Paul Du Noyer Interview (The Complete John Lennon Songs 1970-1980)
Paul Du Noyer is an author, editor, and journalist based in London. His most recent book is The Complete John Lennon Songs 1970-1980. (UK / US) (Full disclosure: I work in the department at Universal Music that marketed a recent Lennon reissue.) Throughout his career, Paul has worked at various music magazines in the UK and was involved in the launch of both Q and Mojo in the 1990s.
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
In 1976 I had just graduated from the London School of Economics when I saw the advert that changed my life. Britain’s biggest music weekly the New Musical Express (NME) was looking for new writers. The NME had successfully ridden the changes in pop since the early 1950s and now wanted young journalists who understood punk rock. I loved music, I liked the idea of writing, so I applied by sending the required sample review (mine was hand-written on scrap paper). I was invited in for an interview and about 10 of us, from over 1000 applicants, were offered freelance work.
By 1978 the NME was printing my live reviews pretty regularly and began to give me other work. I joined the staff in 1980. It was my policy, really born of insecurity, to accept absolutely everything the editors offered. Thus I interviewed all the unfashionable acts that the more established writers avoided (The Damned, Judas Priest, Shakin’ Stevens, you name it); I learned to proof-read, sub-edit and commission; I wrote cover-lines, news stories, gossip columns, and everything else. I rose to assistant editor on the NME and got my share of big-name cover stories (The Clash, The Jam, Siouxsie etc). The NME was a hectic, shabby and argumentative place but I was with my heroes Nick Kent and Charles Shaar Murray. (Lester Bangs dropped by when he was in town.) My early writing was no good at all, but in that environment you really had to improve.
By 1985 I was 30 and felt too old for the NME. I was ready to move on.
But where? Luckily I was asked by two people I knew – David Hepworth and Mark Ellen – to help them launch a new magazine. This was Q, a monthly glossy with broad editorial tastes. I was at first the reviews editor and from 1990-92 the editor.
At Q we quickly found a readership of people in their 30s, who were often rebuilding their collections via the new CD medium. We established a rapport with bigger old-school acts with whom the UK’s music weeklies had a fractious relationship. Through Q I came to interview David Bowie and Madonna, and produced Q-style tour programmes for Paul McCartney, who’d prove an important connection for me professionally.
I formed the idea we could now invent a magazine that took Q’s approach a step further, delving ever more deeply into music of the past and of the commercial margins. Again I was joined by David Hepworth (as editorial director) and Mark Ellen (as managing editor) and by 1994 we had the first issue of MOJO.
I edited MOJO through the first year then stepped back to do more writing, largely for MOJO and Q.
I was approached to write a quick book on John Lennon’s solo music, which came out in 1997 as “We All Shine On”. (In the US I think it was called “Whatever Gets You Thru The Night”.) This book has continued to reappear, with and without my involvement, under various titles. Happily, in 2020, I was given the chance to supervise a new version, “The Complete John Lennon Songs 1970-1980”.
In 1999 I was approached by the publishers of Q and MOJO to help launch a new mass-market entertainment magazine, Heat, which rapidly attached itself to the rising TV celebrity culture. It was not to my personal tastes but they wanted my technical experience of putting magazines together. I stayed until the mag was successfully established in 2000, and enjoyed the whole experience. I then transferred to the company’s emerging digital division and, as its editorial director, oversaw the launch of various music websites. Intellectually this was fascinating but the economic challenges of online publishing were apparent from the start – and two decades later are far from resolved.
In the midst of all this I was trying to complete my first full-length book, “Liverpool: Wondrous Place”. This was the history of my home town’s music scene; Paul McCartney wrote the Foreword for me and Virgin Books published it in 2002. We held a party for it where Liverpool bands from The Mojos to The La’s jammed on stage and Yoko Ono and Elvis Costello sent messages of support.
From 2003 to 2012 I teamed up with Hepworth and Ellen once more to be part-time assistant editor on their new independently-published monthly, The Word. My role was mix of reviews editor and feature writer.
In 2009 I followed the Liverpool book with a similar work on London’s musical history, called “In The City”, which is currently being developed for a TV series.
My most recent book is “Conversations With McCartney”. It draws on the numerous interviews I did with him, whether for various magazines (going back to NME in 1979) or for his own purposes (tour programmes, press kits, album liner notes). He approved the project and his office gave me quite a lot of assistance with it.
Can you talk in some depth about the launch of Mojo?
In the course of editing Q I became tired of following the current album charts to plot our editorial course. I sensed that even our younger readers were more thrilled by the past than by the present. I tried some “retro” cover stories and realised that cover images of, say, Jimi Hendrix or the 1965 Bob Dylan looked fresher, sexier and more youthful than most of our contemporary cover stars.
I picked the name “Mojo” because I’d always been a blues fan, and blues is the bedrock of what came after. I liked the secretive, mystic connotations of Mojo. And it reminded me of a great US magazine I’d bought for the title alone: “Who Put The Bomp?”
At the same time we had no wish to make a merely nostalgic magazine. I thought that older readers who had come in to music via, say Captain Beefheart or The Clash, were by nature adventurous and drawn to extremes.
So we hoped to find a way of introducing young readers to old music, and of telling older readers about the good things happening in new music, especially from outside the mainstream.
I was keen for it to have the sensibilities of a fanzine with the production values of an international glossy. But the message was unclear and the launch was precarious.
We only hit our stride with the fourth issue: Frank Zappa’s death required the total reconstruction of that month’s page-plan and we wrote about him at obsessive length. It helped people understand that we would take the best writers we knew and throw them into projects where their passions had free rein. All these years later I am astonished to find that MOJO has outlasted the NME, Q and so many other titles. I mourn their absence but I’m proud of the work that MOJO’s successive editorial teams have done.
Did you have any mentors along the way? What did they teach you?
You will see from the above that David Hepworth and Mark Ellen were of enormous help to me throughout my career. Hepworth is a respected, sage-like commentator on magazine publishing with an exemplary track record. Ellen is without question the most inspiring editor I have ever known. Both taught me a lot in terms of good editorial practice, but above all gave me some confidence in my own ability as a writer: If these two guys want my work, I always felt, then I must have some potential. They gave me some very difficult assignments – for years I was the automatic choice for Van Morrison interviews – but in so doing they pushed me further than I would otherwise have managed.
Tell me a bit about the process of securing the book deal.
My current book, “The Complete John Lennon Songs”, is an update of my very first book, which I wrote in 1997 in response to a publisher’s invitation. The publisher was doing a series of “Stories behind the songs”, and mine was simply a case of following their regular format.
What the experience really taught me was the value of having an agent. I had no book experience when I accepted the Lennon job; I learned to my cost how bad a so-called “standard” contract can be. I duly found an agent, Ros Edwards, who has been my mainstay for 20 years, placing my book ideas with publishers and agreeing equitable terms. Authorship is a rather lonely calling and a trusted ally, always ready to reassure, is essential – at least for me.
How did you go about writing the actual book?
The way I write my books is not unlike the way that I’d write a very big article. You interview the people who are available. You read as much background material as you can, You wonder how you used to do this before the internet existed. You listen to the music, a lot. You take long walks. You re-write as often as you have time for. You wonder how you used to do this before word-processors existed. You try not to let yourself be distracted by trivialities. You remember how easy this was before the internet existed. Usually you’re asked to give the publisher a chapter-by-chapter outline before you start, but any sensible editor would allow you to switch this plan around as the book develops and begins to reveal its best shape.
What's one tip that you'd give someone looking to write a music book right now?
I don’t know the current market, unfortunately. One thing I’m glad of, however, is that all my books were on subjects I really cared about. You need to spend so much time on a book that it completely absorbs you for months or even years. If the raw material bores you, it must be difficult to switch on your computer each morning.
What's next for you?
Semi-retirement, I think, I’m certainly not looking for more work and don’t plan another book. But if anything that’s tempting should come along I’ll look at it.