Allan Jones Interview
Allan Jones is a former editor of Melody Maker and Uncut. His latest book is Too Late To Stop Now, which follows Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down. Both books collect stories from his work as a staff writer at Melody Maker from 1974 to 1984.
How did you get where you are today, professionally?
I graduated from art school and moved to London in June 1973 with post-college career plans that would be flattered if you described them as vague. I got an early break when a selection of my drawings was published in a new arts magazine called The Image, recently launched by David Bailey and his publishing partner David Litchfield. A commission for some illustrations from the BBC quickly followed, the eventual payment for which barely covered the cost of the ink and paper involved, let alone next week’s rent. I got a job in the mail order department of a posh bookshop in Piccadilly. It was a cushy enough gig, I suppose. At least I wasn’t working on a building site, breaking rocks in the hot sun, bones cracking in winter cold, anything like that. At the same time, it was such dull repetitive work I daily hoped someone in the office might introduce a little havoc to the slowly unwinding days by running amok with a hatchet.
I was still at the bookshop in April 1974, when I met my girlfriend Kathy for lunch in Green Park. She was looking through the jobs vacancies in London listing magazine Time Out. Something caught her eye that made her laugh. “Someone,” she said, “is looking for you.” What caught Kathy’s attention was an ad announcing a vacancy for a junior feature writer/reporter on Melody Maker, the music weekly I've devotedly read for years, then the largest selling music weekly in the world, with a weekly sale of 250,000 copies.