It was my misfortune that on Saturday night at the Louder Than Words celebration of music writing at the Innside Hotel in Manchester, my Q&A session with Dr Simon Morrison was timed to occur at precisely the same time as Stuart Maconie was speaking in an adjoining room. A BBC radio DJ, TV presenter and former assistant editor of NME, Stuart has written for several other magazines and newspapers and is far better known than I am. As a result, I attracted about 25 people and Stuart attracted maybe ten times that.
Stuart, whose session was with David Quantick, another NME alumnus who’s gone on to become a noted screenwriter, was plugging his book The Full English, a best-seller that, according to its jacket blurb, “explores our national identity and how it has evolved during the last century”, which suggests it is not a music book. I, of course, was plugging my Just Backdated memoir of the time I spent on Melody Maker during the early 1970s, which is definitely a music book even if I do stray into areas that involve sex and drugs alongside lots of rock and roll.
Simon Morrison, whom I met for the first time just before our Q&A session, turned out to be a PhD who lectures in music journalism at the University of Chester. Of course, the concept of training to become a music writer on a university course is as foreign to me as the seven years I spent on Melody Maker would be to the students who attend his classes. There can be no doubt, however, that they’d be mighty jealous because what I did in those years in simply unattainable in today’s world of music journalism, which is one of the reasons why I wrote that book in the first place.
Simon had obviously read my book from cover to cover and we had an hour-long conversation that, I think, entertained the 25 folk who chose me over Stuart Maconie. He was interested in my newspaper background and in the circumstances that brought me to MM and when we moved on to my role as the paper’s US editor I could sense the envy of those in the room who could but dream of the lifestyle I led. I was asked about the rivalry between MM and NME and I pointed to the differences in the two publications; that MM was first published in 1926, NME in 1952; that MM was initially a trade paper for musicians while NME was always aimed at music fans; that MM covered all music of types of music – jazz, blues, folk, balladeers, rock and pop – while NME focused solely on pop, morphing into rock. Perhaps more importantly, MM treated the music and musicians more earnestly, which served us in good stead until NME was re-staffed with a crop of great writers from the underground press and covered punk rock with more enthusiasm than MM, at first anyway.
I namedropped shamelessly, Lennon, McCartney, Bowie, Bruce, Debbie and the rest, and told one or two tales that I didn’t include in the book. I contrasted the media friendly attitude of The Who with the less than welcoming outlook I sensed from Led Zeppelin, and mentioned how Bowie – whom I described as “rock’s greatest magpie” – used an interview to gather intelligence from the interviewer by asking him or her whether they’d seen any good bands recently, heard good records, watched good movies or read good books, and stored away the information so he could use it himself at some time in the future. “He was also great at grabbing headlines,” I pointed out. “He might not have told the truth but he knew how to get on the front page.”
After our chat the audience was invited to ask questions, one of which concerned the issue of copyright in the articles that appeared in MM. I tried to explain how the ownership of IPC – MM’s parent company – had changed hands several times over the years and that in my opinion the current owners, a company called Future PLC, don’t even seem know what they own anyway, and no one seems to police the use of material from MM’s pages. Furthermore, the situation is complicated by the fact that freelance music writers – as opposed to staff men like myself – retained copyright of their work anyway, and these days no one seems draw a distinction between the two.
At the end of my session I signed several books for those who’d brought them along or bought them at the stand in the hotel, including one for a lady named Stephanie, who turned out to be the daughter of Les Perrin, one time top music biz PR to the likes of John, George and Ringo, and the Rolling Stones. In my book there’s a tale of how he sleazy PR Max Clifford, who worked for Les at the time, enticed me to a Status Quo show by promising me a “bird” for the evening. “He always was a slimy piece of work,” said Stephanie, “My dad fired him when he heard that he was showing dirty movies to some of his clients.”
All in all, a good day’s work and my thanks to Jill Adam and her Louder Than Words team for putting on another fine festival of fun.
