Shouting from the Hop

Danny Baker

Dan is probably the most famous person to come out of the NME stable from the post-1977 era; He's also the second funniest person I've ever met.

Danny worked on his own Punk fanzine - Sniffin' Glue - prior to getting the NME receptionist job. This job was always given to potential new writers so that they could get their feet under the desk, but also give other staff a chance to get used to them and the Editor a chance to see if they could write on a regular basis as well.

Dan started at Carnaby Street in late 1978, and quickly made his mark in and around the office. A keen footballer, and football fan, we didn't always get on due to his love of Millwall and mine of close rivals Charlton.

We did get to play a few games together, against some good opposition in terms of popularity, and I remember particularly a date we had to play against Madness. As usual, we got a side of eleven together fairly easily, but our ranks were swelled by a few of Danny's mates, whom he had promised a game. When people like Dan organized matches and/or opposition, it was tough to get him to leave team selection up to the usual people, and Danny was always promising his mates a game here and there. On this occasion, I think we may have had 12 - 14 of us all ready and changed waiting for Madness to arrive at the West London ground (over Chiswick way I think?). The kick off time
(probably 6pm) came and went, with no sign of an opposition. We therefore arranged our kick about into something a little more organized, dragging a few local lads in to make up numbers. After about an hour, we were all getting a little tired, having played short sided on a full size pitch. Then, from across the park, a motley crew, and I mean crew, came into view wearing Doc Martens Cherry Red footwear mainly, and promptly announced themselves as ready for action. Quite what Madness had in mind, we will never know for sure, but with the boots, attitude, arrogance, swearing and body language, it didn't seem to be a friendly football match.

Danny promptly blew full time in our make shift game, spoke to Suggs and the boys briefly then announced that we (NME) were all off down the pub, without Madness. Everyone promptly got the message, grabbed their gear and off we trudged. The jibes and swearing as we walked away was pretty bad, and a few of Dan's mates wanted to go back and partake in what Madness obviously thought was going to be the evening's entertainment. Dan was never a hoolie though, and he kept on heading for the pub, as we all did eventually.

Later, I played fairly regularly against a couple of the Madness guys (Bedders, and Chrissy, though not Suggsy), and they were always very polite and nice.

On other occasions, we played The Jam - I'll mention that match under the Gary Crowley section - plus Motorhead, Style Council, and half of Wham!

Danny met his first wife in unusual circumstances, and the parting of their ways was also weird. Dan was on tour with the band Darts, who were well known for their loud behaviour. I'm not sure why, but most of the band plus the journo's who were on tour with them (including Dan and his soon-to-be, who worked for another music magazine) upset someone and found themselves chucked into jail for the night. The police decided to let them cool down and sober up overnight before releasing them all without charge. A cosy night in the cell obviously worked for Dan and his new female friend, and they got married fairly soon afterwards. Of course, these romances never last, and she left their Deptford flat one day, a couple of years later, never to return. She did take with her half of their belongings; the bad news for Dan was that she, literally, took every other one of their records, CDs, and (and worst of all) videos, thereby ruining Dan's complete collection of Bilko episodes, Laurel and Hardy films and such like!

Dan eventually got together with the editor's secretary - Wendy - who was a long standing friend of mine, and previously worked as the NME Ad Managers secretary. Wendy got married to her long time boyfriend and first love, but had a few flings along the way - Mark Woon, Adrian Thrills to name but two - which eventually led to divorce. Once free, she and Dan went out a few times in a bit of a whirlwind romance, and next thing she was pregnant. Unfortunately, Wendy suffered a miscarriage, and got a bit depressed as a result. During her next pregnancy, she did not work very much (understandably) in case anything similar may happen, and we lost touch after her first baby - Sonny - was born. Daughter Bonnie followed a couple of years later.

I'll write a little more about Wendy under her own section at a later time.

Danny is currently radio DJ of the Year, and was last to be found on BBC Radio London 94.9 FM before jumping ship to write a film script. Now that could be good...

Ian Pye

Ian took over from Neil Spencer as editor, in about 1986, in quite controversial circumstances. He was married to Jo Isotta, who was Production Editor at that time, and a lot of people had the impression that Jo helped him out during the interview stage, so that he got the job. He also came from Melody Maker, so a lot of the incumbent staff therefore didn't like him, and he didn't go out of his way to make friends either...Penny Reel, in particular, didn't like him at all! I don't recall if he or Jo left first, but he didn't last long, and was a poor choice for editor.

Phil McNeil

What a nice man! I really liked Phil and never saw him angry or upset, even though he took a huge amount of stress and pressure off the editors. As Deputy Editor, Phil was always at the printers/typesetters with us, and he usually had to stay until all the pages had been signed off. He was in charge of the editorial staff while at the printers really, as Neil Spencer didn't always go along. In the early days at Kettering, when things ran quite smoothly, we'd get away soon after 5pm, but later on, when it all went pretty pear shaped, you'd be lucky to get away much before ten, and we even had to stay overnight on occasion.

Phil was a keen member of our card school on the trains to and from Kettering - we played contract whist mainly - and he would win a large percentage of games. He was also a member of the famous Bedford incident, which I'll write about on here one day soon.

Phil once gave me his press pass so I could get into a Jam gig at The Music Machine in Camden, which was very nice of him.

Ian Penman

Lon Pin Moon; don't ask me why, but that was his nickname at one time! Little Ian always seemed to fall in the shadow (literally) of the more famous Paul Morley. They both joined NME as freelance writers around the same time (1980); they both wrote long, long, articles (being paid by the published word...) with lots of long words within, and seemed quite pretentious.

Ian always seemed to have a cold, though the red nose may have been for another reason?

This is how Wikipedia describes him -

"Ian Penman was the NME's resident intellectual provocateur in the early 1980s. He was never as interested in music as his postmodernist rival, Paul Morley, which makes his clippings at the same time more infuriating and less dated.

Like Morley, he was Wildean and superficial, enamoured of the process of writing for a music paper more than anything else. His elaborate syntax and stultifyingly self-centred prose were, with hindsight, the perfect critic's counterpoint and mirror to the New Romantic wave.

Penman was the true test of NME fidelity, to be contrasted with the earnest "muso" preoccupations of the Melody Maker and the proletarian philistinism of Sounds."

A little man, he may have had a chance in a fight with lookalike Jimmy Somerville!

If you could get him on a one-to-one, he was an OK guy, but he definitely played up when other staff were around, and eventually got too big for his boots and disappeared from view.

That's all for today...more to follow soon.