Book Review on History of NME

“The History of the NME” Review

When I finally got away from my parents’ music and began to seek out something of my own, the NME was there. On the magazine shelves of my favorite bookstore, the large glossy covers featuring glammed up musicians of the underground scene called to me more than a Tiger Beat ever could. The real hook though was the CD wedged inside the magazine, featuring bands that “those in the know” had put together to enlighten my ragtag collection of music that was mostly only redeemable by the quantity of Beatles albums.

And really, that’s where NME’s story begins too. Chronicled in “The History of NME: High Times with Low Lives At the World’s Most Famous Music Magazine,” the magazine existed long before the Beatles left their mark, but there was no foothold on survival for the magazine until the Fab Four came on the scene. In a stranger than fiction beginning, NME started as “Accordion Times” in 1935 to take advantage in the huge boom in accordion music. It was not until 1952 that they changed over to a broader focus and became “Musical Express” and shortly thereafter “New Musical Express.”

    They found their niche with their introduction of the UK Singles Chart that they compiled each week by calling record shops and asking what was selling. Yet, this alone would not have been able to save them had it not been for the happy coincidence that two weeks after their first issue, rock n’ roll arrived on the scene. While Jazz was still hanging on in the pages of NME, it was rock n’ roll that got kids like John Lennon and Malcom McLaren reading the magazine. The Beatles third single “From Me to You” was even inspired by NME’s letters page “From You to Us.”

    The 200 pages of “History of NME” covers all of the uncertainties of the magazine’s beginning in 1952, as well as the introduction of the beloved “flexidisc” put in NME magazines starting in 1974, the groundbreaking “Gig Guide,” and the feuds (oh the feuds) the magazine was infamous for all the way until 2012 when the online version of the magazine launched.

    The book has a strong focus on the writers of NME and their comings and goings as well as the drugs that varied, dominated, and influenced the music scene (and the writing) over the years. Each of the “big” NME writers are represented here with interviews from Nick Kent, Chrissie Hynde, and Tony Parsons about their time in the service of the NME and the highs and lows of working for the music magazine.

Yet, with all this interesting dirt to be dished about the music industry and the artists in the wild 60s and 70s, the history of NME (at least told through this volume) doesn’t get interesting to the average reader until the 1980s when punk music enters in the timeline. More than 100 pages into this work, the reader finally gets what I was hoping for when I picked up this book. Stories of Sid Vicious beating up an NME reporter for wider press coverage, how the magazine sold a record breaking 270,000 copies after Ian Curtis’ suicide, how Morrissey’s rise in the UK made NME a powerhouse and then just as easily broke them when spats with Morrissey inevitably ensued--these were the stories I read NME for, and this is what was advertised on the cover of this history.

Indeed, I felt pretty snookered by the cover of this book that advertises coverage of the years until 2012. In truth, it only covers the 60’s and 70’s in overkill, the 80’s in a way that leaves the reader still hungry, and in only snapshot form in the 90’s before hitting us with an epilogue of purple prose that smiles in a frozen way that is entirely more hopeful than the magazine industry can be about the current state of sales. The book is clunky, and makes the reader work hard through awkward sentences and tedious details of the NME writers’ lives for the golden trivia nuggets and personal anecdotes about our favorite musicians. The pictures included in the chapters are mostly of the NME writers looking posh and a lot like the rock stars they wrote about and wished they were. This makes sense when you view this book in that light: as a platform for the writers to get some recognition and share their peace. Yet, again, that’s not what was advertised on the cover with pictures of Vicious, Bowie and Morrissey. And, honestly, NME has never been known for world class journalism. Once the book gets away from these “rockstar writers,” and tells the stories of the underground music scene that kept readers returning to their pages for so many years, the pages fly by.

    Today, NME’s presence is almost entirely online. They cover not only music news, but film and television. They seem to have quite the fascination for Netflix’s “Stranger Things” in this current issue with at least three different stories on the series. Yet, nods to nostalgia and the roots of NME are there too. Currently, with videos of Dave Grohl’s first practice with Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic.

    “The History of the NME” will be most appreciated by those who got to NME before the Internet did. The jaunt down memory lane is for those who remember the feel of the shiny pages in their hands, and those who flipped to the back of the magazine to see what the top singles were for this week (because where else could you find this information?). It’s for those who laughed aloud at the interview of their favorite musician because they seemed so normal, like you could meet them on the street and not have a quake in your voice as you told them that their music saved your life. It’s for those who remember the utter joy of the “free cd” in the middle of the NME. The NME online, and its lack of this, can’t touch what that meant to the fans that listened to the music that drifted over from across the pond via these pages.  

Book Review (no revision)

I’m including my book review original submission in this portfolio because I am pleased with how the first draft turned out. There are a few instances where I could cut and make clearer with word choice, but overall, the first attempt was something I’m proud of. I’m especially pleased with how it turned out to have a nice and interesting flow, with a source material that did not. This is a piece I would also like to sit down one on one with an editor and hash out how to play with the language to make it more effective should there be an occasion to publish this.