Nov 26 2009 5:26 pm, JJ Dunning
It’s January: The Western world might be wobblin’ and a-wibblin’ in the wake of the September 11th attacks, but there are still a few reasons to be cheerful this year. For the royalists, there’s HM The Queen’s Golden Jubilee in June, celebrating 50 years on the fancy chair in the funny expensive hat. For the rock royalists, there’s a new show starting on MTV called ‘The Osbournes’ that promises plenty of annoyingly shrill arguments and a few hundred chihuahuas. For the football fans there’s the World Cup in Japan & South Korea, and of course, there’s the lingering anticipation of the new Guns N’ Roses album, rumoured to be titled ‘Chinese Democracy’. We waited patiently all last year for it, so it’s bound to turn up in 2002, right?
HI! Bands who formed in 2002: Arctic Monkeys, The Automatic, Be Your Own Pet, Brakes, Death From Above 1979, Dirty Projectors, Girls Aloud, The Killers, MGMT, The Magic Numbers, The Ordinary Boys, Razorlight, Wild Beasts.
BYE! Bands who split in 2002: Cast, Fugazi (and nothing in between, apparently).
Album of the year: The Libertines ‘Up The Bracket’
Two word review: Las Ketchup’s ‘The Ketchup Song’ "HELP! ME!"
Mercury Prize winner: Ms. Dynamite ‘A Little Deeper’
Deaths: Jon Lee, Feeder drummer, 33, Zac Foley, EMF bassist, 33, Layne Staley, Alice In Chains singer, 34, Dudley Moore comedian/pianist, 66, Waylon Jennings, country musician, 64, Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes, TLC member, 30, Dee Dee Ramone, bassist, The Ramones, 54, Jon Entwistle, The Who, 57, Mary Hansen, Stereolab singer, 36, Jam-Master Jay, Run DMC, 37, Lonnie Donegan, skiffle musician, 71, Joe Strummer, The Clash, 50.
The Fly covers:
If you thought 2001 started badly, take a look at this:
It is actually beyond description, so instead I will break down what the composite face is made of.
Hair: That blonde-tinged Hoxton fin is property of Travis’ Fran Healy.
Eyes: Those one-eye-ok, one-eye-wonky, eyes belong to Radiohead’s Thom Yorke.
Nose: Property of blood-fiend rocker Andrew W.K.
Chin: Bumlord chinsworth Mr. Tim Burgess.
Torso/jacket: Liam Gallagher.
Turning to page 22 of this issue reveals a confusing round-up of the year’s goings-on done in a mock-tabloid style, complete with Sun-esque headlines, and a totally-made-up ‘Dear Damon’ page where the Blur frontman acts as an Agony Uncle. It’s bizarre.
Then editor Will Kinsman explains it thus, “Myself and Matt Everitt [then deputy editor] came up with [the tabloid feature concept], over half a dozen pints of ‘Beater in the Queens, up the road from the Primrose Hill office… Not sure who thought of the composite face image, though I know the Guildhall Theatre somewhere (Portsmouth?) wrote to me to say they’d had to remove it from their foyer because it was scaring the children coming to see the pantomime!” Brilliant. There will be more from Kinsman later though, as there was worse to come in 2002. Much worse.
You don’t even have to wait that long. For example, take February’s Electric Soft Parade cover. Never has the magazine trodden the line between the sublime and the ridiculous so expertly. The entire basis of the feature was that the band were in Paris, having a chat with Will Kinsman. This did indeed happen. However, there was no budget to send a photographer with Will, so, ingeniously, he hooked up with the band a week later on Primrose Hill, sat them down on a park bench armed with nothing but a string of onions and a couple of croissants, and took some anonymous-looking shots with lots of anonymous-looking sky. To the layman, this might have initially looked like bad photography, but it was in fact a deliberate ploy that enabled our designer to photoshop in the Eiffel tower, and, for one of the smaller shots, a couple of whole baguettes.
“The worst cover photo ever?” asks Kinsman, “A string of onions and a superimposed Eiffel Tower were never going to make Primrose Hill look like Gay Paris.”
We’re more worried about the fact that Tom White’s head looks like it’s been warped by early nineties computer tech. HE IS GAMESMASTER!
Next up is March, and the cover stars are Gomez, a group unfairly characterised by current Fly editor Niall Doherty as, “four-eyed student layabouts with one blues riff and a croaky throat”. Either way, March 2002 was the first of their two Fly covers. And Niall’s never had a Fly cover. So there.
The Cooper Temple Clause make April’s cover, transformed into a very-orange-indeed cartoon where one of them looks like a chipmunk, whilst May brings us “The” Doves who have always been known as Doves and never “The” Doves, but fuck it, we’re in charge here. Then there’s June, which follows the uber-orange lead of April but instead decides that pink is the proper colour in which to drown a picture of Muse, who for some reason we can’t swear in front of, so the coverline reads “Flippin’ ‘eck, it’s Muse!”. Hmm. We can’t use g’s or h’s either, so it seems. July is Idlewild, who at this point in time it’s important to remember were all set to suddenly become the transatlantic Scots-based indie-pop sensation of the decade. Instead, that honour befell Snow Patrol. Life just isn’t fair, is it?
August and September show off The Streets (our interview was with someone called ‘Mark Skinner’ – as typos go, it’s a pretty good one) and The Music, whilst October’s mag manages to fit 15 people on the cover of an A5 magazine; it’s more through necessity than a wacky record-breaking attempt though, as The Polyphonic Spree are our early winter tips for the top.
November is Feeder, who reflect on the tragic loss of their close friend and drummer, Jon Lee, who committed suicide at his Miami home in January of that year.
Then, just as The Fly is about to sign out on a poignant and tasteful note:
…the December/January joint issue lands with a big splash.
Here’s Kinsman again, “We wanted to do an awards-type issue, so we could write about the best bands of the year, but didn’t want it to be too serious. I can’t actually remember who came up with the idea of a golden poo, but certainly Ben [Wachenje, designer] was well up for it, and rushed down to the local joke shop to buy the poo (which was subsequently sprayed gold), some little plastic flies to have buzzing around it (the Fly link – clever, eh!?!), and the base on which to mount it all on. He built it, photographed it, photoshopped out the wires holding up the flies, then superimposed it on all the photos of the bands. ”
It might have been a stinker of an idea, but at least there is a sliver of logic operating behind it. Albeit rubbish logic. Plus, talking to Will now, it’s possible to detect a background level of conviction in the idea.
“I can’t remember who won what, but I do remember that we allowed the bands to choose which category they won. Actually, and I know this goes against perceived wisdom, but I really don’t think it was that bad! Okay, a turd may not be the best sales pitch, but it was far from being the worst cover we ever did…"
