Jaan Uhelszki was one of the founding editors at Detroit’s legendary Creem magazine. Since that time, her work has appeared in USA Today, Uncut, Classic Rock, Rolling Stone, Spin, NME, Relix, Tone Audio, and Guitar World. She is the only journalist to have ever performed in full makeup with Kiss

Uhelszki got her start in Detroit as a Creem subscription agent. She began writing when editor Dave Marsh assigned her to cover Smokey Robinson’s retirement press conference. She wrote the piece as an open letter to Robinson,^[4] begging him not to leave the music industry. The resulting article became a Creem cover story in 1972.^[5]

She went on to write movie columns and feature-length profiles, eventually becoming a senior editor while working alongside fellow writer Lester Bangs. Creem at the time employed what was considered a “dream team” of rock writers, including Uhelszki, Bangs, Marsh, Ben Edmonds, and Roberta Cruger. Uhelszki has described the insular experience of working on a monthly music magazine as “like living on Donkey Island from Pinocchio–only we looked entirely normal.”^[6]

Uhelszki writes liner notes for Sony Legacy Recordings, Rhino Records, and Time-Life.

She has written essays for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees The Pretenders, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Patti Smith, and The Stooges.

Uhelszki regularly appears as a music authority on VH1’s “Behind the Music” series, as well as on radio shows and at industry panels and workshops, where she works as a media trainer.

Uhelszki appears in the 2012 documentary, Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me, directed by Drew DeNicola and Olivia Mori. In the film, she discusses the first and only Rock Writer’s Convention that occurred in 1972 in Memphis, Tennessee, where Big Star performed for a gathering of top rock critics from throughout the U.S.[17] Uhelszki calls the Big Star performance a “seminal experience.”