Obituary - Tony Tyler, editor of the NME

[rhythmaning]

Obituary from the Independent.

Comments

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I didn't realise he'd written the Tolkien companion, which I loved dearly.

I was always a Sounds man, rather than the NME - it seemed like an ideological choice, to be on the side of punk, Alan Moore and the New Wave of Brittish Heavy Metal against, well, Julie Burchill (and seeing where she's writing these days, I was right).

But isn't it sad, given the state of the meeja today, where you can't slip a laminated policy pledge between the Guardian, the Indy and the Torygraph, that in the 70's and 80's we had pop magazines worth having an ideological rift over?

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I was very much an NME reader - and I thought they were very punk! Still that was the 70s - before there was much in the way of a heavy metal new wave. (Did I ever tell you I went to one of Motorhead's first gigs? No? They emptied the venue - they were a support act - until there were literally just a couple of us down the front... I am sure this goes some way to explain the ringing in my ears... oh no, it's the phone!)

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Well I started reading da music press in the late seventies/early eighties, by which time NME were championing the indie cause - hanging was too good for them, as far as I could see...