Steve Morse, Who Held Down Rock Critic Beat at Boston Globe for Three Decades, Dies at 76

variety.com:

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Steve Morse, one of the nation’s most established and well-respected music critics during his three-decade run at the Boston Globe, died Saturday at age 76.

Morse died under care Care Dimensions Hospice in Lincoln, Mass. He had announced to friends on social media that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, 10 days earlier.

The writer was so respected by the musicians he covered over the years — even when he didn’t let them off the hook for a weak performance — that no less a luminary than Bono crashed Morse’s retirement party at J.J.

Foley’s Bar in 2005, after U2 played a gig at TD Banknorth Garden that same night. The writer recalled the singer saluting him at the party by saying, “One thing we liked about Steve was he wasn’t afraid to kick us in the arse.” (The singer had more reason than that to appreciate Morse, who had been among the first daily critics to write about U2 at the outset of their career.) Morse’s first byline in the Globe, written as a freelancer, was an appraisal of Vassar Clements that appeared in the newspaper in December 1975.