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Product Description
'The NME mattered to all those generations who grew up with music at the centre of their universe. The NME never had a truer chronicler than Pat Long.' Tony Parsons Since it was founded in 1952, the New Musical Express has played a central part in the British love affair with pop music. Snotty, confrontational, enthusiastic, sarcastic: the NME landing on the doormat every Wednesday was the high point of any music fan's week, whether they were listening to The Beatles, Bowie or Blur. The Sex Pistols sang about it, Nick Hornby claims he regrets not working for it and a whole host of household names - Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill, Nick Kent and Mick Farren, Steve Lamacq and Stuart Maconie - started their career writing for it. This authoritative history, written by former assistant editor, Pat Long, is an insider's account of the high times and low lives of the world's most famous, and most influential, music magazine. The fights, the bands, the brawls, the haircuts, the egos and much more. This is the definitive - and first - book about the infamous NME. Word count: 85,000
About the Author
Pat Long was assistant editor at NME during the 2000s. He has written about music for, among others, The Guardian, Uncut and Q. He is a features editor at The Times and lives in London.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
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Author Pat Long has done a great job of annotating the history of the New Musical Express in this highly readable, very entertaining and often very funny book. Of course, for me, being in my early fifties, the paper was in its Golden Era in the mid to late seventies, when great writers such as Nick Kent, Charles Shaar Murray, Roy Carr, Mick Farren, Ian MacDonald et al held sway. They were often more rock and roll than the acts they wrote about, and guided me to more great music than I could ever reflect in this review. I've not read the NME in about ten years, and in truth, I felt that it started going down the tubes in the early 80s, when the frankly incomprehensible likes of Ian Penman and Paul Morley were in the ascendant. However, Pat Long actualy enthuses me to perhaps pick up a copy and see how it's going. He doesn't stint in cataloguing the travails of various writers drug use, and the debilitating addictions which derailed the career of Nick Kent, for example, and led to the shock early death of Pete Erskine - a sad waste and loss of talent. There is an underlying melancholia within the story that kind of acknowledges that maybe music has had it's day, that it doesn't carry the same weight or importance as it did thirty-odd years ago, reduced to merely another entertainment option, along with 24-hour TV, computer games and the world wide web. Music was more important when there was only one national radio station, and you had to look hard to find the good stuff, and it simply meant more, a soundtrack to good and bad times, and the NME helped define those times. Long ends on an optimistic note, and confidently predicts that the paper will still be around to celebrate another sixty years. Me, I'm not so sure, but I can wholeheartedly recommend this excellent book to anyone with more than a passing interest in the history of British rock music, and how words can often inform music.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
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I was a little apprehensive before starting this book - I consider myself to be a music fan but certainly not an expert and I thought it might be a bit too earnest and intense for me, but thankfully I was wrong.
Pat Long has produced a very informative and entertaining guide to a British institution, starting with its humble beginnings when Accordian Times joined forces with Musical Express, and later morphed into the New Musical Express in 1952. The sections covering the 1950s and 60s seemed quite brief compared to those which dealt with the late 70s to mid-90s (my era). For me the book really hit its stride when it reached 1970 and the legendary writers Charles Shaar Murray and Nick Kent are holding sway. This was before my time but Long successfully conveys just how powerful and influential these journalists were, often eclipsing the artists they were writing about in terms of fame and notoriety. After the punk explosion the mantle is handed to Parsons and Burchill, but the in-fighting and drug taking carry on pretty much as before.
The story stops in 2000 because, as Long explains, the digital revolution had such a profound effect on the way we listen to and read about music that it's really another story in its own right. Those of us of a certain age will always look back nostalgically on the NME and its ilk, whatever form music journalism takes in the future.
As well as following the numerous rises and falls of the paper's fortunes, this book is also a fascinating chronicle of alternative and indie British music from the second half of the 20th century. A must for those who were involved in the scene and those (like me) who looked on admiringly from the sidelines.
Pat Long has produced a very informative and entertaining guide to a British institution, starting with its humble beginnings when Accordian Times joined forces with Musical Express, and later morphed into the New Musical Express in 1952. The sections covering the 1950s and 60s seemed quite brief compared to those which dealt with the late 70s to mid-90s (my era). For me the book really hit its stride when it reached 1970 and the legendary writers Charles Shaar Murray and Nick Kent are holding sway. This was before my time but Long successfully conveys just how powerful and influential these journalists were, often eclipsing the artists they were writing about in terms of fame and notoriety. After the punk explosion the mantle is handed to Parsons and Burchill, but the in-fighting and drug taking carry on pretty much as before.
The story stops in 2000 because, as Long explains, the digital revolution had such a profound effect on the way we listen to and read about music that it's really another story in its own right. Those of us of a certain age will always look back nostalgically on the NME and its ilk, whatever form music journalism takes in the future.
As well as following the numerous rises and falls of the paper's fortunes, this book is also a fascinating chronicle of alternative and indie British music from the second half of the 20th century. A must for those who were involved in the scene and those (like me) who looked on admiringly from the sidelines.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
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I suspect that the NME is a publication that many people will read but most of them will, at most, have read it for only a few years before moving on either because of change in taste or musical preference. My era for reading the NME was the late seventies when New Wave was at its peak; once the initial New Wave storm had blown itself out and interest started to wane so did my interest in the NME. When I first read the NME articles written by the likes of Charles Shaar Murray, Mick Farren and Nick Kent had seemed not only relevant but also important, but just a few years later much of the stuff churned out in the NME seemed, to my time altered taste, to be practically unreadable.
Because my acquaintance with the NME was so brief I had suspected that the vast majority of this book about its history would hold little interest for me but I was wrong; this proved to be an absorbing book that not only provides a history of the NME but it is also acts as an alternative view of the last sixty years of rock music and youth culture.
The NME has always been a home to some of the most gifted and outspoken names in rock journalism and I found it particularly interesting to read how some of them allowed their egos to outstrip their talent and how others embraced the rock `n' roll lifestyle a little too much, becoming hopelessly addicted to booze and hard drugs.
Whilst I feel that the book could have been improved by a more inventive use of photo's this is still a publication that is well worth seeking out.
Because my acquaintance with the NME was so brief I had suspected that the vast majority of this book about its history would hold little interest for me but I was wrong; this proved to be an absorbing book that not only provides a history of the NME but it is also acts as an alternative view of the last sixty years of rock music and youth culture.
The NME has always been a home to some of the most gifted and outspoken names in rock journalism and I found it particularly interesting to read how some of them allowed their egos to outstrip their talent and how others embraced the rock `n' roll lifestyle a little too much, becoming hopelessly addicted to booze and hard drugs.
Whilst I feel that the book could have been improved by a more inventive use of photo's this is still a publication that is well worth seeking out.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
JIM
The History of the NME reads like a history of a large dysfunctional family. Many of the journalists had no professionalism and placed their own egos, disestablishmentarianism and... Read more
Published 1 month ago by JIM
New Musical Biography
If you remember the NME and its place in your life as you grew up, then you'll probably really enjoy reading this insight on the magazine. Read more
Published 1 month ago by TheRedBlueBlur
This IS the book about this countrys greatest music mag...
This IS the book about this countrys greatest music mag...great read for anyone who has ever read The NME, as ive have done since i was 14. Read more
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With a keen interest in music journalism, and having read the NME on a regular basis during my teenage years, I found this book not only a fascinating insight into the inner... Read more
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For those with an interest in the history of music it is no surprise to learn that NME has roots in the accordian and that the Accordian Times merged with Musical Express in 1946... Read more
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For those interested in the development of rock journalism
I was too young to appreciate NME in the 1970s and later became a devotee of Sounds and its spin-off Kerrang in the early 1980s when I was teenager. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Neil Kernohan
Star-studded memoir - but not rock stars
I confess I was never really an NME man. I first got into music in a big way in the 80's, so my staples were Smash Hits (greatest magazine ever...? Read more
Published 2 months ago by Paul Fillery
The History of the NME
This book is an essential read for anyone who was a music fan and teenager in the mid to late 1970's and early 1980's. Read more
Published 2 months ago by P. A. Smith
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The History of the NME is really about the History of British Music. The book begins with the start of the fascination with accordion Music in the 1930's. Read more
Published 2 months ago by kdog
I enjoyed it even though the NME was the weekly music paper I liked...
I read the weekly Music papers for a few years from the late 70s to the late 80s. And I progressed from them to Q when it came out, so the theme of this book was of interest to me... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Suze
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