36. ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...SMASH HITS

The absolute very first time I bought Smash Hits magazine was in the early 80s because I wanted to know the words to Stand & Deliver and find out what Adam actually sang since it sounded an awful lot like ‘da diddly qua qua’ or some such nonsense. I found out later from 'ver Hits' that it was indeed ‘da diddley qua qua’ after all which meant my 30p was completely wasted. I could buy a hi-fi with that nowadays if they still made them.

Smash Hits began in the late 70s and was the main source of posters on any schoolkid’s wall. It was also the only source of lyrics unless your favourite band/artist happened to print them on the inside of the record sleeve (the Smiths were particularly helpful in this regard). Adam did the same thing too but the album came out months after the single and I didn't want to wait that long singing the wrong lyrics if the actual words were "Bo Diddley, cry cry" instead. I finally got the Prince Charming album as a Xmas present which is just as well because Ant Rap was released earlier that month so I only had a couple of weeks singing ‘Marco, Merrick, Dairylea’ before I could correct myself. I did think it was odd he'd sing about cheese triangles but it wasn't long after he'd suggested we should "leapfrog the dog and brush me daddy-o" so, frankly, anything was possible.

Misheard lyrics (called mondegreens apparently, who knew?!) were such a common problem in our day that Maxell came up with a couple of adverts taking the mickey out of them with blokes holding cards with nonsense lines which sounded uncannily like the songs themselves. Desmond Dekker’s Israelites became “me ears are alight” (“darling cheeseheads I was yards too greasy”) and the Skids sang “into the valley, peas sure sound divine” instead of….well, perhaps those were the actual lyrics - I didn’t get that particular issue of Smash Hits to check.

The magazine was published by Emap whose head office was based near my home town. The dad of a friend of mine from primary school used to work there but Smash Hits didn’t come out until I’d moved to secondary school and I'd fallen out with him by then (the boy that is - I remained on good terms with his dad). I offered him a walnut whip to try and get back in his good books but he said he didn't like the nut on the top. Er, so what? 99% of us didn't like the nut on top but it didn't stop us enjoying the rest of it.

When I was reading the magazine (OK, checking out the lyrics and tearing out pictures of Siouxsie & the Banshees to blu-tack onto my wall), it was selling half a million copies every issue which is as much as that magazine monster, Radio Times, shifts today (and, at an equally-monstrous £3.50, it's probably the only thing keeping WH Smiths from going bust). With those readership figures, just like TOTP’s audiences of 19 million during the same period, no one could ignore Smash Hits if they wanted to sell some records. Paul Weller described the magazine 'as though punk rock had never happened'....but that didn't seem to stop him from coming back for interviews to nudge 'Town Called Malice' or one of his Style Council numbers into the Top 10.

This was long before cooler magazines like Q, Mojo and, by a couple of years, The Face had hit the newsstands (that's what they did in the old days - sometimes your newsagent would deliver them but, if it was WH Smiths, you were just as likely to get Woman's Realm or National Geographic land on your doormat instead of what you actually ordered). And if NME and Melody Maker were too grown-up for you, Smash Hits was your early-teens alternative once you'd moved on from Look-In. There were some interesting writers – Neil Tennant was on the staff in the early days, fresh from the editor role at the UK offices of Marvel Comics, before he headed off to Pet Shop Boys stardom (surely both those jobs are even better than being a pop star though aren't they?).

The writers and editors were surprisingly irreverent (or possibly just childish). They called Morten from A-Ha “Snorten, Forten, Horten” because that’s how they thought Norwegians spoke (as opposed to Swedes who, as all Muppets fans knew, made hurdy gurdy noises instead). Paul McCartney was ‘Fab Macca Wacky Thumbs Aloft’ (well, I guess that is what he did a lot of the time so it was fair enough) and Smiley Minogue presumably got her nickname for similar reasons (though let's hope this didn't apply when she heartlessly dumped Jason over the phone from Michael Hutchence's hotel room in Japan). And every time they mentioned Duran Duran, they referred to 'pop' 'star' Simon Le Bon which might be harsh (I’ve just seen him play Isle of Wight Festival) but, in hindsight, was pretty funny.

In their interviews, they would ask their pop celeb fodder silly questions like whether they preferred cats or if their mums played golf or what colour was January and they made up their own language – bands boozed on ‘rock n roll mouthwash’, female singers were ‘foxtresses’ and ‘pur-lease’ was the response if (by which I mean when) the interviewees said something ludicrous. I’ve just looked back at some old covers and one of them trumpeted an exposé about why Kylie was scared of Bob The Builder. The editorial style wasn't a complete piss-take like Viz though. They came over as fans just like the rest of us but they basically pricked the pomposity and mythology around stardom whilst remaining part of the carnival.

What was great in hindsight but I found quite confusing at the time was that they would cover the Smiths or Echo and the Bunnymen in a particular issue and, at the same time, interview Five Star or Rod Stewart. If you were in your early teens, heading towards NME or Melody Maker with an emerging sense of self-importance as a follower of 'serious' music, it was hard to read (or to be seen reading) a magazine which might have Kajagoogoo on the cover.

Nowadays, PR people with copy approval would run a red pen through most of the articles penned by the early Smash Hits contributors, ensuring that the end result was as bland, uninformative and non-offensive as anything remotely similar on sale today. I loved how the writers refused to pander to the celebs (without completely alienating them either) in the way ALL media – social or mainstream – does today....especially if it involves their mental health, charidee work or fatuous virtue-signalling ‘beliefs’. In fact, doing a bit of research on the magazine has vastly increased my appreciation of the publication. Pricking pomposity with a bit of humour and irreverence, but with an appropriate level of respect too, is exactly what we need right now.

Alternatively, we could just settle for today's status quo (no, not Francis, Rick & co) where journalists & interviewers simply offer a platform for 'pop' 'stars' to lecture us on white privilege, mis-pronouning or causing the destruction of the planet. Next, as Constable Savage on Not the Nine O'Clock News once warned us, we'll be hauled over the coals for walking on the cracks in the pavement or loitering with intent to use a pedestrian crossing or coughing without due care and attention (oh hold on, that probably is a criminal offence now isn't it?). Is that what we want and what our kids deserve? Pur-lease.

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Next: ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...CHRONICLES OF NARNIA

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