(https://cominghomenewcastle.sbnation.com/) contacted me with a few questions about my memories of being involved with "The Mag" from the end of the 80s until 2004. Here's what I had to say...
What
did you think of The Mag when it first came out? When did you start
writing for it? What were you doing at the time, employment-wise? How did you
get involved?
Back in late 1986 I was living in London and on November 22nd
I made my first ever visit to Stamford Bridge, where we completely dismantled a
woeful Chelsea side 3-1 (Andy Thomas grabbed a couple). After the game, the
three of us headed back towards Portobello Road for a few beers. Before the
session began, I nipped into Rough Trade Records, no doubt looking for
the latest release by Age of Chance, Big Flame or Camper Van Beethoven and in
there, I came across a copy of a magazine I’d never seen before; When
Saturday Comes. Having long pored over self-published inkies about music, I
was amazed to find one on football, so I took a punt on it. On the Monday, I posted
a cheque for a subscription; the latest issue is #400 and I’ve got every one of
them. For me, it will always be the original fanzine.
The next year, I moved up to Leeds for postgraduate studies.
It was a crazy city; the north side from Headingley to Harehills was one large
bohemian, ganja-suffused commune, while the south part was an ugly, angry,
teeming, open sewer of National Front sponsored hatred. That’s where Elland
Road is, but I only went there once; the unfettered abuse from the sieg heiling
psychos in the Lowfields Road turned me right off. If I wasn’t coming home on
the bus on a Friday (£4 return with a student card) to watch Newcastle, I’d take
the train to Bradford and head up to Valley Parade to watch City in a far more
conducive environment, where often we’d partake in a post-match curry while
poring over City Gent, featuring the juvenilia of the schoolboy Mark Douglas, which then as now, the Voice of Bantam
Progressivism. During my West Yorkshire sojourn, I was starting to see more
and more club fanzines, often in Crash or Jumbo Records, while
also picking up the latest offerings by Dinosaur Jr, Einsturzende Neubauten or
the Butthole Surfers. How I longed for a fanzine dedicated to Newcastle to appear
in the classified section of When Saturday Comes, to which I’d
contributed a couple of letters and an article.
During that year, I’d began to write about music,
predominantly gig and record reviews, for the local independent Leeds Other
Paper and the campus-based Leeds Student, where the editor was the
now world-renowned food critic, Jay Rayner, who encouraged me to use my
imagination and articulate opinions trenchantly. While at University I’d had
the benefit of 24-hour free IT and a primitive kind of internal email system.
It meant I could explore how to express myself on screen rather than on paper,
not only saving labour but also teaching myself to be a ruthless sub-editor of
my own work. Luckily, after the Leeds adventure was over, I found gainful
employment with South Tyneside Council in their Adult Education Department, where
similar IT facilities were available at work. This pleased me enormously, as I
was anxious to carry on writing and on return to Newcastle just in time for the
hideous relegation season of 1988/1989, I started penning articles about music
for Paint It Red, where I met Kriss Knights (aka Billy Furious) and The
Crack. I also picked up a copy of The Mag’s first issue on the day
of the Spurs game that opened our season and marked the return of Gascoigne and
Waddle; 2-2 after we’d been 2-0 up at the break. The season never recovered
from that point.
I was incredibly impressed by the professional lay out and
design of The Mag, which blew away most other clubs’ badly photocopied
and consequently almost impossible to read A5 efforts. As the season wore on, I
still didn’t think about writing anything myself, never having written about
football before, but became more and more impressed with the range of opinions
it contained; some I agreed with, though others I diverged markedly from. It
wasn’t until after the season ending draw with Millwall, where I sat sunbathing
on the Gallowgate, that I wrote, in my head, something about football,
specifically a piece begging that we held on to John Hendrie. Kriss had told me
that all I needed to do to appear in The Mag was submit a piece to Mark
and I’d be accepted, as long as it wasn’t rubbish. Amazingly, my work was
published in the first issue of 1989/1990, when we battered Leeds United 5-2.
That was me hooked; subsequently, I wrote for The Mag for 16 seasons
until 2004/2005, when I transferred to Steve Wraith’s players inc that
would also subsequently go by the name of #9.
Did
you ever think it would become what it did, in terms of longevity and
popularity? Why do you think it became so popular?
I was 24 going on 25 when
I first contributed to The Mag; the idea that anything creative I was
involved in would last was something I found hard to countenance. When you’re
young, everything happens so fast and your life changes course so abruptly that
you don’t have time to analyse past events or predict the future. However what
cemented the role of supporters as scribes in the fanzine movement were the
seismic changes in the game, that came via a series of aftershocks following
the Hillsborough Disaster, from the abolition of the proposed ID Card scheme to
the formation of the Premier League and everything associated with the
commercialization of the sport, by way of those semi-mythical E Generation
terrace love-ins post Italia 90; all of these developments meant that the fans
were now being taken seriously. We proved we could be articulate, progressive
and responsible; fanzines reflected this, much in the way podcasts do now I
suppose. Hence, there was a certain inevitability to The Mag’s sustained
success mainly, it has to be said, because Newcastle were so terrible until
Keegan came, that there was plenty to moan about and then loads more to
celebrate, especially as the zeitgeist meant there was also room for
half a dozen other zines dedicated to NUFC to come and go over the next decade.
Did
you know the other writers and contributors? How was it all put together? Were
there work meetings or social events? Or were they just a name you read
alongside yours each month?
I only knew Kriss Knights
initially, but due to my involvement with The Mag, I met some wonderful
folks who I continue to call pals and with whom I can hold a conversation about
any subject under the sun (even though it is inevitably football or music). I’m
talking about Chris Tait, Tony Fiddes, Lynne Knights and several others I’ve
completely lost touch with, such as Ian Maxted or Dean Christopher. Also, it
helped launch the career of a couple of journalists; the best writer about football in our region,
George Culkin, and also Martin Hardy. I should also mention there
were some really good lads on other fanzines; Derek Graham from Talk of the
Toon and Dave Jameson, who is on the mend after a terrible bout of cancer,
who co-edited Half Mag Half Biscuit. Mind there were also several others
I’d cheerily cross the road to avoid, then and now, including one rogue who was
actually a Liverpool fan and collected Nazi memorabilia as a hobby…
Basically, Mark Jensen had
a very laissez faire attitude to content; he just sat in his office
waiting for people to bring stuff in for him. Over the years it changed from
hard copies, handwritten as well as typed, to floppy discs, and then emails. He
then put it all together and sent it off to the designers, who made it look
striking and glamorous, by adding colour photos and using glossy paper. At
first, we only featured away match reports, that were the preserve of the very
wonderful Steve Brennan, but once he settled down to domestic life, Mark
organized who would do what report, which now included home games as well,
because a sizeable part of our readership were exiled Geordies who, before the
internet, struggled to find detailed discussion of games they knew the score
of, but probably hadn’t seen. You were never told what to write and that’s
probably why in its later years, contributors became columnists; Kriss as Billy
Furious and Chris as Sweet Left Foot, for example, who covered several
topics each issue.
As far as social
gatherings went, there were impromptu beers before and after games and gigs, in
several cases. The only official do used to be the end of season one on the
Sunday before Whit Bank Holiday, when we’d all get bladdered in Rosies and
sing our way through the NUFC songbook, as well as most of The Clash’s first
album.
Do
you have a favourite article you wrote? Was there one you’d have
liked to write, if you had access to greater resources or to an individual?
Wow; tough one. I was
pleased with stuff I wrote about Douglas Hall and Freddy Shepherd after the Toongate
fiasco. Peter Beardsley once phoned me up to thank me for a piece looking at
his contribution in both spells at the club. Regrets? I always felt I should
have interviewed Malcolm Allen, as he intrigued me as a person as much as a
footballer, but mainly I really wish I’d gone after the club over the Bond
scheme that took half a grand out of the pockets of hard-pressed fans, then
eventually gave it to various scions of the Hall Dynasty by a circuitous route.
Also, in around 94 Public Enemy were due to tour England, though it was
subsequently scrapped. Kriss wanted the cover to be Andy Cole side by side with
Chuck D, though I thought Flavor Flav and John Burridge were a better couple.
No tour; no photoshoot alas…
The
written version of The Mag transitioned, eventually entirely, online. I
don’t know this but presumably it was due to the changing media market and
falling sales? Do you think there’s still room for a fanzine in the modern
world or have we moved too far into social media and blogs to go back?
Economics is only partly
the answer; rather like Spinal Tap, fanzines have become a more exclusive
taste. The days of a general, not too controversial read about your club are
long gone. Why pay for someone else’s opinion when you can get it for free and
submit your own, however badly written, illogical or even prejudiced your
thoughts are? Goodness knows how we’ll come out of this pandemic, other than
financially ruined in many cases, but we went into it a more reactionary,
selfish and bigoted society than we were in the 90s. As ever, it appears that
only Celtic and Liverpool have fans whose commitment to their club is matched
by an unstinting social conscience and sense of responsibility. Despite the
wonderful work of Bill Corcoran and the NUFC Food Bank, witness how such good
actions are dwarfed by the amount of Newcastle fans untroubled by the proposed
Saudi takeover. If this had been 20 years ago, we’d have seen regular
2,000-word articles in The Mag arguing the pros and cons of this
potential deal; now it’s far easier to send a Tweet calling anyone who opposes
the takeover a Mackem, without soiling your frontal lobes with thoughts about
morality and football club ownership. An unthinking culture made possible by
the younger generation’s disinclination to read anything doesn’t afford house
room to nuanced debate.
Sadly, the law of
diminishing returns is also impossible to ignore. If newspaper sales are down
80% on a decade ago, what hope is there for independently produced
publications? I wasn’t involved with The Mag during its last decade, but
my feeling was that to be a success, or even a going concern, fanzines needed
to take a leaf out of the independent music scene’s innovative sales practices,
whereby 7” singles, in some ways the quill pen and parchment of the digital
age, are desirable items for particular niche markets, as well as always coming
with a download code. From 2014 to 2018, I edited The Popular Side; an
A5 inkie NUFC zine, with no adverts, no colour, no website or anything “modern”
other than a Twitter account, costing £1. We did everything cost price and
turned out 14 issues that were all well received, but it was simply too much
hard graft. The project was also co-piloted by Bill Corcoran who, as I’ve
mentioned, has done such great work with the NUFC Food Bank and Steve Hastie,
who worked tireless on behalf of our support as part of the Fans Liaison
Committee. Both of them were slogging their guts out on other projects and I
couldn’t find anyone to help me sell the thing, so we had to call it a day.
That’s a great shame as I still think there’s a market for a dedicated
Newcastle fanzine, among a certain age and social demographic.
When
you look (if indeed you do) at fan websites or Twitter, are you grateful
that you wrote in an era without instant comment and generally
negative ‘trolling’? Did you ever hear feedback about your work?
I think this is best
summed up by the fact that despite every smartphone owner being in possession
of the entire history of human culture, most of the time people are looking at
amateur porn, photos of cats looking cute or blurred footage of Alan Barnes wandering
down Old Durham Road. Instant comment should provoke debate, but it can be so
disorganized and, as you say, deliberately provocative and hurtful, that
getting away from the Tower of Babel is good for the soul and the sanity. There
is absolutely nothing wrong with provocative or controversial opinions, which
are my stock in trade, but I’m only interested if they are couched within the
parameters of reasoned, detailed, respectful debate. I publish a blog, often
about football, sometimes politics, music or cricket, every single week at http://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.com/
and I would love to
engage in debate about my opinions. Looking back over 30 years of writing, the
best feedback I’ve had, both positive and negative, is that it made people
think. I hope it will continue to make them laugh, cry, nod in approval and
fizz with impotent rage, all at the same time.
Why
did you stop writing? Did you run out of things to comment on about the club?
Or did life just move on and you became busy with other areas? Did
that writing experience lead to something else?
As I said above, I haven’t
stopped. I’ve written for over 100 fanzines, edited programmes for non-league
clubs and contributed poems and short stories to many different litzines over
the past 30 years. I edit one, called Glove (@GloveLitZine) and ten
years ago I wrote a book about Percy Main Amateurs of the Northern Alliance. If
you want to read either or both, email your address to iancusack@blueyonder.co.uk and I’ll sort you out.
Life has moved on, but
I’ve never been short of an opinion. Also, I’m delighted to say my son
maintains his own blog about music, football and politics, as well as an
encyclopaedic Instagram account dedicated to craft beer (@peevytimes).
Nowadays,
if you write online you have a profile and people know who you are. The fanzine
days had an anonymity about them. Is this something you enjoyed? Or did you
sometimes wish people knew you were that guy whose work they read every month?
One thing I’ve not touched
on is the fact my real football love is the non-league game: specifically,
Newcastle Benfield. The local scene probably consists of about 1,000 diehard
followers from Whitley Bay to Whickham and back again. Over that time, I’ve
probably grown to recognize about 80% of the active supporters well enough to
hold a conversation with. That’s what I adore, the human touch, social
interaction and friendly rivalry. In that world, I don’t want to be known for
what I have written, but for the person I am. As regards The Mag,
anonymity was useful as there’s an element of our support that holds those with
book-learning in suspicion.
Overall,
how do you look back on that period?
With
enormous and enduring fondness. You felt part of a movement that was starting
debates, rather than fights in car parks, which was a massive step forward from
football in the 80s. Football fans showed we are civilised and rehabilitated
the game in the 90s. Sure it eventually became too commercial and high profile,
but at least we were listened to. Clickbait polls by gambling websites do not
serve a similar function, because football fans are now, or have been rendered,
passive, unthinking, conformist consumers. That’s so sad.
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