‘Lock up your granddaughters: it’s The Rolling Stones!’ That
was the caption on cover of the first issue of Q magazine I bought, back in September
1989. I suppose an updated version would read ‘great-granddaughters’. That same
snoot-cocking irreverence is also in evidence in this month’s final issue of Q
in a republished interview with Lou Reed. The godfather to a million rock bands,
and writer of ‘Femme Fatale’, ‘Heroin’, ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ and ‘Walk on the Wild
Side’ is described in the first paragraph as a ‘legendarily cantankerous old
moaner’. British rock journalists haver
rarely had much time for preciousness and Q’s writers were no exception.
According to editor Ted Kessler, it was the pandemic that
did for Q in the end, though apparently it had been operating on slim margins
for most of his tenure at the helm. Truth be told, had I not learned of the
magazine’s passing via the internet I probably wouldn’t have noticed its disappearance
from the shelves of my local mag-sellers. The final issue was the first copy I
had bought in over twenty years.
A thick square book of a monthly jammed with reviews of the
latest releases, Q was pretty conservative. The editorial team invariably chose
dependable mainstream megastars for their covers. Paul McCartney (desperately
unfashionable for people under thirty) was the first cover star and the likes
of Annie Lennox and Phil Collins (both of whom had entered dull mid to late
eighties zones) made regular appearances. Mark Ellen, the original editor, had seen a
gap in the market (the music weeklies were at their most politicised and sceptical
about the post-Live Aid ‘rock aristocracy’ and there was a large middle-aged pop
music audience who were ready to shell out for CD re-releases of old classics)
and he exploited it.
But despite its devotion to comfy shoe-wearing superstars, Q
could be funny. As well as making fun of the ageing Stones, it also teamed
grumpy Van Morrison with Spike Milligan for a photo shoot and for several years
its opening feature was the often brilliant interview series ‘Who the Hell does
… think s/he is?’ in which Tom Hiddleston regularly punctured the pomposity of stars
of varying stature. Long before Louis Theroux, his interview with Jimmy Saville
caught the spiky weirdness of the man. ‘I hate children’ was the eyebrow-raising
quote highlighted in a text-box.
As a teenager just finding out about pop music, I had purchased
it now and again but on discovering NME and Melody Maker it seemed immediately and
irreparably staid. It was definitely not the place to go if you were looking
for bands on independent labels and even ultra-populist throw-back merchants
Oasis didn’t appear on the cover until ‘What’s the Story, Morning Glory’ was a global
best-seller.
NME and Melody Maker were the angry teenagers to Q’s
comfortable big brother. And they were also where I first read about Captain
Beefheart, The Fall, The Velvet Underground and a slew of brilliant albums from
the sixties to the nineties. There was less to discover in Q where stadium-fillers
like Clapton, Collins, Eurythmics, Dire Straits, Peter Gabriel, Bowie and Sting
always seemed to be in the spotlight. But
no doubt that changed over the years as younger readers got on board.
Like all magazines, it had been under the cosh for years, struggling
to hold its head up within the flood of freely available digital content – I seem
to recall it rebranding itself for a while as a ‘lifestyle’ magazine. and has
now gone the way of the weeklies. All that’s left on the shelves are Hot Press (which
I always thought survived because of its wide-ranging remit: music but also
film, sport, politics and sex) and the rock heritage monthlies Mojo and Uncut.
Both of the latter are specialist publications aimed squarely at collector nerds
but they do provide oxygen for plenty of new artists. How long those three will
survive is anyone’s guess. Online there is Pitchfork and the excellent The Quietus
and millions of people blogging, vlogging and commenting on music as a hobby.
