Youth and permissive social change in British music papers, 1967–1983
Abstract
Paul Rambali, a music journalist during the 1970s and 1980s, explained that popular music had ‘suggested a range of possibilities in life that nobody ever told me at school nor my parents.’1 For young people like Rambali, in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s popular music was the most significant cultural form that entertained, informed and influenced them. The music press was where, every week, they found out what was going on and why it mattered. Any young person with a small amount of disposable income could walk to almost any newsagents in Britain and find a copy of a weekly music paper – one of the so-called inkies due to their cheap printing methods which left ink on the readers’ fingers. Even if someone did not have the money to buy a copy, it seemed that music press readers were a generous sort and would share: the National Readership Survey recorded that over nine people read each copy which translated into a potential readership, combining those who read the Melody Maker, New Musical Express (NME) and Sounds, of around 3,000,000 people per week.2 These papers, made in metropolitan London – the hub of the music industry and the press, offered a window into popular music, the people who made it and other fans. Copies piled up in bedrooms, living rooms, university and sixth form common rooms telling not only a story of the happenings in music, but that of social change and the way we as a society understood youth.Citation
Glen, P. (2019) Youth and permissive social change in British music papers, 1967–1983. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Publisher
Palgrave MacmillanAdditional Links
https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319916736Type
Chapter in bookLanguage
enSeries/Report no.
Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular MusicISBN
9783319916736ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1007/978-3-319-91674-3
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