Logo of the Melody Maker used in the 1970s

1950s-1960s

With its focus on jazz, Melody Maker (MM) was slow to cover the emergence of rock and roll - one notorious editorial describing the new music as "a flash in the pan" - and as a result, lost ground to the New Musical Express (NME), which had begun publishing in 1952. MM began its Melody Maker LP charts in November 1958, two years after the Record Mirror published the first UK Albums Chart.^[2]

In its issue of March 6, 1965, MM called for The Beatles to be honoured by the British state, which indeed happened on June 12 that year when all four of the band were awarded the MBE.

By the late 1960s, MM had recovered its momentum, targeting an older, more sophisticated market than the teen-oriented NME (which sometimes poked fun at the earnestness of its rival, dubbing it 'Monotony Maker'). Considerably more bulky than its competitor, it had a much larger and more specialised advertising section, in the pages of which many soon-to-be well-known groups would advertise for musicians to join them, and ran pages devoted to "minority" interests like folk and jazz, as well as detailed reviews of musical instruments.

A 1968 Melody Maker poll named John Peel Best Radio DJ, attention which John Walters much later revealed may have helped Peel keep his job despite concerns at BBC Radio 1 about Peel's style and obscure record selection.^[3]

1970s

Its circulation continued to increase, and by the 1970s, under the editorship of Ray Coleman, MM was selling 250,000 copies a week. Critics such as Richard Williams, Chris Welch and Steve Lake were among the first British journalists to write seriously about popular music, shedding an intellectual light on such artists as Steely Dan, Led Zeppelin and Henry Cow, while the veteran Max Jones continued the paper's coverage of jazz.

The Melody Maker was strongly supportive of the glam rock and progressive rock movements of the early 1970s. However, when punk came along around 1976, Melody Maker lagged behind rivals Sounds and NME in embracing the upheaval; of MM's staff, only Caroline Coon was strongly positive towards the new music. It took some years for the paper's sales and prestige to recover.

1980s

By 1983, the magazine had become more populist and pop-orientated, exemplified by its modish "MM" masthead and its choice of Eurythmics' Touch as the best album of the year. Things were to change, however. In February 1984 Allan Jones, an irreverent journalist noted for his sardonic, boozy interviews with the likes of Lou Reed and Ozzy Osbourne, was appointed editor: defying instructions to put Kajagoogoo on the cover, he instead led the magazine with an article on up-and-coming band The Smiths.

In 1986, MM was further invigorated by the arrival of a group of journalists, including Simon Reynolds and David Stubbs, who had previously run a music fanzine called Monitor from the University of Oxford, and Chris Roberts, an exile from Sounds, who established MM as the more individualistic and intellectual of the music weeklies. This was especially true after the "hip-hop wars" at NME - a schism between enthusiasts of progressive black music such as Public Enemy and Mantronix and fans of traditional white rock - ended in a victory for the latter faction, the departure of writers such as Mark Sinker and Biba Kopf, and the rise of Andrew Collins and Stuart Maconie, who pushed NME in a more populist direction.

1990s

While MM continued to devote most space to rock and indie music (notably Everett True's coverage of the emerging grunge scene in Seattle), it was willing to cover dance music, hip hop and less commercial genres such as post rock and electronica. Even in the mid-1990s, when Britpop had brought a new generation of readers to the weekly music press, it remained less populist than its rivals, with younger writers such as Simon Price, Taylor Parkes and Neil Kulkarni continuing the 80s tradition of iconoclasm and subjective, opinionated criticism. The paper printed harsh criticism of the likes of Ocean Colour Scene and Kula Shaker, and allowed dissenting views on Oasis and Blur at a time when they were universally praised by the rest of the music press.

The magazine retained its large classified ads section, and remained the first port of call for bands seeking musicians, and musicians seeking bands. Many of the groups covered in MM (most famously Suede) had originally been formed through ads placed in the paper itself. It also continued to publish a section featuring reviews of musical equipment and reader-submitted demo tapes - though this often had little in common stylistically with the rest of the paper - ensuring sales to the kind of jobbing musicians who would otherwise have had little interest in the music press.

In early 1997 Allan Jones left MM to edit Uncut. He was replaced, somewhat controversially, by Mark Sutherland, formerly of the NME and Smash Hits, who "fulfilled his boyhood dream"^[4]by editing the magazine for three years. Many long-standing writers left, often moving to Uncut, with at least one writer, Simon Price, departing specifically because he objected to a new edict that all coverage of Oasis should be positive. Its sales, which had for some time been substantially lower than those of the NME, entered a serious decline.

In 1999, MM was relaunched as a glossy magazine, a move which in retrospect hastened its demise. It folded in 2000, officially merging with the NME (long published by the same company, IPC Media), which took on some of its journalists and (initially) its musical instrument reviews section.

Bands using MM adverts

Advertisements in Melody Maker helped assemble the lineups of a number of major bands, including:

• Bill Bruford placed an ad in 1968 that was answered by Jon Anderson and Chris Squire to form the founding lineup of Yes.^[5]
• Rick Davies, backed financially by Dutch millionaire Stanley August Miesegaes, formed Supertramp, the "band of his dreams" in 1969.^[6]
• Deep Purple found the then-unknown David Coverdale in 1973.^[7]
• Vince Clarke of Erasure found Andy Bell in 1985.^[8]
• The original members of Suede recruited guitarist Bernard Butler in 1989.^[9]
• Steve Hackett of Genesis put an ad in MM that was answered by the band frontman Peter Gabriel in 1970. ^[10]
• Wang Chung got its start when Jack Hues met Nick Feldman after answering Feldman's ad for a musician in 1977.^[11]
• Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins placed an ad in the late 80s that was answered by Jimmy Chamberlin.
• Depeche Mode placed an ad in the early 80s that was answered by Alan Wilder.

In pop culture

The name of the French band Daft Punk was inspired from a lukewarm Melody Maker review, branding their first efforts under the name Darlin' "a bunch of daft punk".

References

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