The Rise & Fall Of Western Civilisation (or Why Q Magazine Went Crap)

Arrrggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh.
That's better.
Hang on.
Arrgggggaggggghhhhhhhh.

Q magazine. Grrrrr. What the hell went wrong there? Why would I bother spending nearly £4 for a vapid glossy photorag full of large print articles, thinly veiled corporate advertising masquerading as articles , 20 word CD reviews and Top 100 lists of songs to download for your IPod every month? I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore!

It wasn't always like this. I bought my first issue of Q back in November 1986, when I was in my first year of sixth form. I still bought "Smash Hits" in those days, it had reached it's peak and hadn't yet entered the downward spiral into SAW-era bubblegum pop, but I wasn't totally ready for the grubbly inky world of NME or Sounds just yet. I stumbled across Q, and being a glossy mag junkie (I still am) I gave it a go, despite it being full of middle of the road post-Live Aid rockers such as McCartney and Bruce Springsteen, as it also had indepth stuff on current bands and what's more, it had... text. Loads of it. 17 page articles about Elton John's outrageous antics in the 70s, indepth features about "The Comic Strip Presents...", Scorsese movies... it was an oasis of info in the pre-internet age. It would take me a couple of weeks to devour every word written by the likes of ex-Smash Hits men Mark Ellen & David Hepworth, as well as the indepth reviews of these new fangled CD things. It soon became my bible. Hey, my first adult magazine (and I'm not talking about Bongo mags).

As the 90s came, young rival upstarts such as "Vox" & "Select" arrived on the block, covering the new indie baggy/grunge scenes, but Q plodded on with Dire Straits tour diaries & Kate Bush exclusives, never dumbing down but becoming a bit "dad-rock", before Kurt Cobain's death & the arrival of Britpop kicked it's arse into gear. Helpfully, MOJO magazine had been created by Hepworth at EMAP at this time to take a bit of the weight of the old guard off Q's shoulders, allowing it to concentrate on the bright young things such as Blur & Oasis. By the mid 90s I was reading every music mag out, but Q still had the edge as the quality of writing was still there.

So we get to the end of the century ("Oh, it's nothing special" as Albarn would say), Melody Maker's bit the dust, Vox had gone silent, Select was dying post-Diana, but like the Duracell bunny, Q goes on, complete with new associated interwebsitethingy, but an alarming downturn in quality. No longer did it take me a while to read. The reviews were becoming strangely shorter, an alarming number of issues were full of filler such as "100 best..." lists, and the writing was bitty, as if the average reader had an attention span of a gnat. This style permeated much of the other music titles, with the NME becoming more unreadable, as the online version became more popular.

Hepworth & Ellen noticed that there was a gap in the market for a title that would resurrect the spirit & content that the original Q created, and thus "Word" magazine was born. At this point I realised that my relationship with Q was dying and it was time to move on.

It's maybe harsh to blame Q when most magazines have gone the same way, with most of the men's market being the worst culprits (you know, "Loaded" was once very readable & intelligent... compared to now when your might as well get "Mayfair" and be honest), and maybe it's me getting older and more nostalgic for "simpler" times, but 20 years on, me and Q have separated. We may meet up every now and again but frankly, I think we've both moved on, for the better in my case.