Fabulous Creations – Vanishing Worlds

Roger Lytollis, “PANIC AS MAN BURNS CRUMPETS”: The Vanishing World of the Local Journalist (Robinson 2021)

David Hepworth, A Fabulous Creation: How the LP Saved Our Lives (Penguin, Random House 2019)

I can remember the frisson of walking home from the record shop with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon under one arm. There had been the conversations and articles we’d read about this Hallowed Thing; the weeks of anticipation before handing over a significant amount of cash. Now there was the walk home – a certain way to carry an LP record, and a hyper-alertness about who would see, because I was displaying not what I had but who I was. Then came the treasured hours playing and re-playing, preferably undisturbed, in the dark, while this glorious art washed over us. And the anxiety of playing this treasure to others. Would they “get it”? Would She “get it”? Relationships flourished or foundered on the moment.

David Hepworth perfectly captures the whole (mostly male) culture of the Long-Playing Record in the era of the Album, from The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper in 1968 through to Michael Jackson’s Thriller in 1982. These were not collections of songs but thematic extended works of art, when “rock” music flourished with experiment and creativity, when the media (the surface noise; the album art; the forms of buying and selling and listening) were as much a part of the experience as was the music. It was a culture that carried many of us through our formative years. Yet the LP is a transient technology – a phenomenon – that was gone so soon, overwhelmed by cassette, CD, MTV, downloads and streaming.

Meanwhile technologies and profit-before-content business culture completely changed the world of local journalism, as entertainingly told by Roger Lytollis (“writer and columnist … three-time winner at the Regional Press Awards. And twelve-time loser at the North-West Media Awards. He isn’t bitter about that…”). He seemed to stumble into local journalism with little confidence and no qualification or experience. It was a tough laddish culture for a sensitive and anxious young man to find himself in. But he found niches that suited him: writing local features, columns, “celebrity” interviews and sports reports.

He recounts various escapades with self-deprecating humour: the participatory interview at a naturist swimming club which resulted in his car being towed out of a muddy field; his running feud with the owner of Carlisle United FC; a rumbunctious interview with Jordan (Katie Price). But he also writes about the art of long-form feature writing, and the real human encounters he was privilege to: as witness to the victims of Carlyle’s floods; the hardships imposed resulting from benefits cuts and loss of public services; the moving stoicism of war veterans.

As well as the “robust” office banter (=bullying) and drunken excesses and the unreasonable or quirky sub-editors, reporters were exposing local issues, holding to account those abusing power, working hard to fill today’s copy (and later correct yesterday’s foul-ups) and outrageously making stuff up when necessary, all accompanied by an abusive public deriding anything journalists do. We don’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone. The economics of the local press began to falter. Fewer copies sold meant less advertising revenue, leading to staff cuts and multi-tasking, compromise of standards. New owners reduced staff levels further and insisted that income would come from putting content on-line. It never did. Now anyone can get their news for free so why buy a paper?

Man looks back and sees that things are not as they once were. Yet neither author is peddling misty-eyed nostalgia for the Good Old Days. Hepworth is not claiming that the music from the LP’s peak years was better that what came before or after, just that this was a particular cultural moment where technology freed up a flowering of creativity and before the accountants began to rule the music industry. Likewise, Lytollis doesn’t gloss over the now-unacceptable Boy’s Own culture of the press office or the wasteful and self-serving side of the newspaper industry of old, but it is obvious to anyone that the quality of journalism –the standard of writing, the accuracy and scope for investigation of important local issues – has declined with hard-nosed business ownership and reliance on loss-making online platforms. Two voices worth listening to. Both were there, involved, learning the hard way. One worked in a record store and then got into music journalism into broadcasting and writing, the other an award-winning feature writer and columnist has now produced two fine books. Both write well and have documented the social history some of us lived through. Hepworth lists his favourite albums at the back of the book; my own might be bookended by Focus’ Moving Waves and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. Back in the day I encountered the best (and worst) of Crawley’s local press when reading for a RNIB weekly talking newspaper. Now I consume most music from Spotify and barely even look at The Isle of Wight County Press. In the words of one of our local historians: “If things don’t change, they stay the same.”

Elsewhere …

• David Hepworth The Lost World of the LP , a series of The Essay in 5 episodes available on BBC Sounds: BBC Radio 3 – The Essay, The Lost World of the LP – Available now
• Nick Davies, Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media (Vintage 2009) – recommended by Ruth!