Paul Gorman

Totally Wired: The Rise & Fall of the Music Press

A night of conversation, music + libation to celebrate Totally Wired at Reference Point

Next Thursday (August 3) I’m going to be in conversation with the prominent writer and photographer Mark C. O’Flaherty at central London’s library/bookshop/bar Reference Point.

//Mark reminisces about his time at Boyz in Totally Wired//

We’ll be talking about the music press – the subject of my book Totally Wired, which is out now in paperback –  it’s history in relation to LGBTQ+ communities and Mark’s experiences working for such magazines as Melody Maker and Boyz.

Afterwards I’ll DJ a vinyl set of music-press-related sounds.

Bag your spot here.

//Totally Wired paperbacks in the Tate Britain bookshop//

Copies of Totally Wired are widely available, including from bookshop.org

Totally Wired: Music publications that made a difference

When he launched the small-format 32-page song sheet The Melody Maker in 1926, Tin Pan Alley music publisher Lawrence Wright sparked the media revolution that created the music press.

This multi-million pound business eventually straddled the Atlantic and simultaneously proved a fertile breeding ground for generations of writers, photographers, film-makers and performers who made their mark in the wider world.

Everyone from Bob Geldof, Chrissie Hynde and Neil Tennant to Danny Baker, Caroline Coon, Julie Burchill, Barbara Ellen, Caitlin Moran, Miranda Sawyer and movie directors Cameron Crowe and Anton Corbijn (and even Michael Winner) cut their teeth on music magazines such as Melody Maker, New Musical Express, Rolling Stone, ZigZag and Smash Hits.

Continue reading Totally Wired: Music publications that made a difference

Totally Wired: Female music writers kicking against the pricks

//Ellen Willis, c. 1970. Photograph: Ellen Willis’s family//

One of the narrative threads of my book Totally Wired: The Rise & Fall of the Music Press – which is published in paperback next week – traces the ways in which women writers have been forced to fight long and hard against white male dominance of the field.

//Gloria Stavers photographs Jim Morrison 1967. Photographer: Unknown//

This process was kicked off in the 1950s by Gloria Stavers, who transformed the US teen scene as editor and photographer at the huge-selling 16 magazine and went on to champion the likes of the Beatles and others in the 60s on her own terms: while she recognised the charisma of The Doors’ Jim Morrison, she was also his equal and lover.

//Lillian Roxon, mid-1960s. Photo by unknown, Fairfax Archives//

Continue reading Totally Wired: Female music writers kicking against the pricks