Abstract
This chapter analyses the music press from 1979 to 1983, the last time the NME and Sounds had significant increases in circulation while Melody Maker had begun its slow decline. It evaluates why music papers, particularly the NME, had to a large extent abandoned the idea that popular music can engender profound social change. It considers how some journalists explored themes of alienation shaped, to some extent, by the lived experience of social problems and urban blight. This again gave the opportunity to question how permissiveness had changed society. The chapter then demonstrates how conversations in music papers became more esoteric, pointed and angry; Sounds, for instance, was embroiled in the aftermath of a race riot and accused of encouraging racist skinheads.
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Notes
- 1.
Audit Bureau of Circulation (IPC Media).
- 2.
National Readership Survey (1983).
- 3.
Richard Williams, personal interview (2011).
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David Wilkinson, Post-Punk, Politics and Pleasure in Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 65–66.
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NME 21 April 1979, 33. Sounds 21 April 1979, 35. Melody Maker, 21 April 1979, 34.
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NME, 5 April 1979, 1.
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NME 5 May 1979, 3.
- 10.
Garry Bushell, Sounds 28 April 1979, 16 and 60.
- 11.
‘Politics in Music,’ NME 28 April 1979, 3.
- 12.
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- 14.
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- 18.
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- 35.
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- 39.
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- 42.
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- 43.
Dave McCullough, ‘Battle of the Sexes,’ Sounds 5 January 1980, 11.
- 44.
‘Letters,’ Sounds 5 January 1980, 31.
- 45.
Pete Silverton, ‘Family Entertainment,’ Sounds 12 January 1980, 19.
- 46.
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- 53.
Eric Fuller, ‘Oi Polloi,’ Sounds 1 November 1980, 24.
- 54.
‘Letters,’ Sounds 2 February 1982, 51. Dave Lewis, ‘Bouncing Bomb,’ Sounds 9 February 1980, 17.
- 55.
‘Stop Your Sobbing,’ Sounds 15 November 1980, 14.
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‘Letters,’ Sounds 11 October 1980, 68.
- 58.
‘Letters,’ Sounds 18 October, 66.
- 59.
‘Southall and Toxteth, Liverpool: Disturbances,’ HL Deb 6 July 1981 vol 422 cc472–81.
- 60.
The Sun, 4 July 1981, 1.
- 61.
‘Voice of ‘81,’ The Sun 17.
- 62.
The Daily Mail 9 July 1981, 18–19.
- 63.
The Daily Mail 10 July 1981, 3.
- 64.
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- 65.
NME 11 July 1981, 1.
- 66.
Ibid, 2–3.
- 67.
Carol Clerk, ‘Cockney Rejects areGuilty, Oi! Oi! Oi!’ Melody Maker 22 August 1981, 10.
- 68.
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- 69.
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- 70.
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- 71.
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- 72.
Sandy Robertson, ‘Hex Education,’ Sounds 8 May 1982 (RB, accessed June 2012).
- 73.
Ian Birch, personal interview (2011).
- 74.
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- 75.
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Peter Silverton, ‘Honey Bane,’ Smash Hits 14 May 1981 (RB, accessed June 2012).
- 77.
Ian Birch, ‘On a Wing and a Prayer,’ Smash Hits 19 August 1982 (RB, accessed June 2012).
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Mary Harron, ‘This Year’s Model,’ Smash Hits 4 September 1980 (RB, accessed June 2012).
- 79.
Mike Stand, ‘Things Your Mother Never Told You,’ Smash Hits 18 October 1979 (RB, accessed June 2012).
- 80.
Mike Stand, ‘Journey to Glory,’ Smash Hits 20 August 1981 (RB, accessed June 2012).
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Glen, P. (2019). Too Much Paranoias: The Beginning of the End for the Inkies. In: Youth and Permissive Social Change in British Music Papers, 1967–1983. Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91674-3_6
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