Music journalism, deference and dad | thearticle

My late father, the journalist, music critic and publisher Alan Walsh (pictured left) was lucky enough to stake his professional claim in the pyrotechnical, crazy world of the 1960s pop

scene. Dad was from one of the poorest parts of Liverpool, West Derby, but had a stroke of luck when he picked up his pen at about the same time as Lennon picked up a guitar. When the Fab

Four left Liverpool in the direction of London, my dad was on the vapour trail. When Alan Walsh joined _Melody Maker, _his editor, the invariably thirsty Jack Hutton, sent him out on what

they used to call a “glass hammer” rite of passage. Dad’s earliest mission was to interview Tony Bennett, with an accompanying instruction to ask the crooner why he always sang out of key.

The interview did not end well. In fact, it ended early. And we still have no answer to that question. Tony Bennett continues to sing flat; I’m beginning to suspect that he always will. My

father’s job, in conjunction with my mother’s endearing eccentricity, furnished us with a pleasantly unusual childhood. Our house in north London became a sort of salon, through which the

rich and famous would process, many of them as perplexed as my parents were by the nature of their fame. One family friend, Gerry Dorsey, aka Engelbert Humperdinck, was once released and let

go into the cold night of Mill Hill because he had, frankly, overstayed his welcome that Friday night and my parents wanted to go to sleep. He was back the next week. Only to be turfed out

again. To be boring has always been a red card offence in the mind of my mother. Dad, similarly, took no prisoners. He once asked the singer from Manfred Mann out for a fight; terminated an

interview with Jim Morrison because he was drunk (Morrison, not my dad); and told Debbie Harry that she looked like she’d been up all night “horizontal jogging” (she confirmed that she had

been). He became good friends with Louis Armstrong: they sent each other laxatives through the post (no, me neither). There is a professional conceit on the part of contemporary journalism

that it represents a departure from a previously deferential age. This is not correct. The music journalists of the 60s and 70s did not give a stuff about the wealth and status of the people

they were interviewing. They were too busy partying with them. And that failure to acknowledge an artificial divide between interviewer and interviewee is what made that journalism so

special. And so authentic. A good interview is also a conversation. When an interview flows it’s because the egos of the interlocutors are subsumed within a wider exchange. In the 1980s

Bryan Magee hosted a television series, _The Great Philosophers_, in which he would interview a noted contemporary philosopher and invite them to offer an exegesis of the thought of a Kant,

say, or a Wittgenstein. Many of those interviewed — actually, all of them — were more than aware of their own cleverness, but Magee was able to turn their attention away from themselves and

in the direction of truth. Magee was not a brilliant philosopher in his own right but was a fan. And he was attuned to the rhythms of the conversation he was hosting. Magee got the best out

of his interviewees because the normal protocols of the interview were not in place. It was never a tutor-pupil thing. When he spoke with Bernard Williams on Kant, or John Searle on

Wittgenstein, it was Kant and Wittgenstein who were centre stage. Similarly, when my dad, with his burly and uncompromising presence, interviewed George Harrison (which he did, frequently)

it was the music of the Beatles that became central to the discussion. He wasn’t, frankly, interested in the quotidian life choices of any specific “star”. It’s not like that now. Our

journalistic class looks at those who govern us through the prism of deference. Mediocrities like Matt Hancock are allowed to perform their tired old hits without fear of any genuine

interrogation. Boris Johnson, who is at best — in musical terms — a sort of end-of-pier tribute act, is not even asked where he gets his songs from. Our journalists have reinstated a system

of compliance which my father’s generation, the old school, did so much to unpick.  I hope that at the next Downing St “press briefing” some _ingenue_ journalist is sent in with her own

glass hammer and deploys it to dramatic effect. And I hope also that the day will arrive when journalists and those they interview will be able to get drunk together. Deference is dangerous;

drunkenness dissolves it. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now

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