The History of the NME

July 2, 2012
For 60 years, England's New Music ExpressâNME for shortâhas been delivering weekly salvos on the latest musical developments, alerting fans to the Next Big Thing and keeping them abreast of trends. Here, former NME editor Long blandly chronicles the music weekly's evolution from its early days as the Accordion Times to the present. A seminal influence on the listening habits of British rock fans, NME was the first to compile weekly singles charts and offer free "flexidiscs" (disposable records included in the magazine), in addition to introducing a nation of listeners to all manner of artists. Competition naturally followed, but the magazine outlived many of its contemporaries and persists today. Though the author includes colorful anecdotes of rock ân' roll misbehavior from the likes of Nick Cave, Jimi Hendrix, Joe Strummer (who'd occasionally answer the phones at the office), Lemmy (who'd deliver drugs to the office), and others, Long spends much more time detailing office politics, corporate machinations, and rampant drug use among the staff than dishing dirt about the rockers they chronicled. Devout readers familiar with some of the paper's legendary staffers like Nick Kent will likely find this to be a wealth of gossip and trivia, but those hoping for a feast of new stories about Keith Richards or Kurt Cobain will wind up leaving hungry. B&W photos.