FEATURE:
Turn Back the Pages
ALL IMAGES: Q Magazine
Reflecting on the Sad Loss of Q Magazine
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VERY few people were expecting…
the news that arrived on Monday (20th) regarding Q Magazine. After thirty-four years, a giant of the music press has had to make the sad notice that they are closing. I have loved Q Magazine since I was in school, and it was an essential part of my music magazine-buying existence; a new edition each month was a real highlight for me! This BBC article provides more details regarding Q’s closure:
“Q Magazine, a cornerstone of rock journalism in the UK, is to close after 34 years.
"The pandemic did for us and there was nothing more to it than that," said the editor Ted Kessler in a tweet.
He also shared the editor's letter for the final issue, due on 28 July, in which he said: "I must apologise for my failure to keep Q afloat."
The magazine's circulation had fallen to 28,000 per month from a peak of 200,000 in 2001.
Founded in 1986 by Smash Hits writers Mark Ellen and David Hepworth, Q arrived at the same time as the CD revolution took off - and its glossy, aspirational format chimed perfectly with the times.
Its hefty and comprehensive reviews section not only covered new releases, but the copious re-issues that were starting to appear as record labels plundered their archives to bolster the new format.
More recently, the magazine had rediscovered its voice under Kessler, who was appointed editor in 2017, and promoted revealing, in-depth interviews with the likes of Lana Del Rey, Tame Impala and The Streets; alongside deep dives into the back catalogues of The Specials and the Beastie Boys.
However, in May, Q's owner Bauer Media put the title under review, along with a number of others in its portfolio, as sales and advertising revenues diminished during the coronavirus pandemic.
The penultimate issue of the magazine read like a eulogy, with writers past and present recalling their most memorable interviews of the last 34 years”.
Many people knew that Q was struggling, and there were hopes that it would be able to ride the COVID-19 black spell but, alas, it has not been able to survive. I think it is just people not getting out there buying physical copies and, with avenue opportunities reduced, the cost of running the magazine was too high. It is a shame that the Government could not bail the magazine out as, unfortunately, the print press is declining. This report from May forecast the struggle ahead for music magazines and, invariably, we were going to see casualties – though the impact of Q Magazine’s loss is being felt around the world. I will come to my feelings regarding Q but, when reacting to the news, Alexis Petridis wrote a feature for The Guardian where he predicted Q’s demise is the beginning of the end for the music press of old:
“And so Q – its name a play on the act of “cueing up” a CD – rushed into the vacuum. Its early issues featured McCartney, Rod Stewart, Paul Simon, Elton John, Genesis and Eric Clapton on the cover. None of them exactly at their artistic zenith in the late 80s, but all still hugely successful, and all with richly entertaining histories to talk about. The interviews were respectful, but never fawning or hagiographic. Its founders had helmed Smash Hits in its early 80s purple patch, and something of that magazine’s irreverence, its belief that finding pop music hugely thrilling and completely ridiculous wasn’t contradictory, clung to Q’s tone.
You could sneer at Q as uncool and lacking edge (“The magazine that says ‘Hey kids, it’s alright to like Dire Straits’,” chuckled the NME’s Steven Wells) but Q was sharper than the caricature suggested. It was smart enough to realise that soul veteran Bobby Womack had a hell of a story to tell – his name was emblazoned across the cover early on. And it occasionally bared its fangs, as in Tom Hibbert’s “Who the Hell Does ______ Think He Is?”, a series of virulent, pomposity-pricking interviews.
In its final iteration, under editor Ted Kessler, Q became something like the opposite of the magazine it started out as: it was wide-ranging and hip, closer to one of the now-vanished inkies than the Q of old – one recent cover flagged up features on Waxahatchee, US Girls, Låpsley and veteran dub producer Mad Professor – and promoted female writers in a realm that had once been almost exclusively male. As a one-stop digest of what was happening in music, it was hard to fault, but it wasn’t enough to save Q.
Without wishing to sound melodramatic, its closure seems to signal the final passing of the music press as we once knew it. What’s left are specialist titles, small operations surviving on small circulations and magazines that concentrate largely on the past. The latter suggests that the only people who still buy music titles in quantity are old enough to remember the music press at its height”.
I know that there are corners of the music press that will be able to survive this time. Some magazines have been boosted by new subscriptions and donations; others have been able to exist online but, for everyone, COVID-19 is going to be a real test! I do worry that other big magazines like MOJO might be unable to exist post-COVID-19, but let’s hope that we will not see all of our favourite music magazines die. We always knew that the Internet would threaten the music press, but I never thought the damage would be so great! I guess, when people can get music news and information for free online, there is less incentive to buy a magazine. It is a shame, because I grew up reading magazines like NME, and Q Magazine. I loved NME because it is a slim edition, and there was this coolness when buying a copy; it was more aimed at Indie and Rock, whereas Q Magazine was always a little broader in terms of the mainstream. Getting both of a month provided all the information and guidance I needed regarding my music purchases and what was happening. I always loved Q Magazine because of the glossiness and the thickness – one got great value for money with so many beautiful pages and a variety of articles. If you wanted the latest reviews or interviews with the big stars of the day, I would always turn to Q Magazine!
For me, perfection was grabbing a copy of Q, going to a local coffee shop, and devouring the pages as I drank – and then taking it home and re-reading as much as possible! Though I admit I did not buy the magazine as much post-2000 as I did between, say, 1994-1999, I have bought the magazine steadily, and I have also looked at editions from the 1980s and can only imagine how exciting it would have been working for the magazine back then! Even though the Internet and streaming services changed Q Magazine in terms of its popularity and the sort of artists they were featuring, I don’t think there were radical changes from the 1990s/early-2000s to now. Q has always been about covering Pop, Rock and other genres, and it is not quite as cutting-edge as NME or as deep as MOJO. I think some of the best work the magazine has produced has occurred in the past few years, and I have discovered so many new acts through them. The loss of Q Magazine will be felt more by the smaller acts rather than the cover stars, as the latter can make it onto pretty much any magazine or website. It is the smaller artists who get a huge boost from featuring in Q that will be hit hardest. Also, the talented and committed team who have lost their jobs will be bereft!
The final edition of Q Magazine arrives on 28th July (Tuesday), so make sure that you buy it, as it will be a historic item that will be looked back on decades from now. Whether Q’s premature end signals the fold of the music press as we know it, I am not so sure. I do feel other magazines will close in the coming years, but I do think that things are not entirely bleak. It has been a very sad week, and it seems strange that Q will not be on the newsagent shelves anymore. Even if I did not buy the magazine one month, I would always gaze at the cover and smile. Since 1986, Q Magazine has been a staple of the British music press, and there are countless iconic covers that stand in the mind; in edition to some more-recent ones – I have tried to put a few of the best in this feature. So many people like me who grew up reading the magazine will feel the loss hard, but the memories and good times Q has given us all cannot be taken away! Without them, I don’t think I would have been as fascinated in music, and I sort of got my first taste of music journalism reading the pages of the magazine. I wish that we could go back in time and preserve Q but, after thirty-four years, it bows out. Q Magazine was more than a monthly fix: it was almost an institution that, whilst slightly less relevant in the last decade, has provided a platform for new acts, and has it has given so much joy to so many people. As the final edition of Q Magazine is about to make its way to us, it is clear that we will…
NEVER see their like again.