Rock Stars Stole My Life!
By Mark Ellen
Coronet 2014, £18.99, pp340
First thing I noticed as soon as I opened Mark Ellen's new book -
I have to admit my surprise could not have been greater - was its font size,
characters on the page appearing absolutely huge (what I have is the hardback
edition; those with a dislike for "physical objects" will be glad to
know that an ebook edition is also available), even larger than those chosen
for the hardback edition of Carole King's autobiography A Natural Woman (published
in 2012 by Grand Central Publishing): a volume that, not surprisingly, is
described as "large print" - something which at the time I considered
to be impossible to be enlarged.
I
pondered the possibility that this could be what Chance had chosen for me as
the best shot in order to make me aware that the distance between those
perennial Carole King classics such as Up On The Roof and I Feel The Earth Move
and the life of those magazines where Mark Ellen worked - familiar names such
as the New Musical Express, Smash Hits, Q, Select, Mojo, and The Word - was by
now quite difficult to perceive, both time periods now necessitating the same
pair of presbyopic glasses.
Curiously,
Rock Stars Stole My Life! made me think of another book, one which Ellen's book
does not resemble at all, but which makes the individual character of Ellen's
book appear even easier to perceive, by virtue of opposition. I'm talking about
Cornflakes With John Lennon - And Other Tales Of A Rock 'n' Roll Life, the
autobiography written by US critic Robert Hilburn (published by Rodale in
2009).
Cornflakes With John Lennon is the volume where Hilburn - chief Pop & Rock critic of
what for decades was the most influential US newspaper when it comes to the
music industry, the L.A. Times - narrates the long history of his career as the
most powerful music critic in the country. Here's a partial list of those with
whom Hilburn had "close encounters" (readers are invited to take a
deep breath): Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley, Elton John, Stevie
Wonder, Phil Spector, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen,
Joe Strummer, Eddie Vedder, Thom Yorke, U2/Bono, Michael Jackson, Eminem, David
Bowie, Madonna, Leonard Cohen, Chuck D, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and Kurt Cobain.
As
it's made apparent by its title - how many of us had breakfast with John
Lennon? - the book presents a long list of individuals possessing
"heroic" qualities (something which makes Hilburn an
"American" critic, in the commonly understood meaning of the term),
as described by an exceptional witness: Hilburn himself. The music industry,
the market, the audience, the critics - all those entities are not ignored, but
taken for granted, and so placed in the background.
Ellen's
chosen perspective - which I'll define as "Made In U.K." - is
definitely one of "inclusion".
Of
course, familiar figures abound: to name just a few, Meat Loaf, Iggy Pop, Van
Morrison, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Rod Stewart, and - in a chapter entirely
devoted to them, under the title The Lake District And Ancient Ruins (a story
which made me laugh a lot, though the tale has a very bitter taste for Ellen) -
Jimmy Page e Roy Harper. The huge quantity of names and tales are just part of
the whole story, which also features fans, magazines, record companies, radio
and television programs, the ever-changing world, and a lot more - something
which makes this book more than just an autobiography, as it's clearly shown by
its subtitle: A Big Bad Love Affair With Music, which in my opinion is more
representative of the real content of the book than its chosen title.
Today
Ellen is about sixty, still active as a freelancer writer. But as readers will
see, at the end of the book one is confronted with a terminal state of the
music press, and maybe of the music industry itself.
What's
missing? An index! One will have lotsa trouble finding names and places - which
include such (by now) obscure groups as Hookfoot, Fat Mattress, and Colosseum.
As
already noted above, Rock Stars Stole My Life! chronicles Mark Ellen's career
in its various phases: New Musical Express, Smash Hits, his work for Radio One,
his TV work for The Old Grey Whistle Test, co-hosting the UK side of Live Aid,
his editing and managing roles in magazines such as Q, Select, Mojo, The Word.
The acknowledgments appearing at the start of the book also mention
"Annabel Brog, who thinks this book should be called 'How Mark Ellen Was
Totally Washed Up Till His Career Was Saved By Annabel Brog From Elle Magazine'
- which, to be fair, it was".
How
come Mark Ellen's career was saved by Annabel Brog from Elle magazine - and
what's Ellen doing on a big plane which flies Rihanna all over the world, with
a colourful circus of journalists and fans in for the ride, as presented in the
first chapter?
Though
the first scene shows Mark Ellen attending a Rock Festival in August 1971, the
real story begins in the Sixties, of course - readers will have no trouble
tracing a parallel with the story narrated in the movie The Boat That Rocked -
with names such as the Beatles, the Kinks, the Stones, Dylan, the Byrds, Barry
McGuire's Eve Of Destruction, Top Of The Pops, Captain Beefheart, Chicken
Shack, and the Spirit album titled The Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus. We see
Soft Machine performing their album Third at the Roundhouse. We listen to Mark
Ellen playing the bass guitar in a group called Ugly Rumors, a college ensemble
where Ellen sits beside future UK prime minister Tony Blair.
Though
Ellen's first published pieces appeared in the Record Mirror, it's the New Musical
Express - which at the time featured such stars as Charles Shaar Murray, Julie
Burchill, Tony Parsons, and Nick Kent, and "new names" such as Ian
Penman and Paul Morley - that at first looks like the real deal. It's Spring,
1978. The picture of the newsroom painted by Ellen is quite vivid - and, in a
way, surprising.
Feeling
like the proverbial square peg in a round hole, Ellen quits the New Musical
Express. It's Summer 1980, and Ellen starts collaborating with a short-lived
weekly created at a moment when the other weeklies were all on strike due to a
pay dispute. It's with his description of his collaboration with New Music News
that the narration gets more brio, with the portrait of colleague Tom Hibbert -
let's not forget it was Ellen who, just a few years ago, wrote Hibbert's
obituary for The Guardian - and the interview with The Teardrop Explodes which
put an end to Ellen's recreational drug use.
That
Mark Ellen became a mature writer in the period when he wrote for Smash Hits
(his first major interview: Sheena Easton) could sound quite bizarre, given the
"teen" orientation of said magazine (of which Ellen will later become
editor). But, as Ellen writes (p.122), "Pop music was taking over in late
'81". It's the time when the Police, the Pretenders, and Blondie are
having hits, and music videos appear: Smash Hits will ride this wave, with the
slogan The Party On Paper™, and one million copies sold. Here Ellen meets Dave
Hepworth, who'll be a constant companion in his future endeavors; and Neil
Tennant, who'll soon become a star with the Pet Shop Boys.
Readers
will encounter many chapters about Ellen's radio and television work for the
BBC: first, with the radio program Rock On, and as a stand-in for star DJ John
Peel; later, on the screen, as a host of The (Old Grey) Whistle Test. On July
13, 1985 Ellen co-hosts the mega concert broadcast of Live Aid.
There's
a point I want to make here: a competent and versatile critic, Ellen is not a
"soloist", or a "stylist" whose prose one "gets"
after just a few lines; he's more a writer at the service of the music,
involved and sincere - so his enthusiasm reads authentic - also quite
open-minded when it comes to appreciating different music "genres";
those are qualities that - while they make it quite unlikely that an anthology
of his writings will appear - make him a perfect "team player", also
an ideal candidate to be a magazine editor.
This,
in fact, is the role played by Ellen for UK magazines that are now part of the
history of music journalism: Smash Hits (1983), Q (1986), Select (1991), and
Mojo (1993), as monthlies that went hand-in-hand with video, the reinvention of
"Classic Rock" in the "CD age", a fresh period of "new
music", and the "back to classicism" in the age of the "big
box". (There's also the reinvention of the Brit Awards, as a bastion of
"quality on a mass basis".)
Then
disaster occurs, with the Internet, free illegal downloading, and the
multiplication of sources that makes the very idea of a "quality
industry" an impossibility. (Just compare those 270.000 copies sold by Q
in its best period to the 50.000 copies sold now by such magazines as Q, Mojo,
and Uncut, others selling a lot less.)
Here
Mark Ellen is a clear-eyed witness, those problems on a large scale being made
even worse by specific mistakes. And so Ellen is "made redundant" by
the EMAP conglomerate, where he occupied a top post and supervised many
magazines. It's January 14, 2000.
It
was at this point that Ellen and other brave men and women decided to start
what I think was the last music paper magazine founded in the Internet age:
Word, which later became The Word. I remember quite well the articles appearing
in the daily newspapers celebrating this audacious adventure, though I have to
admit I never imagined mousetraps were used in the newsroom. I clearly remember
the cover of issue #1 (Nick Cave); my amazement when I noticed there was no CD attached
to the magazine cover; my amazement when - later - I saw a CD attached to the
magazine cover; and a very difficult commercial journey, which started in 2002
and stopped nine years later. They fought to the last, created a Podcast, but -
alas - there was nothing they could do.
The
last chapters of this book see Ellen, now a freelancer, audition in order to
interview Lady Gaga, and fly on that plane in order to write a piece about
Rihanna's tour. Those chapters feature quite surreal episodes, which I won't
reveal. Here Ellen compares the degree of access available to the music press,
then and now.
The
book also features some fine pictures.
What's
the moral of this story? Maybe the importance of keeping one's faith even when
confronted with great difficulties. Maybe the irrational hope that the laziness
of the majority won't make it all useless.
Beppe Colli
©
Beppe Colli 2014
CloudsandClocks.net | May 26, 2014
