Stuart Maconie celebrates the confessional, flirtatious and often unhinged golden age of the rock interview with the help of Caitlin Moran, Allan Jones and some classic recordings.
- 1 x 28" programme
Stuart Maconie celebrates the golden age of the music press interview.
In the heyday of the printed music media between the mid-sixties and the early noughties, the music interview was many things - combative, intimate, confessional, unhinged, flirtatious, sometimes violent - but it was rarely dull. Still, it seems that long-gilded age of rock journalism is now over.
The days of extraordinary access, when a reporter might spend a week with a band on its tour bus or private plane, hanging out in their dressing rooms and hotel suites, are at an end. The music papers are gone. Earlier this year NME - the last inky survivor - went online only.
Stuart Maconie looks back at the lost world - those revealing encounters between journalist and musician. The programme features classic recorded archive interviews with Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Bob Marley and Michael Jackson - as well as contributions from journalists Caitlin Moran, Barney Hoskyns, Allan Jones, Dawn Slough and others.