Totally Wired: The Rise and Fall of the Music Press

by Paul Gorman

A raucous yet reflective look back at the evolution of the music press and the passionate rock and pop journalists who defined the music of the 20th century.

Totally Wired is the definitive story of the music press on both sides of the Atlantic, tracing its rise and fall from humble beginnings nearly 100 years ago. Along the way, this potent creative breeding ground for scores of writers, publishers, photographers, designers and music-makers tested the very limits of journalistic endeavour and influenced the wider worlds of film, media and pop.

Focusing on developments from the 1950s to the 2000s, a period that witnessed rock ’n’ roll, mod, the Summer of Love, glam, punk, pop, reggae, dance music, R&B and hip-hop, Paul Gorman chronicles the stories of individual magazines from their Tin Pan Alley beginnings and the countercultural foundation of Rolling Stone and the underground press. He explores the 1970s heyday of NME, Melody Maker and Sounds plus such punk-rock publications as Sniffin’ Glue and Temporary Hoarding; tracks the emergence of dedicated monthlies Q, The Face and Mojo as well as dance-culture independents like Boy’s Own and Jockey Slut; and spotlights feminist and Riot Grrrl ’zines Ben Is Dead and Girlfrenzy along with the rise of media by and for people of colour, from Black Music and Black Echoes in the 1970s to The Source, Vibe and XXL in the 1990s. Evoking the music press’s kaleidoscopic visual identities, Totally Wired is illustrated with rare and legendary magazine artwork throughout.

Painting a complete picture of the scene, Gorman discusses the role played by such writers as Lester Bangs, Charles Shaar Murray and Nick Kent in the development of the careers of, among others, David Bowie, the Clash and Led Zeppelin. He also tackles the entrenched sexism and racism faced by women and those from marginalized communities by highlighting publications and individuals whose contributions have been unfairly overlooked.

The resulting narrative, containing stories of unbound talent, blind ambition and sometimes bitter rivalry, makes Totally Wired a riveting and roller-coaster read.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, History, Journalism, Cultural

384 pages, Paperback

Published July 6, 2023

About the author

Paul Gorman is a writer and filmmaker. His plays have appeared on stage in Seattle and his films at film festivals in North America and Europe. His award winning documentary film, "Ride the Sky", spent two years streaming on ROKU's DocsNow Plus channel. In addition to pursuing his creative side, he spent 35 years working in the tech industry as a designer and manager. He is a life-long resident of the Seattle area where he lives with his wife and dog. He enjoys traveling, hiking, cycling, brewing beer, and hanging out with his wife and three grandchildren.

Reviews

[Graham Power · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whatever happened to the music press? The weekly inkies with their idiosyncratic repertory companies of insufferable know-alls, motormouths, upstart crows, teenage tastemakers, solipsists and fantasists, common room anarchists, preening poseurs and pseudo-intellectuals.

Paul Gorman’s engrossing history of the popular music press starts in 1926 with the launch of Melody Maker. On the cover of that first edition was one Horatio Nicholls who the paper eulogised as ‘the world’s greatest popular composer’. Horatio Nicholls was, in fact, the songwriting pseudonym of the magazine’s publisher Edgar Wright - an early example of the sometimes murky relationship in the music press between praise and hype. By the start of the 1970s Melody Maker was firmly established as the most popular and widely respected of the music papers. With its journalistic approach to pop music it was authoritative, factual and just a touch dull. Nonetheless, it covered a wider spectrum of popular music than any of its rivals. If you’ve just dropped in from another planet and want to get a quick overview of what happened in pop music in the ‘60s and ‘70s you could do a lot worse than check out some back copies of dear old Monotony Maker as it was affectionately, or perhaps not so affectionately, known.

The template for what became the rock press, as distinct from the popular music press, was set in the late ‘60s by small American magazines like Crawdaddy! and Mojo-Navigator. This can be summarised very simply: young men showing off or just behaving very badly. This testosterone-charged nascent format resulted, for better and worse, in a whole new genre which took flight in the ‘70s.

Having grown up as a pop music obsessed teenager in that decade it’s difficult for me to escape the conviction that it marked the golden age of music journalism. Such judgements are, of course, enormously subjective. They’re not, in fact, judgements at all, but sense-memory and those of a different generation or sensibility will have different memories and other preferences. The 1980s, perhaps, which saw the emergence of the glossy monthlies led by The Face and the start of the gradual decline of the weekly papers. Doubtless there are those for whom it was all downhill following the tragic demise of Accordion Times in the 1940s. What can’t be disputed is that the British music press in its pomp exerted an influence which the American publications could only dream of. There was a symbiotic relationship between the music and the journalism. In their perpetual search for the Next Big Thing the papers hyped many a duff band and non-movement but also contributed to the dynamic flux which characterised the British rock scene.

Anyway, in 1972 the ailing and hopelessly out of touch New Musical Express successfully reinvented itself as the hippest pop paper in the known universe. NME was published by corporate giant IPC (as was Melody Maker. Sounds was financed - and I’m indebted to Gorman for this fascinating factoid- by a company owned by that celebrated punk rocker Rupert Murdoch.) but it drew some of its writers and much of its attitude from the British underground press of the late ‘60s. Afro-headed Charles Shaar Murray, who had contributed to the notorious Schoolkids edition of OZ, and the androgynous Nick Kent, formerly of Friends magazine, became almost as legendary as the rock stars they wrote about and certainly cultivated their images and personal mythologies as assiduously as any. NME had attitude to spare and was hilariously iconoclastic. It gained a reputation for being outrageously rude about rock stars and biting the hand of the music business that fed it. Mind you, this was the 1970s and these boys, though unutterably cool, weren’t quite as enlightened as they thought they were. Sexism and homophobia were commonplace. Bare breasts adorned the gig guide and the debut album by gay singer Jobriath was dismissed in homophobic terms. Gorman quotes Neil Spencer as saying ‘NME was incredibly homophobic’. And Neil Spencer should know because he used to edit NME. Indeed, the music press was very much a White and heterosexual boys’ club.

When NME, the last surviving weekly, closed its print edition in 2018 an era had definitively ended. Music simply no longer occupies the central space in youth culture that it once did. The music press has a curious sort of afterlife, and not just online, in the shape of the heritage and specialist magazines, but they connect with nothing beyond themselves. Popular music and the press that both reflected and shaped it once served as catalysts to private dreams, alternative worlds and unknown pleasures, but those days are now consigned to the history chronicled in this wonderful book.

Totally Wired is meticulously researched and staggeringly comprehensive. It’s clearly a labour of love but also impressively clear-eyed. Gorman conveys what was great about the music press without ever ignoring its faults and an important strand of the narrative concerns the slow emergence into the mainstream of once marginalised or silenced voices. He writes well about the misogyny experienced by female journalists, the marginalisation of Black music and writers and the sniggering homophobia.

Perhaps there was never a golden age but there was, at least, a silver one and it’s certainly not coming back. The best music journalists were essentially fans who wielded a mean typewriter. They inhabited an obsessive worldview of intense passions and hatreds. Their work had little to do with being fair-minded or objective and was all the better for that. They echoed the Dionysian power of the music and careened schizophrenically between ecstatic enthusiasm and terrifying psychotic loathing. They had a tendency to get carried away and there were many of us who loved being carried away with them.

[Gavin Hogg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dive into the world of music papers, going back to the early days. I knew nothing about the genesis of music publications so it was fascinating to read about the Melody Maker starting in 1926.
Although the text is fairly split between the US and UK, it was the British press I was more interested in as I knew a lot of the characters and understood the references. As with any book that's trying to cover a wide area there were certain things which didn't chime with personal experience - Select only gets a few pages but in the mid-nineties it felt like the only music magazine that everyone around my age was reading.
Lots of coverage of fanzines, which was good to see, including some early ones like Pressure Drop, the reggae zine launched in 1975.
More than anything, the book made me want to sit in a big reading room full of old copies of the NME, Smash Hits, Q, Select, Word and fine zines and wallow. We didn't know that things would change so quickly - thanks a lot, the internet.

[Hal K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting enough for a few chapters or so. A particular strength is the authors ability to hold and reassess the realities of how truly “progressive” the music press was and how this developed. Misogyny, homophobia, and racism were rife within the prose of the most celebrated music journalists of the day. However, the structure of the book and chapters in its exhaustive listing of the details of the day to day habits of each paper in each year grew pretty dull. If the wider approach that situated the place of the music press and its relevance in the wider world was sustained throughout - which to the authors credit does appear now and again- I think would have held my interest for longer.

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

exhaustively researched, amazing depth - 100% must read if you’re looking for the history of the music press as we know it. however, its breadth conversely made me lose interest at times when it covered areas i didn’t care as much about.

[James Cooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exciting whistle stop tour of changing music tastes and wild anecdotes when popular music was less stage managed than it is now. Particularly good is the emergence of critical writing in the late 60s up to the 80s. It feels like a lost world now although some titles are surviving

[Jim Rimmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange thing happened to me during the covid pandemic. I had a falling out with music. It just didn't do it for me any more and I started to appreciate silence where once I would've been propelled to fill this space.

Maybe the vibe will come back because I used to be in the market for exactly the publications Gorman is focusing on with Totally Wired, eagerly devouring columns of the latest news, reviews, interviews, photos of famous folk in fabulous settings, inside scoops from people with better taste and connections than mine. Publications large and small, mainstream and not, drooling over design and illustrations and layout. It all seems so very antiquated and ephemeral now. I do miss it though.

Paul Gorman does a great job of capturing the energy and the eclectic characters who road the bumpy road of the music press across many decades. If you're into this thing you'll enjoy the ride.

[Joe O'Donnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s been a recent glut of memoirs by former music journalists lamenting the decline of the weekly and monthly music press (Ted Kessler’s and Jude Roger’s memoirs being excellent examples of this burgeoning sub-genre). So it is welcome to get a book like “Totally Wired” that sets out to provide a broader, objective overview on the history of the music press and how it dominated much of cultural criticism during the latter part of the twentieth century.

In that regard, author Paul Gorman has certainly done his homework. Starting with ‘Melody Maker’ in the 1920s, Gorman traces the origins of the music press in both the U.K. and the U.S. He follows the rise of print titles such as ‘New Musical Express’ (whose launch in the 1950s inadvertently invented the Top 40 singles charts) and ‘Rolling Stone’ (that combined music with politics and protest while also commoditising the 1960s even while they were still happening). From there, “Totally Wired” brings us through the 1980s, possibly the high watermark of music press publications (in the U.K. at least), when glossy titles like ‘Smash Hits’, ‘The Face’, and ‘Q’ captured the cultural zeitgeist.

While “Totally Wired” is undoubtedly focused on the rear-view mirror, it doesn’t wallow in uncritical nostalgia. Gorman doesn’t attempt to minimise the misogyny and homophobia that was rampant in the twentieth century music press, even coming from writers who would perceive themselves as progressives. He has a refreshing lack of reverence for oft-esteemed journalistic names like Lester Bangs whose prose – from the cold light of 2023 – now reads like porridge. And the author isn’t afraid to bust long-held myths about the press; for example, contrary to their own self-mythology, ‘NME’ and ‘Melody Maker’ were in reality very slow to recognise the initial explosion of Punk Runk in 1976.

A real strength of “Totally Wired” is that it widens its scope beyond the rockist, indie-centric – and overwhelmingly white - landscape of ‘Rolling Stone’, ‘Mojo’, and ‘NME’, and it spotlights music publications that originated out of minority and marginalised communities. While Gorman gives attention to enduring (if unfashionable) success stories like the metal-focused ‘Kerrang!’, he also includes excellent sections of the emergence of Dance Music publications (from the acid-house fanzine ‘Boys Own’ to the more high-end, superclub-focused ‘Mixmag’). And the chapters on the rise of ‘The Source’ and ‘Vibe’ - which chronicled black American culture and Hip-Hop’s rise to global dominance – tells stories that are often omitted when the history of music journalism is being discussed.

A recurring theme of “Totally Wired” is the obsessive search for authenticity, and Gorman expertly shows how magazines like ‘Q’ and ‘Mojo’ created a consumer market for rock nostalgia (one that has arguably stifled forward-thinking and innovation). This book’s focus is maybe a little too focused on the U.K. press scene (the U.S. tends to fade into the background at times), and I would have liked more in-depth detail on the collapse of the music press in the 21st century (when a once vibrant scene was obliterated by the internet). Despite these quibbles, “Totally Wired” is a worthy epitaph for an under-valued era, and to magazines that were once integral to the lives of hundreds of thousands of music fans.

[Keith Messenger · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a comprehensive history of the music press, Paul Gorman’s 2022 350-page tome certainly fulfils its remit admirably, charting the ups-and-downs of the cultural phenomenon by (very reasonably) following the lifespan of the Melody Maker from its inception in 1926 to its demise in 2000. Such is the diversity (covering just about all musical styles – jazz, blues, pop, heavy metal, glam, punk, disco, soul, hip hop, etc. – and the associated level of detail) of Gorman’s account that there is inevitably some variability at various points as to the level of reader engagement. For me, NME and Sounds were at the centre of my universe during the 1970s (particularly glam rock and punk) so when Gorman talks about the likes of Nick Kent, Charles Shaar Murray, Paul Morley, Ian Penman, Jon Savage, Tony Parsons, Julie Burchill (even), etc., my ears prick up and these sections make fascinating reading, with sources quoted extensively, even if the content is relatively short and sweet. Outside of these sections, however, and my attentions began to drift.

Of course, Gorman also charts accurately the reason for the demise of his central subject, namely the broadening of the cultural horizon outside of music to include (principally) fashion and (sadly) ‘celebrity’ (together with more titillation in publications such as FHM and Heat), as well as the impact of ‘do-it-yourself’ journalism promulgated via the internet. I would also contend that the dilution of the cultural importance of music has also led to a dilution in the vitality and dynamism (and indeed the very quality) of the medium and that this is also a factor in the reduction in demand for music journalism. That said, Gorman recaptures some of the invigorating moments of the pre-2000 eras with alacrity.

[Jim Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you grew up religiously reading the English music press in the 1970's, like I did, you will find this a fascinating read. This is when the rock critic was a rock star! I couldn't wait to read the newest band discovery (sometimes making the covers before a record was even out!) and pieces on larger cultural issues (I remember NME running a piece on William Burroughs' influence on rock that captivated me!). The power of those magazines slowly died in the 80's and now have all but ceased to have any cultural impact. There were a number of glaring errors in this book, especially when it came to West Coast America--the writer confuses Penelope Houston of the Avengers with Penelope Spheris of The Decline and Wayne's World, and he states the Amphetamine Reptile was a Seattle label. Still it was entertainingly written and offered up some great rock and roll stories and insights into what made these papers so important to us!

[Madison · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very comprehensive account of the music press industry from its inception until the early 2000s. I most enjoyed the parts where the (sometimes lengthy) detailing of the magazines, editors and publishers, were set against the changing social and political contexts. Some interesting insights in that regard, especially seeing how one genre or counterculture flowed into or was challenged by another. As somebody who was born in the late 90s, though the names of bands and artists were mostly familiar, the hundreds of other names became quite 'skim-readable'. After a while I stopped trying to absorb the information but rather enjoyed the sardonic wit laced throughout. I most enjoyed the second part of the book, from the 80s on and felt like the attention poured into the first couple of decades could have been summarised more succinctly and instead devoted to a more detailed analysis of the digital music press of the last decade.

[Darren Winstone · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was looking forward to reading this book as I’ve read the music press since 1980. Unfortunately I was disappointed. The book was written like a student’s university dissertation, very dry, dull and sometimes overbearing. To be honest, I couldn’t wait to finish the book
Although it’s a history of the music press, it comes across more like the history of Melody Maker, NME and The Face (of which the author has written a book about) and a few other music magazines which lasted only a couple of issues.
The influential heavy metal magazine, Kerrang!, hardly gets a mention. It would have been nice to devote a whole chapter to the heavy metal/hard rock magazines as there were some excellent writers in these magazines.
A better book to read about the music press is Ted Kessler’s ‘Paper Cuts’.
Oh, and any author writing about music and the music press would know that ‘War’ is U2’s third album, not their second.

[Vicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐

Ah the ever-exciting, ever-disillusioning music press. Probably not the best read for an aspiring music journalist as it doesn't focus on any of the new platforms that have cropped up in recent years. It had a good overview of sexism in the industry, but only glanced at racism and misogyny. On one hand, it made me miss the edge that music journalism used to have. On the other hand, it painted a portrait of a difficult and incredibly toxic environment. Definitely not a quick and easy read, and I think you have to be really interested in the subject to enjoy this

[Duncan Ellis · Rating 3 out of 5]

enjoyed this less than I thought i would. Some interesting stuff, particularly in the classic 70s NME period, but very scattergun. Might have been better to focus on the British music press only. not enough extracts of the writing, and to barely mention Melody Makers cerebral, nihilistic 80s period (Simon Reynolds, Chris Roberts, the stud brothers et al) was very disappointing. still, a passable read...

[Alicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read. I loved reading about the historical and social aspects behind the music press. I loved seeing familiar names of journalists like Chris Salewicz, Nick Kent, Mark Ellen and Lisa Robinson etc. The downfall of the book was the length and the repetitiveness. I kind of got tired of it.

[Em Baxter · Rating 4 out of 5]

incredibly detailed and informative, perhaps a little too dense at times. gorman has a good sense of humour, very dry. i was certainly more invested when reading about my periods/genres of preference. i think this is a very important and very well done documentation of a very vital part of music culture.

[Garyjn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my usual fare but it was a present so I dove in and it wasn't bad. I wasn't all that interested in the main subject, the music press, but it was well written and there were lots of anecdotes about rock stars of the 60s & 70s (my glory days) to hold my interest.

[Dan Hayes · Rating 3 out of 5]

It does exactly what it sets out to be , a comprehensive history of the music press, but by god it is hard going at points. Light on the anecdotes and definitely heavy on a barrage of names and dates .

[Tobias Cobbaert · Rating 3 out of 5]

veel leuke en interessante dingen gelezen maar je kan een boek niet "the rise and fall" noemen en de fall er dan in 10 pagina's snel doorjagen. Ook het complete negeren van de post-2000 blogosphere voelde als een gemiste kans.

[Алесь Плотка · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great, reworked, story of printed music press. Puts important gender and racial stresses to many tendencies of 70-ies and around.

[Sarth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Old man yells at clouds. Nostalgia that clearly mirrors the decline of the author’s beloved music papers - online publications receive a single line mention on the final page of the epilogue.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

In which an exciting subject is made tedious and dull. I think Gorman's attempts to be comprehensive have completely hamstrung any sense of a real story - indeed, the "fall" is covered in a mere handful of pages - and instead we get an unfocussed ramble through myriad minor titles and names. I managed to finish it with a last final push over a few hours but blimey it was hard work.