England, formed in 1985 from the ashes of the Lost Pandas. The band's music has evolved from fast-paced indie rock in the vein of their most obvious influences The Fall, Buzzcocks and Gang of Four to more varied forms...

, Primal Scream

Primal Scream

Primal Scream are a Scottish alternative rock band originally formed in 1982 in Glasgow by Bobby Gillespie and Jim Beattie and now based in London. The current lineup consists of Gillespie, Andrew Innes , Martin Duffy , and Darrin Mooney...

, Bogshed

Bogshed

Bogshed were an independent band formed in Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire, England in 1984, originally as The Amazing Roy North Penis Band.-History:...

, Big Flame, We've Got A Fuzzbox...

We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It

We've Got A Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It were an English alternative rock group. Formed in Birmingham in 1985, the all-female quartet originally consisted of Vix, Maggie Dunne, Jo Dunne and Tina O'Neill. The band's name was shortened to Fuzzbox for the U.S. release of their first album...

 and others helped cement the fledgling indie scene in 1984 and 1985, culminating in the release of the NME cassette tape C86

C86 (music)

C86 is a cassette compilation released by the British music magazine NME in 1986, featuring new bands licensed from independent labels of the time. As a phrase, C86 quickly evolved into shorthand for a guitar-based musical genre characterised by "jangly" guitars and fey melodies, although other...

. His influence on the paper at this time was such that he was once lampooned in a Ray Lowry cartoon for his indie stance.

In the early 1990s, he went to work in publishing, eventually becoming the Publishing Director of Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd is a British publisher of fiction and reference books. It is a division of the Orion Publishing Group.-History:...

, part of the Orion Publishing Group

Orion Publishing Group

Orion Publishing Group Ltd. is a UK-based book publisher. It is owned by Hachette Livre. In 1998 Orion bought Cassell.-History:Full history of the group can be found on Orion Publishing Group is owned by -Imprints:...

, before leaving to set up a literary agency

Literary agent

A literary agent is an agent who represents writers and their written works to publishers, theatrical producers and film producers and assists in the sale and deal negotiation of the same. Literary agents most often represent novelists, screenwriters and major non-fiction writers...

, neiltaylorassociates. During his publishing career he has commissioned and/or edited a number of eminent British literary authors, including Lawrence Norfolk

Lawrence Norfolk

Lawrence Norfolk is a British novelist known for historical works with complex plots and intricate detail. His novels also feature an unusually large vocabulary....

, Jake Arnott

Jake Arnott

Jake Arnott is a British novelist, author of The Long Firm and other novels. Most of his works are crime novels, and include homosexual characters...

, Matt Thorne, David Mitchell

David Mitchell (author)

David Stephen Mitchell is an English novelist. He has written five novels, two of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize.- Biography :...

, Peter Ackroyd

Peter Ackroyd

Peter Ackroyd CBE is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a particular interest in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot and Sir Thomas More he won the Somerset Maugham Award...

, Justin Hill

Justin Hill

Justin Hill is an English novelist whose novels have been nominated for the Man Booker Prize three times. Born in Freeport, Grand Bahama Island in 1971, he grew up in Yorkshire. He was educated at the historic St Peter's School, York....

, Toby Litt

Toby Litt

Toby Litt is an English writer, born in Bedford in 1968. He studied at Bedford Modern School, read English at Worcester College, Oxford and studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia where he was taught by Malcolm Bradbury....

, and Tibor Fischer

Tibor Fischer

Tibor Fischer is a British novelist and short story writer. In 1993 he was selected by the influential literary magazine Granta as one of the 20 best young British writers....

.