Before the big purge of 2006, I had every issue of Q magazine to date, every single one of them. From the first issue in October 1986, running right through past the birth of Mojo in 1993 and on into the new millennium, I had them all neatly shelved in meticulous and correct order of release. Even after all the bands worth reading about had migrated to sister magazine Mojo and Q had become home to the Spice Girls, Robbie Williams, Oasis and other horrors I still kept on buying it, mainly for the Q Charts and the quality writing of Tom Hibbert.
Then one day, after realising I would probably never read that Rory Gallagher or John Martyn interview again (let alone be able to find it, even if the mood took me) I ditched the lot, freeing up acres of shelf space and feeling enormously liberated in the process
But today I found around 20 early copies of Q which had somehow escaped the expulsion. The earliest of these is issue #7 from January 1987 and what a keyhole into the (recent) past it is. This morning I read it almost from cover to cover, just so you don’t have to. This is what I found.
Come with me now as we journey back to 1987.
http://i.imgur.com/3LRDY1I.jpg
Now read on —->
Eric Clapton is on the cover of this issue and he is the subject of a major interview by David Hepworth. It goes without saying that The Beano Album is pictured right there on page 28, just as we knew it would be (actually, that could be the reason I kept this issue, now I think of it). Also on the cover is Bob Geldof and inside he’s interviewed by both Mark Ellen and Paul DuNoyer. Pictured in happier times with Paula, it’s basically just a promo piece for his 1987 album Deep In The Heart Of Nowhere laced with a liberal amount of Geldofian pithy quotes, many of which appear forced and deliberately provocative now.
Elsewhere there’s an exclusive Van Morrison interview (imagine THAT happening in Q now) featuring a full page photo of The Man who still had a little bit of hair left in 1987.
The Albums Of The Year (1986) list resembles, with a few notable exceptions, the bargain bin at any charity shop these days with now-unsaleable titles by Anita Baker, 5-Star, Sophia George (?), Janet Jackson, Lionel Richie, Stan Ridgway and Steve Winwood receiving the big thumbs-up from the “small army of Q reviewing staff”.
Most interesting of all though are the references to those new-fangled Compact Discs, still in their infancy in 1987. There’s a full-page ad for “The Q CD” described, mystifyingly, as “A CD for the price of an album” an ominous reminder of just how overpriced CDs were when they first arrived. There’s even a short piece on page 9 titled “A Digital Future” in which David Housham wonders “How long before vinyl discs are redundant?”
If only they’d asked us, we could have told them how it would all turn out.
http://i.imgur.com/LLmEZ1K.jpg
Vinyl. It’s on the way out, you know
http://i.imgur.com/v2sccY4.jpg
I used to have the twin-cassette version of that Philips midi system bottom right. I loved it for the couple of years that it worked.
Today I bought the new special issue of Swedish music mag Sonic: 114 pages all about vinyl… Interviews about people’s collections, articles about shops around the world, vinyl podcasts, gramophones, music archives, niche collectors etc.
I’m not a vinyl fetishist, but it’s a great read. The bond people have with their vinyl collection, the enthusiasm and love they express.
It hasn’t converted me back to vinyl, but I feel inspired to put my stereo back together properly at least! (But I’ve been saying that for years now, and it never happens…)
Erratum: the mag in the OP is Issue #4, January 1987. NOT issue #7
Like you, I collected Q for ages, along with the younger upstarts Select, Vox etc. But there came a point after yet another house move, when keeping them all was just unsustainable. I even started the process of filtering through them with the aim of ‘keeping the interesting articles’…after a couple of hours of which I was rapidly losing the will to live. So I just thought ‘what’s the point?’ and ditched them all, apart from the Bowie stuff. I’ve lapsed recently and begun to collect Classic Pop, and have accumulated quite a lot of career retrospectives and ‘Ultimate Guides’, and over the past few months a whole lot more Bowie stuff. I find it interesting that there’s a burgeoning side-industry devoted to publishing and flogging all the music papers/magazines that most of us got rid of back in the day, in the form of History Of Rock, Mojo 60s etc.
By the way, I think you’re a bit harsh on Anita Baker and Janet Jackson – ‘Rapture’ and ‘Control’ are fantastic albums.
By “unsaleable” I wasn’t passing judgement on the music. But working in record stores for decades I can confirm how hard to sell those titles are these days. Almost impossible in fact
The Anita Baker album went to a charity shop about 10 years ago.
I can still recall the last play it had. Thinking I hadn’t played it for ages I put it on. It lasted a couple of minutes. The 80s production was so horrible. How did we not notice at the time.
I got rid of my collection of Qs probably about the same time. I stopped with issue 120, reckoning 10 years were more than enough and Mojo was at that time in its prime. It gave me enough to read.
Rapture – phenomenal voice. Some great tunes. But almost unlistenable because of the production.
It’s alright for you Carl, I had to witness her live in concert. She was an over-emoter before it became fashionable. Whitney stole her thunder a few years later.
Unfortunately, Carl I *did* notice that sound at the time. Most of 80s music was, for me, a world of pain at that time – I was a teenager in the 80s but I just couldn’t wait for it to be over and couldn’t understand how it seemed to be just me who had a problem with it (of my peers etc). Thank god it’s all now in the dustbin of history/charity shops.
January 1987 the recent past? Crikey….
I got rid of my stash of Qs/Mojos/Vox/Select in about 2005, which turned out to just the right time. I needed the space and the money and don’t have any regrets – partly because some of them were so well-thumbed that I was sick of seeing them. I think I could probably close my eyes and reconstruct the first ten -twelve issues of Mojo from memory. (See also the Fiesta summer special of 1988)
My desert island Christmas present would be a room full of vintage NMEs, 1968-1992, into which I would go and only emerge a hundred years later – a squinting, newsprint-bespattered Rip Van Moose.
Funny, that, isn’t it? To me the 80s seem just like last week.
The 60s mind, that was when history was being made.
And you were seemingly there, every time it happened!
JC, are you in fact Donovan?
Certainly not. And my mate Gypsy Dave will vouch for me there
Oh, well played, Sir!
“..so one day Gyp came in and said ‘Hey, there’s some guy on this website who says he’s been to every important concert and/or event of the last 50 years, just like you have!'”
The Fiesta Summer Special in 1988 was really “Special”.
Amazing what you can find under bushes
It’s sad what it’s become. Q was once essential reading. The quality of writing was great, the features nearly always interesting. One thing about the cover of the 1987 issue that interests me is the “50 best albums of 1986” list. Q’s eventual, lazy and almost monthly usage of this page filling practise was one of the reasons I finally gave up on it.
Aye, there’s only so many times you can discuss the 50 best albums of 1986…;-)
My memory may be failing me but didn’t they list them in alphabetical order apart from the top ten and the number one? My shock was that the writers of Q, didn’t rate The Costello Show – King of America. They just included Blood And Chocolate. They also, included various artist collections when everyone knows they aren’t proper albums!!
(I may have all this wrong)
As for Rapture, a fabulous collection of songs, beautifully sung, the eighties production values make it unlistenable in the 21st Century. Control fares much better. Jam and Lewis were ahead of their time.
Yes, they are listed alphabetically, but there’s no top ten and no number one.
Albums in the 1986 top 50 list which have stood the test of time IMHO:
Billy Bragg – Talking With The Taxman
The Smiths – The Queen Is Dead
Paul Simon – Graceland
Triffids – Born Sandy Devotional
Richard Thompson – Daring Adventures
XTC – Skylarking
Talking Heads – True Stories
REM – Life’s Rich Pageant
Bruce Springsteen – Live 1975 – 85
Fabulous Thunderbirds – Tuff Enuff
New Order – Brotherhood
Robert Cray – Strong Persuader
Also, they cheated by including some 60s compilations which don’t really belong.
The lists can be found here:
http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/qlists.html
Quite interesting reading.
Thanks, that would have saved me some typing
Oop! Sorry Tiggs. (Great minds think alike re Rapture ^)
Steve Winwood – Back In The High Life.
I bought this off the back of the Higher Love single and played it constantly in early summer of 86 – it was O Level time, and the album remains intrinsically linked with English Lit critiques of An Inspector Calls, Of Mice And Men and The L-Shaped Room.
Last heard it about a years ago, and it is really flat and bland sounding. Not how I remember it at all.
Don’t think that is one that has “stood the test of time”
I reckon that Warren Zevon’s cover of Steve Winwood’s “Back in the High Life” has stood the test of time.
Didn’t know he’d done one.
I do now, and jeez it’s good
Cheers for the steer
Nonsense, nonsense. Go back and listen to it again. If not once then a few times to get back into Stevie’s groove. Also, reconsider it in the context of the generally awful shite churned out that year. Winwood married a traditional rock format with much of the emerging technology and sounds, and delivered it with passion, soul and love intact, rather than a dull veneer gloss which swamped that period.
On the list of things to do this evening (or maybe tomorrow).
I am concious that I have been critical (dismissive?) of an album I used to adore, but have not listened to it for some time.
True, 1986 was an ‘orrible time – but there were some genuine highlights (The Chicken Song? Cliff Richard & The Young Ones?)
The Chicken Song – the only Number 1 song to exhort its listeners to “disembowel yourself with spears”
– apart from that one by Ronnie Caroll
The shame is that her songs were never quite so good.
Strange that Costello’s Blood & Chocolate got a nod and not King Of America. Both infinitely more listenable these days than hoary old blues widdlers
Well, they were right on vinyl, weren’t they?
Always disliked Q, even when, Record Collector aside, it was the only mag on the shelf.
Begs the question why there wasn’t a mag like Mojo 10 years previously – the market was crying out for it.
At least Q reported on the then still thriving current music scene whereas Mojo tipped the balance the other way by becoming a rather reactionary harbinger of the end of rock with it’s increasing reliance on heritage acts. Q was good in it’s heyday because, like The Word, you could potentially enjoy an article on any artist, regardless of whether you liked their music, knowing it would more than likely be an entertaining read. It was open minded, didn’t take itself too seriously and was still in touch with new music.
Q 1 to whenever I gave up – perhaps around the mid ‘90’s? I’m not exactly sure when, but at a point when the magazine no longer inspired my musical choices. (It was not until The Word came on scene that they were fired again). But I had to keep them. Until a move meant having to transport them from the loft, to the first floor, to the ground floor and then to the street.
I left my ‘Q’ legacy in a considerately stacked pile outside my flat in Muswell Hill in December 1997, accompanied by a similarly sized stack of ‘Guitarist’ magazine. The stacks were neat. They were in date order. They were loved, they were cherished, they were useless.
I arrived at our new house in Barnet to meet the removal company who alerted me to a problem. They could not move us in because our exchange had been ‘delayed’. (I never understood how they were party to this information in advance of me).
Our buyers in Muswell Hill refused to complete until ‘that pile of shit’ (their words relayed to me by my solicitor), ‘is removed’. I rapidly agreed to remove them at the earliest opportunity. On that basis and verbal guarantee our move was completed.
Under the cover of darkness (that really does sound cheesy), later that day, I did remove them. I moved the entire collection two doors down, on the same pavement to outside a house where I had heard some good sounds rattling through the windows in the years I lived there.
On the way into town the following morning, using my normal route, I passed the house. The mags were gone.
I like to think they went to a good home.
Great story. You’ve reminded me of the time when I was sharing a house with my mates and one morning we came down to discover someone had, without explanation, posted a selection of pornographic magazines through our letterbox gratis.
We imagined someone, about to be caught sticky-handed by a wealthy but prudish aunt who was notoriously quick to change her will, making use of the nearest dumping point to dispose of the incriminating evidence. But no-one returned to retrieve their razzle, and the awkward conversation that might have prompted never came to be.
And, y’know, “gift horse”, “mouth” etc
Thinking about it afterwards though, it struck me that being selected from a very long street of potential recipients (and here we assume not everyone was the beneficiary of this anonymous largesse) as those most likely to appreciate material of the “jazz” variety, was a more cunning and meta- way of daubing the word “wankers!” on the walls of our house…
I’ve posted it before, but this is one of my favourite Q covers.
From October 1989 the headline screams “Lock Up Your Grandmothers, Ooh-er (sic) Missus… It’s The Rolling Stones”.
All except Bill were still under 50 at that stage and Ronnie was barely 42 in 1989, but we were already taking the piss out of the Stones for being old 27 years ago?
http://i.imgur.com/gYUcdvD.png
This was one of the first issues I bought. The first one was from the year before and had Keith Richards on the cover (“It’s Alive!”). He was promoting Talk is Cheap and gave a remarkably honest (and perhaps “refreshed”) interview where he talked about how unpleasant Brian Jones was among other things. I’d never seen a major rock star talk as candidly before in an interview.
Interviewees talking candidly was what Q did best in those days. I’ll never forget Rod Stewart describing Brain Auger as “that twat on the organ” when reminiscing about his days in Steam Packet.
Whenever I see that TOTP footage of Brian Auger and Julie Driscoll doing This Wheel’s On Fire, I always think to myself “hmm, there’s that twat on the organ”.
Here are some of the others I found in the box. I’d forgotten how good Q used to be. These early issues contain all sorts of great stuff, like Zappa and Deep Purple articles for examples.
The one with the blue masthead on the left reading “Blind Date” contains the infamous Spike Milligan interview with Van Morrison. Someone at Q had the idea that if anyone could get a smile out of Van it would be Spike. Afterwards Spike was quoted as saying that Van was “a pig of a man”.
http://i.imgur.com/WzVAu7T.jpg
There must be something wrong with your camera Johnny. Paul McCartney’s hair looks like it’s greying in that old issue of Q, whereas we all know it’s dark brown .
The headline on Kate Bush cover contains what I’ve always assumed to be an in-joke reference to the “Rock ‘n’ roll, phew!” line as delivered by Jeff Bridges in the 1979 documentary “Heroes Of Rock & Roll”
Tell THAT to the kids of today.
Although it might have been worse had it read “Phwoar. Kate Bush”.
I remember one cover featuring Kate Bush, Tori Amos and Polly Harvey with the words “Lips, tits and power”. Or something like that.
Not Kate Bush. The third one was Bjork
Other than that, you were almost there:
http://i.imgur.com/ClokS6h.png
Thanks – I knew something wasn’t quite right, which coincidentally is what I think about the creepy headline “Hips. Lips. Tits. Power.”
In fairness, I think Bjork, Tori and Peej got off lightly compared to poor old R.E.M: “Haircuts, hot dogs and horseplay”.
The 90s, ladies and gents.
IIRC the cover line was challenged in the next letters page, but a reply stated that it was a quotation from an impeccably feminist source (though I forget what).
Seems to be the title of a 1992 song by Pigface
REM were ‘Weirdy, Beardy, Boffin & Bongo’ on one cover, IIRC
I’m guessing they took it from the chorus of “Big Bad Baby Pig Squeal” by the mighty Silverfish.
Ah, the Camden Lurch scene. Silverfish. Th’Faith Healers. Urm, a handful of other bands I’ve completely/justifiably forgotten.
Not sure if that predates Pigface though JC?
That’s from the Silverfish album Organ Fan, also from 1992.
That’s all I got
Never mind the kids of today, this kid of yesterday is struggling – “Heroes of Rock & Roll?”
Heroes Of Rock & Roll (1979).
One of the first half decent rock documentaries. Narrated by Jeff Bridges. At the end of the last episode it cut to Jeff walking on a beach. He shook his head, sucked air between his teeth and was heard to say “Rock & poll, phew!” As if that summed up all that had gone before.
It was an utterance of such mind-numbing naffness (even by American TV standards) that it’s gone down in pop history as something that must be said as the ultimate accolade.
Here’s a taste of Jeff’s delivery.
Rock & poll? Roll obvs.
I bought it from No3 until I grew out of it. I still have them and would love a copy of 1 and 2.
You can probably get them cheapish on eBay. When I dumped mine I listed the first 4 or 5 and only issue#1 sold.
From memory it went for less than $10 too, although that could have been because of the high shipping cost from Australia.
I know man. One day when I can be arsed I will do that.
I nearly fell off my chair on coming across this thread…….last week we had the decorators in to re-decorate our “music room” so had to clear all my records, books and magazines which are proudly displayed on various book cases. Now I have the first 200 issues of Q with the exception of about 8 issues. I often pick out an old copy and flick through the articles and review and always thought it would be a good idea to catalogue the contents. So on completion of said decorating I am slowly putting back my collection of Qs but only after noting interviews/reviews of particular interest…..come on! I retired last November so have tons of time on my hands!!!
Sorry to be pedantic but the Jan 87 issue is no4……no7 was from April 87 and contains an interview with Til Tuesday (Aimee Manns first band)……
You’re correct. The mag in the OP is Issue #4, January 1987. Oh for an edit function (or a decent pair of glasses).
To be exact it’s Volume 1, Issue 4. I wonder how long they stayed with that? The “Volume” thing seems to have been dropped very early.
Don’t forget to note and decipher the phrase on the spine.
Had they started the spine message at that early stage? There’s only a Christmassy sprig of Holly on the spine
….Q47 from August 90 features a four page John Mayall interview where he re visits some of his old haunts in London….
Issue #47 was in the box too. Here it is and, oh look, another picture of The Beano Album.
What are the odds?
Let’s try that again:
http://i.imgur.com/Kv03Wyu.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/FYdfzTD.jpg
Do you remember when Q magazine used to sell back issues and indicate which ones were sold out? Well, I remember that issue above taking ages to sell out, long after other ones from around the same time.
Yes, they used to take up a couple of pages at the back showing the back issue covers. It got too unwieldy after a few years though.
Well, here’s my theory for why there were relatively few takers for that particular issue (does Anne Elk-style “Ehh-emm”):
The lack of a big interview (a Stones tour report is not the same as a new album feature) didn’t help with Q’s usual readers. Plus, around that time (late 80s, early 90s) Q was starting to attract younger readers who were tired of the NME, Sounds etc. They would rather have been reading about Public Enemy, The Stone Roses or Guns N’ Roses than Bob Geldof or Madonna.
I think it was that combination of factors that left it glued to the shelves like a copy of Airplane without a WWII fighter on the cover.
Makes sense.
Knebworth now replaced on the front cover by Glastonbury of course. Probably because it became an intermittent affair after 1990.
As I recall, that Stones feature includes Jagger watching Italia 90 and yelling “Awwww, get yer finishing together!”
Well remembered 26 years on.
It was “Oaow, naaow! Get your finishing together!”
What is the Beano album? @Johnny Concheroo
Well, gather round children and I’ll tell you a story. It’s like this, you see… (continues in similar vein for 3 hours)
I collected them all from issue 1 and had a clear out a few years ago but saved issues 1-100 (might be 1-200) stashed in the loft and I haven’t looked at them for the last 6 years.
Two kids aged 5 and 7 provide little opportunity until I can educate them in the ways of shoegazing…maybe I need to bin them!
You mean the magazines, right….?
I started buying Q from issue 3 and enjoyed it for many years.
In 1989 I moved to Sweden and continued buying the magazine here.
In one issue, Tom Hibbert’s opening “Who the Hell” interview was with Alan Partridge.
Now, remember, this was before the days of the Internet, and news about new TV entertainment travelled more slowly. I lived outside the UK, and had no idea that ‘Alan Partridge’ was a comic persona created by Steve Coogan. And certainly Hibbert, in his interview, just assumed that all readers knew this.
So I basically read the piece as a genuine interview with a real person called Alan Partridge. It was outrageous!
It was not until a few months later that I found out the true identity of Norwich’s top radio presenter. Or whoever he was.
I remember that interview and I also remember the letters page a couple of issues afterwards where someone wrote in lambasting Q for giving so much space to an egomaniac local radio DJ.
I think there was a Q with a Tin Machine cover with the always-chilling words “Back on Course”?
The article talked of Bowie’s teenage son asking him keeping the noise down when playing TM music. Also, I think he was asked about his current state of mind, to which he replied “delightfully irrational!” – which became something a friend of mine still says to this day in a silly voice when he is asked “how are you?”.
There was a 1991 issue with “Are Tin Machine Crap? Discuss” on the cover.
From Q in January 1990, before the shit hit the fan, Tom Hibbert nails the execrable Gary Glitter
http://i.imgur.com/aVSIljJ.jpg
I was in the tech crew at university around that time and did the sound at a gig by the artist formerly known as Paul Francis Gadd.
He was vile. Even before we found out what he’d been up to.
My skin is crawling just thinking about it.
That’s exactly right. We’ve had heated exchanges on the old blog about this before, but the music really was rubbish, by anyone’s standards. Unless perhaps you were 14 at the time.
Did I ever tell you about the time a couple of the Glitter Band (sans Gary, thankfully) crashed at my Ladbroke Grove flat for a two days circa 1975. I honestly forget why now, but seem to think it was a favour for a mate in their management. The Goodbye My Love hitmakers ate me out of house and home and then left, never to be seen again.
Yikes. That was a near miss.
I went up in my son’s estimation (for a short while) this morning. Parklife by The Blurs came on the radio on the school.
On their first tour of student unions, Blur didn’t sell many tickets so we did the gig in the coffee bar. We pushed a few coffee tables together at one end to make a stage. Every time Damon bounced on the spot, his head went through the suspended ceiling tiles. I can’t remember the music much, just a pair of skinny legs sticking out of the ceiling, feet clad in red DMs.
On the school run, I mean.
Great story!
And just to keep it topical. From issue #46, July 1990
http://i.imgur.com/228jCeG.jpg
Hi guys,
Anybody still happen to have a copy of this issue lying around?
I am particularly interested in which version of “Various Artists – The House Sound Of Chicago” was in the Q Top 50 of 1986 and what they said about it.
If someone could upload this it would be much appreciated!