Melody Maker (1926 – 2001)

Founded in 1926 by Leicester-born composer and music publisher Lawrence Wright, Melody Maker was one of the earliest British weekly music newspapers.

The publication mainly covered jazz until Chris Welch and Ray Coleman applied deeper perspectives to American-influenced local rock and pop groups as the 1960s progressed, bolstered by classified ads for musicians and reviews of musical equipment.

The publication retained its large classified ads section until the very end and remained the first call for British musicians wanting to form a band.

By the late 1960s, Melody Maker targeted an older market than its biggest rival, the teen-oriented New Musical Express, and by the early 1970s, the paper was considered “the musos’ journal”.

By 1983, though, the magazine had become more populist and pop-orientated, exemplified by its modish “MM” masthead and regular covers for the likes of Duran Duran.

In February 1984, Allan Jones (a staff writer on the paper since 1974) was appointed editor. He defied instructions to put Kajagoogoo on the cover, instead leading the magazine with an article on the up-and-coming band The Smiths.

In 1986, MM was invigorated by the arrival of a group of journalists, including Simon Reynolds and David Stubbs, who had run a music fanzine called Monitor from the University of Oxford, and Chris Roberts, from Sounds, who established MM as a more individualistic and intellectual publication.

Allan Jones left in 1997 to start Uncut magazine. Many long-standing writers left, often moving to Uncut, and Melody Maker ultimately merged with long-term rival NME in January 2001.