Paul Gorman Interview
I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. Click here to subscribe!
Paul Gorman is an Irish writer based in London. He’s been a professional writer for more than four decades, focusing his work on art, clubbing, design, fashion, media, photography and visual culture. His first book on music journalism was the oral history In Their Own Write. His latest, Totally Wired: The Rise & Fall of the Music Press, expands the scope considerably. It’s a welcome addition to the history of music journalism.
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
I’ve been a professional writer for 44 years, since the age of 18. I left home and school when I was 17 and spent a rambunctious time before joining a weekly food trade paper (owned by a big publisher which at that time owned The London Times among many other trade, regional and national newspapers) as a trainee reporter. I undertook on-the-job training—shorthand, typing, libel laws, subbing, layouts, photography—and progressed to become news editor where in the 80s I won a national award for exposing monopolistic practices in the meat trade (questions were asked in the Houses of Parliament on its publication).
I rocked around various other weekly trade papers and then ran the LA office of the British film trade weekly Screen International, taking in Cannes, the Oscars etc. On return to the UK I became a freelance writer with a regular gig as editor-at-large at British UK music industry weekly Music Week and its sister international bi-monthly, so again regularly travelled to Australia, the US, Australia, China and all over south-east Asia, shadowing Paul McGuinness on tour with U2 in eastern Europe, spending time on Grammy day in NYC with Freddy deMann when he was Madonna’s manager, etc. I also freelanced, writing about people I was interested in for magazines such as Mojo, where I filed copy on Billy Childish, Serge Gainsbourg, El Vez, the US fanzine scene, Robert Fripp, etc.
All the while I maintained my primary interests in art, clubbing, design, fashion, media, photography and visual culture generally, so in 2001 published my first books: The Look, about music x fashion, for which I interviewed everyone from Bernard Lansky (Elvis’s clothier), Dougie Millings (The Beatles’ tailor) to Dapper Dan and Malcolm McLaren, and In Their Own Write, an oral history of the music press with contributions from Cameron Crowe to Lisa Robinson to Caroline Coon to Charles Shaar Murray.
Subsequently I published books with Boy George and Goldie, a history of The Face magazine, edited the definitive history of David Bowie’s London life Any Day Now and wrote monographs of the graphic designer Barney Bubbles and the artist Derek Boshier. Six weeks before his death, incredibly, Bowie wrote to Boshier telling him how much he loved the book (they worked together on a few projects including the Lodger cover).
I’ve also digressed into running fashion labels and club nights, making maps showing London’s significant pop culture address, managing groups (including Dexy’s Midnight Runners and El Vez for brief periods) and consulting private collectors, international museums and auction houses on acquiring pop culture material. I also work with artists’ estates and have curated exhibitions about Malcolm McLaren, Barney Bubbles, Derek Boshier, David Bowie and independent print publications in the UK, the US and continental Europe.
Can you please briefly describe the book?
Totally Wired describes the narrative arc from the start of the music press with the launch of The Melody Maker in 1926 to the UK and US media sector’s atomisation by globalisation and digitisation in 2000.
How did you come to this subject for a book?
I was dissatisfied with In Their Own Write, and have sought to make amends by broadening the focus away from the usual suspects—Creem, MM, NME, Rolling Stone, etc.—to include those people and publications which have previously been marginalised in this story, whether they be Carl Gayle at Black Music in the 70s, Details in the 80s or the diverse, feminist crowd at Ben Is Dead and the power of XXL, The Source and Vibe in the 90s.
What made the topic so interesting to you?
That it is a very broad church which incorporates many, many intertwining and fascinating narratives from the good, the bad and the ugly.
Tell me a bit about the process of securing the book deal.
I have a great agent in Maggie Hanbury. She advised me to use an old copy of In Their Own Write to show how it contained much foundational material but could provide the springboard for a fresh take on the subject matter. The head of T&H Sophy Thompson understood, having worked with me on The Story of The Face, that it was time to put this story into a 21st century perspective, and commissioned it, assigning me to the responsive and sympathetic editor Ben Hayes.
What did the research process look like?
I’d already done a degree of research with In Their Own Write in 2000, so had all the tapes, transcripts and materials from that, and then the music press kept on popping up in other projects—in The Look for example, and writing the book about The Face necessitated going into the magazine founder Nick Logan’s 12 years—including his six-year editorship—tenure at NME. Working for six years on the biography of Malcolm McLaren saw me stockpiling copies of those publications in which he appeared, from Street Life and NME through Rolling Stone to the original Details and even Ben Is Dead. I have a decent archive of alternative and underground magazines, and my curation of the independent publications show PRINT! Tearing It Up at central London’s Somerset House in 2018 also fed my curiosity.
How did you go about writing the actual book?
To paraphrase Anthony Burgess: ‘I sighed and opened a Word document. “I’d better start,” I said.’
There is no great mystery here. You have to apply yourself and crack on. Burgess also wrote that a true depiction of a writer’s life would be pretty dull, since it consists of viewing a solitary person tapping at a keyboard and occasionally breaking away to make a cup of tea or in my case take the dog for a walk. Unlike Burgess, however, I do not take time out to smoke a foul cheroot or indulge in ‘Audenesque analeptic swigs’. ‘Professional writers are not remarkable people,’ he wrote. ‘The career of a taxi-driver or window-cleaner is far fuller of incident.’ I subscribe to this.
What was the easiest thing about the whole project?
Easy is not applicable, since the majority of the book was written in 2020-21 when we were all blighted by the pandemic. However the general feelings of malaise and isolation created circumstances in which I could fully focus on the job at hand. There was one period when I had to withdraw, causing the delivery deadline to be set back when the impact of Covid became too much. Often I’d be sat at my desk with my wife working at her’s alongside me and, because we live near one of central London’s biggest hospitals, for months on end the silence of the city was only punctuated by the wail of ambulance sirens.
This also made me question the substance of project, which seemed picayune in comparison with the misery being felt by so many. I think that strengthened my perspective. I was surprised that one of the terms applied by the British critic Miranda Sawyer to Totally Wired was ‘cold-eyed’, but it’s true. I am very largely dispassionate about this.
What was the hardest thing about the whole project?
Getting round to it. I knew almost immediately on publication in November 2001 that In Their Own Write wasn’t up to the task. Unless you are Studs Terkel or George Plimpton, the oral history is the lazy person’s choice of book-making. At the launch party the late, great British writer Charlie Gillett told me that was one of the reasons he didn’t like the book and that he wanted a narrative which would give an overview of what I thought. I wasn’t upset; Charlie was a lovely bloke (and a great footballer well into late middle age btw). I thought, ‘I have to make this right.’ That took 20 years because there is much else to do and bills to pay.
What are a few tracks / videos / films / books we should also look at, in addition to your book, to get a better sense of the topic?
West End Girls - Pet Shop Boys (Recorded while Neil Tennant was deputy editor of Smash Hits) Scum - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (about NME‘s Mat Snow and Sounds‘ Antonella Burke) (We Hate The Fuckin’) NME - Thee Headcoats My Flamingo by The Subterraneans (Nick Kent’s masterpiece) Bury Pts 1 + 3 - The Fall (Mark E. Smith takes an Uncut journalist to task) The Remedy - Carl I (Carl Gayle in one of his reggae recording artist manifestations) I Killed Christgau With My Big Fucking Dick - Sonic Youth
Can’t think of any films which capture the subject accurately. Any with Flea and/or Dave Grohl praising the magazine/journalists/etc. (i.e. most of them) should be avoided.
I’m embarrassed by most music writers’ memoirs, collected writings and overviews; they are nearly all unbearably self-aggrandising and often revisionist. There are exceptions. Off the top of my head: Evelyn McDonnell’s Rock She Wrote, Signed Sealed & Delivered: True Stories of Women In Pop by Sue Steward and Sheryl Garratt, Boy’s Own: The Complete Fanzines 1986-92, Everything Is An Afterthought: The Life & Writings of Paul Nelson by Kevin Avery, the Ellen Willis compendium Out Of The Vinyl Deeps, Last Night A DJ Saved My Life by Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton, Nelson George’s Mixtape Vol 1 and The Girlfrenzy Millenial: A Big Girls’ Annual.
Did you have any mentors along the way? What did they teach you?
I didn’t and have never had mentors. My projects are almost entirely self-generated or proposed and supported by my wife Caz Facey whose take is always to be trusted.
What’s one tip that you’d give someone looking to write a music book right now?
Ask yourself if it’s necessary. There are too many music books, some of which can be condensed into long-form articles.
What’s next for you?
Various things, as always. In particular I am working on a fashion project, developing a previous book as a documentary and writing a proposal for a book about 21st century celebrity.
Anything you want to plug?
The third edition of my monograph/biography of the late graphic artist Barney Bubbles has recently been published around the world by Thames & Hudson. The Wild World of Barney Bubbles shows the importance of this previously marginalised figure and his contemporary relevance—there’s even a song about him on The Paranoid Style’s new album For Executive Meeting on Bar/None Records. I represent the Barney Bubbles Estate and we are collaborating with some interesting people—see barneybubbles.com—and the online outlet featuring his designs is at shop.barneybubbles.com.
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