The Police in Milan.
British music journalist Allan Jones was there, right at the heart of rock ‘n’ roll in the halcyon days. He talks with Aotearoa journalist Garth Cartwright about stories from the glory days, about legends at both the beginnings and ends of their careers.
In London’s West End, Allan Jones holds court in a Soho pub, the stories flowing as fast and smooth as the ale. Speaking in a gentle Welsh accent, Jones weaves tales of his encounters with the good, bad and ugly of rock royalty and all listening grin, laugh and shake heads in disbelief. “They did what??? You survived that???” we state as Jones recalls yet another epic session whilst on the road with the likes of Lou Reed and Elton John. Jones is one of the UK’s foremost music journalists, a veteran of a golden age when weekly British music papers were read across the globe and could launch new artists with a hurricane of hyperbole or puncture a star’s colossal ego with a harsh review.
Jones, 72, has retired from frontline reporting and is now focusing on writing up his experiences in hugely enjoyable books that succeed both as memoirs and profiles of many of popular music’s most famous names. His first, Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down, was The Sunday Times Music Book of the Year 2017 while the recently published follow-up Too Late To Stop Now continues the mix of merriment and insight, Jones, being both a huge music fan and wry, wise observer. Having joined Melody Maker - the UK’s first music weekly (founded 1926) - in 1974, he edited it from 1984-1997 when he left to found Uncut, the monthly music/film magazine.
After more than 40 years reporting on the frontline of popular music, Jones has a unique perspective on the star-making process, the price of fame and what keeps music exciting and engaging. That he has always remained a fan ensures his writing retains a refreshing enthusiasm. I suggest Joan Jett’s I Love Rock ’n’ Roll could be his personal anthem.
“I could wish for a better theme tune,” he replies, then suggests songs by the Velvet Underground and Warren Zevon that reflect his fervour, noting “my love of rock ’n’ roll remains in many ways undiminished more than 60 years since I first started listening to music, buying records and going to gigs”.
Jones came to love music while growing up in Port Talbot, a small South Wales seaside town.
“Rock ’n’ roll quickly became a soundtrack to my own modest rebellions,” he says, “a feeling of not quite fitting in at school, a yearning to escape the drab realities of small-town life, a lifeline to a new world.” It was, Jones observes, the thrill of experiencing rock in concert that ensured he’s been a true believer across his life.
“I saw a few local bands and even went with some friends to local folk clubs, which were usually so lifeless it was like visiting a dying relative. In November 1966, I saw the Small Faces at the Capitol in Cardiff. It was a revelation, but a greater epiphany awaited on November 23, 1967, when I attended a concert featuring Pink Floyd, The Move, The Nice and Jimi Hendrix. Jimi arrived on stage like he’d just crash-landed in Cardiff from another planet, possibly in a spaceship made of fire, Stratocaster parts and feedback. By the time he’d finished blowing our teenage minds my connection to this thing called rock ’n’ roll had hardened into something more akin to a conversion to a new religion.”
Jones went to art school in Newport, then settled in London in 1973, freelancing as an illustrator and working in a book shop. His girlfriend, noting an advertisement for a job at Melody Maker, insisted he apply. Jones wrote a long letter detailing why he was the right person - even though he had zero journalism experience - concluding, “Melody Maker needs a bullet up the arse. I’m the gun, pull the trigger.” To his great surprise he was offered the job. A lifetime in music journalism followed, with Jones covering everything from established icons - Leonard Cohen, Elton John, Bryan Ferry, David Bowie - through the rise of punk rock, 2-Tone and beyond. A droll, witty writer, Jones often poked fun at the newly minted rock stars. This could prove dangerous.
“The humour in my writing came naturally,” observes Jones. “I loved Hunter Thompson and Tom Wolfe’s writing and was also a big fan of P.G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh and early Tom Sharpe, comic writing of a very high order. I wrote an early piece on Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi that simply took the piss out of him and played the whole ludicrous encounter for laughs, to guffaws from everyone who read it. Apart from Tony, who later took revenge by beating me senseless in a Glasgow car park …” He pauses, then says, “I wanted to write pieces that not only described the many outlandish circumstances I often found myself in, but also admitted to the sundry risible absurdities attached to even the people whose music otherwise inspired in me nothing but fannish devotion.”
Across both his books Jones mixes personal experiences with profiles of the stars so giving readers a sense of what it was like to sup with rock gods. His observations of The Pretenders’ rapid rise from pubs to stadiums presciently hints at the fact the band’s guitarist, James Honeyman-Scott, and drummer Peter Farndon, would both die young. While Lou Reed, often regarded as rock’s most contentious artist, became positively cuddly when around Allan. His enthusiastic intake of drugs and alcohol meant he could hold his own with hard-living rockers.
“I didn’t merely ‘take’ to the so-called rock ’n’ roll lifestyle,” says Jones, “I threw myself into it, headfirst. I took whatever was offered to me and usually asked for more. We were young and unleashed, usually up for anything and having the time of our lives until some of us started dying. In the end, it was probably luck alone that saw me through. I also never made the mistake of thinking that drugs or drink inspired good writing.”
Across both books Jones’ greatest insights are on two musicians he got to know closely. First, Joe Strummer - who Jones initially met in 1972 in Newport when Strummer was a grave digger known as “Woody” - and Sting, who Jones encountered in 1977 when seated next to the bassist on a coach to a French punk festival. He found pre-fame Sting riven with self-doubt and wondering aloud if he’d made a mistake in leaving his teaching job in Newcastle to join The Police in London. Jones, tiring of the musician’s self-pity, told him, yes, quit the band and return to teaching.
“I don’t think anyone who saw The Police performance at Mont de Marsan punk festival would have predicted anything like the success they eventually enjoyed,” says Jones when I ask about the advice he proffered. “They were dreadful. That said, you couldn’t say Sting didn’t earn his success - The Police toured America relentlessly, playing every small club that would take them, their reputation growing through word of mouth.
“When we next met in 1979 for a Melody Maker cover story, the cringing self-doubt had been replaced by an unbreakable confidence. I’d never met anyone so ruthlessly dedicated to the idea of all-conquering success, fame, wealth. His narcissism was such that you imagined him happiest in a house full of mirrors, his reflection the only company he needed.”
As leader of The Clash, the late Strummer scaled similar heights to Sting while retaining his humility.
“In Newport Joe made no mention of any ambition he had to play in a band,” says Jones. “When I met him in London, after he’d called me at Melody Maker in February 1975, I went to see him singing with The 101′ers and he was very much the Woody I remembered: bright, open, relentlessly enthusiastic, with an infectious energy. When he walked out on The 101′ers and joined The Clash, Joe changed dramatically, to the extent his former bandmates barely recognised him. As part of Joe’s past, The Clash’s manager Bernie Rhodes publicly barred me from writing about The Clash as Joe stood mutely by. Our friendship resumed when The Clash sacked Bernie and I started writing about them extensively. He was a genuinely lovely guy, usually full of self-recrimination about his part in the sad demise of The Clash.”
Jones witnessed the music press fade in the 1990s: as Melody Maker’s circulation shrank he launched Uncut, aiming at a readership who now preferred monthly magazines devoted to rock’s foremost icons. An instant success, Uncut continues today yet Jones misses the era when rock bands and journalists engaged in adventures together.
“I miss the wild unpredictabilities that decorated the pages of the music weeklies in an earlier time,” he says. “No one goes on the road with bands anymore, unchaperoned and unsupervised. There are no capers, larks or unscripted adventures.”
Having survived more wild nights than most of us have had hot dinners, Jones is now content to stay home and write of times when rock ruled the world. His books certainly make it sound like immense fun.
“Oh, it was,” he says, “it was.” Then orders another pint.
Too Late to Stop Now: More Rock ‘n’ Roll War Stories, by Allan Jones (Bloomsbury) is available on order or in New Zealand in trade paperback( $38.99) on October 31.
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