Is That Machine On?

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Archive on 4: Is That Machine On?

26/05/2018

BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4, Is That Machine On?

Stuart Maconie celebrates the golden age of the music press interview.

Stuart Maconie celebrates the flirtatiously unhinged golden age of rock press music interviews. With Caitlin Moran. From 2018.

Stuart Maconie celebrates the golden age of the music press interview.

In the heyday of the printed music media between the mid-60s and 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. In 2018, NME - the last inky survivor - went online only.

Stuart Maconie looks back at the lost world - those revealing encounters between journalist and musician.

Featuring classic recorded archive interviews with:

Jimi Hendrix
Kurt Cobain
Bob Marley
Michael Jackson

Plus contributions from journalists Caitlin Moran, Barney Hoskyns, Allan Jones and Dawn Slough.  

Producer: Jonathan Mayo

A TBI production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in May 2018.

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