Author:Barney Hoskyns and Jasper Murison-Bowie
“Phew” is a celebration of Tom Hibbert’s irreverent skewering of musicians, and other assorted celebs, which gained notoriety at Smash Hits and flourished with Q Magazine’s “Who The Hell Does” pieces, The book has been complied by music journalist and author Barney Hoskyns and a chap called Jasper Murison-Bowie, who could have been a Hibbert creation but in fact works with Hoskyns at Rock’s Backpages, where most of Hibbert’s work can be found, albeit behind a paywall.
The book features articles from every era of his writing (bar his first gig with a DIY magazine) intermingled with reflections from colleagues, friends and family. Because it’s an appreciation of Hibbert’s work and not a biography, calling the book “Who The Hell Did Tom Hibbert Think He Was” must have been ruled out, but pleasingly it is used for the first section which focuses on Hibbert the man rather than his writing. An autobiographical piece Hibbert wrote for a book called “Love Is The Drug” (edited by John Aizlewood) explains how Hibbert’s early musical tastes focused on the Byrds and then Moby Grape, who he admits to becoming infatuated with, not least because by the time he came across them, they had long since split up.
Insights into Hibbert himself crop up throughout the book, and there are affectionate contributions from Mark Ellen, Paul Du Noyer. Sylvia Patterson, Robyn Hitchcock and Chris Heath that speak of his humour and how his Wodehouse style prose became widely respected. Fellow journalist at “Smash Hits” William Shaw admits that Hibbert could be intimidating to be around – contributions to editorial meetings were often limited to cries of “Oh, fuck off”. Nonetheless he won his colleagues over with his intellect and laughter. Shaw says Hibbert’s frustration at failing to become a ”serious” writer with a daily newspaper was at times visible and when he finally found work with the Daily Mail and The Observer Hibbert was too spent to see it as the validation he previously craved.
The most notable reflections are those of Tom’s widow Allyce who points out Hibbert had a “pre-emptive distain” for writers who were “friend of the stars”. It’s genuinely sad to read her description of how Hibbert eschewed eating anything but junk food which combined with a prodigious appetite for alcohol led to 3 months in intensive care with pancreatitis that ultimately left him without the will to recover, and over time without a career or marriage.
Much is made of the fact that Hibbert’s lampooning of self obsessed pop starts cut across music journalism that until then had been unduly reverential, although Tom’s work comes is after the gruesome twosome of Burchill and Parsons had been at the NME 4 years and Garry Bushell 2 years at sounds. Former NME writer and Q editor Paul Du Noyer argues Hibbert stood out because unlike the NME, he refused to take either musicians or himself seriously. Not that Hibbert lacked views – Mark Ellen describes Tom as “fiercely opinionated about music” and deemed anything beyond the MC5, the Stooges, Rocky Erikson, Neil Young or Captain Beefheart “too polished and too proficient and thus, laughably awful”.
As someone who only knew Hibbert’s work with Q Magazine, reading what went before and followed left me with mixed feelings. Pieces from “New Music News” first printed in 1980 are a bit hit and miss 40 years on. A review of Dave Berry playing a club in Sunderland seems to have just the right mix of pithy observation as well as respect for Dave as a seasoned pro (not least because Tom rates Dave’s 1963 single “My Baby Left Me” and one “finest examples of hard English R&B” that left guest guitarist totally spent and useless thereafter). The comedy pastiche of Ziggy Byfield or Boring Len answering fake readers letters left me unmoved, reminding me of the “funny” parts of Private Eye I almost never read.
The articles from Tom’s time at “Smash Hits” that loom largest in his legacy – Margaret Thatcher, Morrissey – are presented in full and reveal just how effective his direct approach could be, their answers so extensive and ultimately damming that Hibbert didn’t have to resort to any additional “colour” or commentary.
This is less the case with some of the other “Smash Hits” pieces. He uses an interview with Jon Bon Jovi to air his grievances about the hotel’s dress code and just leaves hanging Jovi’s comments about the lack of privacy in his life, or why he’s bought 17 copies of “The Best of The Animals”. An interview with Kylie Minouge (all of 19 years old at the time) allows Hibbert a cheap joke about being descended from convicts whilst the insufferable Stock, Aitken and Waterman get off more or less unscathed.,
Hibbert is quoted as saying that he turned to sarcasm when he got fed up with writing and that “Who The Hell” was deliberately more demonstrative. Mark Ellen maintains that “there was a soft centred lilt about the way he (Hibbert) wrote”….”with such gentle natured wit and elegance that no one got hurt in the process” but Paul Du Noyer seems nearer the mark seeing Hibbert as an underrated satirist, and if “Who The Hell” seemed “slightly cruel, it was also very hilarious”.
Hoskyns and Murison-Bowie selected 8 “Who The Hells” for inclusion here, amongst which are Chuck Berry – “a cross between a wizend spiv and an aging lounge gigolo” – whose mean demeanour and general unpleasantness make him the perfect subject. And Roger Waters proves to be as much of an egotistical prick in 1992 as he is now. Status Quo largely foil Hibberts attempts to get a rise given their innate level of self-depreciation, but it’s an amusing read nonetheless. Hibbert must be a rarity in that he interviewed Savile, Harris, King and Clifford but Hoskyns says (referring to Savile) they have been excluded for “reasons that require no explanation” – although they are all remain available at Rocks Backpages. Some kind of respectful retrospective would have been welcome – what we have here is a collective loss of bottle.
Paul Gascoigne can be found on the receiving end of Hibbert’s unforgiving attention by dint of making a record with Lindisfarne, who quite honestly would have been a more deserving target. Not for the first time one of Hibbert’s subjects addresses the issue of press intrusion (as had Bon Jovi, Kyle and Gary Numan). In each case Hibbert simply moves on, in this case to make more jokes about Gazza’s weight. It was 30 years ago I appreciate but at the risk of too much retrospective judgement it’s not a great look.
Most interesting of all is Hibbert’s face off with a seriously grumpy Ringo Starr, who is promoting his “Time Takes Time” album. Not just frustrated, but indeed insulted by Hibbert’s Beatles questions, and general refusal to acknowledge Starr’s self professed musical genius, Starr is disarmed when Hibbert tells him how good “Photograph” and “It Don’t Come Easy” were, before they fall out all over again over Hibbert describing Todd Rundgren as “mad”. More revisionist wokeism I know but Hibbert’s gags about Ringo’s nose, and how as a recovering alcoholic maybe he should just have a drink anyway haven’t travelled well.
The latter stages of the book cover Hibbert’s work for the Daily Mail which occasionally sparkle – there’s a fabulous take down of John Denver’s autobiography – and his Pendennis column for The Observer, which concentrates on his attempt to become an MP for the Whig Party in his home town of Henley-on-Thames. There’s some sharp satire – hiring Alan “Fluff Freeman” to be is election agent is amusingly bonkers – but it’s hampered by a lot of repetition which would most likely have gone unnoticed in it’s original weekly column format.
A hidden gem amongst all this better known work however are 2 articles where Tom gets to – or tries to – interview some of his musical heroes. Tom greatly admired eccentricity and the commercial failures that usually accomplished it. He goes to great lengths, with little success, to extract some pearls of wisdom from Arthur Lee, whilst a Mojo article from 1995 that has him fly out to Texas to meet Roky Erickson in greatly reduced circumstances. Hibbert writes with am honesty and warmth that wasn’t had rarely been seen before.
A post hoc book like this would surely have perplexed and bemused Hibbert. Whilst I’m disinclined to judge the printed word quite as benevolently as those that worked alongside him, the book is a fitting testimony to Hibbert’s work and a really engaging read.
Length of Read:Long
Might appeal to people who enjoyed…
Who the hell knows……
One thing you’ve learned
Tom was briefly in Elvis Costello’s backing band
Vulpes Vulpes says
His pieces could often be a slightly uncomfortable read, as you never knew if or when he was going to drop a smelly one in the middle of the conversation. He could be cruel like that from time to time. But as an island of interesting, opinionated attitude in an ocean of generally fawning shite (every bloody review in the reviews sections getting 8 out of ten or more, and every descriptive phase floridly adjectived to death) his words were always ones worth reading.
Captain Darling says
Thanks for the review, and for the reminder of a writer who could usually conjure an interesting turn of phrase, even if, as you say, sometimes he went too far.
I followed his work from Smash Hits to Q and then to Empire in its early days. There he used to do laugh-out-loud-but-insightful overviews of different film genres, and his look at war films was particularly fun. Thanks to Tom H, one of our great knights of stage and screen, will always be Little Johnny Mills to me.
Whatever he wrote usually had something appealing in it, and wasn’t he responsible for some of the nicknames that used to make Smash Hits so irreverent – Fab Macca Wacky Thumbs Aloft, Lord Frederick of Mercury, etc.? For those alone, and the laughter they used to cause in our playground, he deserves a literary tribute like this book.
Moose the Mooche says
Often extremely good in small doses, especially with a particularly deserving target like Roger Waters, and as Foxy said a welcome relief from the fawning and generic sonic-cathedralism elsewhere.
I’m not sure I’d have the stomach for a whole book of such stuff though – sometimes it was just bitter and mean-spirited, like Ed Reardon with a decent record collection.
Thanks for reading this on our behalf.
Gary says
Great review, Fortune8. Who The Hell was always the first thing I’d read in Q and usually the best. A while ago, when Hibbert died, I came across his interview with Dennis Potter. Potter sounds like a great laugh.
Dennis Potter: If you talk about my family, I will kill you. You little shit. The secret in life is not to trust anyone. I am not blessed with great patience. So fuck off. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s people who drink cider! Oh, for God’s sake, why don’t you just die?
Hibbert: Excuse me, Mr Potter, I don’t think that’s a very nice thing to say.
Potter: Oh you’re so fucking polite, you’re like those polite people with bad teeth in a railway carriage…
Moose the Mooche says
Ho ho, met his match there. Potter was a brilliant interviewee and occasionally a brilliant writer but had an ego the size of Canada and as the euphemism goes “didn’t suffer fools gladly”.
fitterstoke says
Sounds like Potter rumbled Hibbert’s modus operandi -seems unlikely that he bought Q, but maybe he read a “Who the hell…” and guessed what was actually happening?
Moose the Mooche says
….or he was just an irascible old barstit.
fitterstoke says
Well, there’s that…
deramdaze says
I love Dennis Potter, I love him even more now.
Our greatest TV playwright was unlikely to not sus a Smash Hits’ writer, and clearly knew the score from the get-go!
Be kinda of nice if the British public were as animated and antagonist and angry about Rupert Murdoch as he was. Might happen one day.
Jaygee says
DP famously called the tumour that ended up killing him “Rupert”
dai says
Great review, I have posted this here before I think but always worth reading again
https://pfco.neptunepinkfloyd.co.uk/band/interviews/rw/rwQ92.html
Jaygee says
Great review, F.
If I hadn’t already been nailed on to buy this, I definitely would be now
salwarpe says
Really good, descriptive and analytic review, and from the description, probably more enjoyable than the book itself. As mentioned by yourself and others, comic writing that works in small doses rarely succeeds when compiled.
Jaygee says
Best enjoyed in small chunks
fitterstoke says
…like Branston…
Rigid Digit says
Did he interview Richard too?
Jaygee says
@fittersoke
Or possibly even Heinz Sandwich Spread – vomit in a jar
fitterstoke says
Bleeeccchhhh!
duco01 says
I’m ashamed and embarrassed to say that I rather enjoyed Heinz Sandwich Spread when I was a boy. Don’t think I’d go for it now, though.
Moose the Mooche says
I wonder if one day that
You’ll say that you care
If you say you love me madly
I’ll gladly be there
Like a vomit in a jarrrrrrrr
Sitheref2409 says
Regardless of how I feel about Hibbert, that was as good a review of a book as one might have wished for.
Really, really excellent
fitterstoke says
This.
retropath2 says
I shall dial up the kindle version, as if and when, a chortle at someone else’s expense always a smirk I find hard to avoid. Rudeness, when couched in exquisitely tooled language is still rudeness, but tends to disarm the recipient.
hubert rawlinson says
Every time I see Hibbert I think it’s a reference to me.
Moose the Mooche says
You’re thinking about New Zealand too much today
hubert rawlinson says
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu.
Moose the Mooche says
…..about half-past three.
Gary says
In old money.
Vulpes Vulpes says
Taumatawhakatangihangakoayauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukypokaiwhenuakitanatahu-matakuaitenakuakauamikitora, Shirley, Tonto?
Jaygee says
What exactly do you mean by “us”, Kemo-Sabe/
hubert rawlinson says
Not according to the lyrics what I copied.
Twang says
I thought he was quite funny but rather snarky and looking for things to be nasty about. John Peel hated him after his one – apparently he’d invited him for tea, met the family etc, had a nice chat then got a complete shoeing
Moose the Mooche says
Yes , you have to wonder at the morality of that if, as in Hibbert’s case, he’d already decided what he felt about the people he was interviewing.
Of course if someone like DLT is the target, morality can bollocks….
Twang says
DLT is a special case. Hairy Cornflake my arse.
Vincent says
When it’s going for a fiver in Fopp, i’ll be having that.
eddie g says
Always enjoyed reading his bits for Q. The sarky tradition of classic NME lived on. Have pre ordered this.
Black Celebration says
Now look don’t @me, you bastards, but I thought Miranda Hart’s show was very funny. So much so that I read her book. However, I quickly became a bit irritated by the style and decided that the bite-size sitcom format was the best and possibly only way to enjoy her stuff.
I am feeling like this may be true of the Hibbster too.