It is amazing what turns up when you start going through your published work. Going back 45 years, interviews with people I don't even remember meeting. Yellowing pages of music weeklies, photocopies of long-gone magazines, transcripts of interviews I do remember (Messrs Springsteen, McCartney, Morrison - Van, not Jim…). Cassettes and reference CDs of programmes. I hope to try and get them into some sort of order and start getting them up here.
From Civil Servant to NME, 1976 (hard to believe I was a “hip young gunslinger”). I was a freelance for a couple of years, my big review was Peter Gabriel’s solo debut, solely because the Reviews Editor was delighted I had never owned a Genesis LP!
Then on to Melody Maker staff writer (1980/82) - my gig ones there: David Bowie’s Scary Monsters… + Sandinista by The Clash. Otherwise I find interviews with people I don’t even remember meeting. I bumped into Peter Holt of the Evening Standard’s Ad Lib column at Glastonbury and freelanced for them for many happy years in the old Daily Express building on Fleet Street: copy was typed out with one carbon copy going to the lawyers. I still remember the pounding of the presses.
For 40 years I’ve been doing the freelance boogie – Guardian, The Observer, Heat, staff at Vox, The Times, Sunday Express, Mojo, Record Collector… That was back in the days when you were paid to write. Ah, it were all green fields back then…
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