Post Music Critic Takes A Final Bow
Joseph D. McLellan, the Washington Post’s music critic for nearly 30 years, died Monday of kidney failure. He was 76.
“As a critic, Mr. McLellan was known for his generosity of spirit,” the paper’s obituary says. “To highlight negativity was a bit mean, he said, because ‘you can find weakness in any human effort.’”
“To be the primary critic of a monopoly newspaper is an overwhelming role. You have to tread softly and be fully aware that your taste is not the only valid taste. All these years, I pasted in the front of my mind that there are many ways to be good,” he once told Washingtonian.
He started at the Post in 1972 on the Book World staff, eventually becoming the music critic.
The paper’s Tim Page remembers McLellan today too: “After illness had forced a radical amendment of his diet, water replacing chardonnay, Joe remained as cheerful a companion as ever, and I defy the reader to find any passage in his recent writing that would identify it as the work of an unwell or challenged man, although he was both. His passion for life, for his friends and family, and for his chosen art never flagged.”
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