»It’s got to be about quality, because if it isn’t about quality, I’m not interested.«

I just left Condé Nast and I was speaking to my agent about what I should do next, as I tend to do a book a year, and he said that it’s time to my memoir. And I said, well, I’ve got no interest in writing my memoir, but he kept pressing and got a deal for the book. So, I wrote the book and when I finished it, I showed it to five people. To my wife, my two daughters, my agent and the editor who bought the book and they all said, you have to make it more personal. So, then I went away and spent another three months making it more personal.

I write very quickly and I’m very efficient with my time, so all in all, it really didn’t take me more than a year.

Yes it was. I certainly didn’t have any qualms about any particular aspect of my life. I just was initially reluctant because I wasn’t sure that they were of any interest, but I enjoyed it, absolutely

I was very aware that if someone was going to pick it up and buy this book, that it needed to be entertaining. And so hopefully a lot of the perhaps some of the more trivial or more glamorous parts of the book are probably the parts that I enjoyed most, because it’s fun to write the anecdotes. If you’re going to tell those stories, they have to land properly, they have to be edited properly.

I think with Terry, I learned that you could be chaotic in a positive way, and I love the fact that he was very much a kind of  “we’ll go and do it then” kind of a person. Plus, he was incredibly enthusiastic. He was very good at nurturing young people and getting the best out of them. And with Nick, I think I learned diligence, carefulness, and attention to detail. In some respect, the opposite of Terry, but no less influential.

I think it previously was an instinct because I was part of it, and it’s now morphed into the latter because I’m no longer involved in that way. And because I’m older and I have different aspirations. You do develop a kind of intellectual instinct for it. I was very aware that when I was at a certain age that it helped enormously to be immersed in something and we very much were.

Yes, kind of, because the acid house was fascinating, but it was a real gear change. It was a response to everything else that had been happening in the 80s. Plus it was fuelled by drugs, which I wasn’t particularly interested in. But when Britpop happened, it wasn’t just about music, it was about the everything – about sport, politics, literature and art. It was about a general sort of upswing in British culture, and it gave a coherent and kind of comprehensive heft, which I think was very important. It really has become as emblematic and culturally fascinating as the 60s.

There was a certain amount of knowledge and a certain amount of arrogance that we knew that we weren’t just writing about our iteration of Swinging London, that we were actually part of it. But in hindsight, I think this time is more important today in some respects than we thought at the time. And I don’t say that with arrogance at all. I just think the confluence of cultures contributed to an incredibly rich and fertile period.

»We certainly put our head above the parapet to a certain extent, but we became a product and an idea that you couldn’t ignore.«

I think it had more to do with ambition. As I started to work at the magazine, I realized, that if we really pushed it, we could really do something special. It could have been any vehicle, I think, so there was a Trojan horse aspect in it. We used that to forge a way into the culture, make the culture and to become brash and confrontational. Trying to reflect what was going on and to change it as well and I think to a certain extent we achieved that. We certainly put our head above the parapet to a certain extent, but we became a product and an idea that you couldn’t ignore. Then that became very powerful.

Yes, I think so. My policy has always been the same. If you’re happy with the people you’ve got, great. If you’re not, then you change that. But if you are happy with the people you’ve got, you basically paint the picture. You draw the road, and you say, this is where we’re going, and this is what I expect you to do. And then you kind of leave people alone.

I believe in attention to detail, but I don’t believe in micromanaging people. I believe in hiring the right people. There are always niggles and not everything runs smoothly, of course. In the end it’s all always about the product. I always focus on how we can make the product better. It’s got to be about quality, because if it isn’t about quality, I’m not interested.

Bowie was obviously a huge inspiration, a man I got to know in a way. He was fantastic. I’ve enjoyed meeting lots of people and I’ve taken bits from people and been influenced by particular people, but not in a major way. As a journalist, it is difficult and dangerous to be intimidated and flattered by encounters with people.

It was. As I say in the book, it was perfect because she’d been interviewed thousand times and didn’t care that I was working for the Sunday Times. But she wasn’t dismissive. She was just doing her job, and she was thoroughly pleasant. It’s yet another example of the really good people, the ones who have been around forever.

It’s often if you interview someone who’s been famous for five minutes, they can be extremely difficult to handle because they’re believing their own publicity. But if you have the status of a legend and have been around for a while, you’re usually very relaxed and pleasant.

I think probably the best book is the Bowie book (“David Bowie – A Life”) because it’s written in a quite unorthodox way, and I think it does show sides of him that haven’t been reflected elsewhere. I enjoyed writing the book about the New Romantics (”Sweet Dreams”) because I think it is a time that has not been reflected upon in a sufficiently substantial way.

When I wrote the Bowie book, which was quite successful, my agent asked me what kind of book I wanted to do next, and I told him about my idea of writing a book about the song “Wichita Lineman”. You can imagine what my agent thought of the idea. But that “terrible idea” got commissioned, I enjoyed writing it, it had some considerable success and critical acclaim. So, in the end I was pleased.

The challenges are always people because there’s a certain amount of attrition, which is never nice. It’s about structural changes and of course a lot of challenges day by day.

I think there’s a regenerative quality to London and each generation manages to throw up a fascinating mix of young people who like going to dark corners of the city and breaking things. I’m not one of these people who says my decade was better than your decade, or my pop music is better than your pop music. I’m of the belief that what’s happening now will maybe already be of equal importance, if not greater importance than decades beforehand. London continues to surprise us and itself. I think it’s an extraordinary city.

I quite like the New Yorker. A lot of British an American newspapers of very good of course. I like The Spectator and The Economist are quite good, but I’m not a fan of lifestyle fashion magazines anymore. Most of them seem to have lost their way. The only interesting one seemed to be the small circulation ones, the idiosyncratically ones, the ones that deliberately are kind of left field. I think most orthodox magazines now are pretty poor.

Elvis! He was the first iteration of postwar pop cultural success. I would have loved to have sat down with Elvis for an afternoon, that would have been fascinating. He could not have failed to be fascinating.

It was actually Paul’s idea. We’d done a couple of podcasts in 2020 post lockdown. He’d obviously enjoyed them and decided that he wanted to do a book. And I was the lucky recipient of his largesse at the time.

I mean, Paul is very particular in the way that Van Morrison can be particular, and he has a reputation for being kind of grumpy and dismissive. But he isn’t really. He just doesn’t suffer fools gladly and like to do his work and talk about his work. I loved doing the project. It was great as it had a lot of freedom. He was largely very forthcoming, and I felt very lucky in order to be able to do it, actually.

Oh, man, without any warning off the top of my head?! Let’s see. “Wichita Lineman” by Glen Campbell, “Mother of Pearl” by Roxy Music, “Can you hear me” by David Bowie, “Police and Thieves” by The Clash and “Edith and the Kingpin” by Joni Mitchell. There you go (smiles).