So this is what middle age feels like... The new Observer Music Monthly is the 50th. Of course, we feel less like a superannuated rock bore, more like a fresh-faced expectant pop kid. Less Eric Clapton, more Britney Spears. Or something. The point is, over the last four years we might have made the odd mistake (the 'sensational' Jentina never really recovered after we picked her for our Flash-Forward slot in May 2004, for instance), but we like to think there's been some good stuff. Here's a pretty personal selection of 10 of the pieces we remember most fondly.
1. On the cover of the very first OMM were Blur, photographed with a specially created work by their pal and now ours Banksy. The band were playing the Leeds festival; that morning, a mini-bus set off from London with the magazine's editor, two art directors, a photographer, Blur's pr and the artist. With not much idea of what we were doing. When we reached the festival site, we found there wasn't anywhere really appropriate for Banksy to create one of his pieces, so we drove off again, and found a farm a couple of miles away. Banksy got to work there on the side of a duck shed; the band drove over; Claudia, the photographer, shot them underneath a TV apparently being thrown out a window. Then we all left. As far as we know, that piece of grafitti is still there, cheering up the poultry on one very lucky farmer's farm. BUT, really, our favourite piece from that same issue was this: Peter Culshaw's extraordinary account of heading into into the Central African Republican jungle to find the world's oldest-known form of music. He still hasn't accounted for several hundred pounds worth of receipts, which he still maintains went on bribes.
2. In our third issue, as part of a special celebrating 100 years of the blues, the brilliant Richard Grant hooked up with his chums from the Fat Possum label in Mississippi. Chums? This is how he described visiting R.L Burnside: 'Leaning against one of the cars are three young men with jheri curls and baseball caps, drinking big 40-ounce bottles of Cobra malt liquor at 9.30 in the morning. I nod and say hello. They scowl back and say nothing. A little girl scampers up from under the porch and runs into the big trailer shouting, 'White man here!''
(Grant asks Burnside himself about a man he killed: ''I didn't mean to kill nobody. I just meant to shoot the sonofabitch in the head and two times in the chest. Him dying was between him and the Lord.'')
3. From May 2004, way ahead of the pack, Chris Campion picked up on grime, the new sound of inner city London. It was a piece that showed it's not just on foreign shores that you'll still make new discoveries. (It's not our fault if the scene still hasn't really happened...)
4. Although east London wasn't quite as dangerous as Mexico... as Martin Hodgson discovered in the course of a remarkable piece of reportage, charting the history of the 'narcocorrido' - drug murder ballads.
5. It's not all guns and drugs, mind. Well, maybe the drugs. Here's Noel Gallagher, in conversation with David Walliams for the June 2005 cover story. The band is Spinal Tap. 'Yeah, he thought they were real people. We went to see them play in Carnegie Hall. Before they played, they came on as three folk singers from the film A Mighty Wind. We were laughing and he said: 'This is shit'. We said: 'No, those three are in Spinal Tap. You do know they are American actors?' 'They're not even a real band?' 'They're not even English! One of them is married to Jamie Lee Curtis.' 'I'm not fuckin' 'avin that,' he says, and walks off right up the middle of Carnegie Hall. He's never watched Spinal Tap since. He'd seen the film and loved it and thought they were a real band.'
The 'he'? His brother.
6. Robbie Williams was going to go on the cover. We'd been to see him, got a terrific interview, and while he'd been a bit mardy with our photographer, Harry Borden, everything was set: after all, this was going to be the only interview he'd give to anyone ahead of his new album. But then in our press week, we went with the photographer Jamie-James Medina, who'd been following them on tour, to see Pete Doherty and Babyshambles play in Southend, at the height of press excitement about the nature of his relationship with Kate Moss. At the end of the night, Pete - worse the wear, it has to be said, surpriiiiiise - handed us two volumes of his journals, and told us we could do what we liked with them. So we published pages of them, and put a picture of Pete first torn from a tabloid with added scribbled words from Kate - 'Fucked again!' - on the cover instead. Instead of Robbie. Sorry Robbie. It felt the right thing at the time. Even after those scribbled words - don't ask why or how - were finally airbrushed from the image that went to press.
7. Morrissey had a new album coming. We'd recently read Douglas Coupland's 'Girlfriend in a Coma'. We thought it would be fun to hook them up, and Douglas agreed, flying from Vancouver to Rome to interview the singer (at no little expense). But there were problems - by the time his flight landed in Italy, 'my system was shutting down on a blend of angry little sleeping pills'; and Douglas had never conducted an interview before; worse, we discovered when he filed the copy, he didn't really approve of the interview process; and so didn't interview Morrissey. I loved the piece; turned out that Morrisseys fans didn't, I'll grant you (you should have seen the post-bag); I'm not saying that made me like the piece all the more, but then again, I'm not saying it didn't.
8. When she appeared on the cover of OMM in May 2006, Lily Allen was yet to put a record out. Far be it from us to blow our own trumpet (oh, ok, you want to scroll down to the third question from the Pitchfork interviewer), but after that, everything happened for her... Oh, and it's a cracking interview by Miranda Sawyer.
9. The special gay issue we produced in November 2006, with Elton John talking to Jake from the Scissor Sisters, and much much more... that was a riot.
10. The 30th anniversary of Elvis' death was looming - or rather, anniversary of his rumoured passing. Our intelligence suggested the King might still be at large, and we knew the only man who just might find him, the godfather of rock'n'roll writing Nik Cohn. There's exclusive interviews, and there's exclusive interviews.
