Those of us who cut our teeth on the weekly music press are, by nature, bullishly nostalgic for the days when NME and Melody Maker sold hundreds of thousands of copies, reputations and heated pub exchanges hinging on their contents. Music and its chronicling seemed like the central whorl around which the universe spun. The tone alternated between bumptious certainty and shit-stirring mischief, in-jokes and crusading.
Then two things happened. Around the time Kurt Cobain died, newspapers decided music was worth covering in more depth. A few years later, the internet banjaxed most things printed in ink, including the unofficial university of the British arts: a febrile hotbed of loudmouths, obsessives and romantics who self-mythologised even as they hymned the acts they loved. A predominantly male and predominantly white hangout full of people posturing like fury, this particular era of the music press prized wit above all; it was often uncomfortably brutal in its pillorying. But it was also intellectually curious and wide-eared; progressive enough in its politics. Its alumni are still keeping gates all over the British cultural sphere.
The fate of all this subcultural energy and mauve prose might not tug on the heartstrings in the same way as the downsizing of the BBC does. But do spare a thought for Ted Kessler, former editor of Q and previously NME stalwart, who provides an in-depth analysis of how things could have gone so much better when decline bit into the titles he worked for; Q shut in 2020. I need to declare an interest. Kessler gave me my first job, let me sub the copy of my heroes and formed me as a writer. One of the most moving chapters here is about his dealings with his own mentor at Select, David Cavanagh, who took his own life in 2018.
Music journalists tend to be square pegs of one shape or another, and Kessler’s is a rip-snorting account of a misspent youth well spent; a background full of secrets and lies, French skinheads and sticky fingers. You’ll feel for him. His American father abandoned the family for a second brood, prompting the teenage music obsessive to leave home (then outside Paris) and return to London to duck, dive and skim the till in record shops until he found a way to turn an obsession into an income.
Finally ensconced at NME, he wobbles on the poacher/gamekeeper tightrope, dating a rock star. His younger brother, Daniel, raised in the US, later becomes a rock star too, as lead guitarist in Interpol; Kessler engineering “the reverse of nepotism”. It occurs to him at some point that “pop” music was an obvious stand-in for that absent father: forming him, sustaining him in myriad ways.
Although there are multiple episodes here in which scribe-lions are led by publisher-donkeys, Paper Cuts: How I Destroyed the British Music Press and Other Misadventures is rich in musicianly colour too. A lifelong Paul Weller acolyte, Kessler ends up being consulted by the man himself about the direction of an album. With typical charm, Mark E Smith of the Fall, asks him if he is a Jew or a Nazi. Kessler has a hand on the tiller during the heady years of Britpop and a major, filmed, falling out with Radiohead. He spends a lot of time in Cuba (with Black Grape and Manic Street Preachers). All of this is recounted with self-deprecation and dry humour, listing wrong turns and cringes as well as detailing the absurd, joyful surreality of being behind the curtain, seeing the pop levers move.
It’s worth gently querying the death of music journalism narrative for a moment, though. Old orders change, giving way to new, across all creative industries. There’s still a great deal of passionate and literate writing about music out there, as Kessler notes. Throughout the anglosphere, chronicling happens from digital platforms all the way up to the New Yorker. Kessler now edits the New Cue, effectively Q in email newsletter form. Articulate romantics tend to loudly decry what has been lost, especially if there are editors and publishers willing to commission them to do so, which tends to amplify that plight. Other threatened species don’t get the same media megaphone.
It’s tiring, however, sustaining that raised eyebrow. Deranged romance-making is the stuff musicians and their symbionts run on: there’s so much of it here. Who, for instance, could ever have foreseen that Paul Heaton (the Housemartins, the Beautiful South) would personally give Kessler £35,000 of his own money, to distribute among all the Q staff and freelancers who were suddenly out on their ear?
• Paper Cuts: How I Destroyed the British Music Press and Other Misadventures by Ted Kessler is published by White Rabbit (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
