REMEMBERING ANDREW TYLER [1946-2017]

It's sad to lose a friend - even sadder when you discover that he had died two years before and you didn't know that. Didn't also know that, such was the pain he was living with, that he elected to end his days at Dignitas in Switzerland.

Andrew and I met at the NME and were both freelancers. I had no idea, for some reason, of the large number of significant music pieces he wrote. I remember him much more for his superb and lengthy pieces on social issues. Our time at the NME overlapped. He was there from 1973 to 1980; I worked there under the name Dick Tracy from 1975-1982. Andrew wrote considerably more than I did, was often out on assignment and was a skilled feature writer. He graduated, as I did, to the national press,Time Out  and other magazines. His investigative work was first rate.

I shared his concern for animal rights. We published The Beast, the first (or one of the first) animal lib magazines in the UK or US. [See Previous Post] which ran from 1975-1981.

Andrew made his concern for animals into his full-time occupation as head of Animal Aid, one of Britain's leading groups promoting veganism and working for the welfare of animals on many levels.

His memoir 'My LifeAs An Animal' documents his working life in his own inimitable style, a book written whilst he was suffering with both Parkinson's disease and a degenerative condition in his back which meant he was in constant pain. It is a mark of the man that he is modest about his own achievements.

His long Kerouac-type meanderings with his guitar across the US in his teens was another whole chapter in his life that I was also unaware of.

He and his twin brothers grew up in a Jewish orphanage and he left school at 14 having read nothing but biblical texts and with minimal writing skills. He learnt on the job at small trade magazines. His background left him with a great concern for the poor, the dispossessed, the unloved, which he expressed in his work with difficult youths who he was able to communicate with on their level. Later he would write moving narrative stories about life on the street which few other journalists would have been able to.

Andrew's quiet and determined nature, his integrity, his focused anger always impressed, layered as it was with a great sense of dark humour. He was the finest of fellows who devoted so much of his life to fighting for the most mistreated of all - the animals.

'My Life As An Animal' is available from Animal Aid. Its existence is due to Sara who  wrote the book's last chapter and organised the whole production of the book, a huge learning curve for her and an exhausting experience. She wrote to me as follows:

'Andrew asked me to campaign for voluntary assisted deaths (VAD) after he'd gone - which I've done to the best of my ability.  I was very lucky and got a front page and two page spread in the Mirror for Andrew.  Because of that was then invited onto This Morning (which I had never seen or heard of as  we have had no TV for 20 years - also I was never an am TV watcher.  Never understood how people had the time!).  Anyway This Morning and Dignity in Dying put a clip of my interview on their FB Pages and I got over a million hits in a week - which I was told is basically unheard of for a non- celeb.  Just goes to show how this issue is in the zeitgeist, as I got over 3,000 comments mostly backing what I said.'

There's a fine obituary by Mark Gold in May 2017 in The Guardian 

Also another great tribute can be found on Charles Shaar Murray's blog

Andrew made 19 short videos in the last six weeks of his life. One of these is on his Facebook page in which he explains why he is off to Dignitas.  Check also this video on Vimeo.

Links to some of his printed works can be found on Wikipedia

ANDREW WITH STEVIE WONDER. He also interviewed John Lennon,
Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen and many others.