Your book spans 10 years of rock, but the peak in many ways feels like 1988, which\u2014and correct me if I\u2019m butchering it\u2014you declare was the best year in rock music ever?<\/p>\n
Well, that was what my Melody Maker colleague David Stubbs said, and we both agreed. But he came up with this clever idea of pitching it like a throwdown to older journalists. He said something like, \u201cPeople will say rock is exhausted, do not listen. They are old, tired, and worse, ashamed of the job they do.\u201d A lot of older rock writers had given up on rock and a younger crew was like, \u201cHip-hop and house music are where it’s at, rock music is just exhausted.\u201d<\/p>\n
We loved hip-hop and were really intrigued by acid house and techno. But we were like, \u201cNo, there’s all this amazing stuff coming out of the rock underground.\u201d The Pixies and Sonic Youth did stupendous albums. My Bloody Valentine, Spacemen 3, Butthole Surfers, The Young Gods. There was a lot of ferment. Quite interesting industrial music. Even metal went through this resurgence with groups like Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth, Slayer and all this thrash metal. We did an end of year issue with a panorama pull-out supplement that had a page on each of these zones. I mean, it’s not a claim if you compare it historically\u2026<\/p>\n
Yeah, what do you think now?<\/p>\n
It was a really good year, but there are others. 1979, the peak of post-punk. The mid-’60s is insane. I think you can certainly make a case [for 1988], but it was more a reflection of our cockiness and ebullience and self-belief. It was meant to be like a pitch to the readers as well: \u201cCome on, be excited.\u201d \u2018Cause the worst thing for young people is to feel like they missed it all, you know?<\/p>\n
Yeah, you were basically my age, 25, in 1988.<\/p>\n
Yeah. I was living a life probably similar to yours in that it was largely unencumbered by responsibility. I saw my family, but it wasn’t on my mind a lot, and I was living week by week, writing about music, feeling on top of the world. Actually, the following year I did my first book, so that was it, you know? I\u2019d achieved all my ambitions. I had a job at the best music paper; I was tight with a group of friends writing together. Sometimes we literally wrote collaborative thinkpieces and throwdowns. It was a very exciting time. I mention in the book that I forgot to take my vacation time. I mean, it didn’t feel like a job. Apart from the arduous ordeal of staying up all night to write a story\u2026<\/p>\n
Do any of those nights stand out?<\/p>\n
Because your body temperature drops, I remember one time actually having to get in bed because I was shivering and lay in sort of a fugue state for about 40 minutes, and then pull myself up and start again. They blur together, but they\u2019re like long dark nights of the soul in a weird way. I would eat biscuits and drink coffee to keep myself going. There was always this feeling of like, \u201cWhat if I can’t finish this?\u201d And then you pulled victory from the jaws of defeat, and you felt high as a kite when you came into work with your story, which you had to bring in physically to the office on paper.<\/p>\n
Whenever I do a manic all-nighter and file it immediately, I look back and it\u2019s shite.<\/p>\n
Yeah, and there was no opportunity to be edited, get feedback or change your mind. I wouldn’t see the physical copy again until it came out the following week. Plenty of potential for doing shite, and there’s probably things I would’ve changed if I’d had longer. But yeah, no, it was an adrenaline rush.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your book spans 10 years of rock, but the peak in many ways feels like 1988, which\u2014and correct…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[288,269,93,61,60,278,513,514],"class_list":["post-510297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-books","tag-culture","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music","tag-textbelowcentergridwidth","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}