“If You Don’t Know The Words You Can’t Sing Along”
Launching Star Hits magazine 1984
“I saw someone get beheaded on my way to work today.”
David Fricke grinned, shook his head and silently nodded at my announcement, before returning to his typewriter. David Keeps and art director Kimberley Leston stared at me, incredulous.
Only Neil Tennant was unfazed. He suppressed a smile.
“Where did this horrifying event occur?”
“42nd Street. You’ve seen those TVs showing previews in front of the movie theaters? Today it was Make Them Die Slowly.”
Beginning in November 1983, after a brief trial period, I showed up at Star Hits every day. Technically I was still a freelancer and paid a day rate, but there was more than enough work to go around. Since I was an early riser and nobody else got to work before ten o’clock, I would occasionally hike from my humble quarters on the lower west side up to the office on East 58th Street, an epic hour-plus journey that wound through any number of Manhattan neighborhoods depending on my chosen route: Chelsea, Gramercy, Murray Hill, Garment District, Hell’s Kitchen, Midtown East. Some days I’d stop for breakfast along the way. Every morning I savored the sights. Even trodding across 42nd Street was revelatory. At nine in the morning, pretty much the same as nine at night, Times Square was low-key terrifying. So I hustled past the grind houses, ignoring the loitering sex laborers and three-card-monte sharks. In sleepless New York City even the low-life hustlers and petty crooks worked around the clock.
After living in Manhattan for three years I knew how to take care of myself. By that point I had internalized a meter for evaluating the danger posed by any vaguely threatening passer-by. My rating system was two-pronged: first I measured a subject’s PDI (Public Display of Insanity) index and then checked for FP (Forensic Potential) bubbling under the surface. In laymen’s terms I trusted my guts and tried to avoid eye contact.
Crossing the street in the business districts was a constant challenge. For an adventurous few, jaywalking was an aesthetic and athletic event, both extreme sport and demented ballet. These daring pedestrians crossed in the snarliest traffic imaginable, bobbing and weaving between delivery trucks, dodging bike messengers, pirouetting past taxicabs, spinning around station wagons and vans, engaging in obscene debates with horn-honking drivers and occasionally, splaying their bodies across a vehicle’s front hood for dramatic effect. Seeing them reach the other side of the street came as a relief, though at the same time it was anti-climatic.
Once I arrived at the office, days rushed by in a pleasurable blur. While the first issue of Star Hits was at the printers the buzz was building. The success of MTV stimulated the record industry’s hunger for publicity. New print media outlets were needed to publicize the new bands, so Star Hits was perfectly poised. At the office morale was high. We were swept away on a wave of music-biz perks and hard work.
Telephones rang non-stop with pleas and entreaties from record company publicists. They didn’t necessarily grasp the concept behind the magazine yet intuited that their clients needed to get in — whether they fit or not. We patiently tried to explain why bestselling metal acts like The Scorpions or Quiet Riot weren’t quite right and prayed that the first issue would make this clear. It was difficult at times just getting people to remember our names, or translate Neil and Kimberley’s English accents.
Neil Tennant was an active musician himself when he assumed the helm at Star Hits, although he kept a tight lid on discussing these aspirations at his day job. While he worked at the magazine, as it happened, Neil and his musical partner Chris Lowe also stayed active in the recording studio, cutting tracks with the eccentric dance music producer Bobby “O” Orlando. By 1986, when Neil and Chris were back in England, having respectively left behind journalism and architecture, they found fame and fortune as the Pet Shop Boys. One of the tracks they recorded while Neil was working in New York was a prototype of their hit “West End Girls.” But back at the Star Hits office in late 1983, nobody would’ve guessed there was a future pop star on staff.
Despite, or perhaps because of, his own musical ambitions (which he modestly kept under wraps), Neil maintained a complex relationship with the idea of stardom. He specialized in a nuanced version of mockery that included affection as well contempt for the target. Humor informed his stinging critique of rock and roll clichés, as opposed to the pretentious gravity of many “serious” rock critics on either side of the Atlantic. Neil was capable of bursting into pomposity-skewering irony or sarcasm at the slightest provocation. Most delicious was his impersonation of a faux-populist English rock-star on stage: HALLO NEW YORK!
But on another level he meant it, baby. Both Neil and Kimberley, as far as I could ascertain, were genuinely thrilled to be in New York.
I remember them as a pair (not a couple): Kimberley was warm and friendly from the first, not quite as wry as Neil but possessed of the same razor-sharp sensibility and pretension-poking sense of humor. She was also empathetic and encouraging without ever being corny about it. (She was English, after all.) Kimberley and Neil both exhibited, dare I say, enthusiasm for New York City, a winning engagement with the city. They were eager to explore and embrace each new experience. They wanted to maximize their New York sojourn and were willing to let me. tag along at times I don’t know how much we went out together, it probably wasn’t that often but the evenings we shared together were special. Their keenness for the city was contagious, it rubbed off on everyone they came in contact with.
They called me “mad” in the English sense of crazy, not angry. “Mark you’re mad,” they’d exclaim when a volcanic opinion spewed from my corner of the room. In my interpretation, their operative principle was: be deadly serious about your work but don’t take yourself too seriously. Neil Tennant and Kimberley Leston instructed me, by example and implication, that it’s more creatively challenging to apply your talents to an opportunity at hand rather than hold out for some purist ideal.
*
The Pyramid Club, on Avenue A near 6th Street, was a dark narrow parlor where low-rent glamor and total trash were served in the same receptacle. Democratically, male and female go-go dancers shook their respective moneymakers on the bar. Perhaps some of those gyrating and grinding girls were guys in drag? Nobody cared. The vibe was outrageous, all-encompassing, down and dirty fun. Plenty of posing on view but the mood was less rigorous, less judgmental than the reigning attitude at other contemporaneous downtown hotspots. Live music and decadent cabaret performances occurred in the back room, providing a focus and font of energy not to mention giving people something to talk about.
One night I entered with the Star Hits gang: Keeps, Neil, Kimberly. I ran into an acquaintance from college. He was visiting New York City with several female friends from the midwest. When he asked what I was doing, I replied with self-conscious modesty, patiently explaining the new magazine. He and the two women he sat with were visibly impressed and I relished their reaction. In unison, they recited the tag line to the Star Hits advertisement that had just started appearing on MTV: “If You Don’t Know The Words You Can’t Sing Along,” referring to the song lyrics reprinted in each issue. Right then and there, I realized we really were onto something.
I also bumped into Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth that night. If they were skeptical when I described the new magazine to them it didn’t register, or more likely New Pop wasn’t even a blip on their finely tuned underground radar. They were eager to see the evening’s entertainment, Jim “Foetus” Thirwell, who writhed on the ground a la Iggy to abrasive taped accompaniment. They sincerely congratulated me on the new job and I insisted on buying them beers. I was totally feeling my oats.
David Fricke wasn’t at the Pyramid that night; straight-ahead rock and sweaty late night sets at CBGB were more his speed. But he was undoubtedly present the night David Keeps dragged Neil and Kimberley to Folk City, where the Music for Dozens series presented the cream of indie rock. The top-billed band was The Knitters (John and Exene of X in country-rock mode) which, unsurprisingly, wasn’t their cup of tea. At all.
Neil and Kimberley shared my passion for the hip-hop Friday shows at the Roxy roller rink, especially Neil, who also accompanied David Keeps to the full range of gay dance spots, absorbing the sights and sounds. Neil didn’t mention his incipient Pet Shop Boys project (to me) until just before he left for London in early 1984. My going away present was a 12-inch single of “West End Girls,” the original, unreleased version.
Neil liked to insist that Shannon’s then-current dance floor hit, the bittersweet and irresistible “Let The Music Play,” was “possibly the greatest pop song ever recorded.” Well, at least until the next one came along. Further amusement was provided by Neil’s biting impersonations of various record-company people. He found “rock and roll chicks” decked out in leather mini-skirts to be absurd, anachronistic holdovers from a bygone era. While I still harbored a not-so-secret fondness for “dinosaur rock” I appreciated the point behind Neil’s barbs and absolutely agreed about the profundity of “Let The Music Play.” Popular music was moving on and you either changed or got left behind.
The first full-length article I contributed to Star Hits appeared in the second issue, dated February 1984. It was an interview feature on the group Madness. The piece turned out fine, rendered in the trademarked Smash Hits fashion, but getting there turned out to be no fun at all. This excruciating interview taught me a lesson about journalism if not life itself.
Now We Are Six: England’s magnificent seven, Madness, cope with the loss of founding member Mike Barson. Whither now the nutty boys wonders Mark Coleman.
The musical circus called Madness has always lived up to its name. From the snazzy reggae-flavored ska of “One Step Beyond” (which kicked off their career in England) to humorous pop portraits like “Our House” (which broke them in the States), Madness sound like they’re having a blast and playing music at the same time. These seven young Brits just have a way of drawing in listeners and making them feel like part of the celebration, too.
Better make that six young Brits. Just when Madness’ much-awaited Keep Moving LP hit the streets, keyboardist Mike Barson announced that he was leaving the group he founded. That’s a tough break for any band, but for a group whose friendship was a big part of the sound, it could have been fatal. How will singers Carl Smyth and “Suggs” McPherson, bassist Mark Bedford, guitarist C.J. Foreman, saxist Lee Thompson and drummer Woody Woodgate carry on?
Sire Records resided on 54th Street just off Fifth Avenue, spread across several floors of a slim high-rise. It was a different world indeed from the Lower East Side flats where I’d interviewed the likes of Bush Tetras, Sonic Youth and Bad Brains for New York Rocker. Exuding professional friendliness, which I found neither seductive nor off-putting, one of the the label’s publicists guided me into a shag-carpeted conference room.
Vocalists Carl Smyth and Graham “Suggs” McPherson hunched over an upright piano in the corner of the room: toying with the ivories rather than tickling them, I’d say. Straight away, they admitted to abruptly cancelling the American tour that brought them here — because they couldn’t find a suitable pianist to substitute for the departed musical mastermind Mike Barson. They were quotably honest about their uncertain future, and once my polite probing was out of the way, they were obviously relieved to recount past glories for the duration of the interview.
We chatted for nearly an hour and I quietly decided it had proceeded rather well. “Hey I’m really hitting it off with these guys!” When the publicist re-entered the room, I turned to greet her and the two Madness members drifted back to the piano for more tuneless tinkling. I packed up the tape recorder and prepared to leave. Before I could say goodbye and thanks, “Suggs” asked the publicist where to find some authentic New York pizza and I piped up: “John’s on Bleecker Street is fantastic!”
My suggestion wasn’t acknowledged. Nor was my presence in the room. As though I no longer existed! I tiptoed out, humbled beyond words. Maybe I overreacted, but the experience burned a tattoo on my brain: POP STARS ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS.
That anti-fraternizing mantra stuck during my subsequent years of interviewing musicians. It kept me unpretentious, preventing my head from getting turned around by exposure to the grand trappings of (minor) fame. But harboring a slightly suspicious outlook toward my subjects possibly came across as hostile, or even repellant. Ultimately, I’d like to believe this attitude gave me an aura of transparency. If pop stars weren’t my friends, I wasn’t trying to befriend them either. I was there to do a job.
The mail started arriving in sacks. We piled them like sandbags near the office front door. 1984 rolled in with a flourish; Star Hits was a success.
The deluge began after the first issue had been out for about a week: hundreds of letters-to-the-editor and, eventually, thousands of entries for the Meet Duran Duran! Contest. These brightly colored envelopes almost always came inscribed with the names of the correspondent’s favorite bands, rendered in ornate calligraphy. You couldn’t truly comprehend the lasting impact of Seventies punk rock in the Eighties until you saw “Sid Lives” scrawled on Garfield stationary.
Sorting Star Hits mail provided quick cash for our underemployed journalist friends and some local college students. Several of the latter became interns and a few graduated to writing for the magazine, most spectacularly Suzan Colon. But incorporating the former into the mix proved tricky when not impossible. The most difficult thing about editing Star Hits was explaining the house style for freelancers; covering New Pop with the appropriate panache was intuitive, a gut-level process.
We soon realized that readers imagined Star Hits as part of a glamorous, exotic pop-star firmament when in reality the magazine was produced by a small colony of worker ants confined in a sterile high-rise office tower. The remarkable thing to me now is the tiny size of the staff, maybe a total of ten people doing art, editorial and business, plus a handful of freelance writers. Even with some leased Smash Hits content, there were always dozens of competing tasks to juggle. But we were young and ambitious, so putting out Star Hits never seemed like anything less than a golden opportunity.
David Keeps lived around the corner from me in Chelsea, so together we’d take the E train to work and start talking shop right away. One of my regular duties was transcribing the song lyrics that ran in each issue. Music publishers provided us with printed “official” lyrics that invariably were wrong, often comically. ’d check the printed lyrics against the recording, with headphones and Walkman since promo LPs and advance cassettes of upcoming releases blared all day on the office stereo. Depending on the deadline cycle, we’d also be assigning, interviewing, reviewing, proofreading, not to mention conducting endless negotiations with record company publicists.
There was no typical day but most were filled with humor. We maintained a full storehouse of in-jokes, running gags and comic routines. David Fricke wielded a sardonic dry wit; David Keeps was exuberant and insane in a good way. I’ll never forget the snowy day when we all got soaked on the way into the office. Apparently Keeps took off his trousers, setting them on the radiator to dry while his bare legs went undetected under the desk. The phones started ringing as soon as we sat down, and an hour or two passed until Keeps leapt up to make a copy in the next room. He sauntered across our microscopic shared space, displaying a colorful, loudly patterned pair of boxer shorts. David Fricke looked up from his desk, cracked a faint smile and then shouted: “YOU’RE IN YOUR UNDERWEAR! PUT YOUR PANTS ON DAVID!”
Maybe you had to be there…
For the most part we avoided using pseudonyms to mask the scant number of contributors. There were two notable exceptions. The Bold Type answered letters-to-the-editors, blending sagacious wit, groaning puns, curt rejoinders and campy humor in equal doses. I won’t reveal his identity though it should be obvious. But I must confess to being “Jackie,” the Ms. Know-it-All answering music trivia questions in Get Smart. (Kimberley Leston’s picture ran at the top of the column.) I tried to be accurate as humanly possible, though on deadline we probably made up a few of the questions.
*
As the months proceeded even rock critics — those professional grumps — arrived at a rough consensus: 1984 was a golden year for hit singles, one of the all-time best. MTV played no small part in stimulating this New Pop renaissance. Though music video itself remained controversial to some, few critics or civilian listeners had any doubt that the new medium, and the cable TV outlet that propelled it into national consciousness, was largely responsible for breathing new life into the Billboard Top 40.
The following playlist is the best proof I can offer for this theory.
Prince — “When Doves Cry”
Tina Turner — “What’s Love Got To Do With It”
Van Halen — “Jump”
Pointer Sisters — “Jump (For My Love)”
Yes — “Owner of a Lonely Heart
Culture Club — “Karma Chameleon”
Dennis Edwards/Sidah Garrett — “Don’t Look Any Further”
Cyndi Lauper — “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”
The Romantics — “Talking In Your Sleep”
Sheila E — “The Glamorous Life”
Bruce Springsteen — “Dancing In The Dark”
Thompson Twins — “Hold Me Now”
Madonna — “Borderline”
Chaka Khan — “I Feel For You”
Rockwell — “Somebody’s Watching Me”
Billy Ocean — “Caribbean Queen”
Shannon — “Let The Music Play”
Ollie & Jerry “Breakin’…There’s No Stopping Us”
George Michael — “Careless Whisper”
The Cars — “You Might Think”
Of course, Star Hits went along for the ride. The second and third issues flew off newsstands at the same astronomical rate as the debut. A touch of perspective: ten years later, when I worked at a far more established pop culture magazine, similar non-subscription sales figures (roughly 300,000 copies) were rarely reached, and celebrated as a major coup. While in theory I’m still willing to attribute the smashing early triumph of Star Hits to stellar editorial content, in practice the collateral benefit from MTV is undeniable. And our commercials on MTV helped too, despite or because of the embarrassing and effective tagline. You Can’t Sing Along If You Don’t Know The Words, and vice versa.
Of course every supernova eventually scatters in space and fades away. The Top 40 stayed strong throughout 1984, but sales of Star Hits flagged sometime during late spring or early summer. Not fatally, but the fell enough to cause grave concern among Felix Dennis and his partners. And Felix didn’t hesitate to make his concern felt among the editorial staff. Dramatically.
*
By that point we were functioning as a unit, albeit an idiosyncratic one. And personally we grew close in the process, possibly insular, not that there was much of an alternative since there were so few of us. Neil Tenannt and Kimberley Leston returned to London early in the year, bumping me up the masthead to associate editor. Graphic designer Phoebe Cresswell-Evans, a veteran of previous FelDen ventures who’d come over with Neil and Kimberley, remained in New York with her oft-impenetrable Welsh accent and mordant wit ever at the ready. She was dirty-blonde, bony, thin, fine-featured with a crinkly smile. I’ll always treasure the day that Phoebe, normally a retiring sort, wordlessly presented me with a list of all the synonyms for “to say” that we’d deployed in Star Hits articles to date: “she chortled” “he barked” etc. That document immediately went up on the office wall amid the posters and photos, serving as entertainment, indictment and important reminder. Don’t try to be too clever.
Replacing Kimberley was Ronnie Meckler, better known as Wippo. Passionate and talented in both art and music, Wippo hurled yet another gregarious element into the high-energy office blend. He was creative, hilarious, hard-working and marvelously expressive, with a malleable rubber face. Relocated from Los Angeles for the art director position, Wippo camped out on the office couch for weeks while he looked for an apartment. He didn’t have much choice but to dive in head-first. As fellow Detroit natives and style-conscious bon vivants, Wippo and David Keeps were natural soulmates. They formed an odd-couple comedy team that simultaneously annoyed and/or amused any and all innocent bystanders.
Before his influence — bold contrasts and clean lines — could truly register in the magazine’s pages, however, Wippo split. A generous offer from Mademoiselle lured him over to the Conde Nast empire after a month or so. Thirty years later I understand his decision; getting a foot in that big door makes more sense, creatively and career-wise, than struggling at a start-up. But at the time I was not only disappointed, I didn’t get it. Why would Wippo want to leave just when things were heating up? For an associate position at such a staid, traditional publication? Such was my unwavering devotion to the cause. Though my own trajectory in the magazine world would soon trend upward, briefly, I never quite figured out how to be a ruthless, savvy careerist. Maybe my inept, rude behavior toward some of my earliest NYC benefactors had a chastening effect.
One summer morning in 1984, Felix Dennis rolled into the office earlier than usual and convened a staff meeting. Citing a poor-selling issue with The Cars on the cover as the tipping point, David Fricke in turn announced his imminent departure. He seemed relieved, frankly, and so did Felix. We all knew that they’d clashed, to put it mildly, over editorial decisions. And it wasn’t hard to discern that Fricke’s passion resided with the old-school rockers he wrote about elsewhere. (Within months, he was a staff writer at Rolling Stone, a position he held for more than thirty years.) Still, the announcement rattled me, since David and I bonded as friends over the preceding months. (A position we still hold after more than thirty years.) I must’ve worn my surprise on my face, because Fricke interrupted his remarks several times to directly reassure me.
“It’s going to work out fine!”
Truth be told things worked out even better than that, despite the fact Star Hits never again equalled (or came close to) its initial sales surge. Arguably the magazine’s most fecund period — Phase Two — came next.
