How ‘60s pop was sold and the first news stories launching the hits

Joni Mitchell called it “stoking the star-maker machinery behind the popular song”. Every record sent out for review used to come with a press release knocked together by an over-excited PR before terms like “psychedelia” or “prog” had been invented. They were scanned once for the odd fact or quote and usually chucked in the bin. Richard Morton Jack has tracked down scores of these handouts from 1962-1972, and the news stories they sparked, and published them in the sumptuous ‘Pressing News’, a fascinating window into how acts were sold in the days when pop stars liked rump steak, sports cars and “sincere people” but disliked “bad music, traffic wardens and people who say I look like a girl”. We leaf through his book here and talk about ….

... the ingenuity of '60s PRs and why Marc Bolan was a turning point.

… Robert Plant and David Bowie’s genius for self-promotion.

… the pop hopeful whose favourite tipple was tooth-rotting, crystal-based ‘Creamola Foam’.  

… how PRs sold rebels and outsiders.  

… a £900 Olivia Newton-John press release.

… Beta Male pin-ups Nick Drake and Scott Walker.

… confected outrage over the Small Faces’ Lord’s Prayer.

… Joe Cocker, eternally a gas-fitter from Sheffield with “a face like the back of a Sheffield Corporation bus”.

… mysterious pop acts that never made it like the Virgin Sleep, the Accent, Bread Love & Dreams, Fresh Maggots and the Tickle whose songs were supposedly chosen by computer.

 .. the Kinks – “four art students who dress like characters from Dickens”.  

… the promotion of pre-psychedelia Pink Floyd – “a lyrical atmosphere whose words express a feeling rather than tell a story.”

… “the Zombies have 50 GCSE passes between them!” and other press release fiction trotted out in the papers.

… the mass 1966 adoption of the kaftan and Charlie Chan moustache.

Order copies of Pressing News here:

https://lansdownebooks.com/products/pressing-news

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