I’ve done a few things in my time – launched magazines, presented Live Aid, written best-selling books – but my best line is still
“I was once the editor of a magazine called Smash Hits – did anybody read it?”
And of course back in the 80s and 90s they did. Every fortnight millions of British teens pored over it at bus stops, papered their bedrooms with its pull-out posters, used it to decipher the words of Althea and Donna’s “Uptown Top Ranking”, voted for Most Fanciable Male (often John Taylor of Duran Duran) or Most Very Horrible Thing (spiders generally) in its annual Readers Poll, and generally looked to it to ward off the tedium of the school week in the days before multi-channel TV.
They were all young teenagers then, living in a world rendered unimaginable by the mobile phone. Many of them are parents now. A few are captains of industry or Members of Parliament or even doctors asking you to take your clothes off. As soon as they find out you were once the editor of Smash Hits that’s all they want to talk about. They read it at an impressionable age and boy, it appears to have left an impression.
It was started in 1978 by Nick Logan, who had been the editor of NME. Nick thought there might be a market for a magazine that simply did words of the latest chart hits but in colour. He was right. When I joined in 1979 it had just gone from monthly to fortnightly and was selling every copy it could print. At its height in 1988 there was an issue with Yazz on the cover which sold as many as a million copies.
By then it was a national treasure with a language all its own. In its pages, Ben Volpeliere Pierrot of Curiosity Killed The Cat was known as “Ben Vol-au-vent Parrot of Curiosity KTC”.
Madonna was re-cast as “Madge”, any mention of David Bowie had to be preceded by his unofficial title “Dame” and even U2 were known as “Bobo, the Hedge, Larry Mullen Jr and, er, the Other One”.
While all other teen media did what they thought was cool, Smash Hits did what it thought was funny. It always believed it was possible for pop to be magnificent but preposterous at the same time.
“Smash Hits” was never slick. When we invented a format where Jarvis Cocker had to honestly answer readers questions selected at random it was called “No! Not The Biscuit Tin!”
If you wrote the best letter of the week you were sent a Smash Hits tea towel. We once gave away half a million badges bearing the words “Pin it on! Take it off! Hours of fun guaranteed!" There was once a quiz without questions. “The answer is Marc Almond. All the rest are singers”.
Among all the stickers bearing pictures of Five Star, Kylie and Bros there was one which just read “put the kettle on, Mother. I’m parched.”
Once the 80s got going it seems everyone that mattered was given a part in this fortnightly pantomime in which Boy George, who we first discovered when he worked in a clothes shop across Carnaby Street, was always Widow Twankey, Clare Grogan was the perpetual Principal Boy and Jason Donovan was forever climbing the beanstalk.
Those acts who didn’t qualify on the grounds that it was too early or too late in their careers were said to be either “in reception” or “in the dumper”. The member of staff overseeing their exits and entrances was Neil Tennant, who went off to start an act called Pet Shop Boys and was never heard of again.
By 1987 even Margaret Thatcher’s people had heard of “Smash Hits”.
Hence [writer] Tom Hibbert was summoned to Downing Street where he elicited the information that her favourite record was “Telstar” but she had always liked “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window”, answers corny enough to have been sincere.
Smash Hits was put together in a noisy office where a constantly running argument about the nature of pop greatness could barely be heard above the sound of Stars On 45 from the boutique below, the sound of boogying Bev Hillier checking song words on the office record player, the clacking of typewriters and the sound of Mark Ellen calling for more correction fluid.
This was definitely old tech. When the messenger carrying an exclusive Wham! cover story to the printers came off his bike, Chris Heath had to sit down and write it all again from his notes.
When the members of The Human League wanted to make sure you picked the picture they preferred they would walk into the office and argue about it.
Come the 90s, pop was back in the hands of the professional groomers of talent. Well-turned-out stage school graduates would be brought to the office to do their party pieces in front of the staff. When the Spice Girls turned up in this fashion they were told the team didn’t have time to listen to them.
Of course they returned to headline the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party, an annual TV show which did more favours for the broadcasters than it ever did for the magazine. Once it became entirely about screaming girls and the Backstreet Boys and Take That the magazine could no longer maintain its secret world.
It’s like they say about royalty. You should never let daylight in on magic.
In the end what did for “Smash Hits” was the mobile phone. Come the 21st century the kids at the bus stop were now looking at each other on their phones. Just yesterday, I saw teenagers on a Tube platform taking Instagram pics of each other, pics which will be every bit as exciting to them as the pictures of Duran Duran their mothers once looked at in “Smash Hits”.
Not the same, though, is it?
