Animal House

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It depends what time of the day and what drugs. And I guess it depends on the individual taking them. In my experience it’s extremely hard to write on drugs but you can get a good flow going if you’ve had a couple of drinks.”

I was really mercurial,” Brown says. “One minute I would be happy and planning something fun, and the next I’d be chewing somebody out. Quite often that was because something else had happened in my life in between and, instead of being able to understand how to process that, I would take it out on the next person.”

At first this book seemed like it was right up my street, especially given that I had actually completed some work experience as a late teenager at Loaded magazine.

I interviewed the playwright Steven Berkoff for Sounds when I was about 19. He decided he didn’t want to do it after my first question, but didn’t have the manners or know-how to end it politely. I genuinely can’t remember I saw anything about him anywhere.” The sense of peace is a far cry from the mania of the 90s, when Brown was the enfant terrible of UK publishing and founding editor of Loaded, the lads’ mag so notorious that Brown became a celebrity in his own right – a mouthy media presence with a trademark head of curls, fond of bigging himself and his magazine up, and with a reputation for partying hard. Nobody knew I was having serious emotional pressures ... The Loaded staff might be surprised, because my mood swings then were like a sail in a squall I’ve never brushed shoulders with royalty and I’d prefer it if the Royal Family invested a lot of their wealth in helping our schools and health service, so no, I don’t think my political outlook has changed since I was down the front of the Redskins or New Town Neurotics at the Hull Trades and Labour club.” Fast forward to 2022. I’m sat watching the Pet Shop Boys in Hull Bonus Arena with James. He tells me he’s finished his book, the one about the bloke who started Loaded, who went on tour with U2 and was in a ballet with The Fall, who played football with The Cult, drank liquid acid with the Beastie Boys, and discussed the debatable merits of hot or cold lamb over lunch with Michael Caine. Brown notes that he was younger than pretty much all of his staff, and that his mum had died only months before the opportunity to do Loaded arose. “So there was no structure or sense of recuperation. And then – boom! – I create this thing that explodes, and all of the things about me that annoyed people – my ego and my voice and opinions – got fuelled.” I always thought it was like bands when the key member leaves. The songwriter or lead singer. It was my magazine … which everybody else made greatIf you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Now, I'm not sure if it was the experience as mentioned above or the fact that the book just became a tirade of name dropping and self appreciation but it started to become very dislikeable, to the point where I barely finished it. Almost inevitably, he landed a job at the now-deceased music magazine Sounds as a regular writer. Pretty soon, at the age of 22, he was the Features Editor at the legendary NME, which is where I first encountered his work. James’ prose was a kind of turbofuelled psychedelic rant of infectious enthusiasm, like if Hunter S Thompson had been raised in Leeds on a diet of jam sandwiches and amphetamine. As a young devotee of the music press, I hoovered up his every word. I liked it his stuff because it was always enthusiastic, hardly ever snide or self-consciously clever. Any band that James Brown championed was worthy of investigation. You must have received tons of demos from hopeful bands whilst at the NME . What made the best ones stand out?

For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.From 1st July 2021, VAT will be applicable to those EU countries where VAT is applied to books - this additional charge will be collected by Fed Ex (or the Royal Mail) at the time of delivery. Shipments to the USA & Canada: A combination of a great photograph, strong cover lines and good colours. If you get all three you are perfectly set.” Social media, YouTube and podcasts. Far more interaction across a broader media landscape. Print isn’t dead, but it isn’t the big beast it once was.” There were a few too many drug/alcohol related tales in the book for me, however I would also argue that most of them did feel related to a bigger context (e.g. explaining the tone of the magazine through describing drug fuelled trips abroad). James noted that Loaded is now frequently lumped in with the other later 'lad's mags' such as Maxim and Nuts due to it featuring similar content focusing on alcohol and women but that he felt Loaded was above that genre, it was a brief comment but I would be really interested to read his deeper opinion on that and the genre that Loaded arguably spawned whether intended or not.

From dancing down the front at Redskins gigs to brushing shoulders with royalty - has success changed your political outlook at all? It's an inspiring read of a working-class boy who did really well and lived by the motto that anything was possible. After leaving school with no qualifications it's clear that despite all the fun and the carefree attitude that he attempts to portray throughout the book that he grafted very hard for his success. I think James is a good example of the old adage 'make your hobby your job and never work a day in your life'. Being told that when you know you’ve got no control over yourself was a real wake-up moment,” he says. It helped that Condé Nast were waving heaps of money at Brown for him to edit the upmarket fashion magazine GQ, believing it had got stuffy and needed an injection of fun. Still, leaving Loaded was like splitting up with someone, and he didn’t open a copy for a while. There was not much fun in media before we came along. Older editors said we did things they wish they could have done, but anyone could have done it

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