The history boy

Simon Reynolds is one of the foremost chroniclers of contemporary popular music. Having cut his teeth as a scribe for Britain’s Melody Maker he has gone on to author an impressive range of titles in a diversity of genres.

Energy Flash and Bring The Noise provide sharp insights into dance culture and the hip-hop genre respectively. The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion and Rock N Roll, co-authored with wife Joy Press, is an illuminating exploration of the social and cultural mores of the music world. But the jewel in the canon is Rip It Up, frequently hailed as the definitive account of the post-punk movement.
Now he has returned with Totally Wired: Post Punk Interviews and Overviews, a marriage of the full transcripts of his research for the aforementioned title and a smattering of engrossing essays on some of the more colourful characters and sub-cultures of postpunk.
“I actually nicked the idea off Jon Savage,” he confesses when I inquire about the impetus for the project. “Not intentionally. My editor at Faber mentioned that Jon was doing the England’s Dreaming transcripts. The idea went in to the back of my mind and then a year later I decided to do a book of transcripts based on Rip It Up. I thought Jon’s book would be coming out long before mine but I actually pipped him to the post. The England’s Dreaming transcripts are coming out later this year.”
Reynolds says that only a small fraction of quotes from the interviews conducted were used in Rip It Up and goes on explain why he feels the transcripts make a compelling read. (And they do!)
“I felt they (the transcripts) were more like conversations,” he notes. “You get a sense of the person, their character and their sense of humour. And because Rip It Up got a really nice, warm reception from the public I thought that some people would be up for it!”
A variety of musicians, managers and trend-setters provide a plethora of different perspectives resulting in a insightful, balanced account brimming with entertaining anecdotes. The list includes David Byrne, Edwyn Collins, Devo, Jah Wobble, Tony Wilson, John Peel and many more.
Most of the interviews were conducted in the early part of this decade. Was Reynolds surprised by any retrospective opinions on the period?
“I really liked the way Phil Oakey had a self-deprecating, downplaying sensibility which is very Sheffield,” he says. “He presented being in The Human League as a series of humiliations and as quite a dismal experience. Even when they got to number one in America he said, he got so angry he smashed the phone! Most people would respond to the news that, in publishing royalties alone, they are going to be a millionaire for the rest of their life by dancing around the room. But he explained it as suddenly he had this burden. He had to have more number ones and what would he do next?”
One of the more prickly customers in the bunch was Pere Ubu’s David Thomas.
“That wasn’t an enjoyable interview,” he admits. “But looking back on the transcript, it was one of the more interesting ones. It probably isn’t that informative about Cleveland because we quickly moved on to having a fight. We leave the nitty gritty details of Pere Ubu’s music behind and have quite a tense exchange. In the end he turned around in a strange pub in Brighton and said, ‘I’m going to talk to my friends’, and walked off to talk to these old geezers at the bar.”
“He was a pretty truculent individual,” says Reynolds. “He approached the interview with the assumption that I was an idiot. It’s okay to draw that conclusion after an hour, but to start that way was pretty poor.”
The book is packed full of absorbing exchanges and entertaining quotes. Leave it to Tony Wilson to come out with one of the most interesting: ‘I always thought of Joy Division as the first band of post-punk and U2 as the second.’
“Well that’s a typical Tony Wilson quote!’ he laughs. “He is Joy Division’s greatest mythologiser and I suppose he saw them as a precursor or influence on U2, who did become the biggest band in the world. Maybe that has a nice sort of narrative appeal to him – if only Ian hadn’t killed himself they could have become that big.”
“I thought it was an interesting comment,” he observes. “I was already aware that U2 were going to be part of my book but it alerted me further to the influence that they derived from groups like Joy Division and PIL.”
The interview with British DJ John Peel is fascinating because it really conveys how he shaped opinion at the time. In such a media-saturated world does such a role exist today?
“There are certain blogs that carry a similar role,” muses Reynolds. “Pitchfork is very influential in terms of people buying records and the grades they give are taken very seriously by a certain contingent. I don’t know if there are individuals that have the same power. “
“There is so much more opinion now,” he continues. “ Also, people can hear music without it being mediated by critics. In those days it was very hard to hear a lot of records so you would listen to what the critics said. I bought so many records because Barney Hoskyns recommended them and they were nearly always great ones. Some critics have that function, they are trusted advisors. But now people can check things out so easily.”
There is an argument that the ready availability of music today has in some way cheapened its meaning.
“Yes, it was a scarcity economy then and a delay economy,” he says. “You had to wait for the music papers to come out on certain day of the week, you had to wait for John Peel to be on. The fact that you had to pay money made the decisions more intense.”
“I remember once approaching a record counter to buy the second Gang Of Four album and almost feeling faint because I had heard it wasn’t as good as the previous one!” he laughs. “It was my one record for that month because that was all I could afford to buy. I listened to that album about 20 times trying to like it because I had spent a huge chunk of my meagre resources on it. I did grow to like some of the songs a little bit.”
“I think now if you can get something for nothing the temptation is to play it once and if you are not swayed by it move on,” he continues. “I think that is one of the reasons records are compressed so they leap out of the speakers at people. People don’t give things as much time. I think there is something to be said about not having access to every single record in the world for nothing which is the way it is really. I try to avoid whinging about how things were better in those days I do!” (Laughs)
Considering his prodigious output I assume another project is underway?
“Yes, I am working on another book right now. It’s about music and its relationship to time, the past and the future. It deals with revivalism and reissues but also some of the things we have been talking about; the influence of Youtube and its archiving of the past, peer to peer sharing and iPods and how that has changed how we use music.”
Having chronicled most of the major shifts in music I wonder how Mr Reynolds might look upon this decade. Now pop has eaten itself several times and bands are wearing their influences on their sleeve so much of what we consume is highly derivative.
“That’s one of the things I will be dealing with in this book,” he notes. “It can feel like nothing has happened in this decade. I think it is down to the technological changes and how they create a different way of engaging with music. There is a much more rapid turnover and people are less engaged. It’s harder to have a real emotional connection with things when you are processing so much.”
I’m sure it will be a riveting read.

Totally Wired: Post Punk Interviews and Overviews is out now on Faber