The History of NME eBook edition released for Kindle
The eBook version of The History of NME is out now, priced at a very reasonable £7.20 from Amazon.co.uk…Continue reading
Amazon sell out – other ways to buy the book online
It appears that Amazon’s algorithms have been short-circuited by the intense demand for The History of The NME. There are still plenty of copies on Play.com, Caught By The River and Waterstones online, though.Continue reading
Jonh Ingham – Sounds’ punk avatar
Great interview with the journalist Jonh Ingham over on the God Save The Sex Pistols site, covering his stint as a freelancer for NME and how Sounds stole a march on the other inkies by publishing the first interview with the Sex Pistols. Continue reading
The early years of the NME
In 1997 the former NME journalist Simon Spence spoke to the paper’s one-time proprietor Maurice Kinn in what was to be Kinn’s final interview. The transcript of their conversation is published here for the first time and is a fascinating insight into the paper’s fortunes in the ’50s and ’60s Continue reading
Interviews with NME journalists: Mick Farren
Editor of International Times and comics compendium Nasty Tales, sci-fi novelist, White Panther, lead singer with biker rockers The (Social) Deviants, doorman at the UFO club and organiser of the Phun City festival, yippie activist – Mick Farren’s counter-cultural credentials are impeccable.Continue reading
BBC6 Music Interview
I talk about the book with former NME journalist Andrew Collins on BBC 6 Music’s Breakfast Show.Continue reading
Harry Hammond – inventor of rock photography
Harry Hammond defined the look of rock’n’roll, pioneering the form of rock photography with his artfully-composed portraits and seemingly miraculous monochrome live shots of artists performing.Continue reading
Interviews with NME journalists: Nick Kent
Nick Kent is the template for what people in the 1970s imagined a rock writer to be like. Lean and sallow, permanently clad in leather and make-up, Kent was one of the biggest stars of the NME before his career became derailed by heavy drug use in the second half of the 1970s…Continue reading
Interviews with NME photographers: Kevin Cummins
By his own reckoning Kevin Cummins took photos of almost every band that played in Manchester for about 15 years from the punk era onwards. He spent over a decade as staff photographer at NME, shooting iconic images of Joy Division, The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and hundreds of other bands. Continue reading
How Margaret Drabble invented punk
Much writing about punk makes reference to a 1977 novel by Margaret Drabble about Britain in decline called The Ice Age. But can the book really be considered relevant to punk, or is it just a cliche? Continue reading
