Melody Maker

This article is about the music newspaper. For the Gibson guitar model, see Gibson Melody Maker.
Melody Maker
Frequency Weekly
First issue January 1926[1]
Final issue December 2000
Company IPC
Country United Kingdom
Based in London, England
Language English
ISSN 0025-9012

Melody Maker was a British weekly pop/rock music newspaper, one of the world's earliest music weeklies (according to its publisher, IPC Media, the earliest).[2] It was founded in 1926, largely as a magazine for dance band musicians,[3] by Leicester-born composer, publisher Lawrence Wright; the first editor was Edgar Jackson.[4][5] In 2000 it was merged into "long-standing rival"[2] (and IPC Media sister publication) New Musical Express.

1950s–1960s

Originally the Melody Maker (MM) concentrated on jazz, and had Max Jones, one of the leading British proselytizers for that music, on its staff for many years. It was slow to cover rock and roll and lost ground to the New Musical Express (NME), which had begun in 1952. MM began its Melody Maker LP charts in November 1958, two years after the Record Mirror published the first UK Albums Chart.[6] On 6 March 1965, MM called for the Beatles to be honoured by the British state, which happened on 12 June that year when all four were appointed as members of the Order of the British Empire (Messrs Harrison,[7] Lennon, McCartney[8] & Starr[9])

By the late 1960s, MM had recovered, targeting an older market than the teen-oriented NME. MM had larger and more specialised advertising; soon-to-be well-known groups would advertise for musicians. It ran pages devoted to "minority" interests like folk and jazz, as well as detailed reviews of musical instruments.

A 1968 Melody Maker poll named John Peel best radio DJ, attention which John Walters revealed may have helped Peel keep his job despite concerns at BBC Radio 1 about Peel's style and record selection.[10]

1970s

Melody Maker supported glam rock and progressive rock in the 1970s.

Critics such as Richard Williams, Michael Watts, Chris Welch and Steve Lake were among the first British journalists to write seriously about popular music, shedding an intellectual light on such artists as Steely Dan, Cat Stevens, Led Zeppelin and Henry Cow.

In 1978, Richard Williams returned again as editor attempting to take MM in a new direction influenced by what Paul Morley and Ian Penman were doing at NME and with Jon Savage, Chris Bohn and Mary Harron providing arty coverage of post-punk and new wave while Vivien Goldman who was previously at NME and Sounds, gave the paper much improved coverage of reggae and soul music, an area in which it had fallen short of its competitors.

Internal tension came to light, principally between Williams and Ray Coleman, by this time editor-in-chief, who wanted the paper to stick to the more "conservative rock" music it had continued to support during the punk era. Coleman had been insistent that the paper should "look like The Daily Telegraph" (renowned for its old-fashioned design), but Williams wanted the paper to look more contemporary. He commissioned an updated design, but this was rejected by Coleman.

During this period Melody Maker was described as "the musos' journal," and that Michael "Mick" Watts emerged as a prominent writer for the paper.[11] In January 1972, in a defining moment for rock journalism, Watts interviewed David Bowie for Melody Maker.[12] It was during this interview that Bowie claimed, "I'm gay, and always have been, even when I was David Jones."[13] "OH YOU PRETTY THING" ran the headline, and swiftly became part of pop mythology. Bowie later attributed his success to this interview, stating that, "Yeah, it was Melody Maker that made me. It was that piece by Mick Watts."[14] During his tenure at the paper, Watts also toured with and interviewed artists including Syd Barrett, Waylon Jennings, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.

1980s

In 1980, after a strike which had taken the paper (along with NME) out of publication for a period, Williams left MM. Coleman promoted Michael Oldfield from the design staff to day-to-day editor, and, for a while, took it back where it had been, with news of a line-up change in Jethro Tull replacing features about Andy Warhol, Gang of Four and Factory Records on the cover. Several journalists, such as Chris Bohn and Vivien Goldman, moved to NME, while Jon Savage joined the new magazine The Face. Coleman left in 1981, the paper's design was updated, but sales and prestige were at a low ebb through the early 1980s, with NME dominant.

By 1983, the magazine had become more populist and pop-orientated, exemplified by its modish "MM" masthead, regular covers for the likes of Duran Duran and its choice of Eurythmics' Touch as the best album of the year. Things were to change, however. In February 1984, Allan Jones, a staff writer on the paper since 1974, was appointed editor: defying instructions to put Kajagoogoo on the cover, he led the magazine with an article on up-and-coming band The Smiths.

In 1986, MM was invigorated by the arrival of a group of journalists, including Simon Reynolds and David Stubbs, who had run a music fanzine called Monitor from the University of Oxford, and Chris Roberts, from Sounds, who established MM as more individualistic and intellectual. This was especially true after the hip-hop wars at NME, a schism between enthusiasts of progressive black music such as Public Enemy and Mantronix and fans of traditional white rock – ended in a victory for the latter, the departure of writers such as Mark Sinker and Biba Kopf, and the rise of Andrew Collins and Stuart Maconie, who pushed NME in a more populist direction.

1990s

While MM continued to devote most space to rock and indie music (notably Everett True's coverage of the emerging grunge scene in Seattle), it covered dance music, hip hop and post rock and electronica. Two of the paper's writers, Push and Ben Turner, went on to launch IPC Media's monthly dance music magazine Muzik. Even in the mid-1990s, when Britpop brought a new generation of readers to the music press, it remained less populist than its rivals, with younger writers such as Simon Price, Taylor Parkes and Neil Kulkarni continuing the 1980s tradition of iconoclasm and opinionated criticism. The paper printed harsh criticism of Ocean Colour Scene and Kula Shaker, and allowed dissenting views on Oasis and Blur at a time when they were praised by the rest of the press.

The magazine retained its large classified ads section, and remained the first call for musicians wanting to form a band. Suede formed through ads placed in the paper. MM also continued to publish reviews of musical equipment and readers' demo tapes -though these often had little in common stylistically with the rest of the paper- ensuring sales to jobbing musicians who would otherwise have little interest in the music press.

In early 1997, Allan Jones left to edit Uncut. He was replaced by Mark Sutherland, formerly of NME and Smash Hits, who thus "fulfilled [his] boyhood dream"[15] and stayed on to edit the magazine for three years. Many long-standing writers left, often moving to Uncut, with Simon Price departing allegedly because he objected to an edict that coverage of Oasis should be positive. Its sales, which had already been substantially lower than those of the NME, entered a serious decline.

In 1999, MM relaunched as a glossy magazine, but the new design did not help. The magazine closed the next year, merging into IPC Media's other music magazine, NME, which took on some of its journalists and music reviewers.

Bands using MM adverts

Advertisements in Melody Maker helped assemble the line-ups of a number of major bands, including:

See also

References

  1. ↑ Moore, Hilary (2007). Inside British Jazz: Crossing Borders of Race, Nation and Class. Ashgate Publishing. p. 26. ISBN 0754657442.
  2. 1 2 "ENTERTAINMENT | Melody Maker to merge with NME". BBC News. 15 December 2000. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
  3. ↑ Herbert, Trevor (2000). The British Brass Band : A Musical and Social History. Oxford University. p. 105. ISBN 0191590126.
  4. ↑ Whitcomb, Ian (2013). After the Ball: Pop Music from Rag to Rock. Faber & Faber.
  5. ↑ Powell, Neil (2000). The Language of Jazz. Taylor & Francis. p. 85.
  6. ↑ Archived 23 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine.
  7. ↑ The London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 43667. p. 5487. 4 June 1965.
  8. ↑ The London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 43667. p. 5488. 4 June 1965.
  9. ↑ The London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 43667. p. 5489. 4 June 1965.
  10. ↑ "Radio 1 – Keeping It Peel – John Peel Day". BBC. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
  11. ↑ "Interview: Out of His Pen: The Words of Richard Williams". Out of His Pen. 2002. Retrieved 5 July 2011.
  12. ↑ Spitz, Marc (27 October 2009). Bowie: A Biography. Crown Publishing Group. p. 180. ISBN 978-0-307-46239-8.
  13. ↑ Jones, Randy; Bego, Mark (September 1976). Interview: David Bowie. Macho Man (ABC-CLIO). ISBN 978-0-275-99962-9. Retrieved 5 July 2010.
  14. ↑ "Interview: Cha...cha...cha...changes: A journey with Aladdin". Melody Maker. 12 May 1973. Retrieved 5 July 2011.
  15. ↑ "BBC Radio 6 Music – 6 Music News – Clips". Bbc.co.uk. 1 January 1970. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
  16. ↑ Cosmos, Tiger (2013). "The Stranglers Biography". Musicianguide.com. Net Industries. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  17. ↑ Archived 21 August 2008 at the Wayback Machine.
  18. ↑ Archived 14 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine.
  19. ↑ "Tees Features". BBC. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
  20. ↑ "The Official Recoil Website". Recoil.co.uk. 17 October 2013. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
  21. ↑ "Lincolnshire – Stage". BBC. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
  22. ↑ "Music – 7 Ages of Rock – Suede". BBC. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
  23. ↑ Archived 6 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine.
  24. ↑ "Wang Chung". Wang Chung. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
  25. ↑ Saunders, William (2010). Jimi Hendrix: London. Roaring Forties Press. pp. 17–19. ISBN 978-0-9843165-1-9. Retrieved 30 December 2011.
  26. ↑ "history". kajagoogoo. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
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