The decade's publishing phenomenon.
If you tuned into the 'Old Grey Whistle Test' in 1983 you would have discovered that further to losing part of its title (it was now simply called 'Whistle Test') it had two new presenters, Mark Ellen and David Hepworth.
The change in title was partly because the music show, which had been on air since 1970, was beginning to show its age and it was hoped that a change of presenters and some editorial switches would save it. It was not to be and 'Whistle Test' was cancelled in 1987.
Presenting 'Whistle Test' was just a part-time diversion for Ellen and Hepworth from their day jobs as music journalists turned magazine editors and publishers. But while they failed to reinvent 'Whistle Test' they did manage to reinvent the popular magazine for the 1980s. This is the story of three magazines they were involved in — 'Smash Hits', 'Q', and 'Empire' — and how all three became hugely successful by tapping into currents in 1980s culture.
'Smash Hits' was launched in 1978 and was the idea of Nick Logan, who had been editor of 'New Musical Express' and would later create influential style magazine 'The Face'. 'Smash Hits' brought together pop lyrics, features and high-quality photography in a glossy format.
It was an instant hit, selling 100,000 copies of each issue, despite 1978 arguably not being the best year to launch a new pop paper. It was a time of a change in pop music: established acts were in decline and punk — while it got a lot of press attention — did not sell a lot of records. Disco, which did sell, was largely a producer-led genre and many disco hits were one-offs, so not ideal material for a magazine about pop stars.
By 1981 when Mark Ellen became features editor of 'Smash Hits', the pop landscape had changed. New acts combined the ideas and brevity of punk with the glamour of pop, and the result was a glossy, thoughtful hybrid, characterised by acts like Culture Club, Soft Cell, Duran Duran, Dexys Midnight Runners and Kid Creole and the Coconuts.
[it] was the first port of call for artists wanting to promote their new record
Pop music was increasingly a visual as well as an audio experience, with videos as important as radio play in promoting a new record — ideal for a magazine where photographs were as important as text.
One of Ellen's first assignments in June 1981 was to fly to Aix-en-Provence to meet Adam Ant, one of the biggest stars of the year who was celebrating his fifth top 10 hit with 'Stand and deliver'. Just over a year before, Adam had been a punk has-been; now he was on a mammoth European tour and a major pop star.
In 1983 Ellen was promoted to editor of 'Smash Hits', now a witty, distinctive and hugely successful magazine that sold 500,000 copies of every issue and was the first port of call for artists wanting to promote their new record. The magazine had developed a very distinctive style and even a vocabulary all of its own. It ennobled the big stars of the day: David Bowie was referred to as 'Dame David Bowie' and Freddie Mercury became 'Lord Frederick Mercury of Lucan' due to his resemblance to missing peer Lord Lucan. A 'frightwig' was an ostentatious hairstyle involving large quantities of hair products such as those modelled by Sigue Sigue Sputnik and a particularly good new record was 'swingorilliant'.
The magazine was also an important source of information on pop stars. June 1985 feature 'Oh! You're not as tall as you are on the telly' revealed the heights of the big and small stars of the day. Madonna is 5'4" and so two inches taller than Nik Kershaw and three inches taller than Jimmy Somerville and Prince, both a diminutive 5'1". Tallest star of the day was Fish of Marillion at 6'4", tiniest Toyah at 4'11". Publishing this sort of information was important in a pre-internet era.
Meanwhile David Hepworth had been developing a new magazine for the same publisher EMAP, 'Just Seventeen', aimed at teenage girls. 'Just Seventeen' combined the type of pop features published in 'Smash Hits' with items on affordable fashion and make-up that could be bought at Miss Selfridge and Boots alongside problem pages and articles on relationships and health much franker than similar material in established magazines such as 'Jackie'. A preview edition was given away free with 'Smash Hits' magazine on 13 October 1983 with the first standalone issue published the following week. It quickly became the bestselling magazine for teenage girls in the UK.
Ellen and Hepworth, now established as successful magazine editors and creators, would soon leave 'Smash Hits' and 'Just Seventeen' to work on a new project for EMAP.
One of the talented team still working for 'Smash Hits' was assistant editor Neil Tennant who would also shortly leave when the pop group he was a member of — Pet Shop Boys — became one of the most successful acts of the mid-to-late-1980s.
Pet Shop Boys would appear on the cover of the third edition of 'Q' magazine, the new project developed by Ellen and Hepworth and edited by Ellen. The first issue of 'Q' magazine appeared in October 1986. The cover featured Paul McCartney, as well as Mick Jones and Joe Strummer (both former members of The Clash and now working together on new project Big Audio Dynamite). The cover also mentioned an interview with Bob Dylan and — in line with the strapline beneath the title 'The modern guide to music and more' — a feature on comedian Lenny Henry and an article on cocaine abuse in Hollywood, illustrated with a photograph of the late John Belushi.
'Q' was launched just as music CDs went from being a niche luxury item to a mass-market product. For the music industry the CD was the dream format — aspirational but affordable, and with high profit margins. Record companies were able to sell large quantities of new albums, as well as large volumes of back catalogue, as older recordings were reissued in the new format. In 1987 studio albums by The Beatles were reissued on CD and became bestsellers all over again. The companies had to promote these lucrative products and 'Q' was the ideal place.
readers were mainly high spending young men, an audience that advertisers found difficult to reach
Britain had a number of established popular music weeklies such as 'New Musical Express', 'Melody Maker' and 'Sounds'. Known as 'the inkies', these were in newspaper format and favoured new innovative music and artists over established and more mainstream rock and pop. They tended to review new albums based on how they progressed music as an art form, rather than the intrinsic qualities of the album itself. If you wanted to know if the new Rod Stewart, Billy Joel, Elton John, Simply Red, Eric Clapton or Level 42 album would sound good on your new CD player and how it compared to their previous albums, the inkies were often not the best place to look for information.
In the late 1980s it seemed that almost every pop album from the 1950s onwards was reissued in the new CD format. These would be reviewed in 'Q', often taking the form of a retrospective of a musician's career. 'Q' would quickly review 30 years of popular music albums from Little Richard's greatest hits to the new Public Enemy record. Alongside reviews, the magazine had pages and pages of lucrative advertising. 'Q' readers were mainly high spending young men, an audience that advertisers found difficult to reach. So adverts for hi fi equipment, cars, food and drink, razors and watches found a place in its glossy pages, in amongst the music content.
'Q' aimed to give its readers a complete overview of (white male) popular culture, so you would find film reviews and features, interviews with leading authors such as Martin Amis and Iain Banks, features on 'Viz' magazine and irreverent interviews with leading figures of the day like Jeremy Clarkson, Jeremy Beadle, Jeffrey Archer, Robert Maxwell, Samantha Fox, Keith Floyd and David Mellor.
Hepworth and Ellen were now the brains behind a media powerhouse so it was apt that their next launch, a film magazine, was called 'Empire'. The first issue was published in June 1989 with the strapline 'The modern guide to screen entertainment'. That first issue featured Dennis Quaid as Jerry Lee Lewis in a new biopic 'Great Balls of Fire', articles on Sean Young and David Putnam, and a behind-the-scenes feature on the making of 'Mississippi Burning'. As well as new films, the first issue also had articles on classics 'The Godfather' and 'On the Waterfront'.
'Empire' was launched at a time of rising admissions at British cinemas and increasing choice in home film entertainment. British cinema was in the doldrums in the early 1980s, with admissions dropping to a new low of 55 million in 1984. This began to change in 1985 with the opening of the Point in Milton Keynes, Britain's first multiplex cinema, which had 10 screens. Over the next few years, multiplexes opened throughout Britain and cinema admissions rose to 100 million by 1991.
Simultaneously the rise in the sell-through video market in the late 1980s and the decreasing cost of VHS video players meant it was easy to collect films to view at home. Previously if you had wanted to see John Ford's 'The Searchers' or Bergman's 'Smiles of a Summer Night' you had to wait for them to show up on television or look out for a rare cinema showing. Now you could not just see them but also own them. You could read reviews of all the new cinema releases plus older films coming out on video in 'Empire'.
Film celebrities were asked unlikely and stupid questions
'Empire' got at least three bites of the reviewing cherry with a new film. They could review the cinema release and then a few months later do a short review for the rental video release. When the film was released again for the sell-through market they could do an early re-evaluation of a film that had first seen the light of day around eight months earlier.
'Empire's' 'How Much Is a Pint of Milk?' feature would continue the irreverent thread that ran through 'Smash Hits' and 'Q'. Film celebrities were asked unlikely and stupid questions that always included 'What is the price of a pint of milk?' in order to show how in touch or out of touch with reality they were. A later similar feature would quiz celebrities on their own films to show how much or little attention they had been paying to their own careers.
In between launching and editing new magazines, Hepworth and Ellen also managed to take part in one of the defining events of the decade. As part of their 'Whistle Test' duties they were two of the presenters of the 'Live Aid' concert at Wembley on 13 July 1985 for the BBC. Hepworth was involved in one of the iconic moments of the day alongside Bono of U2, pulling girls out of the audience as they performed 'Bad' and the crowd clapping along in perfect rhythm as Queen played 'Radio Gaga'.
Hepworth was interviewing Live Aid organiser Bob Geldof and had just started to read out the address viewers could send money to when an impatient Geldof interrupted him. 'F*** the address' pleaded Geldof 'send us your f****** money'.
